The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Ten

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 drawn, 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.

Mary Alsworthy, Vaughn reminded himself, reaching for the decanter without bothering to open his eyes, was not auditioning for a role as his countess, or even his mistress. She was there for a task, a task that might be more easily accomplished if he let her get on with it, rather than rushing forwards like an overprotective duenna the minute danger threatened.

Danger, indeed! The Common Sense Society was a toothless lot, so harmless that even the government hadn't bothered to swoop down and close them down. A bunch of idle dreamers, ink-stained scribblers, each more ineffectual than the last, led by poor, mad Rathbone who spent most of his time solitary in a laboratory, endlessly tinkering with the elements. The point of their presence at the society had been merely to establish Mary's radical bona fides, to have her seen in the company of known supporters of the revolution, in the hopes that word would spread to the right quarters. They ought to have stayed longer, made the rounds of the room, established Mary firmly as part of the group. Instead…

Vaughn set the decanter back down with an abruptness that made the stopper rattle against the lip. He had no excuse for his actions, nothing except a fleeting, unreasoning impulse to which he had even more unreasonably given way. Balancing his brandy balloon on his chest, Vaughn contemplated his own folly. Standing there, in the corner of the low-beamed room, with her dress a long streak of white against the smoke-stained walls, Mary had looked uncannily like Teresa. It was more than coloring, more than clothing. She had that same trick of angling her head, that same proud tilt of the chin. She had looked so slight next to St. George, so vulnerable, with nothing but a thin layer of linen between her skin and an assassin's stiletto. With a clarity that had made his skin prickle with cold in the overheated room, Vaughn had seen Teresa as he had last viewed her, superimposed over Mary, the red lips slack, the pale skin gone gray, eyes filmed and staring. Only this time, it wasn't Teresa, but Mary Alsworthy.

Foolishness, of course. He wouldn't allow it to happen again. He had hired her to do a job, and there was no sense letting mawkish qualms get in the way. It was a contract, a transaction, a business arrangement.

And if he kept reminding himself of that, he might actually believe it.

It was no wonder he was damned, when he willfully repeated the same pattern over and over again, like a little illustration of the fall of man. Not just a fool, but three times a fool. First Anne, then Teresa, and now Mary Alsworthy. All apples from the same tree. Beautiful, yes; clever, yes; selfish and scheming — ah, there were the qualities that drew him, time after time. And why not? Like called to like.

"'Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure,'" Vaughn recited, enjoying the roll of the words on his tongue. There was nothing like a bit of the Bard to add depth and grandeur to one's petty peccadilloes. "'Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.'"

"Very true, my lord," a bland voice commented.

Vaughn spilled brandy on his shirtfront. He opened one eye, regarded two of his butler, decided it wasn't worth it, and closed it again.

"What the devil do you want, Derby?" he inquired, letting his head fall back against the chair.

"No devil, sir, but certainly a maid."

It had clearly been a mistake giving his butler the run of his library. It was one thing to utter ambiguous bits of Shakespeare oneself, it was quite another thing to be bedeviled by inapposite paraphrases from one's butler.

"In plain English, Derby," ground out Vaughn, wondering at the bizarre properties of brandy, which, rather than shrinking his headache, had simply bloated his head, thus spreading the pain across a larger area.

"You have a visitor, my lord," intoned Derby, in the sonorous tones for which Vaughn had hired him.

"At this hour?"

"A woman, my lord," intoned Derby, placing the full weight of his disapproval on the second word.

Did you really believe I was dead?

It was an odd hour to call. Unless, of course, one were a ghost.

"She didn't waste any time, did she?" muttered Vaughn.

"My lord?"

Dragging a deep breath into his lungs, Vaughn ignored his butler and contemplated his options. An oubliette would solve his problem nicely, but town houses seldom came equipped with such amenities. He would have to go and hear her terms, there was no avoiding it. But there was no reason to make it easy for her. A bit of intimidation would do wonders for their negotiations. Nothing too overt, nothing too heavy-handed…just a taste of what it meant to cross swords with a master.

When the solution arrived, it was so obvious that he wondered he hadn't thought of it straightaway. Levering himself up on both elbows, Vaughn's lips curled back in a singularly unpleasant smile.

The great diamond on his finger sparkled like frost as Vaughn gave his butler his orders.

"Take our unwanted guest to the Chinese chamber."

Alone in the great center hall of Vaughn House, Mary tapped a booted foot against the marble floor.

The sound echoed back to her in a series of phantom taps, mocking her impatience and only making the great room feel even emptier. The imperious personage who had opened the door to her had departed a good ten minutes ago, essaying only a chilly, "If you would be so good as to wait here," before disappearing into the uncharted depths of Vaughn House, leaving Mary without chair or refreshment.

Mary made a face at the coffered archway through which the butler had departed. He might at least have shown her to a parlor. Surely, that wouldn't have been too much of a strain upon his dignity. The entrance hall was pointedly bereft of seating.

