The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Three

Mary stubbed her toe.

Fortunately, she managed to turn her stumble into a flounce, using the momentum to propel herself forwards, away from the mocking echo of Vaughn's voice. Even the architecture appeared to be in league with him. The words bounced off the arched vault of the ceiling, following Mary clear down the length of the corridor.

He would have to get the last word, wouldn't he?

Mary had to admit to a certain grudging admiration for his technique. It had been beautifully done. He had waited until she was just far enough away that she would have had to stop, turn, and screech like a fishwife if she wanted to get a last word in. And what could one possibly reply to "I can"? The only response that came readily to mind was, "Well, I can't." Sophisticated stuff, that.

Scowling, Mary swished beneath the heavily carved arch that marked the end of the gallery. She was sure Vaughn would have enjoyed nothing more than to see her embroiled in a lengthy round of "cannot…can, too," baiting her on in that languid drawl of his.

What exactly was "I can" supposed to mean?

It was one of those hideous phrases that said nothing but implied a good deal. That was the brilliance of it. It left all the insults to the imagination of the hearer, playing on the hidden insecurities the speaker could only guess at. She could only fume and wonder at what he might have meant — when, in fact, he probably meant nothing in particular at all.

On the other hand, she could certainly imagine recompense that would interest her. And she was sure he could as well. She wondered how much he had been about to offer her. "Handsomely" was such an indeterminate term.

Whatever the amount might have been, it was a moot point now. Mary's pace slowed as reason began to return. After her grand exit, she couldn't very well go back and negotiate. It was a pity she had reacted so hastily. At the time, however, it had seemed far more important to wipe that smug expression off his face than to consider the merits of his offer.

It wasn't like her to react so irrationally. So emotionally. Mary made a face at herself as she paused to lean against the balcony overhanging the Great Hall. During her three years in London she had managed to sail unsullied through barbs from her friends, indecent propositions from her admirers, and assorted irritants from her loving family. The trick, she had learned long ago, was simply not to react. Nothing blunted malice — or lust, or jealousy, or anything else — like impassivity. One simply stayed silent and waited for the speaker to start to stumble and stutter.

One didn't throw a temper tantrum and sweep out.

It had been a trying few days, Mary reminded herself, running one gloved finger through the furrow created by an ancient gash in the walnut balustrade. First there had been the long trip from London to Gloucestershire, perched on a lumpy pile of her father's books, half-smothered by her mother's shawls, while her mother went into squealing raptures over Letty's new situation and her father fired off sarcastic comments that went clear over her mother's head. Once the journey ended, there was the joy of seeing the happy couple together for the first time since the tangled events of July, Letty lording it over them as mistress of Sibley Court and Geoffrey beaming with affection — affection for Letty, not for her.

And then that strange interlude in the Long Gallery, with the smoke from the torches thick in the air and Lord Vaughn's breath warm against the back of her neck. For a moment…well, that didn't matter, did it? None of it had been real.

Mary lifted her hands to rub her aching temples. In retrospect, the conversation with Vaughn seemed even stranger than it had at the time. Flowers and spies and a flirtation that wasn't. Had that original seduction scene been a form of test, a way to try her wits and her resolve? Or merely an attempt to throw her off balance?

If it had been the latter, it had worked.

Mary peered sideways, towards the entry to the Long Gallery, but the corridor lay as quiet as the crypt. Vaughn wasn't going to ruin a perfectly good parting line by following her. And it was too late to go back.

There were half a dozen questions she ought to have asked, and would have asked if she had had her wits about her. She was almost entirely convinced that he had been telling the truth about his odd offer, but there was a great deal that still didn't make sense. How, for example, was this spy, this Black Tulip, to know that she was available for hire? Any spy who made a practice of propositioning any young lady who fit his aesthetic requirements would not remain in business for long.

