Edith Layton (18 page)

Damon covered his sister’s hand with his. “You’re so transparent, I wonder how the waiter saw you clear enough to serve you that soup you’re ignoring. Don’t worry. I’m not jealous for any other reason. I don’t have to be.” He looked rueful. “I’ll know too soon if I ever
have any cause for worry on that score. You don’t know Gilly well yet, but when you do, you’ll realize that whatever else you can say about her, the one thing you can depend on with Gilly Giles is complete honesty.”

But he couldn’t say that to all his relatives, and many of them were noticing the way Gilly seemed to have forgotten her fiancé. They could hardly not. The strangers in their company riveted their attention, too. The Earl of Kenton was not only charming, he was well known to society, even though he’d been absent from it for years. Lord Rafe Dalton was burdened with unfashionably fiery red hair. But the wars were not so long over that such an obvious military man didn’t gain instant admiration.

The Earl of Drummond was the most commanding presence. Elegant, almost haughty, except for that infrequent slow and curling smile that saved him from arrogance. He wore a dark maroon jacket, and a small single ruby at his snowy cravat echoed the single ruby ring that graced one long hand. It was more than his faultless apparel, it was the man himself. He carried himself with quiet dignity, and while he never raised his voice, he acted as though he knew he would command complete attention and respect. He did.

Now he stopped smiling. So did Damon.

A sudden lull had made the discussion going on at the head of the table clear to everyone in the room. Too clear. “Come, come, my girl,” Drum snapped, sharply cutting off Gilly mid-sentence, and halting all other talk in the room because of the exasperation in his voice. “Where are your manners? We’ve monopolized the conversation at the table long enough, I think.”

No one spoke, least of all Gilly, who sat back, astonished.

Damon’s lips thinned. Then he opened them to speak. “Her manners are good, maybe too good,” he said firmly. “I think she’s been trying to make up for our silence. Why don’t you tell us something about your travels? Then we can let poor Gilly tend to her dinner instead of trying to cover our oversights.”

Drum inclined his head. “An excellent idea. But hardly practical. I don’t want to make a speech. It is, after all, dinnertime. Perhaps, later? Although, in Venice, you know, dinner might go on until midnight and beyond. Remember that night at the princess’s palazzo, Rafe?”

“’Deed, I do,” Rafe said hurriedly, putting down his glass of wine. “So dark and stormy, I didn’t know whether we’d find our lodgings when we left. The tide was in and the water from the canal came to my ankles, and the fog was putting out the linkboy’s torch. And we’d had a bottle or two of that excellent claret!” he said, warming to the subject. “Too excellent. Remember how you saved me from blundering into the canal?”

“But you swim like a fish, my friend,” Drum said.

“Aye, but think of the indignity. I’m a soldier, not a sailor!”

That set everyone laughing. Except Gilly, who sat back, hollow-eyed with hurt. And Damon, who watched her narrowly.

But the dinner was almost over and the good food and plentiful wine made most of the guests sleepily content. Since they were at a hotel and not a private
home, the gentlemen had to forego the usual after-dinner ritual of drinking and telling tales together while the ladies gossiped in another room, waiting for them to be done. So it wasn’t much longer before the men finished the last of their port, and the women who had to visit the withdrawing room returned, ready to go home.

They stood in the hotel foyer, making their farewells. The Earl of Kenton said good night to his guests, took their thanks, and went off to his club. Damon’s relatives peeled off in twos and fours and went into the night. The last of the party, Damon and Gilly, were about to climb into their carriage when Drum stopped them.

“I’d like a word with Gilly,” he said, “alone.”

“Alone? But I’d ask you to remember she’s not alone anymore,” Damon answered curtly.

“Either here, or at Sinclair’s house, where we can be more private,” Drum said to Gilly, as though Damon hadn’t spoken.

“I’m sure I don’t know why a fellow who wouldn’t let me talk all night wants to talk to me now,” Gilly said haughtily, flinging her shawl over her shoulder with a flourish.

