The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Fifteen

Whoever the Black Tulip was, he wasn't Vaughn.

It took Mary some time to extract herself from the black cloth the Tulip had taken the precaution of tossing over her head. It was a simple trick, but an effective one. In her panic at her sudden blindness, she had flailed out, expecting worse to come. Nothing did. Instead of a rope around her arms or a knife against her throat, Mary found herself striking at empty air.

By the time she plucked the piece of cloth from her eyes, the Black Tulip was long gone. As a means of frustrating pursuit, it was crude but effective.

She would be prepared for that trick next time, too.

Mary dropped the piece of black cloth beside the bench with unconcealed distaste, scrubbing her palms against her skirt. Straightening slowly, Mary drew her cloak more tightly about her, wishing she could climb into a tub of boiling water and scrub. Her throat stung where the Black Tulip had favored her with his iron caress, and she could still feel the imprint of his hands upon her shoulders.

With her companion gone, the little summerhouse felt echoingly empty, like a stage after the actors had gone. The pillars holding up the roof shone ghostly white against the night sky and the marble bench glowed palely against the leaf-littered surface of the floor. There was no indication that anyone else had ever been there — nothing except for the discarded pile of black cloth, bunched like a noxious toad beside the bench, and a slight disruption in the debris behind the bench, where the Black Tulip must have knelt. He had left behind no footprint or conveniently dropped handkerchief. No telltale buckle or jewel winked at Mary from among the dirt and cracked twigs.

Using the roof of the Orchestra as her guide, Mary tramped single-mindedly through the closely planted shrubbery, heading in the direction of the Grove. She craved bright lights and loud voices, shrill laughter and strong perfume. She wanted people around her, and lights so bright they hurt her eyes. But most of all, she wanted Vaughn. He would smile that twisted smile of his, and the Black Tulip would be reduced to his proper place, a man among men and no less foolish than any of them. There was something so comfortable about the fellowship of Vaughn's cynicism, which relegated everyone else to their places in the vast human comedy while she and Vaughn sat enthroned as audience, above the madding throng. She wanted the warmth of his hand on her arm; the reassurance of his lean swordsman's body by her side.

She very much wanted that barrier, or any barrier, between her and the Black Tulip. There was simply something…wrong about him. It wasn't the casual violence of his hands on her shoulders and throat that chilled her. She had known vicious men before, the sort of men who tried to lure one out onto a balcony and were inclined to get rough when repulsed. An animal, lashing out as an animal did, she could shrug aside. But the Black Tulip's concentrated control, the methodical nature of his actions…those made her glance back over her shoulder as she forged through the underbrush, wondering just what she had gotten herself into.

Breaking through a gap in the hedges, Mary found herself just where she had meant to be, on the edge of the Grove, with music drifting from the Orchestra and the smell of ham and spiced punch from the supper boxes. The narrow path spat her out near the Pillared Salon, almost exactly opposite the place where she had entered the Grand Walk what felt like a very long time ago.

Near the Orchestra, which stood in the center of the Grove, Mary could make out the broad form of Turnip Fitzhugh, bold in carnation pink, nodding his head appreciatively in time to a spirited rendition of "When Sappho Tuned the Lyre," but of Lord Vaughn and his silver cane there was no sign. Unless…Mary's eyes narrowed as she caught a flash of familiar silver just beside the entrance to the Pillared Salon. He and his companion stood in the shadow of the building, apart from the groups of people milling about the orchestra and supper boxes. Whatever it was they were discussing, it must have been absorbing; Vaughn's head was bent intently towards his companion. It wasn't Mrs. Fustian — those purple plumes would have been unmistakable — and the woman was too short to be the gangly Miss Fustian. Vaughn was no more than medium height but the blond head of the woman next to him barely reached the bottom of his chin.

"Miss Alsworthy!" Mary recoiled as a hand lightly descended on her shoulder.

But this hand bore a white glove, not a black, and the arm it was attached to quickly retreated at Mary's alarmed reaction.

"I do beg your pardon," said Mr. St. George, biting his lip in contrition. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Mr. St. George!" said Mary brightly, doing her best to get her breathing back under control. "I hadn't realized you were at Vauxhall this evening."

St. George shrugged his shoulders self-deprecatingly. "I've been told it's one of the sights one simply must see before leaving London. So here I am."

"Leaving?" echoed Mary, her eye on the blonde beside Vaughn. "I do hope that doesn't mean that you will be leaving us."

"I am glad to hear you say that," said St. George earnestly. "But I do have responsibilities in Warwickshire that will demand my presence presently. I mean, presently demand my presence. Presently."