Unless…could it be a double blind? The tale of the Roving Rosebud might have been nothing more than a front, not for seduction but for more treacherous purposes. Closing her eyes, Mary re-created the image of a black jacket, black pantaloons, black cane, all limned with silver. Vaughn's chosen emblem was a serpent rather than a flower, but a man would have to be an idiot to proclaim his purpose on his sleeve, like that silly boy who had dubbed himself the Purple Pansy and gone off to France with his signature flower splashed right across his waistcoat. The French had jeered over that one for weeks.

Mary didn't know terribly much about Vaughn, but she did know that he had spent the past decade on the Continent, reputedly doing all the dreadful and dissipated things one did on the Continent. No one was ever entirely clear about just what those dreadful and dissipated pursuits were, but they appeared to involve large quantities of pasta and loose women. After being whispered from ballroom to ballroom, the stories had gotten rather garbled in translation.

Dissipation would make an excellent cover for treasonous activities. And she had certainly not displayed an excess of patriotic fervor.

Pushing away from the balcony, Mary straightened her shawl around her shoulders and permitted herself a resigned sigh. There was nothing for it but to rejoin the others, an activity she looked upon with about as much pleasure as entertaining a personal firing squad. Tentatively, she touched a hand to her hair, checking for flyaway strands. After her meeting with Vaughn, she felt frazzled, disarrayed. But a cursory inspection confirmed that all her ribbons were neatly tied and the three long curls that had taken her maid an hour to arrange still fell gracefully over one shoulder. All frayed edges were entirely internal.

Reassured that her armor was still sound, Mary walked resolutely to the carved double doors that fronted the Great Chamber, wishing she didn't feel quite so much like Marie Antoinette ascending the steps to the guillotine. Like so much else, the immense double doors were a sham. Within the massive, carved carapace was one normal-sized door, set into the larger edifice. Easing it open, Mary could hear the cacophony of chatter that marked a successful party, the shrill tones of the dowagers in their corner underpinned by the bass rumble of male conversation.

The clink of silver against china accented the clatter of voices. In her absence, the supper tray had been brought in. An array of delicacies had been set on a long trestle table at the far end of the room, blackened with age and supported by a series of curiously contorted Titans. One of them was most definitely sticking out its tongue. The scent of richly spiced game warred with the perfumes of the women above a musty undertone of damp tapestry and warped wood. Keeping country hours, they had had their dinner at six, eating in state at the battered old table in the Great Hall below, with Letty at one end and Geoffrey at the other. At least the appearance of the supper tray meant that the hideous evening was almost over.

Until they were forced to repeat the whole process tomorrow.

Mary paused to consider her options. The thought of more food rather turned her stomach, but at least a plate gave her an excuse for avoiding conversation. Directly in front of her, Lady Henrietta Dorrington and Lord Richard Selwick's wife — what was her name again? — were deep in animated chatter. Mary rather doubted they would welcome her company.

"I never thought it was a wise idea," declared Lord Richard's wife, jabbing her fork into a piece of cold game pie. "But you know Jane — "

" — and her choice in bonnets!" finished Henrietta Dorrington brightly, driving an elbow into her companion's ribs. "I never understood why she insisted on buying the yellow, when yellow is the one color that doesn't flatter her complexion. Hello, Miss Alsworthy. Have you had anything to eat yet?"

Mary had had quite enough humble pie for one day. She had never liked Lady Henrietta, and Lady Henrietta had never liked her.

"As much as anyone can be expected to stomach," she said with a smile just as bright as Henrietta's. "My sister sets an excellent table."

Lady Henrietta gave Mary a slightly wary look. "Well, you should really try the braised duck. It's excellent." Turning to Amy Selwick, she asked, "Will you and Richard go to Scotland for the shooting?"

Lord Richard's wife shook her head, setting her short dark curls bouncing. "No, we're straight back to Sussex. We plan — " Glancing at Mary, she abruptly broke off. "Um, that is, we have obligations that keep us close to home."

Increasing, thought Mary. How dull.

"You and Miles will come visit, won't you?" Amy said eagerly, confirming Mary's diagnosis. "Before Christmas? It would be such a help to us. Jane will be visiting, too."