This was so patently untrue that even Damon had to bite back a smile. She’d been prattling steadily all night, until her old friend Drum had been rude to her. But the meal had almost been at an end then anyhow.

“
Gilly
,” Drum said threateningly, and took her arm to pull her into the anteroom.

He found his other arm taken in a strong hold. He checked.

“I’d ask you to remove your hand,” Damon drawled, his voice at odds with the hard light in his eyes. “If she wanted to go with you, she would. I won’t have her manhandled.”

Drum shook his arm free, drew his head back, and looked down his long nose. “I wasn’t. But you say you won’t have it? And you laid hands on me? I see. You’re adept with pistols? Or do you prefer swords?”

“My fists can do the job as well, or better,” Damon said coldly, “since I’ve no intention of having to leave the country after I make my point!”

“Lord!” Gilly breathed looking from one man to the other, her eyes wide. “Don’t fight! At least, not over me. Damon, it’s just that he forgets I’m grown up. Drum—I am, you know, and Damon
is
my fiancé. He doesn’t know our history.”

“P
recisely
,” Drum said impatiently. “My point exactly. Which is why I must speak with you,
alone
! Do you understand?” he asked with emphasis, and then looked around for the first time to see if anyone else was watching or listening to them. But only Rafe stood next to them, tense, alert, and unhappy.

“No,” Gilly said simply.

Drum huffed a sigh of exasperation. “Listen,” he said in a lower voice, “I cut you off, and shut you up rudely, and well I know it. I meant to. Because there are some things I thought ought not to be said in company. T
his
company. Things you were about to say. So. Now. Will you come with me,” he asked, biting off each word, “so we can discuss it? I don’t want you angry with me. Call off the dogs. For his sake, if not mine. Precisely because your fiancé”—he shrugged one shoul
der in Damon’s direction—“does
not
know our history—and yours.”

“Oh!” Gilly said, her expression clearing. “But he does! You mean how we met? What I was then?”

“My God, child,” Drum said furiously, looking around again, “how that can be misconstrued! I don’t even want to think about it. Grown up, are you? With as much discretion as a puppy. Have a care. We’re in public!”

“I know everything,” Damon said coldly. “I
f you
knew Gilly, you’d know she’d never let things go this far with me if I didn’t.”

“Indeed?” Drum said, but he was silent as he thought that over.

“One thing is sure,” Damon said in annoyance, noting a few guests were looking their way now, “you’re right. This isn’t the place to discuss it. If you have to have your say before you go to bed, come back with us. We can be alone in the front parlor, no one has to know.” The parlor, Damon thought with regret, realizing the sacrifice he was making, the one place he and Gilly were granted the privacy to make a fonder farewell to each other each night. But not this night if her face were any indication. She was obviously upset.

“I
f
,” Gilly said, “I choose to let him speak to me!”

All three men looked at her. Drum’s harsh words had transformed her as suddenly and utterly as a bright candle being blown out. Now, however, she smoldered.

“I think you’d better,” Damon said. “If only for my sake.”

Drum lifted an eyebrow in a gesture eerily reminis
cent of his cousin Ewen. Gilly looked at Damon in surprise.

Damon shrugged. “If you’re at war,” he told Gilly, lifting a shoulder in Drum’s direction, “you need to face the enemy right off, not run away and rehearse the argument you’re going to have with him all night instead…or at least, I’d rather not be the one you rehearse it on.”

“You
do
know her!” Rafe laughed.

Even Gilly had to smile at that.

T
he hour was late. They sat in the Sinclairs’ parlor, talking in low voices.

“You don’t know what she was saying,” Drum told Damon in annoyance. “That’s the point. I had to stop her saying it. We were reminiscing—which we did all evening, granted. But Gilly’s reminiscences are not like other women’s. Though Lord knows I tried to make them so. I didn’t know how much you knew, Ryder.” He looked uncomfortable for the first time. “I’d no idea you knew the whole. Because, you’ll grant, Gilly’s history is unusual. And whatever you did or did not know, I doubted you’d want the scandalmongers to get their teeth into it. Ewen never did.”

