Love in disguise, p.11
Love in Disguise, page 11
“It won’t be necessary, but thank you for your kind thoughts anyway,” Warwick said sincerely, “so if I may, a word of caution for you as well? You’re too wise for the position, Mr. O’Brien. I heard an explorer speak here in town one day,” he went on as the gentleman looked at him curiously. “He’d come from the Ivory Coast to talk about his discoveries. He said that the fiercest creatures in the jungle are not the brave, bighearted ones, like the mighty lion, but rather the small, mindless droves of tiny ants, which together can fell the noblest of beasts. Take care yourself, Mr. O’Brien.”
After leaving the giant king of thieves shaking his head in amusement, and the two guards at the door in confused thought, Warwick followed the shifty man who materialized at his side again when he’d left the room. He was led down the stair, out the door, and then left alone again in the night.
Mr. Warwick Jones went directly to his town house, and then straightaway to his bed. He slept soundly, and woke with the dawn. Then he washed and dressed with enough care to gratify his valet, visited with his friend Julian long enough to argue him into taking his medicine, drank only coffee to break his fast, thus nearly breaking his cook’s heart, and then left his town house quickly again. He’d done everything with precision. In fact, everything this bright spring morning had gone according to his preconceived plan, and so he’d no way of knowing that an unexpected event was occurring even as he drove away from his door.
For his own light phaeton had driven right past Mr. Logan and his sister as they approached his house in their carriage, and being so distracted by his own thoughts, he didn’t see his business acquaintance frantically trying to wave to direct his attention to them.
“No matter,” Mr. Logan said, pulling his head and shoulders back in from the carriage window and sinking back into his seat. “We’ll see him when he returns. But, devil take it, Sukey, what sort of thing did they teach you at the Spring academy? You pinched me so hard,” he complained, rubbing his arm, “that I don’t wonder if Miss Spring didn’t get Gentleman Jackson to instruct you girls in self-defense.”
“I couldn’t have you shouting out the window, Charlie,” his sister said unrepentantly. “Bad enough you’ve landed me on the poor man so soon. If you started screeching my name out the window, we’d both have been embarrassed to death.”
“Ah,” Mr. Logan said contentedly, gazing at his sister, an eye-filling vision in blond lace this morning, “nothing about you would embarrass any man, Sukey, though it’s very likely you’ll be the death of several.”
Susannah sighed, and made a face she was sure would turn cream, but it only made her brother grin.
*
It was the life of only one man that interested Warwick Jones at that same moment. It was a subject which engaged his interest entirely all morning, although anyone who might have watched him throughout that morning might never have guessed it. For the young gentleman seemed only to be amusing himself as so many of his contemporaries might do. He rode slowly through Green Park, he visited Manton’s shooting gallery, he stopped in at a few clubs, he dropped by Gentleman Jackson’s salon to watch a few young men of quality spar with each other under the famous retired prizefighter’s expert instruction. Only someone who knew him well, and that would have been a rare person, would have known how odd his behavior was. For Warwick Jones never did that which all young gentlemen of leisure did, unless he had a reason. It was almost noon when he at last found that reason, in the midst of a clot of other men at Gentleman Jackson’s establishment.
Lord Robert Moredon was an impressive gentleman. He was tall, but seemed taller still from the way he held his square shoulders high, and his proudly carried noble head showed even features and a healthy pink complexion. He and his sister were acknowledged to make a charming pair, for she was dark as his mama had been, and he as fair and light-skinned as their late papa. Lord Moredon was as regular a sight in London in the Season as his beautiful sister was. But he was an adornment at society parties as well as at the Cyprian Ball where no lady ever set slipper, a frequent dance partner to the latest ton beauties, as well as a frequent patron of Madame Felice and Mother Carey’s less correct but no less popular and exquisite employees. Unwed as yet, he also often had some gaudy creature in his keeping, oftener still, one that many another gentleman envied him for. But he seldom kept any female very long, and though he had a dozen best acquaintances, he was known to have no one friend. He had little patience with his inferiors, and it was apparent that he found their number legion. But then, he was a popular, perfect ornament of society, and so not at all exceptional in any way.