Drawing her cloak closer, Mary warily examined her surroundings. She had visited Vaughn House before, for the great masquerade ball Vaughn had hosted to celebrate his return from the remoter bits of the Continent. It had been July then, and the hall had thronged with parti-colored Pierrots, plumed cavaliers, and gold-breasted Roman generals, the room so crowded that the great green columns that paced at intervals along the walls had scarcely been visible for the press of bodies and the intricate scagliola work that decorated the floor had been entirely blotted out beneath the stampede of slippered feet. The warmth of the July night, the heavy perfumes worn by the guests, and the steam of incipient intrigue had all met and mingled to create a heavy musk that draped across the crowd like the smoke from the hundreds of candles that glittered in their silver-gilt sconces.

Vaughn House, alone, on an October night, was a different prospect entirely.

Empty, the room was much larger than she remembered. Only one branch of candles had been lit, held by one of the two great ebony blackamoors that guarded the entrance to the central rotunda, where a great curved stair stretched towards the upper stories, like a snake stretching itself. The meager light cast strange shadows off statuary and gilt-topped columns, turning the marble inlay of the floor into a sinister pattern of shifting shapes.

It was cold, too, colder than she had realized on the brief walk over, a cold that emanated from the floors and walls and chilled all the way down to the bone. Inside, somewhere in the inner reaches of the house, there must be warmth and light; Mary couldn't imagine Vaughn depriving himself of any of the creature comforts. But the entry had been designed to chill, to intimidate, to overawe.

It was working.

Crossing her arms tightly across her chest beneath the cover of her cloak, Mary lifted her chin, affecting a hauteur she was far from feeling. Above, the gilded figures who perched on the tops of the columns seemed to be leering down at her.

This had not, Mary admitted to herself, been one of her better ideas.

Why hadn't she just sent a note? That would have been the prudent course to take, and just as effective. The Black Tulip's proposed assignation wasn't until the following night; there would have been plenty of time for Lord Vaughn to receive her note and reply. There had been no reason to come herself, none at all — other than the hectoring tone of her little sister's voice as she warned her away from Lord Vaughn. Mary's brows drew together in annoyance at the recollection. What did she know of it, anyway? Just because she had a husband — Mary's lips pressed together in a tight, hard line, stopping up that line of thought before it could go any further.

It had seemed, at the time, like a very good idea to thwart her sister and steal away the short distance to Lord Vaughn's. The expedition had been laughably easy to organize. All it took was snapping that she had the headache. No, she didn't want her maid; no, she didn't want a soothing posset; all she wanted was to be left alone. Was that too much to ask? Letty had retreated with a reluctant backwards glance, her anxious, earnest face peering around the edge of the door one last time before the panel had finally clicked shut. After that, it had been the work of a moment to draw all the drapes, pile up cushions beneath the bedclothes, and slip out down the back stairs. Letty might knock, she might lurk anxiously in the hallway, she might even peek around the corner of the door, but she wouldn't enter without invitation.

It was exhilarating to whisk down the back stairs and know that there was not a person in the world who knew where she was, to be entirely, gloriously free — if only for five minutes. Vaughn's residence had been a world away from last season's lodgings on the borders of Bloomsbury, but it was a mere stone's throw from her brother-in-law's house in Grosvenor Square. At long last, she was of Mayfair. And at the end of the journey, there would be Vaughn.

It had never occurred to her that he might not be home. Or, that being home, he might not want to see her.

She wasn't quite sure what she had expected, but it had something to do with being shown into a warm room, with a fire in the hearth and Vaughn lounging arrogantly in a chair. When she entered, he would draw deliberately to his feet and drawl out a remark that might sound like an insult, but contain within it a hidden kernel of welcome, equal to equal. And she would insult him back, in perfect harmony and understanding, no fussing, no false politeness.

None of which could happen if he weren't there.

Mary twisted her head and contemplated the great front door. Perhaps tonight hadn't been the best time to call. All it would take would be a quick twist of the knob and a good, strong shove with one shoulder. If the butler hadn't seen her face…

"Madam?" It was too late. The erstwhile butler had reappeared.

Mary gave him her haughtiest glance, trying very hard to look as though she hadn't been caught contemplating a precipitate flight back out into the night.

The butler was not impressed.

"If you would be so good as to follow me?" he intoned, in the sort of voice that would have filled Drury Lane Theatre twice over.

Mary gathered her cloak about her with as much dignity as she could muster and followed. They proceeded through a stately procession of reception rooms, each more ornate than the last. The butler's single candle struck gold glints off the ornately curled frames of innumerable pictures, hung one above the other in a dazzling display of connoisseurship and raw wealth. Overhead, the passing light revealed glimpses of azure sky. Pink-skinned goddesses, bearded patriarchs, and dimpled nymphs yawned down upon Mary and her guide as they passed below, disturbing their slumber.

Even the very shadows seemed shinier than the ordinary run of shadow, richer and sleeker. That might merely have been the effect produced by the smooth sheen of Venetian mirrors and silk-hung walls, Gobelin tapestries and floors polished to so slick a sheen that the light wriggled in the amber surface like fish swimming just below the surface of a river. Mary's boots seemed even older and shabbier against the glowing patina of the parquet floor, and her woolen cloak rasped dully against Savonnerie carpets that must have cost more than all the contents of her childhood home put together.