Damon nodded. Rafe, deep in a chair, was silent, watching them with troubled eyes. Drum was standing
near the mantel, staring down into the banked fire in the hearth. Damon sat next to Gilly, on a sofa near the fireside.

“Of course not,” Damon answered. “Gilly’s life story is her own to tell.”

“So I thought,” Drum said, nodding. “After all, Ewen never lied about Gilly or Betsy. But he never told the exact truth. Because,” he said, holding up one hand before Gilly could speak, “it’s no one’s business. Gilly
used
to understand that. But tonight?” He lifted a thin dark eyebrow and stared at Gilly.

Gilly bit back her retort and looked down at a thread on the lap of her gown.

“So, tonight,” Drum went on, “whenever the subject got too dangerous for casual listeners, I tried to change it. It was like talking with a weathervane. I silenced her harshly, I admit—but just as she began telling an amusing story from our mutual past. About the time she refused to be plagued by French dressmaker I’d sent her to and flounced out of the establishment determined to have her own way. She was in raptures, giggling, as she started to remind me how she stole back her boy’s jacket and britches and boots, and went tramping back toward the rookeries again to take up her old jobs of coal heaving or lading. Lovely anecdote, wouldn’t you say?”

Gilly looked stricken. “I didn’t think! I mean, we were talking, and I forgot about everyone else. S
ee
?” she said furiously, suddenly turning toward Damon, as though he’d been the one to do something wrong.

Drum raised an eyebrow again, this time in question.

But Damon thought he understood. “I do see. Your excitement at seeing your old friends made your tongue run away with you. Understandable. It’s a good thing, I suppose, that the earl prevented you from going on with that particular story. One day, maybe…but as for now? Trouble was avoided. And we can assume he’s sorry your feelings were hurt,” he added with a too charming smile for Drum and his lack of apology. “So why are you still frowning? You look like a thundercloud. Where’s the problem?”

“Bother!” Gilly swore, rising and pacing as though she wore brogues and not dancing slippers. “Well, there it is. Exactly. ‘One day,’ maybe? Which day? Tomorrow? Or the next? See? It’s too hard. Damon, I am what I am, and I tell you, your fine family will never forgive you if you marry me! Or forgive me, I mean to say, because it’s clear they’ll forgive you anything.”

“No,” Damon said thoughtfully, “I’d be in trouble if I murdered Cousin Felicity. I asked.”

Gilly almost smiled. But Drum spoke up. “She has a point, Ryder. That’s why I tried to keep her recollections…
general
, shall we say?”

“But I don’t want to forget who I was, because it makes me who I am!” Gilly cried.

“Laudable,” Drum said, “but inadvisable. Child, Ewen said he was The Catch of the Season, and so he is. The Ryders are aristocracy as much as any titled family in England. They’ve been counselors to kings and cousins to queens since the invasion, and likely before. I thought you knew that.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Gilly said, pacing. “I said yes to
Damon because I didn’t,” she muttered, “and now what’s to do?”

“Only because of that?” Damon asked.

Drum looked interested, Rafe stifled a groan.

She stopped, abashed. “No, of course, no,” she said, looking Damon full in the face. “But it was a consideration. How was I to know how famous your family is? Bad enough they might find out one day how common my family was. Worse, if they ever discover how infamous my history is.

“Oh, Damon, you see?” She looked grieved as she stopped before him. He stood and took her icy hands in his. His big hands covered them over and held them tight, trying to warm them, trying to banish that fear he saw in the back of her golden eyes.

“I never want to involve you in scandal,” she blurted, “but I don’t see how it can be prevented. I thought I might pull it off even after I found how highly placed your family is…but I
will
talk. You know that. I love to talk. I have memories. How can I deny them? Well, if you know me, you know I can’t. So, perhaps—no,
more
than perhaps, I think our wedding can’t be. It’s not too late. I’ll have Ewen send the notice to the T
imes
, and no one will ever blame you.”

