The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Thirteen

Mary lounged like Cleopatra in the back of Lord Vaughn's private barge. Reflected light from the lanterns hung on either side of the canopy unfurled across the dark waters of the Thames like silk ribbons as the prow pulled through the water, propelled by the efforts of half a dozen liveried oarsmen.

In front of her, Letty perched uncomfortably on the edge of her own seat, looking as out of place in her warm red cloak as a plump red hen at a court fete. She and Geoffrey had come along as chaperones, having firmly refused to countenance the notion of Vauxhall without their own protective presence. Aunt Imogen, Letty had declared, would just not do. Mary had accepted their escort with a good grace that caused her sister and brother-in-law to exchange a surprised glance.

Vaughn had added two others to the party, a widow and her daughter, both attired in shocking shades of purple that warred with the smooth black and silver of the barge. Between Miss Fustian's exuberant lace flounces and the large, ruffled parasol that Mrs. Fustian inexplicably insisted on carrying, the small cabin felt inordinately crowded.

The party was crammed beneath the tilt, or canopy, a half-cabin that the whimsy of Vaughn's craftsmen had shaped in the form of a small Greek temple, with a triangular pediment and two long Corinthian columns fronting either side, their complex pattern of icanthus leaves chased with beaten silver. Above Mary's head, the underside of the canopy had been painted in faithful reproduction of the night sky, the constellations reproduced in such painstaking detail that one could scarcely tell what was roof and what open sky, nature and artifice blended in brilliant illusion until the reproduction seemed the reality and the reality mere shadow. Rather, thought Mary, like Vaughn himself.

Along the open sides of the tilt waved long banners of rich black silk, embroidered in silver with Vaughn's own devise, a serpent contorted in an impossible spiral as it chased its own tail. Below it, on a curling sigil, rang out Vaughn's chosen motto: Sic Semper Serpentibus.

It wasn't, Mary knew, the family crest of the Vaughns. That, immortalized in print in Debrett's Peerage and in stone along the frontage of Vaughn House, consisted of a modified version of the lion of Scotland (a nice nod to their origins, another of the hangers-on who had followed James I from Scotland to England and been granted an earldom for their pains), demurely licking its paw among a field of gold balls, that the unkind claimed were meant to represent the coins that had come their way through the royal monopolies granted by the intemperate monarch. James I had always had a taste for handsome young men, and by all accounts, the first Lord Vaughn had been possessed of a particularly well-turned calf. The Vaughn motto was something equally mundane, the usual rot about perseverance and plenty, glorified by translation into Latin.

The silver serpent was Lord Vaughn's own private device, echoed in the livery of the oarsmen and rearing figure of a reptile at the prow, every scale outlined with painstaking artistry.

Vaughn had sensibly elected not to cram in with the others beneath the tilt. Standing just beyond the canopy, one jeweled hand resting against a Corinthian column, Vaughn looked every inch the Elizabethan grandee, lord of all he surveyed. While the fashion for swords had ended well over a decade ago, Lord Vaughn still carried himself as though he felt the weight of a hilt on his hip. He stood with a swordsman's stance, balanced and alert beneath his carefully cultivated air of languor.

Mary wondered what he had been like a decade ago, before his precipitate departure for the continent. A hot-headed young blood, eager to press his luck on the gaming table and the dueling field? A lace-frilled dandy with diamond buckles on his high-heeled shoes, all die-away sighs and languid airs?

It was impossible to imagine him as either, as anything other than what he was now, unchangingly, agelessly…Vaughn. A creature of contrasts. Lightless black and flashing silver, heavy lids and alert eyes, seeming indifference and…Vaughn's eyes caught Mary's above the purple feathers of Mrs. Fustian's headdress and something leapt between them that was anything but indifference.

Mary reclined against the rich velvet cushions like a satisfied cat. It didn't matter that he hadn't come to sit beside her, or that he had chosen to stand at the far end of the ship. It didn't matter that he had scarcely said more than good evening to her since she had climbed aboard. Vaughn, as well as she, knew how to bide his time.

