by Edith Layton
“It came an hour ago,” he said calmly, seeing that calm was being restored to the hall, “and was addressed, as you can see, to either you, sir, or Miss Logan. But as she was already gone, it hasn’t yet been read…”
Warwick Jones grew ashen as he scanned the note. The thin red line left from his battle with attackers in London stood out in bold relief against his cheek, and it could be seen that all the muscles in his jaw were knotted. His eyes held a terrible, naked fear for one moment, but in the next, his butler shivered to see that it mightn’t be fable that the gentleman’s ancestor had been a murderer as well as a thief.
“Warwick?” Julian asked quietly, fearfully, his light eyes already growing bleak.
“It is from her brother Charles,” Warwick answered woodenly. “It joyously announces the birth of her nephew last night. It comes from his country home in Dedham. Of course, of course, he is not in London.”
18
The coach was not half so luxurious as any Susannah was used to, but she reasoned that Charlie had settled for whatever was available when he sent for her so quickly. She worried about the reasons for that hasty summons, praying nothing had gone wrong with her sister-in-law or her little niece, calming herself only by reasoning that if that dreadful notion were true, he’d have called her to his country home, not London. Then she fretted that it might be that Charlie had got word of something dreadful befalling her younger brother, and then, her breath catching in her throat at the very idea, she wondered if anything awful had happened to dear Charlie himself. She didn’t even have the dubious comfort of knowing she didn’t have much longer to torment herself with these terrible visions of disaster for her loved ones, since she’d soon be far more concerned about herself.
She hadn’t had much time to think when she’d flung her clothes into a carpetbag, ordered her maid to come quickly, scribbled a note to Warwick, and clambered into the waiting carriage bound for London. But Charlie’s note was terse, and so not like him at all, and she’d not stopped to wonder at it when it had been delivered into her hand. Instead, she’d known she must go to him at once. Her only immediate worries had been because the contessa wasn’t there to accompany her, Julian had gone as well, and Warwick wasn’t there as usual to see things through so that she could take a step without dread of stepping wrong. It was only when she was within the dingy coach and on her bumpy way to London, trying to ignore the shocks the badly sprung vehicle registered with every rut in the road, and painfully aware of the cracked leather seats, musty smell, and dirty windows, that she let herself question the dire reason that necessitated the impromptu journey.
The horses flew down the twisting, narrow roads with such speed, the coachman never sparing them, his whip cracking so continually, that she was tempted to lean her head out the window and shout for mercy for the poor brutes, until she paused, wondering in sudden sick shock if there might not be indeed some terrible urgency spurring him on. But on the first stop, when they paused at an inn to change the foaming team, he wasn’t very forthcoming. He wasn’t a sight to inspire confidence either. He was something in the style of the coachmen she’d seen at the Swan the night she’d met Julian, which meant that he looked nothing at all like him, but instead resembled all the other stage and mail coachmen she’d ever seen. But although he was large and heavy and red-faced too, he was more of each than was ordinarily found in those men, and was slovenly, a thing none of them ever were, since they were generally proud to the point of arrogance, and were so careful of their clothes they were almost dandified in their absurd costumes.
This fellow, her maid noted darkly, had a nose as red as his neckerchief, a welter of food and snuff stains on his boldly checkered waistcoat, his Benjamin cape had rents and patches, his jockey boots were scuffed, his broad-brimmed hat was dented, and the linen at his neck and wrist was far darker than the team of grays the carriage was transferred to. And, he said, around the foaming tankard the ostler had brought out to him at the first stop they’d made, he knew “nuffink about anyfink, missy, ’cept ’e was to get to Lunnon, and quick-like.”
She fretted and stewed and fidgeted as the miles went by, and though her body welcomed the pauses, she resented every stop the coach made for food or comfort as the long, anxious day passed. She was relieved when they pulled into the courtyard of the Crimson Cat and she was told it was their last stop before the journey’s end. At that, she exchanged weak smiles and sighs with her maid, and after she’d sought the ladies’ convenience, she relaxed enough to order a glass of cider and some light refreshments for them both. Then, since her maid always quite rightly saw to her mistress’s needs and comforts first, she sat back and waited for the girl to return from her own toilette. It was then that the coachman stumped into the common room to insist she hurry back to the coach, as they were ready to leave again.
Susannah cast a longing look back to the pitcher, bread, and cheese that were being brought out even as she left, for now that she’d admitted her thirst and hunger, they seemed all the keener for having to be abandoned so soon after being acknowledged. She plunked down on the coach’s peeling, flaking cushions with a sigh, for though the coachman had promised that her maid would bring “them victuals” along with her, it was hard to imagine how she’d get a drop into her mouth when the coach began to buck and jounce along the roads again. So when the carriage started up with a jolt and she was flung back in her seat with the backward thrust of it, she was too winded at once to shout what she had to. And then she discovered that she couldn’t pry the windows open any longer, and that none of her frantic thumping on the ceiling seemed to have any effect either. Thus she had no way of telling the coachman that they were off and down the road despite the fact that her maid was still somewhere in the Crimson Cat ladies’ necessary.
