Edith Layton (13 page)

He nodded. “There’s news. She’s not here now. But she may have been.”

“Indeed,” his brother commented. “We’re looking into it.”

“May have been?” Meg asked with a frown, looking at the viscount.

“I’m told she’s a master of disguise,” the viscount said with a shrug. “And if she was occupied with her own gentleman…” He let the sentence linger be
fore he added, “I have so many guests coming and going. It’s amusing for me but troublesome for you, I expect. No matter, I’ll know soon enough. My staff is ever alert, even if I am not.”

“We can leave in the morning, if we get word,” Daffyd said. “But there’s nothing we can do now.”

“Nothing?” his brother asked, looking shocked. “But I insist you enjoy yourselves in the meanwhile. So since it’s conveniently not raining, shall we go for a stroll while the weather holds?” He crooked an arm and offered it to Meg.

She looked at Daffyd. He shrugged. So she took the viscount’s arm. An attentive footman handed the viscount his silver-topped walking stick, and then Meg let her host lead her out the door.

“Coming?” the viscount asked Daffyd.

Daffyd didn’t answer. But, Meg noted with relief, he was there. He’d come with them. She honestly didn’t know what she’d have done if he hadn’t.

It was a rare mild autumn day that felt like summer. They strolled along the paths, which, being only wide enough for two, made Daffyd follow behind, silent and dark, like their cast shadow.

The viscount noticed Daffyd’s silence, of course, and Meg detected even more amusement in his face and voice. But he didn’t try to exclude his brother; in fact, he spoke loudly enough for both of them to hear as he pointed out the flowers and others features of his grounds.

He spoke with self-depreciating wit, and punctuated his comments with graceful flourishes of his
hands, in a way that Meg found affected at first, and then amusing. He was theatrical in his every gesture—casual, friendly and loquacious, everything Daffyd was not. But he did know a lot about what grew on his estate, and told them of his hopes for future plantings. A bevy of gardeners tended the flowers as assiduously as the bees and butterflies did. If a gardener caught sight of them, the fellow would bow and touch his hat. The viscount had a gentle word for each who did. Meg had never felt so privileged.

She enjoyed herself enormously—until they came to a turn in the walk, and almost ran into another couple. Then Meg felt her heart leap into her throat.

The gentleman was tall and heavyset, and dressed like a man of money and taste. He was considerably older than the fair young woman he walked with. She was so beautiful that Meg stared. It took a moment for Meg to realize the sunlight showed the lady had augmented her beauty with powder and rouge, and that because she did, she was obviously no lady.

The woman inclined her head in a bow, and the gentleman did, too. Both looked at the viscount and then pointedly at Meg and Daffyd.

“Sir Laycock, Miss Delilah,” the viscount purred. “May I give you my long lost, but happily finally found, relative: Mr. Daffyd Reynard? And his cousin, Miss Kovert. They’re collaborating on research about seventeenth-century mazes, and pay me the great honor of wishing to see mine for possible inclusion in the book. I am, as you can see, all a-twitter.”

“Yes, because you always like to show yours,” Miss Delilah said with a giggle and an enormous wink of one kohl-blackened eyelash.

“Indeed,” the viscount said with less humor. “Shall I see you at dinner, Laycock?”

“Any reason why not?” the gentleman asked jokingly.

“Think on,” the viscount answered in cool tones. He waved his hand to indicate Meg and Daffyd. “These
are
my relatives, sir.”

Sir Laycock bowed again. “Then thank you for your hospitality, Haye. But we’ll be leaving before dark. I’ll see you in London.”

The viscount nodded. “You’re welcome,” he said, and without giving them time to reply, moved on.

“You’ve gotten very puritanical since I saw you last,” Daffyd commented.

“Have I? I don’t think so,” the viscount said thoughtfully. “But I did want you and especially Miss Shaw to know there’s no need to worry. You won’t be seeing that pair again. So Miss Shaw need not concern herself about them, or indeed anyone she meets here. She’ll never see any of my other guests in any proper places. And you told me that those are the only places she goes. When she’s not with you, of course.”

“So I said,” Daffyd said.

The viscount smiled, and continued with his tour. But eventually, he stopped. “Would you like to see the maze, my dear?” he asked Meg.

