Edith Layton (2 page)

A
fter a hurried stop for refreshment, the Brighton-bound coach, the last coach of the night, left the muddy courtyard of the
Ruddy Rooster
and splashed off and down the main road again.

The flurry of excitement over, the guests at the
Rooster
prepared to settle in until morning. Most stayed at the tap, and most were locals, because the
Rooster
wasn’t luxurious enough to attract many strangers apart from those on the public coaches. There were finer inns along the busy Brighton Road.

Still, it was crowded enough this night, maybe because of the rain, or maybe because there seemed to be some sort of entertainment going on.

“And so now that I’ve beguiled you,” a smooth
male voice was saying to the attentive listeners clustered around him at the long bar in front of the tap. “
And
bought you all another pint…”

This was met with a rush of laughter.

“Maybe some of you will loosen your lips?” the voice asked.

The speaker was a young man, dark as a gypsy, but dressed neatly and soberly, like a fellow with ambitions. He was certainly attractive. Of medium height, lean and trim, he wore clean linen and a devilish smile. He had ink black hair, regular features, an aristocratic nose, and in the light of the leaping hearth, his dark eyes sparked blue.

“After all,” he went on smoothly, “I’m not asking after your grannies or your sisters, this is my fiancée I’m looking for. I think she may have passed this way this week. She’s blond and shapely, with big blue eyes. The only man among you who could have missed her would be a blind one. Even if he was, he’d know her, because she speaks with a lisp like a highborn lady, though her father isn’t any better born than mine, and mine’s only as close to Quality as the bills he keeps sending them for their boots.

“I know she doesn’t deserve my time after the trick she played me,” the dark man continued, shrugging his shoulders, “running off on the eve of our wedding. But I forgive her because she’s young and I love her madly. I do,” he swore theatrically, his hand on his chest. “And so I only want to be sure she’s safe. If she doesn’t want me she doesn’t have to take me, but I have to know she’s not come to harm.

“Now,” he said in a wheedling voice, “if you don’t take pity on me, or her, is there anyone here who wants to earn a golden guinea? It’s yours for a hint. Where is she, or have you seen her?”

The other guests at the
Rooster
shook their heads and shuffled their feet.

The dark young man looked around the room, and then his gaze sharpened. He saw a young woman at the back of the crowd, prim as a Puritan and just as shocked as one might have been if she’d seen the devil.

Daffyd was used to women staring at him, but not in obvious terror. His interest was caught. It would have been caught anyway. Once a man looked past her drab clothing, she was a charming little thing, with big brown eyes, a pretty face, and a neat little shape. Her only ornament was that flower face of hers; she was dressed all in gray, plain as a nun, and looked respectable as one. Not the sort of female who usually ogled him, at least not openly. He was definitely interested. And she was decidedly horrified. That interested him even more. So he looked away from her immediately, and turned his attention back to the locals he’d met at the tap.

“Not seen such a miss such as you’re seeking, lad,” one old fellow told him. “Leastways not here, and not of late. Blond, blue eyed, and talking like a lady? Be sure I’d remember that.”

The others rumbled agreement.

“Here now,” another fellow said, laughing, “You’re
not taking your pint back just because we can’t help, are you?”

“Well you can’t have mine,” an old woman cackled, and then gulped down the contents of her mug. She plunked down the empty mug, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and added, “Can’t see as how any miss in her right mind would leave you, anyways. Bad cess to her. Could I interest you in a female of experience, instead?” she asked, with an enormous wink.

“You could, love,” Daffyd said, “if I wasn’t so afraid of all your gentleman friends.”

That was met with laughter, and he remained at the tap, joking with them. He took expressions of sympathy on his bad luck as well as advice on how to mend a broken heart with the same good humor. No one had any information for him; he hadn’t really thought they would. The trail was growing cold. But so was he, and it had been time for dinner when that trail brought him to the inn.

Still, he reasoned, the track he was on wasn’t completely without promise. If a female looked at him with horror, there had to be a reason. Could the baron’s daughter have a confidante? A maid? A friend? Someone getting the lay of the land for her before she set foot in a place? Could the runaway then be close by? That made sense. Even more reason to keep his eye on the gray-clad woman.