"You know we would like to," said Lady Henrietta, with a pointed glance over her shoulder, to where their respective husbands propped up opposite ends of the mantelpiece, conspicuously ignoring each other. At least, Lord Richard was conspicuously ignoring Mr. Dorrington. Mr. Dorrington looked a bit like a dog hoping to wiggle his way back after having been booted off the hearth rug. Mary did vaguely recall hearing something about a falling out between the two men, something to do with Lady Henrietta's marriage, but with Geoffrey's defection following only a day behind, the domestic dramas of the Selwick clan had been the least of her concerns.

Amy made a face. "Don't worry. Richard is coming round. Slowly, but…" She shrugged in a way that proclaimed her French ancestry.

"But aren't they always," Henrietta finished for her, with a grin. It was clearly an old and well-established conversation. Whatever the rift between their menfolk, Lord Richard's wife and younger sister were clearly on excellent terms. "Slow, that is. At least they are speaking now, even if it is mostly in grunts."

"Someone ought to prepare a dictionary," chimed in Letty, settling herself on the settee next to Lady Henrietta. Mary had known they were friends — the less popular girls did tend to band together — but she had never realized they were quite that cozy with one another. "It would vastly improve communications between the sexes."

"Your disadvantage was in never having older brothers," said Lady Henrietta smugly. "It does wonders for one's fluency."

"I do have one," protested Amy. "What about Edouard?"

"But he's French," countered Henrietta, who had met him. "They can't be trusted to make the right sorts of inarticulate noises."

"The French are scarcely articulate at the best of times," put in Mary, just to have something to say.

Instead of tittering the way they were supposed to, the other three women just looked at her, as though they had forgotten she was there and were less than pleased to have been reminded.

"I believe I'll have some more of that duck," said Henrietta, rising with more energy than grace from her perch on the settee. "Letty?"

"I shouldn't." Mary's sister glanced ruefully down at her waist.

"But you will," concluded Lady Henrietta cheerfully, threading her arm through Letty's.

"You," protested Letty laughingly, "are an evil influence."

"I know," said Lady Henrietta complacently. "It's one of my more loveable attributes. Oh, look, there's Penelope with Miss Gwen! I wonder what mischief she's been getting into now?"

"Penelope or Miss Gwen?" demanded Amy, a dimple showing in one cheek.

"Either," replied Lady Henrietta with relish.

Laughing, the group swept on ahead, leaving Mary standing like so much detritus in its wake.

Only Letty hung back. She tilted her head up at Mary with what Mary privately thought of as her country housewife expression, a militant gleam that presaged someone being washed, fed, or otherwise ordered about. "You are going to come eat, aren't you? You didn't have a thing at dinner."

"I ate a whole jugged hare." Perhaps it hadn't been an entire jugged hare, but it had certainly been the better part of one. Including an ear Mary was quite sure wasn't supposed to have been there.

Mary could tell Letty didn't believe her. "Would you like some tea? Or coffee? Perhaps a lemonade? We still have some lemons left in the orangery — "

"No. Thank you." Mary cut her off before that hideous we could grow and spawn, birthing a litter of ours. "I believe I can contrive to carry on without a beverage."

Letty refused to be balked. "Are you comfortable? Are you quite sure you have everything you need?"

Except a husband, preferably titled. Mary managed a brittle smile. "Really, Letty, you needn't fuss. I'm quite as comfortable as I can be."

The words "under the circumstances" didn't need to be voiced. They seeped out like smoke, poisoning the air and scorching a deep furrow between Letty's brows. Guilt charred across every inch of her guileless face. Even her freckles looked guilty.

Mary bit back a wordless noise of annoyance. Why did Letty always have to be so earnest about everything? She was welcome to her dreary viscount, if only she would stop looking at her with that hangdog expression, the one that positively panted for expiation. What did Letty expect her to say? No, darling, I don't mind in the least that you've quite ruined my prospects. I always wanted to be made a laughingstock in front of the ton. It only made it worse that Letty hadn't done any of it on purpose. Outright malice would have been easier to bear than blundering virtue.