With smooth skill, the oarsmen drew the barge up beside the Vauxhall Stairs. With murmured thanks, Mary took the hand Geoffrey offered her to lift her up from her seat, but her eyes were on Vaughn, as he helped his guests out of the boat. Now, surely, he would say something, give her some sign. Take her arm, walk with her along Vauxhall's shaded paths, as lovers had done for decades before them…

Pleasantly aware of her own fashionable white muslin, she watched as Vaughn's amused gaze skated over Miss Fustian's yellow bows and purple net. "My commendations to your dressmaker, Miss Fustian. I have never seen anything quite so…original."

Mary watched the silly chit simper in response, too dull to realize she had been insulted.

At last it was her turn to exit the boat, and she held out a gloved hand to Vaughn with her daintiest air, knowing that her shapely ankle in its fine silk stocking showed to good effect as she lifted her skirts a modest inch to effect her descent. As he handed her down, she glanced sideways up at him, the same sideways glance that had half the young bucks of the ton panting to get her out onto the balcony. It was a glance she reserved for very special occasions — or very titled men.

Lord Vaughn never noticed. His attention was unaccountably elsewhere. Not on her ankle — that, Mary could have understood; indeed, encouraged — but on the back of Mrs. Fustian's feathered head. Two fine lines showed between his brows, like the goal posts in a game of Pall Mall.

"You have a lovely barge, my lord," Mary murmured in her huskiest voice, arching one slippered foot to hunt for the ground with exaggerated care.

Vaughn's eyes flicked ever so briefly sideways as he handed her over the last step. "Your approbation is, as always, the light of my existence."

Mary hit dry land with a thud that reverberated from the bottom of her thin slippers right up through her legs.

When she turned her head back to Vaughn, to make some retort, something to make his eyes glisten silver with sardonic amusement, she found only the black wool of his back as he reached back to hand down her sister, exchanging snide comments with Pinchingdale about not caring to perform the same office for him.

He couldn't very well have simply walked away and left the last of his guests to fend for themselves, Mary reasoned with herself. It would have been bad form. Mary tried very hard to ignore the sharp little voice in her head that persisted in opining that Vaughn wasn't the sort to let himself be deterred from his desires by social niceties. The logical conclusion to that line of thought — that Vaughn didn't desire her, in any way at all — didn't bear consideration. There was last night.

Pasting a bright social smile on her face, Mary walked up to join the little group that clustered at the entrance to the gardens, as though that had been exactly what she had intended all along. After all, if he wanted her company, Lord Vaughn knew where she was.

Apparently, two could play at that game. At least, Mary hoped Lord Vaughn was playing. Having safely seen all his guests off the barge, Vaughn strode to the front of the group, offering his arm to the purple-bedecked Miss Fustian. With their number complete, the small party meandered down the lantern-decked alley that led from the water entrance into the slightly tarnished wonderland of the gardens. Walking behind Mrs. Fustian, who showed a very unmaternal lack of concern about her daughter's tкte-a-tкte with Lord Vaughn, Mary bided her time.

"I don't like this," Mary heard her sister whisper behind her in an aside meant for her husband.

Since there was a good foot between Letty's mouth and Pinchingdale's ear, the communication wasn't nearly as discreet as her sister had intended.

"You mean you don't like Vaughn," interjected Mary over her shoulder, and had the satisfaction of seeing her little sister flush.

"That's Lord Vaughn, to you, missy," snapped Mrs. Fustian, jabbing the point of her parasol into the gravel for emphasis. The steel of her voice warred with her floating layers of feathers and bows, like a dragon decked out in a lacy peignoir. "Of course, they don't like him! Liking is for ninnyhammers. Real men elicit rancor." Pausing for a moment of deep consideration, she added, "Loathing, even. But never liking."

"Hatred, perhaps?" suggested Mary's brother-in-law, hiding his amused smile behind a tone of excessive gravity.

