The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Twenty

Lifting a hand to shield his eyes, Lord Vaughn scowled at the crisp autumn sunlight. "It's England," he grumbled. "Shouldn't it be raining?"

In the harsh noon light, the bags under his eyes were turning a perfectly lovely shade of purple, which contrasted nicely with the greenish tinge of his skin. Whatever he had been doing last night after his disappearance with Lady Richard's country cousin, it had clearly involved a great deal of spirituous liquor.

Mary regarded Vaughn's unhealthy color with no little satisfaction. Every now and then, justice really was served.

Mary shot him a smug, sideways glance. "It's a perfectly glorious autumn day. Don't tell me you aren't enjoying it."

"I might enjoy it more from within a carriage," commented Vaughn, nodding at the vehicles arrayed a slight distance away.

"In a carriage, we would be harder to reach," returned Mary, positioning her own sunshade more directly over her head. "And that is the sole point of this exercise, isn't it?"

"Isn't the pleasure of your company reason enough?" inquired Vaughn, in a way that suggested her company was anything but.

He had been decidedly surly ever since calling for her that morning, at the unhallowed hour of ten. True to her word, Mary had been dressed and ready, wearing her sturdiest walking shoes and carrying her thickest sunshade. Although the air was crisp, the skies were clear, promising the sort of perfect autumn weather that seemed nature's way of apologizing for the bleak winter days to come.

Aside from a raised brow, Vaughn had made no comment on either her punctuality or her attire. Mary had answered the brow with a brow of her own, and thus they had begun their journey in perfect silence, without so much as a good morning between them.

Mary had used the opportunity to study her companion. She had, she realized, only rarely seen him by daylight. Her acquaintance with Vaughn had taken place largely by candlelight, in the flare of the torches at Sibley Court, the lanterns at Vauxhall, the flickering candles of the Chinese chamber.

In the unforgiving morning light, with his skin sallow from lack of sleep, deep paunches beneath his eyes, and long furrows in his cheeks, Vaughn looked his age and then some. Even in his youth, his face must have been more distinguished than handsome, his cheekbones too sharp, his nose too aquiline for the Corinthian ideal of manly beauty. Mary compared him with St. George, broad of shoulder, sensuous of lip, quick to smile, and eager to please. St. George would never have greeted her with a raised brow and a shadow of a shrug. He would have helped her into the carriage, showered her with greetings, offered her a lap rug, and made polite commentary about the weather. The sunlight suited St. George.

Even so, Mary realized gloomily, even lined, sallow, and surly, she would far rather be sitting across from Vaughn than any other man of her acquaintance. It gave her more pleasure to exchange scowls at him than to smile at St. George, and his arrogantly raised eyebrow said more to her than the stumbling paeons of all her past admirers.

Mary had spent the rest of their short trip frowning out the window. Morning, she decided, was a highly overrated time of day. It made it far too difficult to ignore things one had no desire to see.

Leaving the carriage at the gates of the park, they had made their way on foot towards the martial display. Despite their early start, the park was already crowded with loyal subjects of the Crown, jostling and standing on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of their monarch as he reviewed the twelve thousand volunteers who were to help protect English shores from the vile French threat. By some miracle of military maneuvering, the twelve thousand troops had been drawn up into three sides of a square, as symmetrical as the joinery of a master cabinetmaker. It was impossible to get anywhere near the King. Mary saw him only as a bobbing white wig on horseback, distinguishable only by the star of the garter winking from his breast.

Having seen the press of people in the park, Mary could only imagine that the Black Tulip's object was exactly as he claimed, to give her further instructions. How the Black Tulip intended to find her was another matter entirely.

Mary staggered as someone bumped into her from behind, but it was only a lanky teenager elbowing his way to a better position.

Unfortunately, patriotism seemed to exist in an inverse relationship to the use of soap. As Mary and Vaughn picked their way gingerly across the park, the air around them was pungent with unwashed bodies, spilled drink, churned dirt, and the unmistakable scent of horse. In front of them, a small child dribbled a steady stream of drool down the back of its mother's dress. A crusting of crushed crumbs and spittle, long since dried, testified that this was by no means the infant's first offense.

The woman in front of her patted the baby's back, eliciting a ripe burp, redolent of sour milk. "'Ave you ever seen the like?" she demanded of her neighbor, who was chiefly notable for a towering ruin of a bonnet, the plumes cracked and sagging, the silk water stained. "Old Boney ain't going to mess with them."

"Don't reckon he would, dearie," her companion replied comfortably. With the affairs of nations thus so satisfactorily settled, she extracted a glass bottle from the pocket of her skirt and helped herself to a hearty swig of gin.