At the end of the last room, the butler opened a door in the paneling that Mary hadn't seen before, cleverly cut to blend into the rest of the wall. Beyond lay a short stretch of hallway that seemed dark and dull in comparison to the richness of gilded woodwork and painted ceilings in the chambers through which they had passed. There were no windows on either side, merely a series of matched sconces set at intervals down the wall, paired serpents whose open mouths each held the base of a candle, while their tails twined together in a love knot below.

At the far end, Mary could make out the shadowy shape of a stairway. Not the grand stair that curved around an immense statue of Hercules in the central rotunda, but a plain, workmanlike stair, narrow and steep, leading up to the upper stories.

Mary covertly eyed the staircase, wondering just what Vaughn intended. Upper stories tended to contain more private sorts of room. Like bedchambers.

Instead of the staircase, however, the butler turned the knob of a door in the center of the wall, so insignificant that Mary hadn't noticed it. With an inclination of his head, the butler gestured her into the room.

Mary swept regally past him, so intent on her grand entrance that it took her a moment to realize that it was being wasted on empty walls.

Mary came to an abrupt halt, the sole of her boot squeaking against the polished floor. She scarcely noted the click of the door as it closed behind her. There was no Vaughn. The room was empty.

Revolving in a slow circle, Mary took in her surroundings. There was certainly no place for Vaughn to hide. The room was scarcely larger than her dressing room at her brother-in-law's house, the walls paneled in a polished rosewood inlaid with precious porcelain plaques painted with scenes of life in the Orient. There were eight panels in all, angling inward to form an octagon. The parquet of the floor echoed the shape of the walls, sloping inward in an ever-narrowing pattern that drew the eye towards the center of the room, where a fancifully carved table held a silver salver.

Everything in the room was rich and strange, from the unexpected shelves that held vases made of jade so fine that Mary could see the light reflecting through it, to the Oriental dragons who stood in pairs beside the crimson-cushioned benches that sat at the base of seven of the eight walls. The eighth wall was occupied by a mantel of rare red marble, in which a fire had been laid but not lit. Even without the fire, the room didn't feel cold. Candles had been lit in gold filigree holders at even intervals all along the eight walls, and their light reflected warmly off the rich rosewood and the pale parquet floor, striking off the hidden gold threads in the shot-silk crimson cushions and turning the lolling tongues of the brass lions red-gold.

Standing in the center, beside the carved teak table, Mary felt as though she had been placed in a velvet-lined jewel box. There were no windows, no door, nothing but rosewood and porcelain, filigree and marble. Even the ceiling had been plastered and painted in imitation of the roof of a pagoda, tricking the eye with the illusion of successive layers of intricate architectural detail rising ever upwards.

Tipping her head back, Mary squinted at the ceiling, knowing that it had to be flat no matter how her eyes insisted otherwise.

The only warning she had was a light click, and then the door burst open, followed by a velvety voice drawling, in tones of barely veiled menace, "How very kind of you to call. It saves me all sorts of trouble."

Mary dropped her head so quickly she nearly wrenched something in her neck. It was so like Vaughn, to catch her at a disadvantage, gawking at the ceiling like some poor provincial who had never seen trompe l'oeil before.

Drawing herself up, she slowly turned to face him with all the outraged dignity of Elizabeth I confronting a disorderly courtier. She was doing quite well at the regal outrage until Vaughn came into view. The stinging rejoinder Mary had prepared fell unuttered from her slack lips.

Vaughn lounged in an expansive pose, the billowing white folds of his shirtsleeves filling the doorway. Without waistcoat or cravat, the ties of his shirt undone, Lord Vaughn looked more like the caricaturist's ideal of a dissolute poet than a belted earl. His shirt hung open at his neck, revealing the strong lines of his throat and a surprisingly impressive display of musculature, the smoothly honed physique of a swordsman rather than a pugilist. The shirt had been loosely tucked into his pantaloons, but seemed to have come free in the back, the shirt-tails hanging over the tight kerseymere of his breeches. The large diamond still winked on his finger, its richness only serving to underline his shocking dishabille.

Mary found herself incapable of doing anything but stare. It was impossible to envision Lord Vaughn without his armor of brocade and lace, but there he was, in little more than his linen, the lithe grace of his form admirably displayed by the sheer folds of fine fabric. It was…Mary blinked rapidly. It was unmistakably Lord Vaughn, but a Lord Vaughn such as she would never have imagined. And yet, it was undeniably he. Who else could be so arrogant even in dishabille?

In the meantime, Vaughn seemed to be having equal difficulties comprehending her presence. At the sight of her face, he rocked back on his heels, taking an inadvertent step back and catching at the door frame for balance in a movement that made his sleeves flatten against the corded muscles of his arm.

Regaining his usual self-possession, he propped himself against the door frame, folding his arms across his chest.

"Well, well," said Vaughn mockingly. "What have we here?"