Mrs. Fustian was not impressed. "Certainly not. Any common laborer can hate. True connoisseurs prefer more subtle shades of aversion."

Common was certainly a word no one would ever think of applying to Lord Vaughn. Tonight, in particular, he was uncommonly elusive, as glinting and inaccessible as the subtle silver threads that ran beneath the dark weave of his coat. He had taken the unaccountable step of devoting himself to the entertainment of the younger Fustian, heading up the party with her gangly form mincing along beside him.

Clinging to Lord Vaughn's arm, Miss Fustian stared goggle-eyed at him through her spectacles, looking as though she had never seen an earl before. Dressed like that, perhaps she hadn't, Mary thought crossly.

"If not hatred," put in her brother-in-law as the path broadened so that they could walk all abreast, "what of love?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Mary saw her sister and brother-in-law exchange a sickeningly speaking glance.

"Hmph," was Mrs. Fustian's eloquent opinion on that subject. For the first time that evening, Mary found herself in perfect agreement with her. "Good enough for shepherdesses, but not at all the thing for civilized folks. Love is a severely destabilizing emotion. Look at Paris," she finished, as though that said it all.

"The city, or the Greek?" inquired Letty in a tone of suppressed laughter, her arm twined possessively through her husband's.

"Either!" declared Mrs. Fustian.

"The late Mr. Fustian, then…?" broached Geoff delicately.

"Fustian by name, fustian by nature," provided Lord Vaughn, pausing by the famous statue of Handel in the southern piazza with a simpering Miss Fustian on his arm as the little group collected around him. "Isn't that so, my dear?"

"Oh yes, my lord!" stammered Miss Fustian, overcome with the honor of his regard. "Very much so! Dear, dear Papa! How I do miss him." Miss Fustian took refuge behind a purple linen handkerchief.

"And a fine bit of fustian he was," concurred Lord Vaughn reminiscently.

Mary's brother-in-law made a noise dangerously close to a snort, earning him a quick squeeze on the arm from his wife.

With the uncomfortable sense that she had somehow been left out of a private joke, Mary looked quizzically at Vaughn. "You were acquainted with Mr. Fustian, then, my lord?"

Vaughn smiled blandly around the circle of lamp-lit faces. "As well as anyone here. Mr. Fustian was kind enough to accompany me on many of my wanderings."

Well, that explained it, then, thought Mary with some relief. Mr. Fustian must have been a tutor or a companion of sorts who had followed Vaughn around the Continent in his youth. That explained the undeniably underbred tone of the Fustian females. Naturally, Vaughn would think fondly of such a man and be kind to his widow and unfashionable daughter for the sake of his memory.

"I always found him," continued Vaughn meditatively, as the little group clustered in the lee of the brightly painted supper boxes, "an uncommonly resourceful fellow."

"Really?" Mary's brother-in-law raised an eyebrow at Lord Vaughn. "I would have said that he lacked depth."

Shaking off the importunate Miss Fustian, Vaughn matched Mary's former suitor eyebrow for eyebrow. "My dear Pinchingdale, at least he was constant in his inconstancy. Fustian never pretended to substance."

This time there was no mistaking the hard edge to her brother-in-law's tone. "You mean he never took the trouble to be honest."

Lord Vaughn's quizzing glass flashed mockingly. "My, my, how quick we are to condemn others. Imprudent honesty can do more harm than honest roguery. Wouldn't you agree, Pinchingdale?"

"Good intentions — " began Letty hotly, bristling to her husband's defense.

"Pave the road to hell," finished Vaughn smoothly. Extending an arm to Mary, he said, as though none of the previous conversation had occurred, "Shall we venture along the promenades, Miss Alsworthy? It would be sinful to allow such an uncommon fine night to go to waste."

"More sinful not to," cackled Mrs. Fustian, earning a scowl from Mary's brother-in-law.

Propelled by a look from Letty, Geoff took a step closer to Mary, an honor guard of one. "You needn't put yourself out, Vaughn. I would be more than delighted to accompany my sister."