Mr. Warwick Jones, however, stood and gazed so long and hard at the gentleman that it seemed he found him a rare and exotic object. His unblinking stare had such force that some few of the men surrounding Lord Moredon found themselves stepping back from him, as though that unrelenting gaze had heat as well as intensity, and they wished to remove themselves from its path to ensure that they weren’t the object of that pitiless gaze. At length, even Lord Moredon, who seldom noticed anyone he had not specifically summoned, noted Mr. Jones. He looked up from a tale of an obliging wench he’d been regaling his comrades with, to meet a direct pair of dark blue eyes that he pretended he had difficulty recognizing at first.
“I say, Jones,” he laughed after a moment, “what ails you? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost. Or is there some insect crawling on my vest? Devil take the fellow,” he whispered sotto voce to some man at his side, “damned insolent the way he keeps staring.”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Jones said languidly, his voice so at odds with his expression that several gentlemen moved still further away from Lord Moredon. “No, there you’re out, Moredon. I may be looking at a phantom, albeit perhaps a few moments prematurely, but I know I’m looking at an insect.”
A silence came over the group of gentlemen at that, as each digested the slender young man’s words, and then drew in their breath in excitement, not wishing to make a sound or miss a thing, realizing they were witnessing something shocking, and certainly something worth talking about later.
“Are you foxed, man?” Lord Moredon demanded.
“Most certainly not,” came the cold reply. “If I were, I might be able to bear the sight of you, thinking it only the sort of horrors one gets after too wild a night.”
“Are you mad?” the gentleman asked, amazed.
“Most certainly maddened, enraged that we share the planet, Moredon,” Mr. Jones answered with a sneer.
“I will have satisfaction,” Lord Moredon said at once, with a sudden smile, “but you may name the instruments and the hour, since you’re so mad for execution, of the deed, if not yourself,” he joked, looking to his friends and adding, for their benefit, “An odd, peculiar fellow, always was, even at school.”
“Yes, I’m all impatience, so let us have it here and now. And with our fists, to have done with it at once,” his antagonist said as he began stripping off his tightly fitted jacket.
But Lord Moredon, thinking smugly of his scores at Manton’s shooting range, and his skill with sabers and famous eye for other sorts of swordplay, cried scornfully, “Certainly, Jones, you may back out if you wish, we all have brave moments, later regretted, I’ll understand, we’ll all understand,” he added with glad mockery, sweeping his arm to indicate the large openmouthed audience they’d drawn.
“Really?” Warwick Jones asked, casting his neckcloth aside and beginning to remove his vest. “Are you so anxious for exile, then? I’m not. And I remind you, that’s the penalty for the sort of dueling you prefer. Only think, that way even if you win, you lose. Are you eager to leave your lovely sister alone, without your so fond protection, simply for the pleasure of somehow putting a hole someplace vital in me? Or is it rather that you fear taking me on without some deadly instrument to hand? Perhaps it’s that you only know how to fight a man when you’ve got two others to hold him down for you. But I can’t think the Gentleman here would approve your usual method.”
Gentleman Jackson himself, who’d been spiritlessly giving pointers to a beardless youth on how to hold up arms that he’d been silently grieved to note had no more muscles than a plate of macaroni, had stopped to listen to the altercation and now hastened to the two gentlemen, murmuring soothing noises intended to calm them. But by then Lord Moredon, his face having grown pale and then bright red with rage, was tearing off his own jacket and shirt, and his pale blue eyes held such a murderous expression that the proprietor of the club turned to Mr. Jones, hoping to find a more reasonable ear. There was nothing but cold, calm reason in the younger man’s dark blue eyes, and something in the faint smile he wore caused Gentleman Jackson to stop and appraise the situation more calmly. The opponents were gentry, it would be witnessed, and on the whole, safer to have the argument settled in his establishment than beneath some oak tree at dawn. Then too, whatever fears he might have had about an unequal, unfair match because Lord Moredon was so much larger and more bellicose, vanished when the Gentleman, a man who knew how to take the measure of another by more subtle means than judging the way he spoke or bespoke himself, saw what advantage Lord Moredon stripped down to.
