Love in disguise, p.21
Love in Disguise, page 21
“Everything in hand?” Susannah said, aghast, and then angry; and then, suddenly far too angry to be aware or shocked or even care that she could speak up so to Julian, and dare to confront Warwick as well, she gasped, “In hand? It seems to me,” she went on furiously, “that you’ve gotten everything in ribs, and eyes, and faces up to now, but I don’t recall the doctor patching up any hands lately. Perhaps that will be next time, eh? All you have to do is to let Lady Moredon alone, and you can live without pain. All you have to do is continue to see her, and soon, likely, we’ll all have everything in hand, and face and heart too, no doubt, aye!” she said, too wound up to care that Julian was staring at her gravely, or to notice that Warwick was watching her with something very like delight.
The silence that greeted her when she was done was sharper than a rebuke. She colored up and dropped her gaze, unwilling now to look at the hurt she could at last recognize in Julian’s open face. She kept her eyes on her breakfast plate, and so could only hear him say softly, gently, and entirely reasonably, “Ah, Susannah. You may not agree with my taste in ladyloves, and you don’t have to, but I promise you, I wouldn’t pursue where no lead was given. And I’m trying to erase those objections of her brother’s. In fact, so soon as these ribs you mentioned are knit up tightly enough, I think I’ll be getting back on the Thunder, and so will bring no danger down upon anyone here any longer. I’ll do anything to restore my fortunes faster, anyway, for that’s the problem as I see it. Lord Robert doesn’t want a beggar to carry off his sister, and for all he’s not a good man, who can blame him? But more,” he said in so imperative a tone that she looked up and so was as caught in his clear knowing gaze as if he’d shone a light upon her, “he’s gone beyond objecting to my suit, he’s interfered with my life…our lives. And what sort of a man would I be if I allowed my liberty to be taken away because of another man’s whim? Whether I loved the lady or not, I’d not be much of a man then, would I?”
“And as I certainly don’t love the lady,” Warwick put in softly, “it’s clear the issue is more about the state of our freedom than of Julian’s heart.”
“If it’s your safety that’s worrying you,” Julian said at once, “don’t worry, that’s what I’m off to see about today, and if there’s any real danger to you, we’ll certainly make sure that you’re well out of it before we go any further.”
“Ah, not too well put, my boy,” Warwick said, smiling at Susannah’s outraged expression, “since right now she looks—in hair, coloring, and certainly in emotion—like a direct descendant of one of those fierce ladies who rode in a chariot, spear at the ready, protecting her menfolk from those nasty Roman chaps when they threatened them. And anyway, Julian, my dear friend,” he added, turning his attention to the blond gentleman, “you’re in error. You are not going anywhere, I’m sending out various summonses today, and tomorrow, as soon as the doctor peeks under his dressing and pronounces me fit to scowl and shout again, I shall be going. Not you. They’ll eat you alive where I’m bound.”
“Oh yes,” Julian said angrily, wheeling about to face his host, “I only drove the coach from Brighton and back past midnight and across the heath for a month of Sundays, so I’m clearly far too delicate a flower to do what the great Mr. Jones can do. They’ll eat me up alive,” he mocked. “Oh, I’m terrified, can you point out a bed I can hide under, Mr. Jones?”
“I know the lay of the land,” Warwick said icily, looking down his long nose at his friend, an effect that would have been coldly aristocratic but was somewhat ruined by the battering his face had taken, “and however virile you undoubtedly are, you look much the gent, my dear.”
“And you, I suppose,” Julian said with some heat, “look far more able to defend yourself, swathed in bandages like Ramses the First.”
“Why don’t you go together?” Susannah asked softly.
Warwick replied, “Bandaged or not, Julian, I know those low streets, I know how to deal with the king of the dunghill, and you do not.”
As Julian snapped, “Yes, and they’ll deal with you promptly enough, they won’t even need a knife this time, I believe they can use a feather—”
And Susannah said again, more sharply, “Why don’t you go together?”
