Love in disguise, p.42
Love in Disguise, page 42
“Very well, even better,” he said. “I’ll put on my lovely morning robe, and spirit you into your room to fetch one of yours. We’ll sit together in the east salon, in high state, sober and righteous as puritans, too principled to have gone to bed in an unchaperoned house. Yes, Aunt Harriet will adore it, come.
“I intended to speak to you alone before she arrived, anyway,” Warwick said, once he’d settled her on a couch, deep in his arms, in the east salon, where, as he’d said, they’d be able to see any coach come down the drive, and disengage in plenty of time.
“There was a thing I wanted to tell you before you met her, but somehow it slipped my mind,” he said, smiling and taking her hand to his lips.
He held on to her hand and toyed with her fingers, and seemed a trifle nervous as he went on. “We can’t have a grand wedding, since I’m in mourning. So I thought we’d have a simple one, by special license, as soon as possible. Do you mind missing out on all the fuss?”
She assured him that she didn’t, but he seemed even more anxious, and so she became a little ill-at-ease as well.
“My uncle left me some funds, the rich get richer, you know,” he said quickly, “and a magnificent home, near Gloucester. I’d like to live there, if only for his sake, all his energy went into it, and it is the family seat.”
She was too nervous now to do anything but nod, and so he went on rapidly, suddenly very serious, “He left me something else.”
She held her breath, hardly knowing what to fear.
“And I can’t refuse it, if only out of respect for him. You’ll be marrying Warwick Jones, of course. But don’t take alarm when the minister unites you with the Baron Ives too.”
“You, a baron?” she gasped after a moment, as realization dawned.
He nodded, and as she pondered this startling development, added, “And though you’ll be no bigamist, you’ll be wedding the Viscount Kimberley as well.”
Before she could speak again, he gazed at the ceiling and uttered, “…and the Earl of Dartford.”
“Warwick,” she cried, sitting bolt upright in alarm. “An earl? You’re an earl now? However shall I marry an earl? The fishmonger’s daughter and an earl?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said soothingly, taking her back in his clasp, “I’m still Warwick Jones, the highwayman’s heir. Eccentricity runs in my family. No one will be the slightest put out, believe me. Uncle talked to his pond carp, all I’m doing is marrying someone whose father made his fortune from them. Anyway, don’t let the earl bother you. For then the minister will say, ‘Marquess Holyrood,’ but pay him no mind either, for then he’ll say, ‘Duke of Peterstow.’ And that’s all, I promise, I promise.”
“A duke!” she gasped. “A duke! Me, a duchess? Oh, Warwick,” she grieved, “whatever shall I do?”
“This, I think,” he said gently, distracting her.
“Oh,” she said, distracted, enchanted, “yes.”
*
Lady Harriet Jones arrived at dawn and was shown into the salon to meet her great-nephew, the new duke, and his promised bride. She was anxious to meet the girl; she’d heard about her when she’d seen Warwick last, and had been thrilled that he’d her to talk about. It had given her hope. There were too few close-connected, documented Joneses about, and she’d worried that bachelorhood would run in the family until it ran out entirely. It was a curse to them. Now, he’d won her. And she was well pleased with what she saw he’d gotten. Pretty as she could stare, nicely mannered, and with a great deal of money, Warwick had assured her. No title, but then, manner had always meant far more to Lady Harriet than title, and money was always welcome, she was a Jones, after all.
Warwick said they were glad to see her. Doubly so, he explained, since they’d sat up all the night, sleepless, in the salon, afraid of retiring for fear of offending sensibilities because there was no chaperon in attendance on them. Lady Harriet sighed to herself. That was entirely like her great-nephew and all the Jones men: icy, bloodless eccentric. And yet, there the pretty child was, hanging on his arm, gazing into his face as though she saw the sun itself rising there. She felt sorry for the girl. For Warwick was, as everyone knew, an odd, haughty, peculiar gentleman. She shrugged; it took all kinds.
Then Lady Harriet left to be shown to her rooms. It was just as well she didn’t look behind her as she did. For like Lot’s wife, she couldn’t take life with a pinch of salt. So she wouldn’t have cared for what she’d have seen, if only because she was a strong-minded female who loved her convictions, and hated to be contradicted.
