Love in disguise, p.7
Love in Disguise, page 7
As his route took him past the coach the flaxen-haired unknown had just entered, he glanced across to it, and seeing that lovely face at the window, and seeing the sudden surprise in it, he smiled the wider, and for the second time since he had first seen her he sketched a bow, only a briefer one this time, for he didn’t wish to give his cattle any wrong notions. And for the second time, she gasped and drew back, and having no door to shut in his face, drew her shade down at once over the sight of his impudence.
Two smiles, he thought on another smile, as the Thunder pulled away, and two windows closed on him for them. But his spirits didn’t sink, in fact they rose higher with every breath he took of the cool morning air and with each step his horses brought him closer to London. For he wasn’t thinking of either of the two females at all now, not the lovely blond girl who’d given him her admiration, nor the obliging brown-haired wench who’d given him all else, for they were negligible, each in her own way only a brief delight briefly noted. Instead he envisioned the cool, lovely countenance of a lady. His true lady, who lay in London and was completely unavailable to him and yet who drew closer to him with each milestone he passed. And soon, thinking on his lady, he delighted the topside gentlemen by raising a sweet tenor to join them, as they accompanied the guardsman in his rendition of “A Lover and His Lass.”
*
Miss Susannah Logan’s coach was one of the last to pull out from the courtyard, but if Mr. Warwick Jones noted it at all, he saw only the back of it as he glanced out the window again and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. He only knew that his was going to be the last to do so, and as he’d known it for the last hour, he was in a towering temper as the baron finally seated himself at the table and groaned, clutching his head, wondering if he might be able to make it to the coach. Mr. Jones wished he had some hemlock to give him so that he could be at least carried out, unprotesting, when the landlord obliged with a foaming drink that looked equally noxious, but seemed just the remedy the baron had been seeking.
Mr. Jones, a gentleman to his fingertips, as the two young women agreed as they drove back to London, insisted on giving them and the baron sole use of his coach for the journey. He himself, he claimed, would travel outrider style to see that no highwaymen lurked at Gibbet Hill, despite the fact that he knew very well that none had for over a decade.
Although Mr. Jones was the last to arrive in London, he was one of the first to reach his destination. Not only did he live in the heart of town, once he’d gotten there he’d dropped his passengers off and settled accounts with them with stunning speed and such grace that they didn’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed with him until after his dust had died down behind them.
Once ensconced in his favorite chair in his study in a dressing gown so old as to be a friend, he sat back and sighed with relief. A fire mumbled nicely in the grate; he looked about the room to all the curios and books and works of art he’d collected, and felt a great and deep content.
So it was odd that he soon felt restless, and rose from his chair and paced the room, and finally, with a deep sigh, rang for his valet to help him dress again. For the ormolu clock on the mantel insisted on reading only three.
But there was a book he wanted to buy, and he remembered the chore with rising good humor, and after he’d seen to that, a dinner to be had, and then various places to visit in the night—an opera, a play, and a lively possibility that he might find some attractive willing young person to help him pass the rest of it. This time, he mused, a quiet friendly one would be pleasant to have stay with him. Then he paused, and thought of what might actually be nicer, and laughed to himself, alarming his valet, but he was only thinking that not only was he being absurd, he must be getting greedy. He’d already located one real friend, and with any luck at all, would see him again soon.
*
The Logans reached their destination in London at the same time that Mr. Jones was gratefully sinking into his club chair, even though they’d set out earlier than he had. This wasn’t only because Mr. Logan was a cautious man who didn’t love speed for its own sake and was no expert judge of horseflesh. He was, above all, an excellent man at business, and however sturdy his horses or well-sprung his carriage, he reasoned that an overworked horse worked for less time in the long run, and a carriage jolted pell-mell over roads needed more repair than one that went at a reasonable clip. So it was a safe, sound two in the afternoon when the Logans’ coachman pulled up at number fourteen on a long gray street.
There was complete silence within the coach. Then the gentleman spoke, far too heartily.