“I will,” Damon said, looking into her stricken face, forgetting there was anyone else in the room, and not caring when he remembered. “I want you as my wife, Gilly Giles. Not in spite of, but because of all the things you are, and were. Where else could I find a woman so filled with heart and high courage? Someday my family may find out what your history was. So what?”

“S
o what
?” she gasped.

“Yes. So what? If you want to tell them now, you can. If you don’t and they find out, we’ll just say we thought they knew. It doesn’t matter to me.” He touched her cheek to emphasize the point. “It shouldn’t matter to you. Your future’s with me. Your past made you the woman I want to spend my future with. You see? Simple.”

They stood in the center of the room gazing at each other. They made a handsome couple. She, delicate, shapely, graceful. He, vital, handsome, ardent. Since her old friends had returned to visit she’d been brash and jolly, exuberant as the boy she’d once pretended to be. Now she seemed utterly feminine. She held his hands as if for support, her eyes searched his and her own widened at something she saw there. He looked down at her as though he wanted only to gather her close in his arms, the kiss he longed for clear to see in his posture, easy to read in his devouring gaze.

Rafe nodded, pleased. Drum sat arrested, staring, his mask of imperturbability for once slipped and forgotten.

She nodded. “I see,” she said slowly, a new emotion flooding into her face, something between shame and regret. “You’re sure?”

He laughed. “Again? You’ll say that at the altar if you aren’t careful. ‘Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?’ the vicar will ask, and you’ll look at me, and in front of all the guests you’ll ask, ‘You’re sure?’
That
would give the gossips something to chew! I don’t mind you telling all the
ton
chapter and verse about your masquerading as a boy. But your lack
of faith in me? Please get it through that lovely head of yours that I don’t care about what was. Only what
is
! And what is—is that you’re a find of a lifetime. Lovely. Clever. Brave. True. Resourceful. Where would any man ever find so much in a wife? Now, do you want me to keep saying it? I’ll have to add
vain
if you do.”

“No,” she said. “That will do. In fact, it’s too much. I’m promised to you, and I’ll stay with you if you want me. But if you don’t mind, I’d rather they didn’t find out just yet. So, if you find me talking about such things in company again, don’t even be as polite as Drum was. Just put a hand over my mouth.”

“And get it bit off?” Damon chuckled, but his tender expression and the way he looked at her clearly showed what it was he wanted to put over her mouth just then.

Rafe cleared his throat and stood up. “Well, late’s late, morning’s coming, and I need sleep. Been traveling for days. Time to go. I said—time to leave, eh, Drum?”

“What?” Drum said. He looked like a man who had just woken. “Oh. Yes, very late in the day, indeed,” he said musingly. He rose. “Well, child,” he said, as Gilly became aware of everyone else in the room and stepped back from Damon, blushing. “Now that that’s solved, you forgive me? I was only trying to protect you, as ever.”

“I know,” she said simply. “Thank you. But now you have to know, I’m no longer a child.”

“That I do see,” he said slowly.

“And now she has someone else to protect her,” Damon said.

“Good. The more people we can muster to protect
our Gilly,” Drum said lightly, “the better. She’s a fierce little thing, you’ve no idea of the scrapes she can get into without trying. Did you tell him about the time you took it upon yourself to teach Squire Waring a lesson?” he asked Gilly suddenly.

“Oh, lud!” Gilly laughed. “I’d forgotten! What a set to that was! Remember, Rafe?”

“Who could forget?” he said with a grimace.

“See,” Gilly told Damon excitedly, “the squire, he had this old carriage horse. Well, you know I don’t have much to do with horses, but this Old Bess, she was a singular beast. Wasn’t she, Drum? I liked her, and she’d worked hard for him. Well, I heard he was thinking of calling the knackers to take her and…”

Drum smiled, Rafe laughed, and before the story was half done, the three were sitting and talking animatedly again.

Or rather, Damon thought, watching them, Gilly was talking, and Drum was urging her on, watching her with a curious smile on his face. A new smile, fond as ever, but with something else in it, something assessing, the way a man might look at someone enchanting, some woman he’d just met. Or so Damon thought, and cursed himself for thinking.

