The Seduction of the Crimson Rose pc-4 Read online

  The maid had gone straight to Letty, then. Ah, well. It was her own fault for being so careless as to neglect to follow up her request with a sixpence. A little bribery always worked wonders.

  Without turning from the dressing table, Mary began taking the pins from her hair, letting the long, dark mass unroll down her back, section by section. "But I will be."

  Letty rolled her eyes in the mirror. "Don't worry. I'll leave when the water arrives. I just wanted to talk to you about — "

  "Lord Vaughn," Mary finished for her. Lifting her brush, she held it suspended, waiting. Her eyes fixed on her sister's in the mirror. Letty's eyes, usually as easy to read as a child's primer and just as wholesome, shifted uneasily away.

  Letty shrugged uncomfortably. "Well, yes. It's just that…"

  "You don't like him," said Mary flatly.

  Letty flung up her hands. "I am capable of finishing my own sentences, you know."

  Mary didn't bother to respond. She simply set the bristles of the brush against her hair, drawing it deliberately through the shining length. One stroke…another…

  In the mirror, Letty made a face of annoyance. "It's very hard to carry on a conversation by oneself," she said.

  Mary waited, drawing the brush downwards in long, languid strokes, the only sound in the room the swish of the bristles against her hair. If Letty was set on lecturing, lecture she would, whether she received any encouragement or not.

  Letty shook her head at her in the mirror. "Oh, Mary…"

  There it was again. That "Mary." That long-suffering, long-drawn-out rendition of her name that made her nails sharpen into claws. When had that begun? Five years ago? Six? Before that, Letty had been such a complaisant child, so easy to entertain with a bit of ribbon or an old doll, beaming all over her freckled face at the chance to play dress-up in her sister's clothes and have her hair dressed like a big girl's.

  That had been a very long time ago.

  Letty drew herself up to her full height, just a shade over five feet, her bosom puffing out like a pigeon's. "I need to talk to you about Vaughn."

  "Do you?" Mary's voice dripped acid.

  Letty frowned at Mary in the mirror. "He's…not trustworthy."

  "Is that all?" Mary laughed derisively. "I've known that for ages. It's hardly news."

  Letty plunked both her hands on her hips. "Mary, you must see — "

  Dropping the brush, Mary swung around on the bench. "I don't see that I must see anything. Must I?"

  Letty shook her head. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just…"

  "What? That you're older and wiser?"

  Letty had the grace to flush, but she soldiered stubbornly on. "When I was in Ireland," she blurted out, "Vaughn was there, too."

  "A hanging offense, to be sure," Mary drawled, in her very best imitation of Vaughn.

  The furrows in Letty's brow dug a little deeper, but she didn't allow herself to be deterred. "There was a woman…"

  "With Vaughn, I imagine there would be," replied Mary thoughtfully, abandoning the drawl. "He's that sort of a man."

  "You almost sound as though you admire him for it."

  "I do," said Mary coolly, and was surprised to realize she meant it. He was a man who knew what he wanted and took it. She had had enough of poets and moralists, the sort who sighed and yearned and never had the backbone to act. It had taken months to coax, wheedle, and maneuver Geoffrey into taking the final steps towards elopement, and even then he had done so with a heavy conscience and an inauspicious eye. A conscience, Mary decided, was a damnably unattractive trait in a man.

  Letty was determined to make her see sense. "Vaughn won't…that is, he isn't…"

  Mary's lips twisted into a crooked smile. "The marrying kind? He's never made any misrepresentations on that score."

  "You don't want to be compromised. Or worse." Letty bit down on the last two words, her teeth digging into her lower lip as though she feared she had already said too much.

  Mary's eyes narrowed. "Why not? It works remarkably well for some."

  Letty backed up a step, stumbling over the hem of her own skirt. "That's not fair," she protested.

  "But true," countered Mary pleasantly. Flexing her hand, Mary languidly examined the perfect curve of her fingernails. "After all, you were compromised. And everything you do is always right. Ergo…"

  Letty shoved her hair haphazardly behind her ears. "It wasn't like that. You know I never meant any of this to happen. Mary…"

  Watching Letty's lips move, her hands twisted in the folds of her skirt, Mary felt a surge of impatient pity for her little sister. If only Letty wasn't so damnably earnest. She could have her Geoffrey and good riddance to him. Just so long as she stopped talking about it.