22
Nan watched him as he lay sleeping, as she’d done for hours, and was yet again astonished at how young and innocent he appeared when those light, speaking eyes were shuttered. But then they opened, and were blank in that half-second before comprehension flooded back to him, and she held her breath in fear of what he might say in that moment when he recalled where he was, and whom he was with. For if he could hurt her with a glance, she dreaded the wound he might inflict with a thoughtless word.
She didn’t know if it would be worse if he remembered or if he didn’t. Last night he’d suddenly appeared in the doorway of the Silver Swan again, coming in out of the fog like a wraith, looking as pale, wild, lost, and tormented as any mist-born wandering soul. He’d been soused, of course, she knew that the moment he’d leaned close to her to whisper his greeting, and it had been evident in the taste of his kiss, the moment after that. She’d been looking forward to this meeting with him for months, so that she might soundly snub him. Her triumphant walking-away speech had been rehearsed in too many lonely nights as she lay in this bed alone, or with others, for her not to know it by heart. But she’d looked into that beautiful, tortured face and she’d said yes, if she’d bothered to say anything at all, as she’d led him carefully down the stairs to her bedchamber.
Although he’d been so disguised he could scarcely speak without slurring, or step without foundering, he’d been capable enough to delight her, but she believed he’d be able to do that even if he were at death’s own door, and not just so badly jug-bitten. He’d turned to her many times in the night, and whatever his state, he’d been so tender and gracious she hadn’t needed to hear him mutter something about celebrating his wedding night to know that someone had lately cut out his heart, and that he was, somewhere, bleeding badly, if invisibly. It hadn’t been herself that he’d spent himself with last night, she knew that. But she no longer cared. He’d needed her, she’d served him. That, after all, had always been the only foundation of their relationship.
The light gray eyes grew aware. He closed them. And then groaned.
“Aye,” she made herself sneer, hopping out of bed as briskly as if she’d never passed the hours staring down into his face like a witling, waiting for him to wake and come back to her in any way he chose, “you deserve it too. Drunk as a wheelbarrow. An’ prolly feel as though you ort to be in one on the way to the boneyard now. Here,” she cried as he sat up, winced, and then tried to stand, “don’t need you fallin’ an’ havin’ to be put up in splints. Take your time. Hang on, I’ll get you the landlord’s finest, tastes like he did sumthin’ nasty in it but it’ll set you right. Have a wash while I’m gone, it’ll help,” she said as she shrugged into a plain frock and eased slippers on.
“Need help?” she asked then, dropping her air of insouciance, as she hesitated by her door.
“No, thank you, Nan,” Julian said, looking up at her with a rueful smile. “You’ve given more than enough already.”
There was payment enough, she thought as she raced down to the taproom. The landlord of the Silver Swan was only just checking out his supplies for the coming day at this early hour, but he was good enough to mix up his cure for a surfeit of spirits for her guest, and kind enough to say nothing until she took it in her hands. And even then, “You’re a fool, Nan, but a good one,” was all he told her.
When she returned to her room, he’d obviously washed; his golden hair was still wet as she saw it emerge from the shirt he pulled over his head. He grinned when he saw her, and drank down the cup she handed him with a huge grimace, but swallowed it all. She said nothing as she handed him the razor she’d kept for him, but after he’d lathered his face, she took it from him again, saying only that she scarcely needed a bloke with a cut throat littering her room, and shaved him in silence, forbearing to say another word until she was done.
Then he took her hand as she began to move away.
“I’m going away, Nan,” he said.
“Thought you’d already been,” she answered, looking to her hand, and never to his eyes.
“Further, this time,” he said. “I’m giving up the coachman’s game,” he explained, “England itself, for a space, too. I’ve made a little fortune actually, with the help of a friend. But I’m off today to seek a better one, and won’t come back until I’m richer than I need to be. I don’t know where I’m bound, or when I’ll be back.”
She stared at him in silence. She might be only a serving maid, and no better than she should be, and she knew that herself. But there’d never been any man like him before, and she knew that when he left her, there’d never be any like him after. It was more than his face and form; she appreciated manly beauty and it came in many guises to her—she accepted that that had always been her downfall. It was his air, his speech, his courtly manner, it was, she realized, he himself. He was unique, her viscount-coachman lover.
