The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Twenty-One

The newcomer planted herself firmly in the space by Lord Vaughn's side. She came no higher than his shoulder, her blond curls bobbing against the black superfine of his coat like boats on a midnight sea. The broad-brimmed bonnet she wore cast a deep shadow across her face, leaving her as little more than a walking fashion doll, in a walking dress of fine burgundy wool, far more suited for the crisp autumn air than Mary's twice-turned muslin. Her kid gloves had been dyed to match her dress. The deep burgundy looked like streaks of blood against Vaughn's arm.

Or maybe it was merely that Mary's thoughts were bloody. Who was this ridiculous interloper? Mary waited for Vaughn to make short work of her with one of his cutting remarks, but Vaughn, for a wonder, said nothing at all. He appeared to be in the grip of an emotion too strong for words.

Instead, the bonnet brim lifted and fell as the lady in red raked Mary up and down with a distinctly appraising stare.

"I am Lady Vaughn," she announced. "And you are?"

"You," said Mary flatly, feeling her command of the English language escape her. "Are Lady Vaughn."

There must be other Lady Vaughns. Cousins, perhaps. Wives of minor peers or cadet branches of the family, preferably distinguished by alternate spellings, like Vaughan or Voyan or other Elizabethan execrations.

"Yes, that's right," said the little blond woman, in the tone of one speaking to the mentally impaired. "I'm so delighted to see that my husband has been entertaining you in my absence."

Her "husband" looked as though he would rather be entertaining himself with a good, hearty throttling. His hands flexed around the head of his cane hard enough to bend the silver, as he breathed heavily through his nose, in the manner of dragons and other fire-breathing creatures.

But he didn't say anything to deny it. Not a word.

"Haven't you anything to say?" Mary demanded. "Anything at all?"

The self-professed Lady Vaughn smiled with sickening sweetness beneath her broad-brimmed bonnet. "Knowing Sebastian, he's probably said quite enough already, haven't you, Sebastian? He never could seem to help himself. You really must forgive him, Miss — oh dear. I'm afraid I still don't know who you are."

And didn't much care, if her tone was anything to go by. Mary might as well have been a weed in the garden, a misplaced chair in the morning room, a broken biscuit on the tea tray.

I married an earl's daughter, Vaughn had said, not ten minutes ago. The faded blonde in front of her held herself with the careless imperiousness of one born to the peerage. It wasn't, as Mary well knew, the sort of demeanor that could be learned, no matter how hard one tried to imitate it.

But Lady Vaughn, the former Lady Anne Standish, youngest daughter of an earl, was dead. Everyone knew that.

Mary looked frantically at Vaughn, but there was no surprise on his face, no indignation, no denial. Just a venomous, killing rage — the rage of a cornered creature, knowing himself caught, with no recourse but to sting.

Mary's stomach twisted.

"You are?" prompted the alarmingly corporeal Lady Vaughn.

"No one who need concern you," Mary said in a brittle voice. "Isn't that right, my lord? I was nothing more than this month's entertainment."

Lady Vaughn's gloved fingers left dents in Vaughn's sleeve. "Men will have their little amusements."

"No one would know better than you, would they, Anne?"

Lord Vaughn spoke at last, but the words weren't anything like what Mary had hoped to hear. The intimacy of that single word, that "Anne," hit Mary like an arrow to the gut, ripping through any last hope she might have had of its all being a hoax, a mistake, anything but what it was.

Her back arrow straight, Mary looked up over the blonde's bonnet, straight at Vaughn. "It's true, isn't it? You are married. To her."

Vaughn's eyes shifted briefly downwards to the bonneted head. "Such as it is."

Pain sharpened Mary's diction, lending her words an icy edge. "There isn't much room for doubt. Either you are or you aren't. It's as simple as that."

"Just what I've been telling him," chimed in Lady Vaughn. "Only with Sebastian, nothing is ever simple, is it, my dear? He delights in complication."

"Not this complication," clipped out Lord Vaughn.

Mary looked from one to the other, Lady Vaughn smug, Lord Vaughn looking daggers, and suddenly felt like the servant wench in a French farce, a side character used by the author to create complications in the midst of the main action. The operative word being "used," as Vaughn had used her. What for, she wasn't entirely sure, but it seemed to have something to do with the battle of wills being played out around her, between Lord and Lady Vaughn, earl and countess, linked by blood, by birth, by marriage bonds, leaving no place at all for her. Even in the richness of their attire, they were a match for each other.

It would make a brilliant woodcut, thought Mary with the flippancy of despair. Something by Gillray, clever and cruel. He could call it The Wife's Return.

"When you told me I was to be a pawn," said Mary, in a hard little voice, "I hadn't realized that this was to be the game."

"It wasn't," said Lord Vaughn tersely. "Believe me."

