The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Twenty-Eight

He which hath business, and make love, doth do

Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

— John Donne, "Break of Day"

"Anne? In league with the Black Tulip?" Vaughn raised an eloquent eyebrow. "My dear girl, the bullet went through my shoulder, not my brain."

Under the usual layers of linen and wool, the area in question ached like the very devil. Tailored to be formfitting, his coat had not been meant for the extra padding of a bandage, even one stripped down to the very minimum. His valet's tentative suggestion of a sling had been summarily dismissed with all the derision it deserved. A Vaughn put weakness on public view? Unthinkable.

His head ached, his arm ached, he had a wife on the loose, and he had been summoned to Pinchingdale House at the inhuman hour of noon to discuss the fact that a crazed French maniac was out for his blood. In short, he was not in the best of moods.

His sarcasm didn't even raise a welt on its intended victim. Mary crossed both arms across her chest and stared him down. "How else would the Black Tulip know you had a wife?"

"The man is in the business of collecting information."

And the devil only knew that Anne wasn't exactly being subtle. Vaughn only hoped she hadn't trumpeted her resurrection to anyone else just yet. He had already made an appointment with his solicitors for the following afternoon, to discuss the troublesome matter of a reappearing wife. The less gossip she generated, the better.

As Mary drew breath for what was clearly another well-reasoned and completely irrelevant argument, Vaughn neatly cut her off by sliding his good arm around her waist. "Must we continue with this tedious topic? I can think of far better uses for a darkened room."

Mary shoved at him without conviction. "As tedious as it may be to you, I happen to find your continued existence a matter of some concern. One would think you might, too. Immortality doesn't come to you along with the earldom, you know."

"I should hope not," Vaughn teased, sliding his hands up her arms to her shoulders. His bad arm twinged in protest, but it was worth it just to see her tilt her head up at him with that sloe-eyed glance that was more effective than a hundred other women's come-hither stares. "Or I would never have inherited."

Mary gave him the sort of look Vaughn imagined Queen Elizabeth must have bestowed upon her courtiers. Right before sending them to the Tower. "You know very well what I mean."

"Could it be," Vaughn asked delicately, "that you are worried about me?"

Mary's eyes shifted away in an evasion that was as near a victory as Vaughn was going to get. "I don't know why I should be, since you clearly aren't the least bit worried for yourself."

Hearing what she hadn't said, Vaughn gathered her closer, resting his cheek against her hair. Despite her irritable words, she came into his arms without protest, leaning against him as though she needed the comfort, too.

Vaughn rubbed his cheek against the sleek fall of her hair. It smelled faintly of expensive French perfume, a sophisticated extraction of flowers that had long ago ceased to have anything to do with nature.

"There must be a way out," he murmured.

"Of course there is," came the crisp voice from beneath his ear. "We question your wife."

Frowning, Vaughn pulled back to look down at her. "It won't do any good."

"Oh, won't it? You just don't want to admit that someone who once shared your bed might want to murder you."

Vaughn dropped his arms and took a step back. "I never said anything of the kind."

Mary arched both brows. "Then why are you so reluctant to admit that your wife might be involved?"

"Because" — Vaughn clasped his hands behind his back and strolled towards the window with exaggerated deliberation — "Anne has all the political inclination of a stoat."

"Even stoats might be bribed."

Vaughn made a great show of examining the weave of the draperies. Dull stuff. The Pinchingdales had never had any flair for fashion. The same could not be said of his sometime spouse. "I doubt the French treasury could afford her."

"There is another possibility," Mary's cool voice said behind him.

Turning, Vaughn spread both hands wide in a gesture of invitation and derision. "I am all agog. Divine revelation? Possession by demons?"

"Lady Hester Standish," said Mary crisply.

"Definitely a demon."

"You did say that she had revolutionary leanings."

"With which she inspired my dear not-quite-departed wife? You forget. I did know Anne quite well at one point. She had no interest in her aunt's theories."

That has been one of the many little disappointments of their brief marriage. At the time, Vaughn had thought of himself as something of an intellectual — a philosopher, a wit. He had lost that delusion several years ago and moved on to the more attainable role of cynic.

"No," said Mary, her eyes brilliant even in the dim room. "But she does presumably have an interest in her aunt. What if Lady Hester is our Black Tulip?"

"What if the King were a rosebush?"

"A rosebush?"