“Oh!” she gasped. She was only prevented from
clapping her hands together because she had one hand on her host’s arm. “I would! I’ve read about them, but never been in one.”

“You’ll
love
this one,” her host said comfortably. “It’s over two hundred years old. Come along.”

They walked across the lawn until Meg saw the maze looming up in front of them. It was even taller than it had looked from the window. It was fully twelve feet high, and made of ancient green shrubs that had knitted together to form dense dark green walls. They stepped in through a doorway cut into the hedge and found themselves in a cool, dark, narrow, green shadowed path. The sun was still overhead, but there was little illumination where they stood. Even the air seemed damp and vegetative.

The viscount stopped. “There’s a surprise at the center, a pearl embedded in the great green oyster, as it were. But if you don’t know the way it might take you two hundred years to find it. So much as I’d adore having you here as the centuries roll on, I’d never distress you so cruelly. We can see it and have plenty of time left for teatime. I inherited the secret to its heart as well as the estate. But Daffy, my dear,” he said, suddenly turning to look at his brother, “with all you’ve come to know of me in the year since we’ve met, it occurs to me that you’ve never visited my maze.”

“No,” Daffyd said. “Whenever I visited here, the entertainments offered were at night.”

“What a lovely idea!” his brother exclaimed. “I shall have to bring torches, and try it.” He frowned.
“Fie. No, some bibulous fool would set the place alight. We shall have to leave it for daylight. And so it is! So there’s no time like the present for you to see it. But let’s make a game of it, as it was meant to be. Are you game, Daffy?”

“Up for anything,” Daffyd commented.

“Good,” the viscount said. “Now, there are actually two ways to go in order to get to the secret center. Dear brother, you take the left road, and we’ll go by the right one. The distances are equal, and of course, I have the advantage because I’ve been there before. So I’ll let you go first and give you a full five-minute start. That should equalize things. I
do
try to play fairly. Winning’s not much fun if one doesn’t.

“Now, listen carefully. There are many turns, but only eleven you must take in sequence that will get you to the center. The key is Master Shakespeare’s immortal sonnet.

“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’” he recited. “‘Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimm’d; and every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d…’

“I’m sure you know the rest,” he went on with a wave of his hand. “It was popular when the maze was first planned. So if you scan the verse in your mind, it’s simple. Note the line number and the letter
number, and if they’re even, go right. If the line number and letter number are odd, go left. Simple. You see?”

Meg lifted her hand from the viscount’s arm, feeling chilled. That surely was a cruel thing to expect Daffyd to know.

“And if the last line is odd, and the next is the same?” Daffyd asked.

His brother smiled. “If the last turn is odd or even, and the next is the same, don’t turn at all. Now, even with the key, I suspect I’ve given you a hard task. Do you think you can do it?”

“No reason not to,” Daffyd said. “I may only be a poor illiterate gypsy lad, but we Roms have supernatural ways of foreseeing the future. I’ll be there waiting for you. If you played fair.”

His brother gasped, and clutched his heart. “Me, cheat? Oh, fie, Daffy. I faint, I fall, I’m wounded!”

“You’ll recover,” Daffyd said. “See you soon.” He raised a finger to his forehead in mocking mimicry of the way the gardeners had saluted his brother, smiled at Meg, turned, walked a few paces, turned again, and was gone from sight.

The viscount stood chatting with Meg, telling her about the history of his hedged maze. Then he looked up at the sun, and pulled a golden watch from his waistcoat pocket. He glanced at it and nodded. “Time’s up. Onward,” he said, and picked his way, tapping with his walking stick, down the narrow bordered lane with Meg. They turned left, and right, the
viscount chatting so pleasantly that Meg soon forgot trying to solve the puzzle, and simply strolled along with him.

“Now,” he finally said, as he stopped at the end of a dark green tunnel. “Close your eyes. Come, trust me. No peeking, please. Walk on with me, and then on my command, open your eyes.”

Meg did as he said.

She felt the change. The air suddenly felt clearer, it was definitely easier to breathe, and she saw red against her closed eyelids and felt warmth on her shoulders, meaning that she stood in sunlight again.

“Open!” her host caroled.