"What about a biscuit? We have some lovely gingery ones…."

Mary just looked at her.

Letty sighed. "Perhaps, later, we might speak privately?"

Mary's expression didn't change. "Perhaps."

"I have some good news for you."

"I shall look forward to it."

There was nothing Letty could say to that, so she simply furrowed her brow at Mary one last time — her concerned expression, as opposed to her feeding or washing expression — and went off after her friends in pursuit of refreshments. From the supper table, Mary heard the flurry of chatter abruptly peak in volume as Letty rejoined her friends. Like a flock of geese squawking, she thought unpleasantly.

Vaughn still hadn't returned.

He couldn't still be in the gallery, could he? Mary's eyes narrowed as she glanced at the narrow sliver of floor revealed by the half-open door. She couldn't blame him for wanting to avoid the rest of the house party — but where was he? Without his saturnine presence, the gathering felt oddly flat.

"Darling!"

The same could not be said for the maternal bosom, which was currently swollen with unabashed glee and an entire carafe of ratafia. Mary fought her way free of her mother's embrace.

"Isn't this above all things splendid?" gushed Mrs. Alsworthy. "Oh, your darling, darling sister."

So, noted Mary dispassionately, Letty had risen to two darlings. Bring out the Pinchingdale diamonds and she might attain the giddy heights of three endearments at a time. In the space of one wedding ceremony, Letty had gone from disappointment to favorite daughter. As for Mary, she had been demoted down into the depths of parental purgatory. Not hell, since she still had a chance to redeem herself by an advantageous match, but she had quite definitely been booted out of paradise pending further developments.

"Such a house!" Mrs. Alsworthy exclaimed, her cheeks pink with pride and wine. "Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"It is certainly something out of the ordinary." Unless, of course, one happened to live between the covers of a novel by Monk Lewis or Mrs. Radcliffe.

"And the park! I've never seen anything so grand. Why, I'm sure you could fit half of London into it!" Mrs. Alsworthy beamed gleefully about her. "Your sister has done very well for herself, very well, indeed."

"Hasn't she," murmured Mary.

"I do wish we could have found as comfortable a settlement for you," fretted Mrs. Alsworthy, conveniently forgetting that Lord Pinchingdale had originally been intended for her older daughter. "I don't understand it. Three Seasons! One would have thought you would have caught someone by now." Mrs. Alsworthy preened, one ringed hand rising to pat her green silk turban. "I secured your father without even one Season."

"At the Littleton Assemblies," Mary supplied, having heard the story more times than the Prince of Wales had consumed hot dinners. "I know."

"I was wearing my blue brocade, with my hair all piled on top of my head — that was the fashion then, you know, and very becoming it was to me, too — and the sweetest little stomacher all embroidered with purple pansies, and your father was smitten, smitten on the spot."

People who waxed rapturous about love matches clearly had never been privy to the aftermath of one. Her parents' great love had lasted all of a year; the marriage itself had been limping along for three decades.

"Of course," Mrs. Alsworthy was still rattling on, "I was never so tall as you, and we all know that men don't like tall girls. It makes them feel small. You really must get in the trick of looking up at them, like so."

Mrs. Alsworthy hunched her shoulders, stuck out her neck, and attempted to look dewy-eyed.

Mary wasn't quite sure how impersonating a myopic turtle was supposed to help her secure a husband, but it was easier not to argue. "Yes, Mama."

Mrs. Alsworthy squinted thoughtfully at her. "And perhaps a bit more trim on the bodice…Gentlemen do so appreciate a nicely trimmed décolletage."

"I don't think it's the trim, Mama," said Mary.

As she had known she would, her mother ignored her and carried on with her own train of thought as the ribbons on her own exuberantly trimmed bodice trembled in sympathy. "So fortunate that Letty has offered to fund another Season for you — but this will have to be the last, you know. To have five Seasons looks like desperation."

"Letty is paying for my next Season?"

"Why, yes. Isn't it lovely of her to take such notice of her sisters now that she is a viscountess? A viscountess!"