"I was," said Vaughn with dignity, "simply underlining the absurdity of the notion. Lady Hester is sixty if she's a day — "

"But remarkably spry."

" — and has not, to my knowledge, been abroad for the past fifteen years."

"To your knowledge," countered Mary. "That doesn't mean she hasn't been. She only opens her house for the Season, just like everyone else. Where is she for the rest of that time?"

She did have a point, although Vaughn was damned if he was going to concede it. "Presumably, she retires to the country. Just like everyone else."

"But how can you be sure that's where she goes?" Mary argued. "I've certainly never been invited to a house party there. Have you?" Taking his silence for assent, she went on, "I saw Lady Hester at Vauxhall and again at Hyde Park."

"You also saw Turnip Fitzhugh."

"Not in Hyde Park."

"If I were the Black Tulip," pointed out Vaughn, "I would take pains not to be seen."

"Unless you expected others to use that reasoning," said Mary triumphantly. "In which case you would take pains to be seen as much as possible. Hiding is so obvious."

The tangled logic was making Vaughn's head ache. Or perhaps it was the aftermath of the opium. "You seem to have overlooked the slight problem of sex. Isn't the Black Tulip meant to be a man?"

Mary exuded smugness and French perfume. "Yesterday, the Black Tulip was wearing a dress." Looking remarkably pleased with herself, Mary swished herself and her skirts onto an overstuffed settee. "It all adds up quite nicely. Lady Hester's voice is low enough to be taken for a man's, and her features are mannish enough to pass for a man if she had to. Her long absences from town could hide trips abroad. And she is the person most likely to command her niece's allegiance."

Vaughn lowered himself onto the settee next to her, saying slowly, "As far as Lady Hester knows, Anne is dead."

Scenting victory, Mary seized her advantage. "As far as you know, as far as Lady Hester knows, your wife is dead. You don't know that she really knows that at all. It might well be quite the opposite."

"I never should have got out of bed," muttered Vaughn. "It was so wonderfully peaceful there."

"So is a tomb."

Vaughn extended his arm along the back of the settee. "A bit melodramatic, don't you think?"

"No," said Mary soberly, shifting to face him. In the dim light, her beautifully chiseled face was as pale and serious as an ancient statue. "I had my hand on the pistol when he shot at you. I saw — "

Breaking off, she looked briefly away. Her back was as straight and her face as serene as ever, but her hands gave her away. They were twisted into a knot so tight that the veins on the back of her hands stood out like blue worms.

When she spoke again, her voice was carefully light. "He's not going to stop at an appendage, you know. I haven't compromised myself just to have you killed off."

The back of Vaughn's throat tightened with a painful brew of admiration and tenderness. Admiration for her indomitable will and impressive self-control. And tenderness…well, because he couldn't seem to help it. It was just there, whether he wanted it to be or not.

But it wasn't in him to put any of that into words, any more than it would have been in her to acknowledge it.

Instead, he grazed his knuckles lightly across her cheek, saying with his touch what he couldn't in words.

"You haven't compromised yourself at all," he said, mirroring her tone of urbane detachment. "Not yet, at any rate. I must be losing my touch."

"I don't know why I even bother with you," Mary agreed, tilting her head back and looking him challengingly in the eye. In the depths of her gaze, something desperate glittered, something desperate and anxious, brilliant with the fierceness of unarticulated fear.

The answering spark lit in his eyes, blazing through his veins like wildfire, urgent and reckless. His voice dropped to a seductive drawl as his fingers tangled in her hair, pulling her closer. "Then I'll just have to remind you."

She laughed deep in her throat, a low sound of anticipation and triumph that set his blood pounding, and turned the question of her seduction from academic to inevitable.

Until a broadside of light assaulted his eyes and his own name was cracked over him like the blast of a cannon.

In the harsh morning light streaming through the window, a dark form loomed like an avenging archangel, seven feet tall, with a flaming sword in his hand.

Vaughn released Mary so quickly that they both nearly tumbled off the settee.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, the figure in front of the window shrunk to human proportions, and recognizable ones, at that. It was the master of the house himself, Mary's former suitor and current brother-in-law, looming in front of the window with one hand still holding the drape he had just yanked back. It wasn't a flaming sword in Pinchingdale's other hand, but Vaughn's own stick, which he held aloft in a way that boded no good to either Vaughn or his cane.

"What are you doing?" demanded Mary.