At first, she was horribly sorry for poor Millie, picturing her beside herself when she returned to find her mistress gone, and herself alone and stranded in a strange place, miles from home. And then she remembered poor Millie had a head on her shoulders and a fairly big mouth in that head at that, and she actually found herself smiling as she pictured a truer version of her maid’s reaction. And then she recalled her own situation.
She continued to shout and rattle and exhaust herself making futile noises as the carriage reached the outskirts of London, but there wasn’t an indication that the coachman had heard a sound. She was frightened then, worrying about herself, wondering if the coach was going to tip over, nervous about being alone. The only solace she had was in the thought of what Charlie would do to the fellow when she was delivered to him. And if, for one moment, the thought occurred to her that it was not a mistake, that the action was deliberate, and that it had not been Charlie that had summoned her at all and sent her off on this mad journey, then she found the perfect retreat from that absolutely hideous unthinkable thought. She refused to believe it. And like so many people who refuse to be cowed by fate, she got angry instead.
It was even easier for her to become enraged than it was for her to dissolve into tears when she discovered, as the coach slowed to almost a standstill in London traffic, that the doors had been fastened and barred from the outside. And when she tried to clear the windows with a handkerchief so that she might signal and wave to passersby to attract attention to her plight, and found that they’d been uniformly filthied, again from the outside, she found herself more comfortable trembling with rage than she would’ve been had it been fright she quaked with. Which wasn’t to say that she wasn’t roundly terrified by then. She was. But she wasn’t ready to submit to defeat, because her Da had taught her that fear was in itself defeat. For once, she was happy that she wasn’t a true lady. A lady, she believed, ought to have subsided into tears and lain trembling on the cushions, awaiting her destiny. Susannah raged, and looked about for a way to deal death and destruction to the author of her difficulties, if only so that she wouldn’t deliver herself to useless, helpless terror.
So when the coach at last rolled to a stop in
a rubbish-strewn alleyway so hemmed about by high crooked houses that it was twilight at teatime, and the door was finally flung open, the three men who peered into the shadows of the carriage to see where the girl had tried to hide herself were forced to take an unplanned step back as the young woman, her eyes blazing fury, marched out. She almost believed herself mistaken in their motives, since for that second all three were too dumbfounded to do more than gape at her. She was, although she didn’t know it, a perplexing if awesome sight to them.
They saw an absolutely lovely young lady, wearing a gown of celestial blue that did nothing to hide the perfection of a slender, but ripe form, and that emphasized her fair skin and the yards of flaxen hair that had come down from its pins during her wild ride. Her features were delicate and piquant, she was an altogether entrancing female, if one could ignore the fact that her fine brown eyes were slanted in a feline cast and filled with pure and glowing rage.
She saw three dangerous-looking grubby men of assorted size and height, all of whom would have announced their presence to her even if she were blind, they smelled so badly, some from simple dirt, some from the application of too much cheap perfumery. For as she stood and stared, she began to sort them out and saw one who was tall and filthy, one who was lean and ragged, and one fat one who had put on all the airs and graces of a gentleman half his size, so that his clothing fit badly, where it fit at all.
She was so fierce-looking in that moment when she left the coach that they simply gawked as she stepped out. But then, just as her expression wavered as she began to realize that she was in deeper difficulty than she’d known, they began to remember that however furious she looked, she was only a woman, and only one, at that, and there were three of them. It was the thin one who broke the silence.
“’Ere, she’s a treat,” he whispered in awed tones.
“I knew me luck was changin’,” the tall one said happily. “Come to Daddy, luv, there’s a good girl.”
He reached out for her, and involuntarily Susannah recoiled. This pleased him very much, and he smiled widely, giving her the benefit of the stained teeth he still possessed. He giggled, and reached for her again.
But Susannah observed a great deal and learned very quickly. This time she didn’t cringe, but when he touched her arm, she swung her other hand and caught him soundly on the ear.
He swore and reached for her, but before he could touch her again, the corpulent man said hastily, “She’s not yours, idiot, leave off. She’s his, and we’d best be quick about getting her inside before she attracts too much attention. Miss,” he said anxiously in what may even have been sincere tones, “come with us, please, or it will go hard for you.”
She hesitated. The coachman called down nervously that he had to be off, the fat man looked unhappy, the thin one seemed stricken into silence by her beauty, and the tall man leered and said merrily, “I’ll take her in, not to worry,” as he reached for her again. This time he captured her arms, and placed one hand widespread on her bottom, as though he were about to lift her and fling her over his shoulder, although all he did was grin. She struggled with him, to his growing amusement, as she soon discovered it was hard to fight with someone taller and stronger, especially when she’d never been taught to fight, and when every time he touched her she was shocked into a temporary paralysis of shame and disbelief because of where he touched her, and when she was handicapped further by having to hold her breath as well, the closer he held her.