All of this might have shown in her face then. She didn’t take care to conceal it, she was so taken with what she now saw in his face in the daylight. He’d changed, something had altered. The morning light showed the lack of sleep and the amount he’d drunk the night before, but it wasn’t only the slight smudges under his eyes or the sadness to the set of his lips, it was something that shone from his eyes, it was a change in his very soul she saw in the full glare of day. But it made him no less beautiful to her. So she used the last of her rehearsed renunciation speech at last, to save some remnant of her soul from his possession:
“Then, good luck to you, my lord,” she said, “and goodbye, and a good life to you as well.”
“Would you like to come?” he asked.
She gasped. It was not only at his words, for he’d said it expressionlessly and she didn’t know if he jested or not, but at some terribly lonely thing she glanced for just one moment, something she knew quite well, having found it at the bottom of her own soul whenever she dared to look.
“Oh, aye,” she scoffed, for she knew how to fend off honest feeling better than anyone, “it would be wise of me, nice secure post, that, runnin’ off around the world with a noble gennleman.”
“I’ll sweeten the pot,” he said, still emotionless, still as sincere or insincere as he’d been. “Marry me, then. Why not?” He spoke as much to himself as her as he added, with a new, small twisted smile quirking his lips, “It would be pleasant to hear ‘yes’ for a change, and I’m about to change my entire life.” Then, at last, he laughed. “You’d be valuable to a roving man, even that black-haired wench at the Crown hasn’t got your talents, nor can she shave a man half so smooth, I’ll warrant.”
Once, when she’d been young, in that brief hour, Will, from down the road, had asked her to come berrying with him, though she’d known very well what he’d meant. And she’d been afraid. So she’d asked that stupid Annie Hanks to come with her so that she’d not have to face it all alone, not yet. But soon she’d tired of Annie and left her on the road, and gone on with Will and what was to be her life. She knew too well what it was to want something so badly that you ran away from it, and so much that you couldn’t stay away from it neither, and how it felt to try to avoid what you knew you must do. And she’d never be any Annie Hanks, not for any man, especially not if she cared for him.
And she was a realist. She knew he never meant it even if he thought he did. Pain made anyone say foolish things.
“Oh, lovely bride I’d be for you, my lord,” she laughed. “I couldn’t sign the marriage register, I’d have to make my mark. Can’t read, nor write. I can shave you just fine, and do a great many other fine things for a man, the only thing I know good is carin’ for a man’s body,” she added, just to see him wince, even as she did saying it. But when a thing had to be ended, it had to be sure.
“So thank you, my lord, but no thank you,” she said, laughing, making it all a joke for both their sakes, “and I hope you don’t compliment all your barbers that way.”
“All things come in threes, my luck’s bound to change soon,” he said, making no sense to her, and he bent and kissed the tip of her nose. “Thank you, Nan.”
After he’d dressed and gone downstairs to eat and said good-bye to the landlord, he asked Nan to come with him to the door. He gave her a purse, over all her denials, but though it weighed far heavier on her heart than it could ever in her hand, she took it at last, when she realized he must end things in his own way too. The payment, she thought, would certainly make his proposal a jest. But then, she had to reconsider, and she had the rest of her life to do it in.
For at the last, before he left her, he looked down into her eyes and whispered, “You know, Nan, you’re exactly the sort of girl I most like.”
“And just what sort is that?” she asked saucily, knowing the answer and hating that he needed to erase everything tender this way.
“Why,” he said seriously, watching her closely, as closely as he’d observed her that long-ago night when she believed he hadn’t, “the wise, and kind, and loving, generous sort, of course.”
*
“Did you tell him about Ben Compton?” the landlord asked as she stood at the door and waved at her last look at the Viscount Hazelton as he rode out of the courtyard.
“No need,” she said flatly, for indeed there’d been no need to tell him she was marrying another coachman on the Brighton run, “he ain’t coming back for years. And when he does, I’d be too old for sport.”