The annoyance in her voice, as well as the tone of it, stopped them abruptly. They gazed at each other, and then at her, and they both began to laugh.
“Thank you, Mama,” Warwick said contritely when he was able. “And will you come with me tomorrow, as Nurse asks, Julian?”
“I’d be pleased to, Warwick,” Julian said, on a grin. “And thank you, Susannah.”
She smiled to herself, and was thinking up a suitably cool reply to cover the amazingly good feeling their restored good feeling evoked in her, when Julian commented approvingly on the civilizing influence of females, and then Warwick agreed, and began to mention such famous feminine peacemakers as Eve, Medea, Joan of Arc, Helen of Troy, Mary, Queen of Scots…until Susannah pretended outrage, and they all fell to laughing again.
Watching the two gentlemen so in concert with each other again, Susannah, oddly enough, felt her own merriment fade. There was a flash of awareness in that moment for her. For it seemed to her then that the two gentlemen, one dark, one light, were part of each other, and parcel of her happiness, and yet since the one she wanted could never want her, so she would always be doomed to doing just what she did now, which was to only look on and watch their happiness and try to take what comfort she could from that.
They took her sudden silence for concern for them, and then began to assure her of their safety, and of her own. But she’d never for a moment worried about herself, since she felt more secure when with the two of them than she ever had in her life, and thought that no hostility, physical or verbal, from either acts of desperate ragged men in the streets, or words of silk-clad aristocrats at a ball, could touch her, or harm her, so long as they were there with her.
But they were gone all day the next day, and it was dreary for Susannah, and there was no mistaking the fact that she was nervous and uncomfortable with herself as she wandered the house wondering what was happening to them. Warwick had been pronounced fit enough to go out if he were a madman, as the doctor had said, and as he’d replied that was fair enough, it hadn’t been long until he and Julian had left to search for the man they called the Lion, who might have knowledge of those who’d been hired to assault them. Not for the first time, Susannah regretted the circumstance of her gender, for it didn’t seem fair that she could only pace and wait for word of them, while they might go out and meet their difficulties head-on. She remembered the contessa’s explanation for her aching body the day after the attack as she continued to prowl the lower portions of Warwick’s town house, and wondered if her body were again refusing to admit to the rules society forced upon it, for there was no way she could be comfortable sitting down, or lying down, or even standing still this day, not until she knew what had become of her two gentlemen.
There wasn’t even anyone for her to talk with as she wandered and waited. Since the contessa had different training, or at the least, more experience with it, and also because she wasn’t so personally involved, she’d gone to her room for an afternoon nap that threatened to slide into evening and become a night’s sleep. Susannah was bored and anxious and edgy when the butler went to answer a summons at the door in the late afternoon.
And so that was why she completely forgot her role as guest and ran to the door to hear if it were news of Warwick and Julian. And, of course, that was why she then completely forgot her role as lady, and despite all of the astute butler’s hints—raised eyebrows and discreet coughs, telling of his hesitancy to comply with her wishes—insisted on inviting the strange gentleman in, and interviewing him herself, by herself, in the drawing room.
*
They’d taken Warwick’s light curricle into a district where hired hackney coaches would not go. Although Julian had wondered if they weren’t making too much of a splash, as he noted the crafty, hard, and sullen faces observing them as their blooded high-stepping team picked gracefully through the filthy, teeming streets, Warwick assured him that his clothes, face, and voice were enough to alert the entire district, so there was no need to try to dissemble by walking where they might drive. And anyway, he’d said, with the fleeting ghost of a smile behind his bandage, the way news traveled in such a place, they were probably remarked the moment they set out from his town house.