“Well, puss,” he said jovially, “here we are. Don’t look so grim. She’s probably the cheeriest body imaginable. She’s a bit past her prime, but lively as can be, doubtless that’s why she welcomed a visit from a young person and seemed so eager to be back in the social swim again. It don’t look too promising here, but it ain’t a slum and she does have connections.”
“Oh, Charlie,” Susannah protested immediately, shamed that he might have seen her disappointment at the sight of the row of unimpressive houses, especially after all her talk of disinterest in the social whirl, “it’s enough that she’s willing to take me in.”
“No, it’s not,” he replied, taken aback. “What would be the sense of having you come here otherwise? It’s shabby here, I grant you, but flash ain’t everything with the really old gentry. Respectability, Sukey, that’s the ticket. Come, we’ll give it a try,” he announced before she could resist further. “Faint heart never won fair lady, nor old lady, neither.”
He guffawed at his own humor as he handed her out, for a businessman has to have a thousand jests at his command and should always know when to put the light touch to a ticklish situation, and ought to laugh heartily at his own wit as well so that the other fellow doesn’t feel stupid or left out and knows it for a jest. But his Susannah never had a head for business, he remembered, when she didn’t reply at all but only gazed at him, troubled.
She didn’t know this relative her brother had discovered, any more than she knew London, she thought as she reluctantly went up the stair. And respectable or no, she suddenly wondered how Charlie expected some middle-aged lady, however genteel, to see her into the ton, or even into proximity of such dashing fellows as the Viscount Hazelton—unless she bought a seat on his coach for her.
She grew even graver when she reached the door and saw a black wreath hung upon the knocker. Her mood did not alter greatly when a wizened maid, dressed in what seemed to be layers of rusty black, opened the door to them. Only then did Susannah’s expression change, to one of astonishment, when the old creature squinted at the card she was handed and then snapped, “Dead. She’s dead.”
And closed the door in their faces.
They stood there too astonished to say a word, and it was only when Mr. Logan’s ears began to grow ruddy that the door was pulled open again.
A female of middle years and height, plump and plain and gray as a field mouse and dressed simply but all in that same hue, stood before them, her distressed round face showing her only color: two high red splotches upon her cheeks.
“I am so sorry,” she said at once in a pleasant voice. “Do forgive Agnes, she’s old as the hills, and we don’t get much company. She went to show me your card, you see, for she cannot read, and was so intent on it that she remembered only that she oughtn’t to leave the door standing open, for a cat once got in, and Mrs. Anderson loathed them, and she was scolded… I am so sorry,” she said suddenly, aghast, as though someone else were talking that she’d just gotten a chance to interrupt, “for there you are, still outside, while I ramble on. Do come in,” she pleaded, “and I’ll try to explain all.”
They were led to a small parlor, and after they’d seated themselves, their distraught hostess began speaking at once.
“Mrs. Anderson passed on a few weeks ago, and more’s the pity, for I know she was eagerly awaiting your visit. Of course, she was extremely old, you know. Or perhaps you don’t,” she said, watching their expressions closely. “But then, she was rather vain, and so I’m not surprised she never admitted it to you. But not in the least infirm, you understand, and as she’d once been very social—oh, yes,” she put in, seeing the young woman’s eyebrows rise slightly, “her husband was one of the Berkshire Andersons, they were always at court when the old king was in his right mind. Your proposed visit excited her enormously; it would have given her an excuse to renew old acquaintances, or at least discover which of them were still living. She had such a successful funeral, everyone was there, she would have been so gratified…” She sighed and then went on more firmly, “But the point is that her heart gave out suddenly, and so a great many plans have had to be changed. I’m a connection of her late husband, and was pleased to be her companion in recent years. But you’ve arrived just as I’ve done packing. I’m leaving today. Mrs. Anderson’s sister has inherited all, you see, and as she’d married out of their circle, and retired to the country and acquired, ah, a different style of life in the past years, I find I would not suit, and so have given in my notice.”