"Hmmm," said Mary, thinking absently that what he lacked was presence of mind. Who was that woman next to Vaughn? It was hard to make out anything of her features, due to the mask that covered her face from her eyebrows to the bridge of her nose, but even a hooded black cloak couldn't disguise a figure as prettily curved as that of the pink-cheeked shepherdess in the large Hayman painting behind her. "Will you pardon me? I must ask Lord Vaughn if he has seen my sister."

"We have that in common, then," said St. George pleasantly, strolling along with her towards the Pillared Salon. "I seem to have misplaced mine as well. Oh yes," he added, in response to the question Mary might have asked had she been paying him any attention at all. "She came with that Rathbone fellow."

Belatedly recalling her duty, Mary made a noncommittal noise in reply.

"The very thing." St. George grinned wryly down at her, taking inattention for distaste. "I feel much the same way. I would be delighted if she would only return to the governesses. The turtles, even," he added with a gusty sigh.

For once, even amphibians had ceased to be diverting. As Mary watched, the woman pressed something into Vaughn's palm. It disappeared just as quickly into Vaughn's waistcoat pocket, so quickly that Mary had only a glimpse of something pale against the figured fabric of Vaughn's waistcoat before it was gone.

Vaughn looked blandly up as Mary and her companion approached, as though it were nothing out of the ordinary to be receiving notes from masked women.

Perhaps for Vaughn, it wasn't.

Mary's lips pressed together in a tight line. As for the woman…Mary glanced sharply to the side, but the woman was gone, as rapidly and quietly as the note into Vaughn's pocket.

If that didn't signify skullduggery, Mary didn't know what did. She narrowed her eyes at Vaughn in implicit question, but if Vaughn noticed, he chose not to comment.

Instead, he raised his cane in languid greeting. "Ah, St. George, Miss Alsworthy. Have you had a pleasant coze?"

Mary fancied she could see the outline of the note, pressing against the closely cut fabric of his jacket.

With none of her usual finesse, she broke in, "My lord, I believe I had the pleasure of meeting a friend of yours this evening. After I was so unfortunately and accidentally separated from my sister."

"Indeed?" Vaughn raised a casual eyebrow. "My sympathies, then. Friends are a tedious lot. Enemies, on the other hand — "

Shrugging, Vaughn abandoned the topic as though bored with it. Reaching into his pocket he extracted, not the treacherous little piece of paper, but a silver snuffbox, as intricately pierced and chased as a medieval saint's reliquary.

"And I suppose you are an expert on the topic," said Mary crossly, as Vaughn wordlessly offered the box to a bemused St. George. Next to Vaughn, St. George seemed as tame and domestic as a plate of blancmange.

Snapping shut the lid of his snuffbox, Vaughn clicked his tongue in exaggerated deprecation. "Far be it from a dilettante such as my humble self to claim virtuosity in anything. I am but an eager amateur and unworthy of any such accolades." As his eyes met Mary's, his voice unaccountably dropped, took on a different cast. "Entirely unworthy."

Looking in polite incomprehension from one to the other, St. George shook his tawny head as though to clear it. "Would you be so kind as to excuse me? I really ought to see if I can find my sister…."

His honest blue eyes lingered just a moment too long on Mary, as though waiting for her to forestall him.

"Happy hunting, my dear St. George," drawled Lord Vaughn, shattering the moment.

St. George forbore to respond in kind. With a polite nod to Vaughn and a warmer salutation to Mary, he set out in search of his lost sister and her latest pet turtle. But he could not quite resist casting a look back over his shoulder at Mary.

Seeing it, Mary smiled and waggled her fingers at him.

St. George continued on his quest with a spring in his step that hadn't been there before.

Lord Vaughn's dry voice broke into their byplay. "Don't worry. I won't keep you from your saintly suitor long."

Mary, who had been worrying about nothing of the kind, felt the color rise to her cheeks — with irritation, she assured herself. "You might have been more subtle with him," she said, hating the carping note she heard in her own voice.

"Subtlety is wasted on such as he," Vaughn said dismissively. Mary wished she could have detected jealousy in his voice, but it wasn't there. There was nothing but a faint tang of impatience, with St. George — or with her? Vaughn's eyes scanned the crowd beyond her shoulder.

Searching for the blond woman?

"I met your quarry," Mary said, her tone harsher than she had intended.

Vaughn's eyes dropped back to her, as though almost surprised to find her still there. Resting both hands on the head of his cane, he said mildly, for him, "So I surmised."