So, of course, he pretended he’d never seen her while watching her from the corner of his eye as she
was shown to a table in a far corner. Even more interesting, he thought. She wasn’t running away from him. Good, he didn’t feel like leaving. He was hungry and the rain was going to be an all-night affair.

“And so now, thank you all,” he finally told his audience, “but even though my heart is breaking, my stomach’s growling. I must have dinner. I’ll stay the night and leave in the morning. So if anyone thinks of anything to tell me about my missing fiancée, I’m here until dawn and would be grateful for any information. Thank you all.” He bowed, to please them, and then winked at the serving girl.

“A table in the corner, luv?” he asked her. “I’m tired of talking. How about that one—there?” He gestured toward a table in the gray lady’s lonely corner.

“Right, it’s yours,” the serving girl said, and whispered, with a wink of her own. “And if you get tired of not talking, sir, I’m here until the place closes. After it does,” she added, “I’m here all night too—so if you still don’t want to talk, I’m sure we can find other things to do.”

She was plump and passably fair, and looked clean. And an intimate assignation wouldn’t be out of character for an abandoned fiancé. Daffyd started to smile, but paused. He was bemused to discover that this time, the thought of free fun with no obligations didn’t cause his flesh to rise. He was surprised at himself. Was it age or experience that killed his desire? But he wasn’t yet thirty, and his previous intimate experiences with females had always brought pleasure.
It could have been a good way to while away a chilly night in an unfamiliar place. He wasn’t feeling sick, only tired. But he wasn’t interested. Something was definitely changing in him as well as in his world.

Could it possibly be because his two adopted brothers had recently married? It might be that in comparing his bachelor’s rakings with their obviously deeper and more satisfying matings his looked like the empty pleasures they were. But he’d never minded empty pleasures. He tucked the thought away for future consideration.

Still, because a gracious offer ought to be accepted as such, he tipped a smile to the serving wench. “I’ll keep it in mind, luv,” he told her; although he already believed his mind was the only place he’d have it.

There were two tables available in the corner of the room he’d indicated: one to the back of the gray lady, and one in front of her. Daffyd took the one in front. She’d be too nervous with him behind her, and he didn’t want her to take flight. Besides, she probably thought he couldn’t see her. But a seemingly casual repositioning of his dinnerware gave him her reflection in a knife’s edge, and she showed very nicely on the side of the smooth silver match safe he set in front of his plate.

He ordered his meal. Then he sat back and waited for his dinner, amusing himself by watching the waitress roll her hips as she strolled away with his order. And all the while he tried to read the gray lady’s expressions as she decided what to do next.

She peeped at him from time to time. Sometimes she frowned. Sometimes she bit her lip. But she stayed where she was, and though he could see her nibbling at her dinner, she paid more attention to him than to her plate.

Of course, Daffyd thought as he tucked into the fine mutton chop that had been put in front of him, it might only be that she’d mistaken him for some other villain. His dark gypsy looks had always made females shiver, and men look askance. Even when he’d been a boy, if anything was discovered stolen in his vicinity, people always looked at him. Which was why he’d been caught holding goods rather than stealing them. He’d been a good thief, but a bad risk. His dark looks made him resemble every Englishman’s notion of a villain, from a Frenchie to a gypsy to any unknown foreigner. That was why he wore good clothes and spoke in flowery accents tonight.

He was by nature short spoken, but could ape anyone, and had found people liked speaking to people who sounded like themselves, or just a bit better. He always mimicked his betters among strangers. Otherwise he might be turned away at the door, mistaken for a tinker or a traitor, or the gypsy that he was.

The woman in gray might have been afraid of him simply because of his looks. He’d certainly never seen her before, and he remembered faces. But in that moment when their eyes had met she’d thought she recognized him, he’d swear it. She could be addled, of course, he’d met females who were. But she
didn’t look it. She looked sober, proper, and apprehensive. Still, though she kept studying him, she didn’t move from her table.

No one from the tap came to talk to him either.