Because he knew she was clear as rain, and he knew she’d missed her friends. Because he realized he himself could add nothing to the conversation except laughter or exclamations. Because he couldn’t help but notice how her eyes were shining and how she hung on the earl’s every laconic word whenever he offered a comment.

He knew it was innocent, knew he was being selfish.
He resented it, Damon told himself, because a glance at the mantel clock showed her guests were taking up what little was left of the night, and he wouldn’t have time for more than a hasty caress before he left her.

He had less time than that. It was very late. He had to leave with Drum and Rafe, and so could only take her hand at the door. But Drum bent his head and gave her a kiss on her cheek. And then stepped back and stared down at her. Which was not as disturbing to Damon as the way her head shot up and she looked back at him.

Jealousy was a sick, sour feeling at the pit of Damon’s stomach and had nothing to do with his brain. He hated it, and himself for feeling it. It was new to him. But then, he thought, as he went out the door with the other two men, so was everything he felt that had anything to do with Gilly Giles.

He was so troubled by his unworthy reaction to that simple cousinly kiss, he couldn’t think of anything to say as they walked down the street together. Neither of his companions seemed to notice. Rafe gave a jaw-cracking yawn. The Earl of Drummond was lost in thought.

“I think we part here,” Damon said after they’d walked another street in silence. “My lodgings are nearby. Do you need a hack?”

“A hack?” Drum said after a moment. “No, thank you. If I sit, I’m done for. Best we keep walking, it’s not far. I’m famished for sleep. We only just arrived in England, hunted up Gilly, nothing would do but we go right to dinner, and now we’ve sat up half the night gabbling. Rafe, here, is asleep on his feet. He learned
to do it in the army. I’ll have to wake him when we get the hotel. I’m not so lucky. I need a bed—or at least, to sit down before I nod off. Nice meeting you, Ryder. We’ll talk when I’m awake, I think. After about a year, or so I feel. Shall you be visiting Gilly tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Damon said, trying to be polite in spite of his tangled emotions about Gilly’s old friend. “I’ll call around noon. My sisters keep fashionable hours when they’re in London. Gilly doesn’t. But I think she could probably use some sleep, too. I’m glad you came. She’s overjoyed seeing you again.”

“And I, her.”

They bowed. Rafe bent only his head, and Damon smiled, wondering if the close-mouthed fellow had really learned to sleep with his eyes open. Damon left them and, still smiling, strolled on toward his hotel. But now he was thinking of her. Of her candor, her spirit, of her honesty, and lack of guile. And of her lips, and of her breasts and of her…A
ny more such thoughts, my friend
, he told himself with a wide grin,
and
you
will never get to sleep tonight
.

But that was exactly what happened. He was humming with unfulfilled desires, and so even when he got to his bed it was hard to sleep, thinking of how long it would be until it was night again, when he could take her in his arms once more. It got more difficult when he started thinking of how many days and nights it would be until he could take her entirely, and never have to part from her again.

Sleepless, but jangling with energy at the thought of seeing her again, Damon bounded up the stairs to the
Sinclairs’ townhouse the next day, a little before noon.

“Tell Miss Gilly I’m here,” he told the footman blithely, as the door swung open. “If she’s not ready, I’ll wait.”

“Can’t do that, sir. She’s not here.”

“Not here?”

“Left with the Earl of Drummond over an hour past, sir.”

“Good God!” Damon said, his mind racing. “Has the old…has the viscount’s father taken ill?”

“Not that I know, sir. They was laughing to beat the band, so I don’t guess. Mr. Wilkins,” he said to the butler who had appeared at his side, “Mr. Ryder is wishful to know if the viscount’s father was took ill?”

“Good heavens no, sir,” the butler said in alarm. “Why? If I may ask, that is to say. Have you heard so?”

“No, but why did she leave so early? Why did he arrive so early? Where did they go?”

“Oh, as to that,” the butler said, beaming, “the earl, he came for breakfast, and then took Miss Gilly to the park. They said they’d have a walk by the Serpentine, to shake off the cobwebs.”