Vaughn turned a deeper shade of green.

"Shall we attempt to find some higher ground?" he asked, lifting his lace-edged handkerchief to his nose.

Holding on to the edge of her bonnet, Mary edged sideways, heading towards a relatively untenanted stand of trees a little ways away. "If you find this so unpleasant, there was no reason for you to come."

"Naturally," said Vaughn with heavy sarcasm, using his cane to clear her path. "Any gentleman would allow you to wend your way through this charming assembly alone."

"I'm sure Mr. St. George would have been delighted to accompany me. And been a good deal more good-natured about it."

"If good nature is all you demand, may I recommend the acquisition of a lap dog? You shall find its company just as stimulating."

"Pets bite," Mary said tartly, using her elbow to good effect on a group of teenage boys who showed no inclination to step aside. "And they don't generally come with estates in Warwickshire."

"I would advise against rushing into rustication." Vaughn slipped through the gap after her.

Mary employed her sunshade as a walking stick, not looking back. "I hear it's a lovely country. The climate is most salubrious."

"But the inhabitants leave something to be desired."

Mary arched a glance back over her shoulder, her eyes inscrutable beneath the brim of her bonnet. "Unless one desires the inhabitants."

Joining her beneath the tree, Vaughn plunked his cane down beside a tree root like a conquistador planting his flag. "You don't," he said, with altogether too much assurance.

"Isn't that for me to judge?" Mary shook out her crumpled skirts, paying particular attention to the smudges of something sticky just above the right hip. It had the texture and consistency of old oatmeal. Mary flicked experimentally at it with one gloved finger. She could feel Vaughn's eyes on her, not the least bit deceived by her seeming inattention.

"Don't do it," he said shortly. "There is nothing more unpleasant than finding oneself inescapably yoked to a person for whom one has no regard."

Mary abandoned the stain. "Nothing more unpleasant? You have a very limited imagination, my lord. I can think of a great many things more unpleasant."

With one hand braced on the silver head of his cane, Vaughn radiated worldly skepticism. "Can you?"

"Yes, I can," retorted Mary. "And better than you. Do you know what it is to be a pensioner in someone else's house? Of course not! You're Lord Vaughn. You have houses and estates and — "

"Horses," supplied Lord Vaughn helpfully.

"Servants," finished Mary, with a quelling glance. "All rushing to do your bidding. Yours. Not someone else's. You don't know what it is to have to wait upon the whims of others. And all because no man has deigned to offer me the protection of his hand."

"Protection? An odd way of describing the institution of matrimony."

Mary's lip curled. "How else would you describe it? Marriage is protection against poverty, protection against all the carping old women who say, 'Oh, poor dear, no man would ever have her,' protection against the advances of unscrupulous cads who think nothing of taking advantage of a woman alone. Why else would anyone ever bother to marry?"

"One has heard that there are occasionally other reasons," interjected Vaughn mildly.

Mary bristled at the implied mockery. "Don't even think of talking to me about love. It doesn't make a difference, whatever your beloved poets say."

Vaughn's lips twisted into a humorless smile. "I, of all people, am in no position to do that."

"You, my lord? You're in a position to do whatever you like. You, after all, are a man." Mary imbued the simple word with enough venom to damn a dozen Edens. "And not just a man, but the great Lord Vaughn, master of all he surveys. You have only to snap your fingers, and your every desire is gratified."

Vaughn's gaze never strayed from her face. "Not every desire."

Mary waved aside his words with an impatient hand. "Most of them, at any rate. And then you have the consummate gall to stand in judgment over me for taking the only way open to me — I don't see any other, do you? I can marry or I can rot. It's not admirable, and it's not glorious, and I don't deny your right to mock. But I would think that some notion of noblesse oblige would mandate more condescension to your struggling inferiors."

Vaughn's brows drew together. "I never thought of you as anyone's inferior. Least of all mine."

"Ha!" There was something very satisfying about the short syllable. Mary was so pleased with it that she repeated it. "Would you treat an equal like a — like a common doxy?" She stumbled over the vulgar term, but there was no point in mincing words now. How else was there to describe it? He had used her that night in the Chinese chamber as he would any other female who came conveniently to hand, so long as that female was a pretty one. "Good enough to kiss, but never good enough to marry," she finished bitterly.

Vaughn looked at her in surprise, his brows drawing together over his nose. "That isn't it."

"No?" Breathing deeply through her nose, Mary crossed her arms across her chest. She supposed that hadn't been it for Lord Falconstone or Martin Frobisher or any of the other men who wrote her sonnets and tried to wheedle her out onto to balconies, but somehow lost all their eloquence when it came to the four simple words that made the difference between reputable and ruined. "Then how else would you describe it? It's all simple enough. The great Lord Vaughn wouldn't deign to sully his bloodlines with a mere miss. You need the daughter of an earl, at least."