So much for hoping that he’d be able to find the runaway heiress on the Brighton Road. He wondered where to go next, because he wasn’t ready to give up the search. He disliked his errand, but disliked having to report failure at it even more. The thought of rescuing his mother from anxiety and then waving off her thanks and disappearing from her life had pleased him very much. But he could live without that pleasure. He’d lived without her for so long anyway. However, the thought of telling his adopted father he’d failed at the task bothered him much more.

“I think it’s a good thing for you to do, Daffyd,” the earl had said just days ago when he’d told him about the mission. “For too many reasons to enumerate. Although I’m sure you’re aware of them all.”

“If you think I’m going to retrieve the wench, sit at the viscountess’s feet and wallow in her praise, you’re wrong,” Daffyd had answered.

They’d been sitting in the new earl of Egremont’s study at Egremont, his magnificent manor house, after a lavish dinner, drinking excellent port wine together. Everything at Egremont was excellent, most of all, to Daffyd’s mind, the fact that Geoffrey Sauvage, eleventh earl of Egremont, was in his rightful place at last.

He said so then.

Geoffrey had looked amused. He’d been dressed
casually that night, at least for a man of such power and wealth. He’d taken off his beautifully fitted jacket and unwound his elaborate neckcloth and discarded it, as he always did when he wasn’t in company. The fine linen shirt he wore showed he was still muscular, if a bit thicker around the waist then when Daffyd had met him. But he was fit, and though a few gray hairs now showed in his brown hair, his dark blue eyes were as keen as ever.

“Avoiding the subject doesn’t change it, Daffyd,” he’d said softly. “She came to you for a favor and you elected to try to do it for her. That’s good, and I’m proud of you for it.”

Daffyd had grunted something, and reached for his glass of port. He didn’t want to discuss the matter and so focused instead on his host.

Geoffrey hadn’t looked much like an earl when they’d met, but he hadn’t been one then, or thought there was much chance he’d ever be. No place on earth could have been further from where they sat that night either. Because they’d met in Newgate prison. Familiar territory for Daffyd, but Geoffrey Sauvage had never seen anything like it. That had formed the basis for their association. Not much else could have.

Their situations couldn’t have been more different, though their fates would be the same. Both had committed crimes the Crown punished by death. But Geoffrey had all unknowing been accused and convicted of a crime committed by a relative who wanted his title and estate. Daffyd had actually com
mitted his crime, and many others besides. Geoffrey was said to have stolen a silver snuffbox, but he hadn’t even known where it was hidden when the Runner found it in his house. Daffyd definitely had plans for the stolen pound note he’d been arrested with in his pocket. Geoffrey had been a sober man of business, Daffyd a petty thief from the streets of London. Geoffrey was university educated. Daffyd was ignorant of most things except for those that would get him food and a place to sleep out of the rain.

And most of all, Geoffrey had been a grown man with a son Daffyd’s age, imprisoned with him for the same crime. Daffyd had been a boy with less than a dozen years to his name.

But Daffyd had known one thing Geoffrey and his son didn’t: how to survive in prison. After all, he’d done it many times before. And so then, for that brief time, he and his adopted brother in crime, Amyas, had been able to help Geoffrey and his son. In return, they’d gotten the one thing they didn’t have: the power and protection of a grown man in a place where muscle meant survival as much as cunning did.

It had been a better bargain for them than that. A noble relative of Geoffrey’s had influence that spared him the hangman’s noose. He’d gotten that pardon for Daffyd and Amyas, too. They’d been transported to Botany Bay instead of dancing on air at the end of a rope. And though that fate could have been just as lethal, they’d defied the odds. They’d survived and prospered just as their partnership did.
They became rich and returned to England again: Geoffrey to become earl of Egremont, Daffyd and his brother to become young men about town.

They’d arrived in England only the year before. Daffyd’s world had changed once again. Now, he was wealthy and free, but for the first time in his life, alone. Oh, he had a suite in this great palace of a manor house reserved for him, and another one in Geoffrey’s London townhouse. He had his own flat in London as well. What he didn’t have were his two boon companions: the earl’s son, Christian, and his first “adopted” brother and fellow street rat, Amyas St. Ives. He’d lost them both to marriage. They were still his brothers indeed. But their lives belonged to their lovely wives now, and Daffyd wouldn’t have wanted it any other way—except on nights when he was especially at loose ends.