"I found this in the hall," Pinchingdale bit out, brandishing the stick like an angry aborigine.

Regaining his accustomed poise, Vaughn held out one hand. "How kind of you to return it to me, Pinchingdale," he drawled. "But it was really quite unnecessary. I would have collected it when I departed."

Pinchingdale's lips tightened, but he managed to hold on to his temper. Vaughn's opinion of him went up a notch. A small notch, but a notch nonetheless.

In carefully controlled tones, he inquired, "May I ask what you're doing here, Vaughn?"

Before Vaughn could give the obvious and inflammatory answer, Mary intervened.

"I invited him to call," she said shortly.

That piece of intelligence did little to sweeten Pinchingdale's disposition. "You summoned him."

Under other circumstances, Vaughn might have objected to being referred to in that sort of tone, but he was too busy watching Mary, who lifted her chin and skewered her former suitor with an imperious stare. "There were certain things I needed to discuss with Lord Vaughn."

Pinchingdale looked pointedly from one to the other, from Mary's tousled hair to Vaughn's rumpled linen. "A proposal of marriage, one hopes?"

For a brother-in-law, Pinchingdale was altogether too damn proprietary.

"I had heard that you prefer to deal in elopements," said Vaughn silkily.

"I am asking you, Vaughn, as one gentleman to another, to have a care for Miss Alsworthy's reputation."

Lifting his quizzing glass, Vaughn trained it on the other man with deliberate insolence. "As you did?"

The words sizzled in the air between them like a flaming gauntlet.

"Hello!" Pinchingdale's little wife stuck her freckled face around the door. "Why are the drapes closed?"

The rest of her followed her face around the edge of the door, garbed in a cheerful, flowered muslin that would have looked more the thing for the country than the town. It was a source of ongoing amazement to Vaughn that she and Mary had sprung from the same family. There was only one possible answer. Mary was quite definitely a changeling.

Rising, Vaughn acknowledged her presence with a carefully calculated bow. "So people won't shoot at us through the windows," he explained. "Naturally."

"If you would like to be shot at from within the room," said Pinchingdale shortly, "I would be more than happy to oblige."

"I don't think that would be very good for the wallpaper," said Letty, moving to slip her arm through her husband's in a gesture that was one part affection and two parts restraint.

"Blood does stain so," agreed Vaughn.

"A risk I would be willing to take," said Pinchingdale grimly, but Vaughn noticed that he made no effort to extricate his arm from his wife's. That might have been because she was holding on to it with both hands.

"You needn't bother," said Mary in a voice whose edges cut like glass. Rising with a dignity that commanded the attention of all, she placed herself deliberately between Vaughn and her former suitor. "Why kill Vaughn, when the Black Tulip is planning to do it for you?"

For all Pinchingdale's other flaws, no one could accuse him of being dim. His expression changed in a moment from anger to reluctant comprehension. He would, Vaughn had no doubt, have far rather blasted his brains out for seduction of his sister-in-law than joined forces with him over a common enemy. But Pinchingdale was nothing if not honorable, and when England called, he obeyed.

"Ireland," said Pinchingdale grimly.

"Among other things," said Vaughn, deriving great enjoyment out of watching Pinchingdale squirm. It was almost worth having received that bullet in the arm. "The Black Tulip has added two and two and emerged with forty-five. He thinks I am the Pink Carnation."

"But that's absurd!" exclaimed Letty. Flushing, she added, "I didn't mean…It's just that, well…"

"I couldn't agree more," said Vaughn genially. "I only wish the Black Tulip felt the same way."

"An ingenious story, Vaughn, but do you have any proof?"

Mary drew herself up to her full height. In her white gown, she looked like an avenging goddess who had forgotten her helmet and breastplate. "Isn't a bullet in his shoulder proof enough?"

"It isn't actually in my shoulder at the moment," clarified Vaughn helpfully. "It only stopped in passing."

Pinchingdale cast his eyes briefly up to the ceiling, as though seeking for divine intervention.

He received a response rather more quickly than one would expect. A new tread sounded in the doorway, and a footman appeared, bearing a letter on a silver salver.

"A message for his lordship," he intoned.

Pinchingdale moved to take the letter.

"His other lordship," corrected the footman hastily, thrusting the tray towards Vaughn.

Pinchingdale cast him a startled look. "How is it that you're receiving notes in my home, Vaughn?"