She opened her eyes to see that they were in the center of the maze. A huge marble statue of a nude Venus being caressed by an equally nude and obviously enthusiastic Mars, applauded by a bevy of salacious frolicking cherubs, stood in the middle. Meg stared. It was beautiful. And possibly the lewdest thing she’d ever seen.

A quartet of curved marble benches framed the ornate sculpture. And the tall, dense hedges surrounded the whole.

“We won,” the viscount said. “Poor Daffy. Now then, my dear Miss Shaw, we have some much-needed privacy at last. He won’t join us for some time.”

“Didn’t you tell him the way?” Meg asked nervously.

He smiled down at her, mischief and something else in his suddenly ardent deep blue gaze. “Oh, I
did. Some of it. He’s a resourceful fellow. He’ll join us eventually. But not for some time. So, my dear Miss Shaw, my so very lovely Miss Shaw. What shall we do to amuse ourselves during our precious stolen hours?”

M
eg blinked, and took a step back. Her eyes flew wide, she stared up at the viscount in dismay.

He didn’t seem to notice. “No sense in our standing here until Daffyd finds us,” he said in his usual cool amused tones. “We’d put you in danger of exhaustion and that will never do. Pray have a seat, my dear.” He motioned to one of the marble benches.

She hesitated.

He misunderstood. “You’re right to be cautious,” he assured her. “We try to keep everything in perfect order here but my servants can’t account for birds that fly overhead.” He swept a spotless handkerchief from an inner pocket and dusted it across the spot
less white marble of the bench. “But see? The bench is immaculate. Come, sit, my dear.”

So it seemed she had been the one to misunderstand. Meg calmed herself, and as carefully as a woman lowering herself into a pot of boiling water, she sat. Her host then sat beside her, threw one long leg over the over, one arm over the back of the bench, and smiled down at her.

He was sitting too close, she thought in sudden alarm. But short of insulting him by moving away, there was nothing she could do. So she pretended not to notice. He certainly didn’t seem to.

He inspected his shining boots, and then brushed an invisible spot off one long thigh. That made Meg notice that although he was thin, he was not gaunt. His gray breeches were fashionably tight and she could see that his thighs were well muscled. She looked away, embarrassed. But now she realized he was altogether fit, and his clothes were tailored to show it. In all, he was, if not a handsome man, then certainly an attractive one. His dark blue eyes reminded Meg of Daffyd, but his long, clever face reminded her of someone else. It nagged at her. She searched her brain to find the resemblance. His pale complexion and brown hair, cut in the fashionable windswept style, made it harder, because she had the vagrant nagging notion that the viscount looked like someone she knew who was dark as Daffyd himself.

Meg sat up straighter. She suddenly recognized that curling smile. She’d seen it in pictures of
Charles the Second: England’s wittiest, most charming, and most dissolute and licentious king.

She got the scent of lemon and lavender water as her host casually stretched, and used the motion to put his other arm on the bench in back of her and move a jot closer. She dared look at him. He was looking back at her, his eyes intent, his smile at its most winsome. His head began to lower toward hers.

Meg’s heart began to race, her reaction was as swift. She leaped to her feet.

He rose as well, looking at her curiously.

She blushed, feeling stupid and childish. He probably had only been trying to whisper something into her ear, because perhaps he knew Daffyd was near. What a gauche fool she was! It well might be because the elegant new gown she had on was giving her airs.

After all, the man was Daffyd’s half brother: a lord of the realm, sophisticated, educated, and rich as Croesus. She just wasn’t used to the attentions of such a gentleman. The problem was she wasn’t sure his behavior was what he might show any guest, or if they were
attentions
, such as she’d had from other men.

But she’d made too many mistakes on her journey so far. She’d trusted a trio of felons and probable rapists. She’d trusted Daffyd’s other brother too. She couldn’t, wouldn’t risk another blunder.

“My lord,” she said carefully, looking down at the ground as though she’d find a solution to her predicament there if she looked hard enough. “What I think we should do with that hour is to go back, or
find Daffyd straightaway. If we stay here, we could talk about the weather, I suppose. But I…”

He was still.

She swallowed hard and went on doggedly. “Please forgive me for what I’m about to say. Put it down to me being totally unused to dealing with suave and worldly gentlemen such as yourself. I fear I’m being presumptuous. I’m probably being vain as well, and very foolish to boot. And so I won’t say anything else, except that I do
not
want to do anything but talk with you, you see.”