“Fool,” she managed to spit at last, writhing in his grip, “do you think this is what Lion would approve?”
He released her so suddenly she had to steady herself against the side of the coach, and the fat man stopped arguing with the coachman about his fee for services. All of the men swung around to stare at her then.
She’d mentioned Lion, she supposed dazedly, only because that was the name that had naturally come to her when she’d thought of crime. She’d never expected such a gratifying reaction. But in truth, their reaction to her words was as nothing compared to the way she was surprising herself more each minute. In no way was she acting as a lady. In stress, in her moment of deepest need, she discovered herself reverting to an instinct she hadn’t known she possessed, behaving as what she really was, whether she’d forgotten, or had indeed ever even known what that self was or not. If she’d inherited no business sense from her da, she was yet his daughter, and there were things, she discovered, that if not bred in the bone, were at least learned at his knee. Those things came to her now, unbidden, and she was grateful for them.
She raised her chin and tried to look ferocious. Da had always said the world believes what it sees, and a man can sell anything he can make the world believe it sees.
She’d been angry, she’d fought back in every way she knew, and now it seemed she knew still another way, since the right words were coming to her lips by bypassing her brain entirely. Her decision was made so lightning-fast she was scarcely aware of it. But one second she was merely encouraged and the next wholly decided, even as she stood glowering and panting for air at the side of the coach. She rejected all the expensive things learned at Miss Spring’s academy. They were for ladies. She was, after all, just as the world always took pains to tell her, not one. And at any rate, ladylike recourses such as fainting, weeping, praying, and pleading seemed pointless now. Coolness, cleverness, some deceit, and pure brass, all the ingredients Da had sworn made for successful business, might yet save the day. At any rate, it made her feel better, and even if that were all it did, that was how she meant to go on.
“Er…Lion?” the corpulent man breathed. “You are acquainted with him?”
She paused. She thought furiously. If they were working for the King of Thieves, they’d not ask that. If they weren’t impressed by his name, they’d not ask that. If they weren’t terrified of him, they’d not look as though she had conjured up a demon at the mention of his name. She set her jaw, and set her bridges afire.
“Intimately,” she breathed, in the lowest, most vulgar fashion she could manage.
At least, she thought a little while later, as she stood and looked out at the blank wall her barred window faced, her tactics had gotten her off the street without further molestation or pain. The coachman had pocketed his coin, tipped his hat, forgotten to wink, and lashing his horses, had fled. The other men had held a whispered conference and then the fat man had offered her his arm, his apologies for the mistake, and asked her as nicely as you please, to please follow him. Since she hadn’t any choice, because she couldn’t outrun them, she’d agreed. He’d led her into a wretched hovel, up a flight of stairs so filthy her slippers stuck to them, and then, with a flourish, had shown her into this room. Once she’d swept past him, head high, he’d slammed the door on the hem of her skirt and she’d heard it bolted soundly enough to keep in elephants. Then she’d been left alone.
At least the tall man hadn’t touched her again, though his leer, she decided, trying to cheer herself up, was, just as her nurse had threatened would happen to herself when she was little and refused to put off a silly face she’d made, now probably frozen to his nasty face permanently. She gazed at the blank brick wall and held her hands tightly together, and having no watch, decided she’d been waiting in this room for either an hour or an eternity. That was the worst part of it. The longer she stayed locked in the room, the more her courage ebbed. She was cursed with an active imagination but blessed with enough good sense to know that the honors she envisioned were working against her. She tried to brace herself by turning her thoughts to other things, believing that if she weren’t distracted she’d be capable of dreaming up far worse than what was actually awaiting her. Then the door opened and she discovered that she was wrong.
At first she was so relieved she almost wept the tears that anger had held back. The gentleman that came into the room was just that, a gentleman, there was no mistaking it. He was tall and well-proportioned, well-dressed in a tight blue Weston jacket, with scrupulously
clean white linen at his neck, and he wore well-fitted dove-gray pantaloons and high shining boots, his only adornments a golden fob and a quizzing glass. He was also well-brought-up, for he bowed when he saw her, and then took her hand. She looked up into a face as fair as her own, but what she saw in those cold blue eyes caused her own eyes to shut as tightly as the door did behind him. When she opened them again, he was smiling, and she knew that all the rest was prelude and she had never, ever, been so frightened.
“Miss Susannah Logan,” he said pleasantly, “what a happy accident to make your acquaintance here.”
This comment amused him very much, and when she didn’t reply after he’d done laughing softly, he went on. “I could have scraped up your acquaintance at Brighton, you know, but then, I’d have had to contend with those churlish fellows you’ve been living with, and I didn’t care to. I decided to bring you to London and introduce you to society instead, just as your friends attempted to do. Do you like the gentlemen you’ve already met? They are eager for your further company.”
He frowned at her then, and putting a gloved finger to her cheek, he looked into her face. She resolved not to blink or look away, and she kept her countenance immobile, but she couldn’t control a sudden shudder at his touch, and he smiled again.