London
After reading Miss Spain’s letter, Lewis sat up until nearly daybreak, listening for Jack’s footsteps and drawing pictures. Miss Spain in the bow window in Clifford Street, reciting Wordsworth at the soiree, walking with Cassie in Green Park.
He would have to go to Bristol. What were those damned, unnamed circumstances? And which girl was Miss Anna Spain?
He nodded off over his paper, awoke sufficiently to crawl between the sheets, and dreamed the rest of the night. He and Anna waltzed alone through an empty, candle-lit room. He pulled her close and kissed her lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers twining through his hair. Somehow he’d lost his cravat, his coat and shirt. The pressure of her breasts against his bare chest made it hard to breathe. He ran his hands down her back and over her hips. She wore nothing but a silky something, a shift or nightrail. It slid easily as he pulled it up, intent on finding the skin underneath. She opened her mouth to say something—
“Mr. Lewis, sir?”
No. She wouldn’t say that.
He opened his eyes. Someone stood by the bed, a hand on his shoulder.
“Robert?” Lewis came awake with a jerk and sat up too fast. His head swam. To be discovered by the footman in the midst of… Well, there was nothing he could do about it.
“So sorry, sir,” Robert said. “Sir John wishes to see you when you’re ready. And this came for you early this morning.”
Lewis lifted his head from the comforting cradle of his hands. This was a note suspended six inches from his face. Jack. He’d actually forgotten.
His blood surged upward toward his brain, where it belonged. He snatched the paper from Robert’s hold. “Has Jack not come home?”
“No, sir.”
The writing was not Jack’s impatient scrawl but a lady’s hand on fine vellum:
Please come at your earliest convenience. I hope you can talk Mr. Wedbury into going home. Otherwise I must resort to rougher tactics.
J. Squires
“What’s the time?”
“Not yet nine,” Robert replied, moving in silhouette past the too-bright window. “Is it Master Jack? I trust he’s all right?”
“The sooner I get there, the sooner I’ll know.”
Twenty minutes later, Lewis entered the library, where Sir John and Lady Wedbury waited. From the looks of things, they’d had no more sleep than he.
At least he had news, of a sort. “Good morning,” he said, striding across the room to take the chair Sir John indicated. The windows were open, but as far as Lewis could tell, only the sounds and smells from the street made their way inside. The room felt stifling. June in Yorkshire was never stifling.
“Not much good about it that I can see,” Sir John grumbled.
“You’ve had no word, then?”
“None,” said Lady Wedbury. “No word, no sighting, nothing. Certainly no apology, to you or to us.” Her voice sounded scratchy. “He had better be ill, or dead. Because I have such a scold building up inside, I might explode. That boy has never seen the likes of it.”
“I know, ma’am.” Lewis easily resisted a momentary urge to laugh. “I received a note this morning—”
“From Jack?” Jack’s mother erupted from her seat. “Is he all right?”
Lewis shook his head. Such a to-do over a night with his mistress. From which Lewis must retrieve him. For Miss Squires, and for his parents’ sake. “Not from Jack, but I know where he is. I’m heading out now to fetch him home.”
“We’ll come with you.”
“No!” He could just see himself escorting Jack’s parents to a prostitute’s lodgings. Lady Wedbury crossed her arms and glared at him.
He softened his tone. “No, ma’am, it’s no place you can go. Nor you, Sir John. We’ll be home soon.” He hoped. “And I suggest you refrain from jumping on him the moment we walk in the door.”
From Covent Garden it was a short walk to the address Miss Squires had given him on Maiden Lane. There was Munday’s Coffee-house—he’d been to their cider cellar more than a few times, with Lindale and the others. And there was the tailor’s shop she’d mentioned.
Lewis tensed as a bruiser of a man stepped from the neighboring doorway. “Mr. Aubrey?” he said through the gaps between his remaining teeth. At Lewis’s cautious assent, the man tugged at his forage cap in deference. “I work for the lady.”
He pulled a key from his pocket and opened the door into a narrow stairwell smelling of boiled mutton. Up they went, past the first-floor landing and up again. Lewis tugged at his cravat, damp from perspiration. Lord! What am I doing here? This is where she and Jack…
He had no notion what to expect. Oh, he’d heard plenty of stories. In and outside the ton, bucks liked to brag about their carnal adventures. But in telling their tales, men focused on the women and the act itself, not the surroundings.
The place was perfectly ordinary, one of the most comfortable rooms he’d ever seen. A sofa and chairs, a table, a fine rug on the floor. The window boasted yellow curtains, open to the hazy sunshine. There were flowers everywhere, in yellows and purples and pinks. They filled the air with their scents.
He couldn’t say what kinds they were. Though he’d drawn flowers often enough, he’d never been so stupid as to ask anyone their names. Wouldn’t Gideon have had a grand time if he heard about that! Little Lew likes lilacs, lilies, and lupines. No, Lewis had burned the flower sketches as soon as he finished, or torn them to shreds and tossed them in the stream. They hadn’t been much good, in any case.
“He’s ’ere, mum. I’ll be outside if you need me.” The servant stepped back out to the landing and closed the door.
Miss Squires rose from a chair by the window. Lewis hadn’t noticed her, half hidden behind one of the bouquets.
