The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Nine

Who, then, was Teresa?

Mary slowly followed Aunt Imogen into the foyer of her brother-in-law's London mansion. All around her, white marble nymphs sneered down at her from their niches, arrogant in their chilly perfection. One held an urn as though ready to dump water over the head of anyone so unwary as to walk directly past. No hint of color enlivened the entry hall, not so much as a black tile on the floor. The octagonal room had been executed all in icy white, like a Roman temple — or a tomb for the living.

Mary's boots echoed sharply on the white marble floor, in counterpoise to her thoughts. She could picture Vaughn, his hand clenched on the head of his cane in the sort of reaction she herself had failed to elicit. What had this Teresa been to him? Or, rather, Mary corrected herself, what was she to him. There was nothing to indicate that a use of the past tense would be more appropriate to the occasion.

Was this Teresa Vaughn's mistress? Mary hadn't heard any rumors linking Vaughn to a particular member of the demimonde, but that would explain Lady Hester's use of a first name alone, without title or honorific. It was a form that might indicate either familiarity or contempt. A devoted aunt might be deemed to have reason for reviling her niece's husband for his extramarital antics.

But Vaughn's wife had been dead. For ten years. Most men didn't remain constant in wedlock, much less after it. The only reason Mary's father hadn't strayed was that he was more interested in his books than in women. And an income of three hundred pounds a year didn't leave much room for supporting a mistress.

Mary became aware of a certain bobbing and fluttering on the corner of her vision. A maid, in a neat gray dress and white cap was trotting along beside her, jogging anxiously up and down in an unsuccessful bid for her attention.

"Yes?" Mary asked sharply.

The maid melted into relief. "It's her ladyship. Her ladyship said as to tell her — "

"Yes, yes." Mary cut her off with a wave of one hand, and the maid subsided into alarmed silence. Mary had a feeling she knew all too well what it was her ladyship wanted. She seized on the most expedient means of delaying the inevitable. "I'd like a bath brought up to my room."

Chewing on a hangnail, the maid hovered indecisively, torn between following her original orders and the unmistakable tone of command. Mary's back stiffened. Someday, she was going to have her own household, where her servants obeyed her orders. The operative word being hers. Hers, hers, hers. Not her parents'. Not her sister's.

"Sometime today," added Mary, with a pleasant smile ringed with steel. Vaughn's conversational habits appeared to be catching.

They were also effective. With one last anxious glance over her shoulder, the maid went. A moment's observation confirmed that she was, in fact, heading for the nether regions where servants and hot water were to be had and not to her mistress's chamber to tattle. That should earn her at least fifteen minutes before Letty came banging on her door.

Tugging in turn at each finger of her glove, Mary proceeded pensively up the broad marble stairs. Even without the added incentive of delaying her sister, a bath wasn't a bad notion. She could still feel the grime of the tavern like a film on her skin, laced with the nauseous scent of stale beer and day-old sausage rolls.

She wondered, idly, if Lord Vaughn was doing the same. She couldn't imagine he liked the stench of sausage any better than she did. Lord Vaughn with his impeccable lace and linens. And yet…Mary closed the door of her temporary bedroom behind her, tossing her gloves onto the bed. And yet, Vaughn had seemed awfully at ease with the group of radicals in the tavern. For a man who had been on the Continent for the last decade, he had been surprisingly familiar with their proceedings.

Yanking free the ribbons of her bonnet, she sent the straw and silk confection skimming after the gloves onto the white eyelet bedspread that Letty had chosen for her. Embroidered with a twining frieze of white flowers and vines about the edges, the coverlet was all that was pristine and virginal, a perfect haven for an innocent young girl's maidenly dreams. Mary hated it. It jeered at her of her failure, frozen at twenty-five in an inappropriate and attenuated girlhood.

She took pleasure in tossing her spencer onto the coverlet, the braided twill creating a wide blue blot on the pristine white. It was a petty sort of revenge, but it was better than nothing.

There were times her palms ached to close around a china ornament and fling it against the wall just as hard as she could, for the satisfaction of hearing it smash into a thousand tiny pieces. She would take the Dresden shepherdess on the mantel, blond and smug, and she would hurl it at the pink-patterned paper on the walls, that hideous pink paper covered with rosebuds that would never bloom, frozen in artificial sterility from here to eternity. And she would exult as the porcelain shattered, as the pattern cracked, as a million little pieces sifted sparkling to the muffling calm of the carpet.

There were times when just the thought of crashing china was all that kept her from running screaming down the hallways of Pinchingdale House. The idea of making a scene, causing a fuss, cracking all the codes that had held her all these years, watching her sister's and brother-in-law's faces as they came running in…

Followed by the inevitable clucking. The sideways glances, the concerned conferences, the smothering solicitude.

The Dresden shepherdess was safe on her perch.

At least now she had her little agreement with Vaughn to distract her. Whatever else Vaughn's faults might be, he worked excellently well as a diversion. As long as she took care to remember that a diversion was all he was. As Beatrice had said of the Prince in Much Ado About Nothing, he was too costly for daily use.

Mary reached back to untie the ribbon that held a sapphire cross in place against her neck. The sapphires were glass, of course, like all of her jewelry. An impressive gleam on the outside; worthless within.

As Mary let the black velvet slide into a small heap on her bedside table, a knock sounded tentatively against the door.

Servants never knocked, even such ill-trained ones as her sister employed.

Mary stiffened, fighting a craven desire to slip out through the dressing room and keep going.

"Mary?" her sister's voice called. It couldn't be anyone but her sister. No one else in the household called her by her first name. Even her brother-in-law had retreated into a respectful Miss Alsworthy, as though by that belated formality he could eradicate their embarrassing past.

Mary retreated hastily to her dressing table, sliding onto the low bench with its embroidered cover. Pitching her voice low, she called out, "Not now, Letty. I'm bathing."

The door cracked open, and a gingery head of hair poked through. It was followed by Letty, insufferably tidy in a green wool dress that brought out all of her freckles. "No, you're not," she said. "The water hasn't been heated yet."

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.