His friend was amazed at how well Warwick knew the area, how easily he steered his team, threading it through narrow streets and down darkened alleyways, seeking out one low house after another. He was further astonished at how well Warwick predicted the people he met—for every starveling brat he picked as postboy did his job perfectly, so that not a scratch was ever found on the curricle when they emerged, blinking, from out of some stygian tavern, or when they came down from some hovel in one of the tenements high above the rank streets. And he was no little disturbed at how Warwick remained impassive as he interviewed opium eaters and drunkards, filthy bawds and pickpockets, procurers and their bizarre living merchandise of every sex, and received just as much respect from them in turn, however grudgingly given, as if he were the King of Thieves himself, while reacting to it as casually as if he dealt with them every day.
“But I did once, my friend,” Warwick explained as they drove to what they hoped would be their last stop for the day, for evening was drawing on, and even Warwick seemed uneager to spend the night in the area. “Or almost every day, in my youth. And please don’t imagine I’ve got onto some unhealthy new scheme for increasing my riches. I receive such devotion here because of my wild youth, and I got that only because of my name. Yes, my ancestor Gentleman Jones may have ended rotting on a gibbet, but his great-great-grandson is rated aristocracy here because of that ill-famed life, and even more for his ill-fated end. It’s the nose, I think, that cinches it,” he said lightly, running a finger along the length of that high and narrow feature as he did, “that was handed down in the family with the ill-gotten goods, or so all the portraits and broadsheet caricatures insist. It’s the only good thing about it, I believe,” he mused, “except for the fact that I’d likely last longer underwater than such a pretty lad as you, if only because my standing on tiptoe would save the day for me,” he commented, as he drew his horses up under a half-legible sign which declared that they’d finally arrived at the Lost Sheep Inn.
Once within the dark and foul-smelling place that had only a few wretches sleeping, or dead, in the sawdust on the floor, they were eyed by two reasonably healthy-looking young men, and then told that they were expected upstairs. As they climbed those narrow, circling steps, Warwick recognized the place as being the Lion’s den, and so he paused, and so he told Julian. But at Julian’s look of relief, for he was growing weary with the search, since everyone had been glad enough to talk with his friend, but they’d all grown silent as the grave at the mention of the Lion he was seeking, Warwick only chuckled.
“It’s the same place, and so it’s his lodgings of course, but of course he isn’t here, and won’t be anymore.”
Before Julian could challenge him, he said softly, as he continued following his escorts up the stairs, “Of course he’s not, because they’ve directed us here and let us see where it is.”
It was the same apartment Warwick remembered, the same guards seemed posted at the doors, and the same bright-haired overdecorated young woman sat at the table. But this time, she was alone.
She was young, though there was that in her small face which had never been young, and beneath her bright red hair it was entirely possible that her bright face might have been as beautiful as she’d painted it. Her figure was attractive as well, and displayed to advantage in her almost fashionable gown, and Warwick suppressed a smile as she rose and walked, swaying provocatively, toward her visitors, for he knew she’d never have approached them so if her protector were anywhere in sight or within leagues of hearing what she said.
“He’s not here,” she said, while all the while she looked at Julian, studying him until he, although used to a female’s scrutiny, looked away, discomfited by her blunt appraisal.
“Obviously,” Warwick answered, “but you’d hardly have allowed us to be led here again if there weren’t some message, or reason, from him.”
“Oh, too true,” she said, giving up her examination of Julian in order to study Warwick’s battered face, only not so closely, and from a further step away. “It wasn’t him what got you, I was to say.”
“And that’s all?” Warwick asked.
“Aye,” she said, although she seemed amused now.
“And he won’t be back here?”
“Who’s to say?” She shrugged.
“I thought you might,” Warwick said, smiling sadly.
“I thought so too,” she said on a sudden laugh, “but the runners are onto him now. Someone’s set the cat to the pigeons.”
“It wasn’t us,” Warwick said thoughtfully.
“Oh, I know.” She grinned widely at that, looking far younger than she had. “You’re breathing, ain’t you?”
“And no other message for us?” he asked, smiling back at her, though Julian seemed stunned.
“Naw, not right now, not yet, not here, leastways,” she answered, seeming to grow more amused by the minute.
“Tell him I honor my debts, all of them,” Warwick said, suddenly very serious, suddenly in great haste to be gone.