He certainly noticed her now. She wore embroidered silk slippers on her feet and a jade-green satin dressing gown with, he was almost certain, nothing underneath. She tied the sash tighter as she glided toward him. With a portion of her hair held loosely back, the remaining locks kissing her shoulders, she appeared younger, and lovely.
“So, Mr. Aubrey. You’ve come to collect Mr. Wedbury.”
She made it sound so simple, as though he were taking Jack for a drive in the park. It was possible they might never drive or ride together again.
He dragged his gaze up to her face. “Perhaps I should wait outside with your—uh—footman, and you can send Wedbury out to me?”
She chuckled, low and seductive, and performed an inspection of her own. Her scrutiny took in his cravat, his waistcoat, the buttons on his coat, and finally his groin. Which, annoyingly, responded. “That’s why I enjoy younger men. They’re eager, yet so diffident.”
Lewis had had enough of whatever game she was playing with him. “He is here, isn’t he?”
“On the other hand,” she said with a teasing little smile, “they’re dreadfully sensitive.” Then she seemed to drop her act and become a normal person. “He’s sleeping. Tell me, if you please, why he showed up at my door seeking refuge. He’s not done anything criminal, has he?”
“Oh no. A minor breach of honor, that’s all.”
“Minor? He insists he can’t go home, and that you will never speak to him again.”
Lewis grunted. “How does he feel about that?”
She shrugged. “He’s complaining of headaches. I’ll wake him.”
Miss Squires disappeared into what Lewis took to be her bedchamber, and five minutes later Jack staggered out, his shirt untucked and hair uncombed. With sleep-glazed eyes, his cheeks and chin pocked with dark bristles of unshaven beard, he looked like a vagrant. And a stranger.
“It’s not visiting hours,” Jack grumbled.
“Since when do you care about that, Jack? If there’s somewhere to go, let’s go—I must have heard you say it a thousand times.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “But I’ve got nowhere to go.” He collapsed into a chair, his legs sprawled out in front of him. He might have been raised in squalor rather than privilege. If this was the way he’d behaved, no wonder Miss Squires wanted him gone.
Lewis sat facing him, leaning forward. “Of course you do, Jack. I’m here to take you home.”
“Home?” Jack delivered a sneer worthy of Gideon. “God, no. I don’t want to hear Mama’s strictures about what Society will say.”
“She’s only angry that you disappeared without a word. She doesn’t care one way or the other about fencing etiquette. And your father is nothing but worried. He was at Angelo’s and saw the whole incident, did you know?”
“What do I care?” Jack leaped to his feet and strode about the room, squeezing his head between his palms.
Headaches, Jack? That’s what you get for drinking so much. Wouldn’t help to say so.
Jack stopped and peered out into the street. His words sounded hard, bitter.
“And you, Lewis? What did they promise you to come find me? Half my inheritance?”
Lewis rose too but kept his distance, torn between anger and hope that he could make things right again. That in three short weeks they would go home to Yorkshire with everything unchanged. He and Jack, best friends forever. “Don’t be daft, man. We’ve been friends since we were born. D’you think that won’t survive a scratch on the arm?”
The new Jack did not cooperate. Hands clenched at his sides, he turned from the window and rushed toward Lewis. “Don’t patronize me, damn you! All I want to do is have some fun. Is that such a sin?” He stopped an arm’s length away, his skin flushed, eyes slitted in fury. “I have no desire to go home. You mind your business and I’ll mind mine.”
Lewis could feel the heat emanating from Jack’s body. His breath was foul. “You weren’t invited for a long-term stay, Jack. How do you think I knew where to find you? Miss Squires wrote to me. She has better things to do than play nursemaid to a spoiled, rag-mannered drunk.”
That provoked a hard laugh from Jack. “She’s a whore, Lewis, and an actress. Give her enough money, she’ll play any role I ask.”
Before he could call it back, Lewis’s fist left his side. It connected with Jack’s chin and he fell backward, knocking over a small table and the vase of flowers it contained. Jack lay unmoving atop the mess.
Lewis stared as he pressed his throbbing hand to his side. He’d never been much of a pugilist.
Miss Squires erupted from one door, her manservant from another.
“I thought you would employ subtler tactics, Mr. Aubrey,” said Miss Squires, her voice sharp. “Gully could have done that.”
“He said—”
Jack groaned, lifted a hand to his head, and achieved a sitting position among the flowers.
“I heard what he said.” She paused before continuing, cool and inscrutable. “Thank you for coming to my rescue. Now it’s time for you to leave.” She glared down at Jack. “Both of you. Gully, please see that Mr. Wedbury is properly dressed. As your nursemaid, Mr. Wedbury, I cannot allow you to roam the streets in your stocking feet.”
Damp and bedraggled, Jack slumped in one corner of the hackney. “Why the devil did you hit me, you double-crossing nit? Did you think to protect sweet Juliet’s reputation?” His bark of laughter held no humor. “That’s rich.”
It seemed a long ride to Brook Street. The smell of flowers failed to mask the stink of Jack’s breath and body. Sweat beaded on his face and soaked his hair.
Lewis frowned, but they were three weeks into June. Lewis was sweating too. A man had a right to sweat in midsummer.
God forbid Sir John and Lady Wedbury should see their son this way.