“I do see,” he said. He smiled. “And you’re not being a bit presumptuous or vain or foolish, Miss Shaw. You
are
lovely, I
am
a rogue, and you read my motives perfectly. I did have lovemaking in mind.”

She looked up at him with something like horror.

He shrugged. “Well, at least we got that out of the way,” he said. He sat again, and indicated the empty space beside him. “So sit. I won’t presume again. You have my word on that.”

She sat, careful to keep distance between them.

He stretched out his legs, and sighed. “I do think you’re adorable, but I also have a care for Daffyd. For all his air of invulnerability, the fellow is susceptible to pity, and like any man, to charm. So one has to be sure of a female’s intentions toward him, especially this one. Speaking of which,” he added, eyeing her sidewise, “are you sure?”

She stared at him.

He shrugged. “So be it. At least tell me, is it any
thing in particular about me that puts you off? Something you dislike?”

“No, my lord,” she said, wishing she hadn’t sat again. “It’s nothing personal at all.”

He sighed, this time, theatrically. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. No accounting for taste. Though, mind, I’m not faulting your taste. He
is
a likely lad. You
do
know his history?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she lied.

“You disappoint me,” he said mildly. “Come. Don’t give up now, courage suits you. Of course you know what I mean. All I asked was if you knew my brother’s sad history.”

She nodded. “He told me. I met his grandmother and his half brother Johnny, too.”

“Ah yes, the formidable Keja and wicked Johnny. Daffy told me all about your quest. I meant the rest of it.”

“Yes, I know about the rookeries and Newgate Prison, the Hulks, and the Antipodes.”

“But so does anyone who takes the trouble to ask,” the viscount said in bored tones. “He positively delights in telling people about that. The proper ones are horrified, the improper show him due respect. He claims that’s what separates the wheat from the chaff. I believe he does it to shock those he doesn’t like, and avoid the pain of being discovered later and rejected by those he does. That’s not what I meant. No, I wanted to know if you knew the rest.”

Her eyes opened wider. There was more?

“Don’t worry. There are no other criminal charges
pending against him,” the viscount said. “I wanted to know if he’d told you his entire history. Do you know why I’m so delighted to have him here? How I discovered he was my brother?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t answer outright because she found herself curiously disloyal discussing secrets about Daffyd behind his back.

Again, the languid nobleman read her mind. “It’s no secret, at least, not Daffy’s, or mine.” His smile curled even more. “It would, however, give our mama the pip to know that others know. So
do
let me tell you about it. Our mama,” he said, “was greatly daring in her youth. She actually did run off with a rag-tag gypsy, just like in the old song. Only in the song the noblewoman’s husband came thundering after her, promptly chopped off her gypsy lover’s head, and took her back home.”

The viscount cocked his own head to the side. “That was in the earliest ballad, from 1524. The other song comes later. That one’s said to be about the gypsy Johnny Faa, of Dunbar. In that song, the cuckolded nobleman rode in, killed the gypsy and hanged his seven brothers, too. It’s supposed to be about the sixth earl of Cassilis and his lady. But some say it never happened, the earl just had political enemies who wanted to blacken his lady’s name. Still, you can bet something like that happened to someone once, because there are so many songs about it. Gypsy lads have had a certain allure down through the ages, you know.

“Our dear mama, mine and Daffy’s, didn’t follow
any of the old stories. Her lord didn’t come thundering after her or kill her gypsy lover. In fact, he never saw him. The whole affair ended rather flatly. Our mama left her gypsy and crawled back to her lord, and that—until Daffyd appeared, or rather reappeared, in London a generation later—was that.”

“I see,” Meg said softly.

“Not quite,” her host said. “Because you see, or rather, don’t, our mama left a son as well as her husband in order to go a-roving with her gypsy. My brother Martin doesn’t remember, of course. He was born after she returned. Long enough after to ensure his legitimacy, but I overheard the whispers about Mama’s adventure. You can’t lock gossip out of the nursery and kitchens. Now, mind, I know that hers was an arranged marriage and that my father was a martinet, cold as a fish and rather stupid, to boot. So it’s difficult to blame dear Mama for her escapade. It’s much easier to fault her for not mentioning she’d borne another babe while she was gone with the gypsy rover.”