“But surely her sister will honor her obligations to us,” Mr. Logan objected, dismayed and clearly prepared to argue.
“Oh, certainly, decidedly,” the woman agreed, getting to her feet immediately. She began to say more, changed her mind, stood hesitant, and then with something very like a shrug said sadly, “Please wait,” and left the room.
“Too high in the instep,” Charlie said wisely, when she’d gone. “Likely that’s why she’s leaving. Just as well. Maybe Mrs. Anderson was too starched-up for you too. But her sister’s a connection of ours as well, remember, so this might even work out better.”
But as Susannah didn’t look any more convinced of this than he felt, he subsided. Enough time passed so that he was about to admit that the late Mrs. Anderson he’d dug up from family gossip was a very distant relative indeed, a cousin twice removed, and Susannah was about to tell her brother that Tunbridge Wells was not actually the end of the world, as it was on several stagecoach routes, when they both heard voices coming from the hallway that led to the parlor.
They both heard a voice, actually; the other accompanying sound was all made up of soft, broken, half-phrased apologetic cautions and only formed a pattering background for the great trumpeting main theme of noise.
“Good Lord,” the bass voice complained, “a party can’t close her eyes but she’s dragged up by the hair by some fools. Tessa, you’ve got no brains, jingle-brained creature, rousting me from a good rest to see some common… Don’t shush me, my girl,” the voice roared, impossibly enough actually able to pick up in volume in anger. “I don’t care who hears… Damnation!” the voice thundered after a crash was heard. “Who put that table there? Well, well, get on with it, where are they?”
Susannah and her brother were both standing when their relative staggered into the salon, supported by the gray-haired woman who’d greeted them at the door.
“This,” that unhappy lady said to them, “is Mrs. Anderson’s sister. Mrs. Pruit, here are the Logans.”
The massive woman she introduced teetered into a chair, and sank down there, her voice the exact tone as the protesting chair’s as she cried, “Well, get me something to drink, idiot. Meeting up with relatives is thirsty work, isn’t it?” she added, regarding her visitors at last and giving them a ferocious wink.
She was large in form and frame, and all her considerable person was wrapped in a varicolored day robe that gapped wide in every place a person viewing her wished that it would not. The strong aroma of lily-of-the-valley scent that came from that garment was still not strong enough to overwhelm the odor of alcohol which emanated from her, with the result that the small room soon began to reek as though it were springtime in a distillery.
“Eh, Tessa,” she bellowed at the gray-haired woman, “tell that lazy slut in the kitchen, the usual for me. And what’s your pleasure?” she asked her visitors good-naturedly.
“Do you possibly have a coaching schedule?” Susannah blurted anxiously.
*
The Logans waited in their coach and passed their time arguing spiritedly. Then, although Susannah deplored it, as soon as her brother saw the gray-haired woman leave the house, he sprang from the coach to join her on the stair. Susannah saw him tip his hat and talk animatedly, and after a time the gray-haired woman nodded slightly. Then Charlie signaled to the coachman, who went to secure the woman’s luggage, and to Susannah’s surprise and disquiet, the door to the coach opened and the woman joined her.
“This,” Charlie said happily, when he had seated himself again, “is the Contessa Miriam della Casandro, Sukey.”
“I’m sorry I neglected to introduce myself earlier,” the woman explained softly, inclining her head as a greeting, “but you see, I was in rather a hurry.”
“She’s graciously consented to be your companion during your stay in London,” Charlie added proudly. “And she ain’t doing it for the blunt, neither,” he cautioned his sister as she stared at the squabs and looked for a crack in the plump cushions that she could crawl into to die of embarrassment. “No,” he gloated, “for she’s got her pick of positions. She’s doing us a favor.”