  "This woman Vaughn was with," Mary interrupted abruptly. "Was her name Teresa?"

  "What?" Caught midsentence, Letty blinked several times at the abrupt change of subject.

  "Her name," Mary repeated, as though to a very slow child. "What was it?"

  "I don't remember her Christian name," Letty said distractedly. "I'm not sure I even heard it. I knew her only as the Marquise de Montval. That is, I knew of her. I didn't actually know her. Not as such."

  "French?" Mary tucked that bit of information away for future use. The name meant nothing to her, but it might be of use in conversation with Vaughn.

  "No, English. At least, she was English." Letty raked her hair back from her face with both hands. "But that's not the point. The thing I wanted to tell you — that is, the Marquise de Montval — she — "

  "So she married a Frenchman, then." Teresa wasn't exactly the most common name for an Englishwoman. It certainly wasn't as popular as Charlotte or Caroline or even Mary, but it wasn't unknown. They could be one and the same.

  "Ye-es, but — " Letty stumbled to a halt, scuffing one sensible shoe against the pastel flowers of the Axminster carpet.

  Mary raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Surely a married woman shouldn't be so miss-ish? I assure you, I shan't swoon at the mention of a mistress. I have heard of such things, you know, despite my spinster state. Are you trying to tell me that she and Vaughn were lovers?"

  Letty's honest face was a study in consternation. "I wish that were all, really, I do. But the Marquise — "

  Letty broke off as a scuffling noise at the door attracted her attention. Looking almost relieved, she called, "Yes?"

  Around the corner of the door appeared an undersized figure in a neat gray dress and a white cap, the same maid Mary had neglected to bribe. She was holding out a heavy sheet of cream-colored paper, the fine stationery an incongruous contrast against her work-reddened hand. On the reverse of the paper, Mary's name had been scrawled in a bold, black hand. There was no direction, no frank, just Miss Mary Alsworthy in thick black ink. The bottom of the y snaked back under the whole like a sea serpent twining around a hapless ship.

  "This just came for you, miss," the maid murmured, lowering her eyes under Mary's unblinking stare. "Under the door, like."

  Mary and Letty both moved forwards at the same time. There were some advantages to having longer legs. Mary crossed the room and plucked the letter out of the maid's hands before Letty could get to it.

  "I believe this is meant to be mine," she said, looking pointedly at her sister's outstretched hand.

  The pads of her fingers tingled with anticipation against the textured surface of the paper. Through the thick stationery, it was impossible to see what was written within. The hand was an unfamiliar one.

  To the maid, Mary added, "You may go."

  She would have liked to have said the same to her sister, but she doubted it would have any effect. The maid looked to Letty for confirmation. Letty motioned for the maid to stay.

  "Under the door?" Letty asked, wrinkling her nose. "What do you mean, Agnes?"

  As Letty quizzed the maid, Mary smuggled her prize to the far side of the room, standing beneath the shelter of the curved fall of the drapes as she cracked the black wax
that sealed the paper shut. There had been a signet of some sort pressed to the wax, but the die had slipped as it was applied, smudging the imprint and rendering it unrecognizable. She could make out a snippet of a curve at the bottom. It might have been anything from the bottom of St. George's shield to one of the serpents of which Vaughn was so fond. Or the ornamental sweep at the bottom of a large R, for Rathbone. Did revolutionaries patronize such expensive stationers?

  Knowing that her time was limited, Mary hastily cracked the seal, impatiently brushing aside the broken bits of dried wax that scattered across her skirt. The missive was only one page, seeming thicker only due to the quality of the paper. And that one page contained only three words, scrawled dead across the center of the page, between the two lines made by the folds.

  Vauxhall. Tomorrow. Midnight.

  And that was all. There was no salutation, no signature, no explanation, only that abrupt summons — for summons it must be. But from whom? And why? She doubted St. George would be capable of couching a simple request in anything less than a paragraph. Rathbone, perhaps. But Vauxhall, pleasure palace of the idle rich, hunting ground for the amorous, all flimsy fantasy and decaying decadence hardly seemed to be Rathbone's métier.