For when the larger man stood, poised, huge fists up and torso bared to the waist, a keen eye could see it was not muscle which rippled at his midsection, nor were the thick arms thickened with sinew. And when Mr. Jones’s jacket and shirt were removed, the shape of the man did not go with them, as was the case with so many other men of fashion. The shoulders remained wide, the chest developed, the waist narrow, and while there was no extra flesh, that which was there didn’t move as the man moved forward, as his opponent’s did, except when the motion of his arms caused the long, strong muscles to slide smoothly beneath the taut olive skin.
The proprietor of the boxing salon stepped back as the opponents in the impromptu match stepped forward. Sudden wagers were placed, with the odds heavily on Lord Moredon, the money going to size and apparent passion. The first two blows that were landed, great slapping punches that sent Mr. Jones’s head back, sent the odds flying up further. The next blow, a heavy thump to Mr. Jones’s heart, which backed him up a pace, sent the bettors into a frenzy, trying to take sides against the few who’d wagered on the upstart Jones. But those who took a moment to clear their throats before they shouted their bets lost all their chance, though they were soon glad of it. For Mr. Jones, it seemed, had only been taking the measure of his man, and from then on he only went forward, mercilessly forward, patiently and systematically pounding Lord Moredon’s face back, and back further.
“For God’s sake, Jones,” someone shouted after several moments, unable to watch the gory rout any longer, “finish him for mercy’s sake and be done with it.”
Then, as though the words had caused him to see through the black mist which had narrowed his vision, Warwick saw Lord Moredon shake his dazed head again and again to clear the blood from his eyes, and so, with a sound very like a disgusted sigh, he took the unknown Samaritan’s advice and landed a blow to the other man’s stomach and another to his jaw, to finally bring him crashing to the floor at his feet.
The room was very still when Warwick Jones knelt by Lord Moredon, and so they all heard what he said to his downed opponent in terse and labored breaths. “Moredon,” he said, “you made two great mistakes. Oh, not just in hiring two men to hold Viscount Hazelton down so that you could kick him into submission. I understand that’s your way. But you oughtn’t to have left him alive to tell the tale. And you shouldn’t have forgotten that though he’s lost all else, he still has friends. I am one.”
Mr. Jones rose to his feet, and then it could finally be seen that he looked weary unto death. But then he seemed to remember something. He knelt again, and taking Lord Moredon by the hair, he lifted his head and added, coldly and loudly, “And oh yes, if you hire men to work your revenge in future, I’d advise you to engage two more, permanently, to then watch over you every next moment for the rest of your life.”
It was only late afternoon when Warwick Jones returned to his town house, but, his butler thought in alarm, he looked as exhausted as though he’d been out all night. He looked as if he’d been doing a great deal more that his butler ought not to ask about as well, for there were faint bruises darkening on the lean jaw, and after he’d handed his cane and his hat to a footman, it could be seen that he absently held his hand to his chest as though in some humorous imitation of the pose that vile Bonaparte was said to favor. But there was nothing amusing to be seen in the heavy-lidded eyes, which seemed more difficult for him to fully open than ever.
Mr. Jones began to ask after his guest, when his butler interrupted him, a thing he’d never do unless something as momentous as peace being declared or assassination accomplished had occurred in his master’s absence. But his news was almost that startling to his employer, and he’d known it would be.