Scooping up the folded piece of paper, Vaughn cracked the seal. "I can only assume that whoever it was must have followed me here."

Letty reached the drapes seconds before Mary.

"I do need some light to read," said Vaughn mildly.

Without further ado, Mary snatched the letter from him and held it up to the light herself. It was short; no longer than three lines, and whatever it was made a grim smile spread across Mary's face.

"Ha," she said.

Vaughn cast her a sardonic look. "As edifying as that syllable was, would you care to elaborate further?"

Mary waved the letter in the air like a triumphal banner before relinquishing it into his outstretched hand. "This proves my theory. It's from her. She wants to see you."

"I don't follow," said Pinchingdale, as Vaughn skimmed the three lines of the note.

It was, indeed, from Anne. They had much to discuss, she said. She hinted at a deal. A deal certainly hadn't been in the cards yesterday, when she staked her claim at Mary's expense. Yesterday, when the Black Tulip seized the opportunity opened by his confusion to put a bullet through him. Unless the Black Tulip hadn't so much seized the opportunity as created it himself. With the help of Anne.

"Who is she?" asked Letty, moving straight to the meat of the matter. Her brows drew together as she cast a startled look at her husband. "It couldn't be — "

"No," said Pinchingdale. "It couldn't be the Marquise de Montval. She was quite dead."

Little did they know that dead was often a negotiable category.

Shaking out the lace of his cuffs with studied nonchalance, Vaughn braced himself for the inevitable. They would have to be told about Anne. Vaughn had a feeling that Pinchingdale was going to be even less pleased at the notion of his sister-in-law canoodling with a married man than he had been when that man was merely one's resident roué.

"If you must know…," Vaughn drawled.

"The writer is a former lady friend of Vaughn's," Mary broke in, crisply and clearly.

That was one way of putting it.

Vaughn looked at her sharply, but Mary angled her head pointedly away, refusing to meet his eye.

Pinchingdale's keen gray eyes followed them both, reaching the obvious and erroneous conclusion that the woman in question was a former mistress of Vaughn's and that Mary did not approve.

Brava, Vaughn thought. It had been beautifully done.

With her nose firmly planted in the air, Mary went on, "I believe that she has been colluding with the Black Tulip."

Pinchingdale's eyes narrowed. "You and the Black Tulip seem to share a great many of the same lady friends, Vaughn."

"Only one other," Vaughn said shortly. Something in the expression on Pinchingdale's face moved him to defend Teresa's memory. Such as it was. "She was a clever woman."

"And a vicious killer."

"Everyone has their little flaws."

Mary clapped her hands sharply together. "Boys," she said pointedly. "Might we get on?"

"Yes," Letty jumped in before the two men could shift their bad humor to Mary. "What does the note say?"

Vaughn's eyes dropped to the few sparely written lines, not at all like Anne's usual diffuse style, although it was undeniably her hand. "She asks for an assignation. This afternoon."

"Where?" asked Pinchingdale, abandoning private quarrels for the public good. At least, for the moment. Vaughn had no doubt that Pinchingdale would like nothing better than to haul out the family horsewhip the moment the Black Tulip had been safely dispatched.

The address wasn't one Vaughn recognized. "Her lodgings. They appear to be in Westminster."

"It's clearly a trap," Mary put in. "An attempt to finish what the Black Tulip failed to accomplish yesterday."

"That does seem like a reasonable conclusion," seconded Pinchingdale.

"Then what do you suggest I do about it?" Balancing his snuff box in one hand, Vaughn neatly flicked open the lid, as though the entire discussion were one of merely academic concern. "You are, after all, meant to be the expert on this sort of affair."

If Pinchingdale caught the implied insult, he chose to ignore it. "Keep the assignation," he said briefly. "Keep it, but go armed."

Letty nodded decisively. "I like it. They wouldn't expect you to walk knowingly into a trap."

"That," interjected Mary, "is because no sane person does."

Inhaling his snuff, Vaughn coughed delicately. "Then it ought to be perfect for me."

"Perfect idiocy, you mean. I'll come with you."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" said Letty matter-of-factly.

"And what might that be?" Mary asked icily.

"Lady Euphemia's play."

"Oh," said Mary.

"You are the princess," added Letty apologetically.

"Catch the prince's eye and you might be a real one," drawled Vaughn.

"Isn't there the small matter of his wife?"

"A trifling difficulty."

Mary sighed. "If only."