Mary smiled sweetly up at him. "I would sooner place faith in Signor Machiavelli. At least he was an honest rogue. Good day, Lord Vaughn. Lady Vaughn." Taking up her sunshade, she shook it ostentatiously open, using it as a barrier between them. "I shan't intrude upon you any longer. Good day."

She didn't look back.

Behind her, she could hear Lord Vaughn's voice, calling her name. Mary ignored it.

She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, heel to toe. Step after step she walked, head held high, looking neither left nor right, consciously deaf to the sounds of a minor scuffle between Vaughn and Vaughn's wife. Oh, but that voice was hard to blot out, an insistent buzz at the back of her ears, droning the word "wife" over and over, like a worm boring its way into her brain.

A wife. Mary's legs carried her forwards without destination through the fringes of the crowd, past the gaily covered booths that had done a brisk business earlier in the day selling pies and gingerbread and commemorative programs. This was one day she didn't want to commemorate. If she could, she would wrap it up in a little ball, along with the entire past month, wadded up like last month's washing, and fling it all into the Thames, to be drowned and forgotten.

The recollection of every thoughtless word, every heedless deed, every shameful, baseless hope made her cringe. How they must have laughed at her, night after night, flinging herself at a married man in the hopes of a title that was already taken.

Had they met to mock her? Memory presented her with the image of the Chinese chamber, with two glasses ready prepared, two glasses for an intimate tкte-а-tкte. And then she…Mary's cheeks burned with the memory of it.

Perhaps they had placed bets on her, the earl and countess, wagering on her virtue as one would on a horse at the Derby. Mary jabbed her sunshade into the ground as she walked, wishing it were a spear. Stabbing was too good for Vaughn. He deserved to be hung, drawn, and quartered like the basest of traitors, with his head stuck up on a spike outside Almack's as a warning to other would-be rakes and seducers.

Or perhaps they should simply take her head, Mary thought with disgust, and stick it on a spike as a warning to other credulous maidens not to fall into the arms of the first would-be widower who wandered along.

Stupid to believe he cared for her. Stupider still to allow herself to care for him.

And yet, she would have been willing to swear that what he had said today he had meant honestly — at least as honestly as Lord Vaughn understood honesty — every last, unromantic syllable. Would he have told her about his wife? Was that what he was trying to tell her when that hideous little midget of a blond thing interrupted?

"Miss Alsworthy…"

Surrounded by the thunder of her thoughts, it took some time for it to register that someone was calling her name. Not aloud, as Vaughn had done, but in an insistent whisper, like the whistling of the wind.

Thoroughly disoriented, Mary stumbled to a stop, twisting her neck in search of the source of the sound. All around her, she saw nothing but empty booths, bunting askew, whose owners, having sold their wares, had pressed forward with the rest of the crowd to watch the King address his troops.

The King. Mary's spine stiffened. In her preoccupation with Vaughn, she had forgotten entirely about the King, his review, and the purpose of their visit.

"Miss Alsworthy…" Her name came again, from the narrow corridor between two abandoned booths.

Mary turned slowly towards the sound, wondering what would happen if she put up her sunshade and walked briskly away. After all, what had she to do with the Black Tulip, now that all her obligations to Vaughn had been extinguished? Let Vaughn's wife bedazzle the Black Tulip with her charms. And if the Black Tulip didn't like blondes, that was Vaughn's problem. He was the one who had married one.

"Miss Alsworthy…" There was a distinct tinge of irritation to the whispered call.

An irritated French spy was a dangerous French spy. One didn't need to be the Pink Carnation to know that.

Cursing Vaughn and his heirs unto the ending of the world, Mary moved slowly towards the two abandoned booths. The ground beneath her feet was churned and muddied, littered with broken biscuits, crumpled bits of paper, and lost hair ribbons as she picked her way carefully into the shadowy tunnel created by the two booths.

"Yes, mon seigneur?" she murmured in tones of proper submission, as she poked her head in between drunken billows of bunting. The sour smell of spilled ale mixed with mud made her stomach churn. It was just one more unpleasant aspect to a thoroughly unpleasant day.

"I want you to turn around," rasped the harsh whisper. "Not all the way around," it added, just in case she might be idiot enough to do a full rotation.

When the Black Tulip said turn, one turned. Mary obligingly rotated, keeping one hand tightly on the shaft of her sunshade. This time, she resolved, if she had to, she could disarm the Black Tulip with a sharp jab from the steel tip. With the proper show of obedience, he wouldn't be expecting her to turn against him. A blow to the toe would send him staggering and leave him clear for a hearty whack to the head. It was a maneuver she had been forced to employ once before with a particularly importunate suitor. It had been wonderfully effective.

Once she had handed the Black Tulip into the custody of His Majesty's government, she could get on with more important matters. Namely, killing Lord Vaughn.