The shadow of the tree branches above moved darkly across Vaughn's face. "Enough," he said sharply, turning away.

"Why?" Mary yanked on his arm, oblivious to the people milling around them, to the bands still playing on the parade ground, to the King trotting up and down along the row of his recruits. The Black Tulip could have been turning handsprings behind them and she would never have noticed. "Why flinch at it? It's your own choice. Are you too much of a coward to own it?"

"Choice?" Vaughn took a step back, the head of his cane catching the sunlight, making the arched neck of the silver snake glow like the idol of a pagan cult. "I suppose you could call it that. I chose to marry the daughter of an earl, just as you advise. I made that choice long ago, and I've been paying for it ever since."

That, as far as Mary was concerned, was so much blether.

Mary would have said as much, but Vaughn's curt voice went relentlessly on, like the lash of a whip. "I made a host of other choices, too. I chose to run away. I chose to ignore what was inconvenient. I chose pleasure over substance. I chose and chose and chose. After a time, Miss Alsworthy, do you know what happens? You run out of choices. There aren't any left. You're pinned in a web of your own devising."

"I don't believe that," Mary shot back before he could catch his breath. "You can't hide behind inclination by calling it compulsion. If you truly wanted matters otherwise, you could make them so. Why can't you just admit it? It's just that you don't want me."

"I don't, do I?" Vaughn rolled the head of his cane beneath his fingers. "How terribly kind of you to inform me of that. Otherwise, I might have continued to exist under the exceedingly uncomfortable delusion that I did."

Mary fought her way out of the tangled web of syntax. "I didn't mean like that," she countered. After all, he was male; they wanted as easily as they breathed. Hence the convenient construction of balconies off so many ballrooms.

Vaughn's fingers tightened on the head of his cane. "Nor did I," he said.

For a long moment, he held her gaze without speaking, simply letting the impact of his words sink in, before adding rapidly, as though he wished to get it over with as quickly as possible, "I won't deny that you're beautiful. No mirror could tell you otherwise. But there are beautiful women for the buying in any brothel in London. Oh yes, and the ballrooms, too, if one has the proper price. It wasn't your appearance that caught me. It was the way you put me down in the gallery at Sibley Court." Vaughn's lips curved in a reminiscent smile. "And the way you tried to bargain with me after."

"Successfully bargained," Mary corrected.

"That," replied Lord Vaughn, "is exactly what I mean. Has anyone ever told you that you haggle divinely? That the simple beauty of your self-interest is enough to bring a man to his knees?"

Mary couldn't in honesty say that anyone had.

Vaughn's eyes were as hard and bright as silver coins. "Those are the reasons I want you. I want you for your cunning mind and your hard heart, for your indomitable spirit and your scheming soul, for they're more honest by far than any of the so-called virtues."

"The truest poetry is the most feigning?" Mary quoted back his own words to him.

"And the most feigning is the most true. Now tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm lying. Tell me what I really want."

"I can't." Mary waited just long enough for Vaughn's silver eyes to light with triumph, before adding, "Because you didn't pause long enough to give me a chance."

Reaching for her as though to embrace her, Vaughn stopped himself just in time. His hands closing over her upper arms, he shook her lightly instead. "Do you know what it's been these past few weeks to constantly see you and know I couldn't have you?"

"It's no more than I've had to bear," Mary shot back, and only realized too late just how she had exposed herself. The look of satisfaction on Vaughn's face was all that was needed to show her that she had said too much. Seeking to distract him, she blustered, "You're just trying to evade my question, aren't you? If you had the choice — "

Vaughn's hands tightened on her shoulders. "Choice, again, is it? Let me assure you, once and for all. If I had my choice, there would be no need for any of this. If I had my choice, you would be buying your bloody bridal clothes. If I had my choice, Monday night would never have ended with a kiss."

"Bridal clothes?" echoed Mary.

"I would crown you with coronets and deck you with ancestral jewels. If I had my choice. But I don't." Vaughn's grip loosened so suddenly that Mary stumbled back against the tree. His face was hard and ugly in the unforgiving noon light. "I don't have that right."

Mary had to swallow hard before she could speak. Her throat was dry, and her tongue felt too thick for her mouth. "Why not?"

She had her answer. But not from Vaughn. Before he had time to answer, a shadow fell across the space between them.

"Because," said the newcomer, twining her arm possessively through Vaughn's, "he already has a wife."