He said very little to Julian after they’d left the Lost Sheep, and only replied in curt monosyllables as he sprang his team as best he could out of the slum district and then through the increasingly congested London evening traffic. Julian followed him as he hurried up the stairs to his town house after he’d thrown his reins to a footman, and was on his heels when he came walking rapidly into his entry hall.
“You have a visitor—” the butler began, as his master snapped, “I know, has he left?”
But he didn’t wait for a reply as he went to the drawing room and threw the door open wide.
Susannah stood and smiled a greeting to them, her smile slipping and becoming more tremulous when she saw Warwick’s face. But standing in back of Warwick, Julian couldn’t see the expression that had alarmed her, he could only see the enormous, broad-shouldered square of a man who lazily rose from a chair at their entrance, as a grin of greeting spread over his wide and craggy face.
“This is Mr. Sean Jonathan Ryan, Warwick, Julian. Mr. Ryan, may I present Mr. Jones, the Viscount Hazelton,” Susannah said correctly, introducing them.
But though Julian took a step forward with his hand outstretched, Warwick moved to block him, and did not himself put out a hand, or incline his head or his body into the least semblance of a bow. Instead he stood erect and said coldly, “Otherwise known as Stephen Patrick Francis O’Brien.”
“Possibly, but,” said Susannah, looking very surprised at the rudeness her host was showing to his guest, “also, of course, as the Lion.”
12
The fair, lovely young woman stood quite still as the two gentlemen paused in the doorway to the drawing room. They remained where they were standing, arrested, as the large gentleman they’d just been introduced to shrugged and dropped his ignored outstretched hand to his side again.
“The penalty, I might inform you,” the wide-shouldered man then said on a smile, “for murder, is the rope. But then, I need hardly remind you of that, Mr. Jones, need I?”
Warwick unbent enough to smile, though he never took his eyes from Susannah as he replied absently, “No, but I doubt I worry you a great deal Mr. O’Brien…ah, Mr. Ryan.”
“‘Lion’ will do,” the man rumbled comfortably, sitting down again and crossing his legs, “but I cautioned you because it’s the young lady I was worried about, not myself. You shouldn’t blame her, she couldn’t help it, you know, not really. Not that I held a gun to her head, mind, for my dear old mam taught me good manners, but I’ve a silver tongue, you know, which was the only other thing the poor old soul left to me.”
“No,” Susannah said at once, “there’s no need to defend me, Mr. Ryan, I was not in the least beguiled, I was curious. You said you knew something that would be to Julian and Warwick’s advantage, and so I decided to admit you. It was entirely my own decision, for I couldn’t see what harm it could do.”
“Aside from the fact that your visitor might have had you in seventeen pieces in less time than it takes to talk about,” Warwick said easily, though his fists remained knotted and his eyes blazed, “that is, if he didn’t decide to have you in less spectacular but more usual ways, why, none at all.”
As Susannah’s face grew very pale, the large gentleman chuckled and said softly, “Now, now, Mr. Jones, it’s true she’s lovelier than anything I’ve seen in many a long day, but I’ve had a long day myself, and then too, you’ve seen my own little sweetheart, dear Sally, again only just this afternoon. She’s an engaging little creature, isn’t she? And demanding too. I’m a talented fellow but I have some limitations, and only so much stamina.” He grinned before he added slyly, “And today, at least, to misquote wildly from a nobler gent, I came to bury enmity between us, not to praise the lady”—he glanced at Susannah in such a way as he had not all the time he’d passed alone chatting with her, causing her to grow even whiter as she realized for the first time that Warwick was absolutely right and she ought never to have done as she did—“praise-worthy as she most certainly is.”
“Then I think we ought to talk,” Warwick said, relenting, realizing no harm had been done, and from Susannah’s transparent distress, that the lesson had been taken. He turned his attention to his visitor. “No doubt you know we’ve been searching for you all day? Your dear little Sally was too amused at our call for it to be coincidence to find you here waiting for us.”