“Sir,” the man said with some agitation, “whilst you were out, that Mr. Logan came to call again. This time, however, he came with his sister, and her chaperon, and her maid, and all their luggage. He said that they were to be staying on, here, with us, with your permission. I could scarcely call the man a liar, sir,” the butler went on in visible perturbation, “and so could not turn them aside. I let them in,” he went on, his voice rising with emotion until it almost reached normal conversational tones, “as I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Oh, damn,” Mr. Jones said, closing his eyes as if in pain, but as his butler began to eagerly say, “Just so, so if you’d like me to show them out—” he cut in to say wearily, “Sorry, Mr. Fox, I am sorry, I’d quite forgotten they were coming. I ought to have told you sooner,” he said, though he had to squelch a stab of annoyance at how quickly his sometime business partner had taken him up on his offer of hospitality. He’d never expected the man to come running with his blasted unwed sister so soon, he thought.
“Forgive my thoughtlessness,” he only went on to say, ensuring his servant’s devoted service for another lifetime for his consideration, “and would you please have rooms prepared for them all? And perhaps we ought to speak about hiring on a temporary housekeeper of some sort now that we’re not to be a bachelor household for some weeks. But that can be later. For now, I think I’ll make my bows, then excuse myself and see to the viscount, there’s a thing I have to discuss with him.”
“There’s that, too,” the butler said, in his excitation sounding like a gossipy commoner hanging over a washline, eager to impart a good bit of tattle to a neighbor, “for she’s up there right now. That is to say, she was here when the doctor came and he chatted with her and then he said that with her brother’s permission, of course, he thought it would do the viscount a world of good if she came up to chat with him to cheer him up and take his mind off his hurts. And so she’s there now, with her brother and her chaperon, the contessa, of course, that much sense they do have, and it has seemed to divert the viscount, he does seem much better than one would expect….”
The butler’s voice trailed off in embarrassment as he saw his master incline his head to one side as he listened to him. In the silence that followed, he could hear his own words echo, and realized he’d sounded like a prattling child. But before he could make a recovery, his master asked only, “She?”
“Miss Susannah, Miss Logan,” the butler explained, but by the time the second word was out of his mouth, Mr. Jones had nodded absently and was taking the stairs to the viscount’s room.
He’d been so angry and keyed up for so long that when his business with Lord Moredon was done with, he’d felt as physically deflated as if someone had put water in his knees. Then, no matter what the outcome had been, there’d been no question he’d been soundly thumped during the confrontation as well. So when Warwick reached the second landing, his heart beat a bit faster than usual, his breath came with a bit more effort, and when he came to Julian’s door, his face was wanner than it was normally, as well.
He saw Julian at once, lying on his bed in a dressing gown, propped up on a quantity of pillows. His face was cruelly discolored and out of shape, but even with the bits of plaster here and there, he could see that his friend wore a crooked smile. A middle-aged woman sat in a chair to one side, nodding at the persons in the room; from her quietude and air of calm, he knew her for the chaperon that had arrived with all the luggage. Mr. Charles Logan perched on the end of a table, grinning like a boy, obviously happy as a man at a wedding feast. And a young woman with an abundance of hair the precise color of the sunlight pouring in the window stood with her back to the door and offered Julian a glass with something cloudy in the bottom of it.
“Careful, Julian,” Warwick said softly from the doorway. “That’s how the Borgias did it, you know.”
He started to smile and went forward to better hear Julian’s somewhat slurred greeting and reply, when the young woman turned to face him.
And then, for the first time in his life, between the drawing in of one breath and the letting out of another, he lost a breath somewhere in between, forever, as every life’s function he had stopped in that one moment as he gazed at her. He’d been dealt a heavy blow earlier, but this one was the most profound he’d ever received. For she looked exactly as he’d always imagined love itself would look if he ever found it.
But that was only how she looked, so in the space of time he had to begin another breath, he thought on a certain wild hope and despair that she would speak now, and so shatter the illusion forever, for certainly, he thought, her words could never match what his eyes had seen. So he waited for the platitudes, or the polite nonsense, or the stammered foolishness that could release him from this sudden uncomfortable, unsought bondage she’d placed him in.