“Ben’s dark as a Gypsy,” the landlord commented, for all it was none of his business, he was a friend and knew he could pry. “Last night might have been pleasurable, but was it wise? Be something fierce to pay if you presented Ben with any kind of a golden baby that wasn’t in a purse.”
“Ben’s already started ’is own, why do you think I’m marrying ’im?” she said savagely as she turned away, bitter at being reminded that there again she’d lost him, and so had no chance to ever have anything to remember him by, except for all her dreams, for all the rest of her life.
* * *
It was a macabre place to wait, but Warwick, Julian thought, on a shake of his head, had an unusual sense of humor. When he’d heard that his friend planned to visit the Silver Swan one last time before he left England, Warwick had made him promise to wait here on this last morning so that he might send a farewell gift to him. He’d agreed to the odd request, Julian thought, if only because he’d been so anxious to leave that wedding yesterday he’d have promised to wait at the gates to hell in order to escape the merriment, and not just beneath the hanging oak where Gentleman Jones and Lord Moredon both had met an end.
He sat his horse in the shifting shade and waited, glancing up and down the long road, and at length, he frowned. It wasn’t for the futile waiting; he had, after all, nothing better to do now. His scowl was for the painful reminder of how Warwick must have passed his wedding night last night, for Warwick never forgot anything, drunk or sober, and yet this time he clearly had forgotten that last word he’d had with his friend. Pleasure, Julian thought with the uncomfortable admixture of hurt and happiness he felt for both his friends since he’d seen them wed, evidently could make Warwick forget his word in a way that everything else he’d experienced in his life had not. If he felt some consolation in the thought that Warwick had previously encountered very little real pleasure, after all, and certainly deserved some, he soon forgot it as he tried to block the next natural images that occurred to him when he considered the subsequent activities of the happy bride and groom. He was so busily doing that that he didn’t lift his head to see the rider coming out from the trees behind him until he heard the hoofbeats.
“Three times dead, and buried twice over. I could’ve had you down and out before you turned round the first time. Good God, my lord, have you an army at your back that you can be so casual of life?” the rider said, drawing rein as he came up beside him.
“No,” Julian answered, embarrassed, for he was right, “it’s only that I didn’t expect more blood to be let at this tree’s roots. And,” he added, deciding to give truth because it was due, “I was deep in thought and blue-deviled, and perhaps didn’t care very much for my neck just then. But thanks for sparing it, Lion. But never say Warwick’s pulled your teeth?” he asked, his amazement growing as the large man’s appearance began to register upon him. “You’re not his messenger now?”
“They’re bright and shining as ever, my lord, but I do bring his message as a favor,” he answered, and taking a paper from the bag at the side of his saddle, he handed it to Julian, adding, “Best if you read it now.”
Julian scanned the paper and looked up to find the other man studying him just as closely.
“But,” he said in confusion, looking from the paper to the larger man, “you? You are the gift Warwick gives me, as he says, ‘…to take with you on your travels, for your comfort, safety, and future success’?”
“So it would appear. He gave me you, by the by, when he gave me a similar letter.”
Julian checked, as the Lion went on ruminatively. “And I too would’ve refused his generosity at once, if it weren’t for the fact that I admire the duke very well, damned if I’ve ever met a cannier fellow, and if he claimed you’d be of worth on a journey, I was forced to think it over. Then I determined at least to carry out his first wish in the matter. For as it happens, I’m leaving dear Mother England on the first fair tide too.
“Yes,” he said on a sidewise smile, “I too have some notion of rising in the world, if not,” he added, looking pointedly up to the tree they rested beneath, “quite so far as all that. Which is almost the reason entirely. It seems Lord Moredon left me a hard legacy, for some of the information he laid with Bow Street interested them far too much. And then, our friend, the new duke, was entirely right. ‘Lion,’ he said, ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, and uneasier the one that makes too many crowns at your game.’ Quite right,” the sandy-haired man brooded, “and when I considered that not only Gamy Leg Bob and Whitey Lewis were after my position, it gave me some pause. I only took on my post by accident, I’m not a Londoner born, but it was such a ripe tasty ken that I fell into it, so to speak, and never gave a thought to the future.