“Indeed, I was once young too,” the contessa said, smiling at Susannah sympathetically, “although never so beautiful, I believe. Still, I had looked forward to your visit as much as Mrs. Anderson did, and am pleased I survived to facilitate it, for though I have no fixed residence at the moment, I too have some social connections. Now,” she asked comfortably, “the only question remaining is, where shall we stay for that visit? Mr. Logan?”
“Ah,” Charlie said, grinning fiercely, “tonight? At a hotel. And tomorrow? Why, that’s my little secret,” he said, tapping the side of his nose. And Susannah’s heart sank, for she’d grown up with Charlie and knew that thin-lipped grin was a sure sign that he was thinking rapidly, and the tapping meant that he was lying most creatively.
*
As crack coachman of the Brighton Thunder, the Viscount Hazelton had arrived in London before either Mr. Jones or the Logans had. But though he arrived first, he was last to reach his destination, having had first to go the round at the stagecoach stop, touching his broad-brimmed hat to his passengers as they got their baggage or waited for transport to their own destination, and then having to stay standing and waiting beside those who’d forgotten to remember that their coachman expected a gratuity for his services.
“Damme,” one of the young gentlemen who’d ridden topside with him murmured to a friend, his uncertainty written in plain pink on his beardless young face, “give me a clue, do I give the fellow a tip or no? He’s a viscount, I’m only a baron’s son, what’s to do?”
“Why, young sir,” the coachman said on a laugh, having overheard his embarrassed question as he’d been waiting for another fashionable gentleman to dig his coins out of an extremely tight pocket, “the only question that matters is if you enjoyed the ride. For if you did, I hardly think it matters what rank your coachman holds, so long as he holds the reins right enough. I’d tip my barber,” he said on a nudge, “if he were a baron.”
So amid much laughter, he got his coin, and smiled and raised his hat to the young gentleman for it. But that was the coin he held apart from the others, and that was the one he spent at once, dropping it on the publican’s bar as though it were smoldering, when he bought his guard a drink after the passengers had all left.
They talked awhile about roads and conditions and complained about wages and gossiped about other coachmen and guards when they were joined by a few others. But when they’d done drinking and began walking out of the main coaching inn, the viscount looked pale and grew silent, as though his energy had left with his pose of hearty, convivial coachman.
“You’ll be laying over for a few days, eh?” the guard remarked as they walked down increasingly narrow and dirty streets.
“Not too long, no,” the viscount said softly, stepping aside quickly to avoid a noisome mess that had been flung from an upper window to the pavement, “no one pays me to rest.”
“Your friend give me ’is card back at t’Swan,” the guard said evenly, “tipped me ’andsome and ast me to see you remembered ’im.”
“He gave me one too,” the viscount said as he paused before the tavern and lodging house where he had his London room. “The fellow must have had a thousand printed up, no accounting for the way some people throw their money around. Don’t worry, I’ll remember him.”
But that, Julian Dylan thought sadly as he placed his friend’s card in a corner of the speckled looking glass in his room, was probably all he would do. For after all, he thought, lying down at last, fully clothed, upon the creaking bed that took up most of his small room, the world looked different on a wild night in a comfortable inn than it did in the cool sane light of a normal afternoon. His decisions to put his home at pawn and invest the proceeds, such a glowingly good idea when he’d been glowing himself with good fellowship and good rum, seemed foolish and dangerous now. The reality of the few coins he’d earned today, the truth of the indignity of standing before his fellowman hat in hand, pretending to a jovial unconcern with the amount they tossed to him, and with the way of his earning it, were all as present and actual as the poor sagging bed he sought repose on. And all the dreams of future wealth and happiness he’d envisioned with his old friend Warwick to guide him seemed about as real as the dreams he began to slowly let himself drift away into now.
His last thought as the afternoon light struggled between buildings to finally find a purchase on his high, narrow windowsill, was that he was lucky to have such a friend as Warwick, and he hoped he’d be forgiven for not seeking him out again, but for once the astute fellow had been wrong. Help might not be charity, and a friend might be expected to help, but he knew no friends who could work miracles. And in his case, only a miracle could help.