“She never told anyone?”

“Not so far as I know. But I knew about her adventure. She left when I had a bit more than three years on my plate, and returned when I was rising five. I was furious with her for leaving me. In fact, I’ve never really forgiven her for it. Still, I think I’d have been entranced to know I had a half brother rattling around the world. I didn’t. She never said a word.

“At any rate,” he went on, “her adventure must
have exhausted her, because Mama settled down. Circumstances made that easier for her. Soon after she brought forth my brother Martin, my father passed away and troubled her no more. She never spoke of the year with her gypsy rover. I never mentioned it—outright—to her again.

“But then, last year, the earl of Egremont returned to England to take his rightful place, and brought with him his terrible trio, straight from exile in the Antipodes. He had his son and the two lads they’d met in prison in tow, one said to be a half-wild, half-gypsy lad, and the other an attractive rogue from nowhere. The
ton
was enthralled with their story. Handsome young convicts who looked and spoke like gentlemen, and were rich as they could hold together? They were invited everywhere, and be-damned if they didn’t brazen it out, and go everywhere, too.”

Meg sat up when she heard that, her eyes glowing at the mention of Daffyd’s bold behavior.

“Of course I heard about them,” the viscount said, “as did my mama. In fact, I was there when she first clapped eyes on Daffyd, at the Swansons’ ball. One look told her what had become of the son she’d abandoned. She actually grew pale, and staggered. I had only to see my own eyes looking back at me from his face to know there was a reason for it. Later, my mother had to admit it. Daffyd was perfectly forthcoming with me after he discovered the truth from her. The best part was that I discovered I liked
him very well indeed. In fact, I’m proud to call him brother.”

Meg sat silent. Then she looked at him directly. “But if you like him so well, why did you try to…not that I matter to him, in that way, but I came here under his protection and you just…”

She paused. She couldn’t utter the words, “tried to seduce me.”

“Tried to seduce you?” he asked merrily. “Because I do like Daffy and didn’t want him embroiled with some wild young chit with the same proclivities as our mama. He deserves more than that, more than a woman just looking for excitement with a handsome gypsy. I thought I might be able to divert you and spare him becoming involved with such another as our mother. Actually, I’m not sure I’d have been that self-sacrificing if you hadn’t been quite so pretty. The chore might have been a delight. Alas, I’ll never know, will I?” he asked with a charming smile.

Meg’s nostrils flared. She forgot her place. “I came along with your brother because I realized I’d been a fool to go off by myself,” she told him hotly, “and because I believed he had the best chance of finding Miss Osbourne! It’s true,” she added in more muted tones, “that it was folly for me to have set out on my adventure at all. But I did, and I enlisted Daffyd’s help, and so here I am. And that’s all I want from him!”

He smiled. She wanted to slap that curling smile from his mouth.

“Really?” he asked bemusedly. “That well may
have been all there was to it,
then
. Trivial I may be, my dear, and trifling I may wish to be, but I note more than changing fashions. Strange things occur on journeys; people change even as the scenery around them does. They tend to see themselves differently when they’re cut loose from their anchors. They certainly see their companions in a different light. I remember an Italian girl I met on my first grand tour, we were snowbound in the Alps…

“Be that as it may,” he said, “I don’t blame you if your emotions changed. Daffyd is clever and perceptive. He wouldn’t have survived to this day if he weren’t. He’s also wily and courageous, which I imagine he also had to be. But strangely enough, he’s honest, when he wishes to be, and when he is, he’s honest to a fault. He’s loyal to a fault as well.

“Oh, I can easily see why constant exposure to my brother Daffyd might change a person. After all,” he added with a sly grin, “all the songs say that the Gypsy Davy was exceptionally seductive. Surely you know the tune? One of my favorites.”

And then, to Meg’s surprise, he sang the rest of what he had to say, in a clear, ringing voice:

He stopped and smiled at her. Then he spun around as another voice rang out to finish the lyric for him.

“
Some say he’s dark, I say he’s bonny
,” the deep masculine voice sang. “
The flower of them all is my handsome, winsome Johnny
.”