Was there nothing that would light a spark of interest in those pale gray eyes? She remembered the way they had flashed silver last night, in the cloistered confines of the Chinese chamber, where the whole room had closed about them until it had shrunk to the space of her arms around his shoulders, his lips on hers.

But that had been a different night, a different place. A different man. Her shoulders still ached from the Black Tulip's bruising grip. Mary's brows drew together dangerously as she regarded her supposed coconspirator, urbane and unruffled in his black brocade coat and immaculately tied cravat.

Where was he while she was being molested by dangerous French spies? It was one thing to stay out of sight, so as not to alarm their quarry, but he might at least have lurked in the bushes. But, no. Lord Vaughn couldn't be bothered. He was too busy engaging in tкte-а-tкtes with short blondes.

Mary folded her arms across her chest and favored Lord Vaughn with a look that would have felled a lesser man. "He wants to meet again," she said abruptly.

Vaughn lifted one brow. "You?"

Mary's temper frayed dangerously. "No, the Queen of Sheba. Do you think that could be arranged?"

Reluctantly, Vaughn's lips split into a lazy grin, his teeth white against his shadowed face. "A few draperies, a little blackamoor to carry your train, and we'll have Solomon himself swooning at your feet."

She didn't want Solomon and she certainly didn't want the Black Tulip. At the moment, she wasn't even entirely sure she wanted Vaughn, unless it was to strangle him.

Before she could pursue that happy line of thought, Vaughn spoke again, his voice brisk and business-like. "When?"

"The King has announced his plans to review recruits in Hyde Park on the twenty-sixth of this month. The — your friend has requested that I meet him there to receive further instructions." Mary couldn't quite suppress a slight shudder of distaste.

"The twenty-sixth…" Vaughn paused a moment for mental calculation, one hand on the head of his cane, head tilted in the classic pose of cogitation. "He gives us the better part of a fortnight."

"Us?" Mary arched an inquiring eyebrow, deciding to forgo strangulation for the present. She rather liked the sound of the word "us." It had a pleasant ring to it, almost as pleasant as "Lord and Lady Vaughn."

Tapping the end of his walking stick against the gravel, Vaughn turned abruptly to examine one of the large paintings by Francis Hayman that decorated the open portico of the Pavilion. Frozen in paint, falsely accused Hero swooned in the arms of her cousin Beatrice in a convincing counterfeit of death.

Vaughn's eyes dwelled on Hero's lifeless features as he spoke in a voice as flat as the paint. "I will, of course, escort you. It was, after all, part of our agreement."

Mary didn't like the sound of that nearly as much.

On an impulse, she scooped a glass of wine off the tray of a passing waiter. The liquid gleamed garnet red in the light of the lanterns, like the wine in Vaughn's glass in the Chinese chamber last night as he offered it to her. She had declined then. Now — Mary lifted the glass in a silent toast, an invitation.

She didn't need to explain what it meant; he knew, as he always seemed to know.

Vaughn propped himself against his cane, the picture of languid unconcern, but his pales eyes glittered like the diamond on his finger as they narrowed on hers.

"I thought you didn't indulge."

"Perhaps I've changed my mind," Mary said recklessly, tilting the glass to her lips without breaking their gaze. Using her tongue, she flicked a stray drop of wine from her lower lip. "It is a woman's prerogative, is it not?"

Taking care not to brush her fingers, Vaughn reached out and abstracted the glass neatly from her lifted hand.

"Some prerogatives, Miss Alsworthy, are best not employed."

"Why not?" Mary demanded, wishing she could stamp her foot as she had when she was a child and thwarted in some small desire. But one didn't stamp one's foot in front of a peer of the realm, however much one wanted to.

"Because" — Vaughn's lips twisted into a crooked smile — "they have grown out of date."

Placing the glass firmly back down upon the tray, he looked inscrutably down at her, in a way that made Mary wonder if she had a smudge on her cheek or had suddenly grown a third eye in the center of her forehead. "If you ask him, I'm sure Mr. St. George will fetch you a lemonade."

Over Vaughn's shoulder, Mary could see her sister bustle across the Grove, dragging her tall husband by the hand, anxiously scanning the crowd. Spotting Mary with Vaughn, Letty raised her hand in greeting, her pace quickening.

Mary made an impatient gesture. "What if I don't want lemonade?" she protested, her blue eyes urgent on his. "Lemonade is so…insipid."

"Perhaps." Vaughn's bland countenance was a study in indifference. "But it is far better for your constitution. Enjoy your lemonade, Miss Alsworthy."

With a curt nod to her relations, Lord Vaughn strode off into the glittering crowd and was gone, leaving Mary with nothing but bruised shoulders and the sour taste of lemons.