  Vaughn, on the other hand…Oh, yes, Vaughn was a creature of Vauxhall if ever there was one. And the peremptory nature of the summons smacked of his oratorical style. Vaughn lifted a finger and the rest of the world obeyed. Or so he liked to think. It was all of a piece with the way he had invited her to the park the following afternoon. Anticipation tingled through her like heady wine thinking of Vauxhall, with its dark walks and even shadier inhabitants, dusted over with fireworks that dazzled rather than illuminated.

  Mary snuck a sideways glance towards her sister, still deep in conversation with the maid, who was spinning a complicated tale of under-footmen and misplaced correspondence. Letty would be sure to disapprove.

  Letty would not have to be told.

  She might even, Mary thought, her head spinning with possibilities, be able to do away with the indifferent chaperonage of Aunt Imogen. At Vauxhall, hooded, masked, who was there to recognize her and go tattling back to society? She could be free for a few precious hours.

  But why hadn't Vaughn mentioned anything a mere hour ago, when he had all but ordered her to the park with him? And why fail to sign the note? He might be arrogant enough — no, Mary corrected herself, he was arrogant enough — to assume that he would need no introduction, but she would have expected at least a V, sprawled at the bottom of the page in seigneurial splendor.

  Pursing her lips, Mary squinted down at the letter, drawing out the three folds to their full extent. The paper crumpled beneath her fingers as she saw it, there, on the lowest right-hand corner of the paper. At first viewing she had taken it for nothing more than a blot, a careless drop of ink spattered by an impatient pen.

  But it wasn't.

  On the lower right side of the page, where a signature ought to have been, someone had sketched a small black flower.

  Chapter Ten

  …But that was in another country,

  And besides, the wench is dead.

  — Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, IV, i

  In Belliston Square, Lord Vaughn had received a letter of his own.

  Vaughn could see why his fastidious butler had pointedly buried it at the very bottom of the pile, beneath an invitation to the Naughty Hellfire Club's annual Fall Frolic (breeches optional) and a circular advertising a two-for-one sale at Mme. Pimpin's House of Pleasure (bed one wench, get the next one free). The paper was the cheapest sort of foolscap, stained with trails of ink and the oily imprint of grubby fingers, presumably those of the bearer, since the letter itself bore no frank. It must have been delivered by hand, and a decidedly dirty hand, at that. Beneath the streaks of grime, the enclosing sheet was puckered and snagged where the writer's impatient quill had jabbed through in her haste. The writer had driven the nib clean through the base of the V like a swordsman running his opponent straight through the heart.

  Not that the heart was an organ with much bearing on the affair. Not for a very long time, at any rate.

  Vaughn didn't need to crack open the wax to know the identity of the writer. There was no seal imprinting the wax, no telltale scent wafting from the folds (other than a slight tang of mud, courtesy of the bearer), no distinguishing curlicues twining from the base of the letters, but even blotted and smeared, he knew that handwriting. There had been a time — a time he preferred to ignore — when he knew it as well as his own.

  With the finicky care of a cat, Vaughn lifted the letter by one corner. It was all of one sheet, folded over, sealed, and addressed on the blank side, curiously insubstantial for something that pressed against him like the weights used to crush accused traitors, stone by painful stone, gasping for air from their constricted lungs until their organs crumpled one by one beneath the pressure.

  The seal crumbled off with the flick of a finger, red wax flaking onto the table like drops of wine. Slowly, deliberately, Vaughn spread open the page.

  "Sebastian — " it began.

  A name no one addressed him by anymore. His acquaintances, his enemies, even his own mother called him Vaughn, in proper deference to his rank. The boy Sebastian had been outrun years ago, abandoned somewhere in Paris.

  If the use of his name were an attempt to soften him with reminders of past intimacy, it was in singularly poor taste, given the terms on which they had parted. Vaughn's eyes flicked past the salutation, to the letter itself. The ink she had used was as cheap as the paper. Diluted with water, it turned the words into a gray wash on the page. Even so, one phrase burned from the blur.

  Did you really believe I was dead?

  Vaughn pressed his eyes closed, but it didn't help. He could still see the words blazoned against the backs of his lids.