The emphasis on the last word was wasted on no one in the ill-matched party, least of all Vaughn.

With a sardonic smile playing about his lips, Vaughn's eyes skated from Geoff to Letty and back to Mary.

"Such a charming family grouping," he murmured, and might have said more, had his attention not been caught by something just beyond Mary's left shoulder. Beneath Mary's fingers, his arm went stiff. Surprise and alarm chased across his normally polished countenance.

Following his gaze, Mary saw nothing to excite that sort of reaction. There was no one there but a couple in conversation. The man wore a full costume, in the fashion of the Venetians, an all-enveloping black cloak and pointed bird's beak of a mask. The woman was more conventionally garbed, a black mask tied across her eyes obscuring her features, blond curls peeking out from under a black hood.

As the pair walked slowly past, Mary could make out the interior of the supper box behind them, tenanted by a familiar set of gargoyle features, bracketed by a thicket of coarse gray hair, randomly studded with ruby-tipped combs that managed to look more like weapons than ornament. It was the woman who had accosted them in the coach the day before. And she was staring straight at Mary, with an expression of unmistakable venom on her face.

Mary was tempted to wave gaily back, but any such impulses were stilled by the abrupt interpolation of another person in their midst.

"Pinchingdale? Pinchingdale, old chap!" exclaimed Turnip Fitzhugh, slapping his old school chum on the back so hard that Geoffrey staggered.

Turnip's mother had optimistically christened him Reginald, but there was nothing the least bit regal about him. No one was quite sure how he had acquired his distinctive nickname, but even his friends had to admit that it was an accurate reflection of his mental powers. He was, everyone agreed, quite definitely a Turnip.

He also, thought Mary irritably, had the world's most inconvenient timing. By the time his uncoordinated form had surged past, Lady Hester's box was empty. Mary glanced uncertainly up at Lord Vaughn, but his face bore an abstracted expression that blunted all hope of private communication.

"Pinchingdale, old bean! Is that really you?" demanded Turnip.

"The last time I checked," replied Geoff pleasantly.

"I can vouch for that," agreed Letty, bumping her head affectionately against his arm. "He's definitely Pinchingdale."

Unconvinced, Turnip peered uncertainly at his old school chum. "I say, Pinchingdale, aren't you off rusticating?"

"If he were," pointed out Mrs. Fustian acidly, "would he be here?"

A furrow formed across Turnip's broad forehead as he pondered that problem. He opened his mouth, thought about it, and then closed it again.

Being of a generous disposition, Geoffrey put him out of his misery by explaining, "We were. We came back."

"Ah," Turnip's brow cleared as he mulled that over to his satisfaction. "Devilish dangerous place, the country. Don't like to stay out there long m'self. Cows, you know," he explained to Letty.

"Cows?" demanded Mrs. Fustian, taking a grip on her parasol that would have cast terror into the heart of a more perceptive man.

Caught up in unpleasant recollections of his own, Turnip shook his head, looking as grim as a man in a carnation pink waistcoat could contrive to look. "Deuced tetchy beasts, cows. Who knew?"

"Trust me," intervened Geoff, before the gleam in Mrs. Fustian's beady eyes could translate into words. "You don't want to know."

"Speak for yourself, Pinchingdale," sniffed Mrs. Fustian. "Unlike some, I have an inquiring mind."

"And I suppose inquiring minds want to know," concluded Geoff in tones of deep resignation. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

Turnip wagged his head earnestly up and down. "Everyone ought to be warned about cows."

It was only a matter of time before they descended to sheep. Mary edged carefully away from the group around Turnip. One could generally count on Turnip to natter on about nothing for an extended period of time, and while he did, she could slip away from the watchful eye of her sister and brother-in-law. Midnight, the Black Tulip had said, and it had to be nearly that now.

Poised to slip her arm through Vaughn's and stroll off together along the dark paths — with the Black Tulip as their object, of course — Mary found herself reaching for an arm that wasn't there.

Vaughn had disappeared.