Behind her, the Black Tulip approached, with a curious rustle of fabric, like the slithering of a giant serpent. In the narrow space, the sound was magnified, oddly loud in contrast to the din of hoofbeats and clattering drums that drifted from the center of the park. Fabric whispered against fabric as something brushed against the back of her skirts.

"You summoned me, mon seigneur?" she trilled.

"How well it sounds on your tongue," the all-too-familiar voice purred in her ear, setting the hairs on her neck on end. "You make an excellent courtier. Although you might do even better as Queen."

Odd sentiments for a republican. But the Black Tulip's politics were none of her concern. At least, they wouldn't be, once she was done with him.

"I've always thought so," agreed Mary calmly, keeping her back still and straight. "But no one has offered me a crown as yet."

"Only a fool waits for offers," chided the Black Tulip. "If you want what is yours, you must take it."

"And what does mon seigneur want of me?" Mary asked sweetly. Out of the sunlight, the air felt surprisingly cold, raising gooseflesh on her arms beneath the thin fabric of her spencer.

It was the wind that made her shiver, she assured herself, nothing more. They weren't alone in an abandoned corner of Vauxhall this time. It was broad daylight, with a thousand troops mustered half a mile away. The idea of the Black Tulip attempting anything at all in such a setting was ludicrous.

"The time has come," murmured the Black Tulip, "for you to prove your devotion to our cause."

"I desire nothing more," parroted Mary obediently. "Had you anything in mind?"

"Oh, just a trifling task." There was a deep purr of satisfaction to the Black Tulip's voice that made Mary instinctively take a tighter grip on the shaft of her sunshade. "Nothing too taxing."

Lord Vaughn had a great deal to answer for. "How might I serve my lord?"

"There is a troublesome creature who has been plaguing me for some time now," said the Black Tulip meditatively. "Someone who makes the mistake of attempting to meddle in my affairs."

As he spoke, something pressed against the small of her back, something hard and cold, shaped like a circle. A million miles away, she heard the click of a trigger being cocked.

This couldn't be happening. Not to her. Not in the middle of Hyde Park on a sunny autumn day with thousands of people milling around just in front of her, with bands playing and the King riding up and down the rows of his troops, with his fat son, the Duke of York, bobbing along beside him. The babble of a thousand voices pressed against Mary's ears, shrill and painful, and the sunlight seemed unnaturally bright, as if to highlight everything that she might never see again, the vivid crimson of the Duke's uniform, the gaudy reds and blues draping the makeshift wooden booths, the yellow thread patterning the hem of her dress. She could smell mud and ale, decaying leaves and unwashed bodies, mundane and unpleasant and yet suddenly so infinitely desirable, all of it.

Steeling herself to stillness, Mary said carefully, "To meddle with your affairs would be a very unwise thing to do."

"Indeed," agreed the Black Tulip genially, as the barrel of the pistol pressed through the thin fabric of her dress. "Most unwise."

With a suddenness that made her giddy, the pressure lifted from her back. Reversing the pistol, the Black Tulip held it out to her, neatly balanced in the palm of a gloved hand. It wasn't particularly pretty. There was no elegant silver work or tracery, no fanciful curlicues or detail. It was simply what it was, an instrument of death, wood and iron in its most compact form, offered on a black-gloved hand.

Mary stared senselessly at it, not comprehending what he meant her to do.

"Well?" urged the Black Tulip. "Aren't you going to take it?" The gloved hand hefted the pistol in a practiced weighing of death, turning the weapon over with the deftness of long familiarity. "This pistol belonged to another lady before you," he said conversationally.

"Did it?" asked Mary, gathering her wits back around her and reaching for the object. If the Black Tulip were fool enough to hand her a weapon, she certainly wasn't going to refuse it.

The Black Tulip moved it neatly just out of her reach, leaving Mary grasping at empty air. "Her loyalties became…confused. We wouldn't want that to happen to you, now would we?"

"Confused?" Her trick with the sunshade made considerably less sense when the object happened to be holding a pistol. There had to be some way of getting the pistol away from him…. "Might I see it?"

The Black Tulip ignored the request. "She was given a task, but she refused to see if through. She wouldn't kill the man she was meant to kill. So I killed her," he concluded matter-of-factly.

"Did you?" Mary's throat felt very dry.

"One can't have that sort of insubordination in the ranks," said the Black Tulip regretfully.

"No, of course not," Mary agreed, as the pistol wafted negligently in front of her.

"It's death on morale. It was a pity, though. She had proved so satisfactory until then."

"Mmm," said Mary, keeping an eye on the trajectory of the traveling firearm.

"You asked to be allowed to prove yourself, so I give you the opportunity to finish the task your predecessor left undone."

"How very magnanimous of you." If she could only just grab it out of his hand, and then turn it on him.

"I want you to kill Lord Vaughn."