  Grimacing, Vaughn looked down his nose at the letter. She needn't sound quite so snippy about it. It had, after all, been an impression she had gone to a great deal of trouble to secure.

  Believe it? Yes. No. Perhaps.

  Letting the paper drift to the table, Vaughn rubbed two fingers against his temples. Belief had had nothing to do with it. At the time, it had been far easier to take the situation as it appeared, without wasting time on trivialities like confirmation, accepting it because he wanted it to be so. A quest after proof bore far too great a chance of kicking up inconvenient truths, like slut's wool under the rug.

  He hadn't reckoned with resurrections. When someone went to that much bother to appear dead, they generally stayed dead. At least, so one would hope.

  Believed? Perhaps not. Hoped? Oh God, yes. He hadn't realized just how much, until now, with the disappointment of it wrenching at his gut, filling his mouth with ashes and his breast with bile. Since returning to England, he had found himself contemplating the very banalities he had long since abandoned: a wife, a nursery, speeches in the Lords and a well-worn chair at Brook's. What a grand irony it would be, after all his years of wanderings, to settle down like Odysseus at his own hearth with a faithful Penelope on his knee. And yet, there it was, beckoning, taunting him with the possibility that the past might be rolled up and bundled back into Pandora's box; that he could, after all this time, start again and redeem the years he had lost.

  He ought to have known better.

  Exposure, the letter threatened. A full accounting, unless he acceded to her as-yet-unspecified demands. Never mind that by exposing him, she would expose herself as well. She had less to lose. He didn't doubt for a moment that she meant what she threatened. She was, and always had been, entirely ruthless when it came to achieving what she desired; ungracious in victory, vengeful when thwarted, like the goddesses of classical drama, who thought nothing of destroying an empire for an imagined slight.

  Rising, Vaughn stalked to the window. Outside, the autumn twilight had deepened to full dark, smudged with coal smoke. All around Belliston Square, lamps were being lit, curtains dra
wn, fires built against the October chill. Narrow chimney pots sent out their dense smoke to coat the arrogant stone of the great houses and film white woodwork with gray.

  Vaughn breathed deep of the tainted air, savoring the scratch of smoke against his nostrils, scraping the back of his throat. It was, he supposed, as close as one could get to brimstone without actually being in hell.

  Reaching for a decanter, Vaughn poured himself a splash of smuggled French brandy, contemplated his glass, and splashed in some more.

  "Where I fly is hell, myself am hell," he murmured, and raised the glass in sardonic salute to his own reflection in the window, a shadow figure who nodded and drank in concert, watching him with wary eyes. The shadow image was filmed by the soot that streaked the window. Every day, the servants wiped it away, and every day the stain returned.

  He had been a fool, at this late date, to think he could settle to domesticity, warm his toes by the fire and cultivate his garden in gouty old age. Like Milton's Satan, he carried the seeds of his own destruction with him wherever he went.

  Taking up the letter, Vaughn held the corner with the signature to the candle flame. The flimsy paper caught instantly, the paper blackening and curling, obliterating the name he had hoped never to see again. As the paper twisted and charred, one word stood out against the shrinking background. Dead.

  Did you really believe I was dead?

  Wincing, Vaughn dropped the burning letter onto the silver tray, where it smoldered like one of the salamanders of medieval alchemy, a twisted, blackened thing with glowing red embers for eyes, until those, too, winked out into a pile of ash.

  He poured more brandy to stop the pain in his head, marveling at the diabolical impishness of the workings of providence. Tossing it back, he poured another, settling himself down in a wide-armed chair, balancing his glass on one arm as he contemplated the bloody fiendishness of fate.

  Closing his eyes, Vaughn let his head drop against the back of the chair. Against the backs of his lids, he could see the firelight striking blue lights in Mary Alsworthy's hair as she stood in that tiny Gothic chamber in Sibley Court, coolly bargaining over terms. It reminded him of another fall of blue-black hair, spread against the arm of a settee…. Without opening his eyes, Vaughn applied the brandy to his lips and found the liquid chased the vision away. Instead, like a necromancer's potion, it supplied him with another image of Mary Alsworthy, canoodling in a corner of the room with that bloody St. George, fluttering her lashes for all she was worth, and doing it bloody well. What a courtesan she would have made, what an actress. What a countess.