"Just lovely," repeated Mary flatly. It was one thing to make the same tired rounds a fourth time, batting her eyelashes at the same rapidly diminishing crop of men, but it was quite another matter to do so on the sufferance of a younger sister. To know that every shawl, every dress, even the food on the table had been magnanimously donated by Letty for the worthy cause of helping her older sister to a husband.

On those terms, she would rather remain a spinster.

Only she wouldn't. Either way, she would be choking on her sister's charity. She could accept Letty's munificence now — and meekly submit herself to being organized as Letty saw fit — in the interest of one last, desperate bid for the comparative independence of the married state. Or she could remain unwed and be a perpetual dependent upon her parents. Which, in the end, meant being Letty's dependent, since her father's income was scarcely enough to keep him in new books and her mother in turbans. Between the two of them, they neatly dissipated the revenue from her father's small estate before one could say beeswax.

It was rather galling to face a future as a petitioner in the house where she had thought to be mistress.

"And Lord Pinchingdale will be paying Nicholas's fees at Harrow! Harrow! Can you imagine! We could never have done so much."

"Nicholas must be overjoyed," said Mary.

Nicholas would be miserable. Her little brother was the despair of the local vicar, who had been enlisted to teach him the classics. Fortunately for Nicholas, the vicar was as nearsighted as he was hard of hearing, as well as being prone to drifting off at odd moments, a habit Nicholas had done his best to encourage. Mary would be very surprised if Nicholas knew how to read, much less in Latin. Being sent to Harrow would do wonders for him — if they didn't expel him first. It was undoubtedly the right thing to do. Letty always knew the right thing to do. But it set Mary's teeth on edge.

She was the eldest. She was the one who was supposed to be magnanimously funding her brother's education and using her social consequence to bring out her younger sisters. Not the other way around.

It wasn't right.

"Have you tried the duck?" Mary cut in, just to put a stop to the catalogue of all the benefits Letty planned to confer on her family now that she was a viscountess — a viscountess! Her mother enjoyed the title so much that the word had acquired an inevitable echo every time she uttered it.

"Duck?"

Mary took her mother by the arm and steered her towards the refreshment table. "Yes, duck. I hear it's very good. There's also game pie."

Unfortunately, she didn't think food would do much to fill the hollow feeling that seemed to have settled into the pit of her stomach. It was the same feeling she had had in the gallery before Vaughn appeared, only ten times worse. In the space of three months, she had become superfluous. The grand match she had intended to make had been made by Letty; the benefits she had intended to graciously bestow upon her family were already being bestowed — by Letty. What was there left for her? Nothing but to sit and wait and be an object of charity, fed on Letty's leavings.

As if she had read her mind, Letty spotted Mary and their mother and began to bear down on them. In her hands, she held a plate piled high with food, and her face bore its most determined housewife expression. Someone was going to be fed, and they were going to be fed now.

It wasn't going to be Mary. Without a qualm, Mary tossed her mother to the wolves. "Look!" she called out cheerfully, giving her mother a little shove in the direction of her sister. "Isn't Letty lovely? She's prepared a plate for you."

"Darling!" Mrs. Alsworthy exclaimed, and made for Letty with both arms outstretched, although whether to embrace her or to snatch up the plate was largely unclear.

Mary didn't wait to find out.

Leaving her relations to it, Mary hastily made her exit stage left, back into the relative quiet of the upper gallery. It should take Letty some time to extricate herself from the maternal embrace. Well, it was only fair, Mary decided. If Letty wanted to be a two-darling daughter, there was a price to be paid.

Mary had her mind set on a very different sort of price. Lifting her skirts clear of the dusty floor, she made straight across the upper hall into the Long Gallery. The painted Pinchingdales held no fascination for her this time. She strode rapidly past them, seeking the living rather than the dead. There was no one standing between the torches, no one sitting on the window seat. The gallery was empty, deserted.

Mary reached the window and turned, thwarted. Where was he? She would have seen him had he returned to the Great Chamber. There had been no sign of movement downstairs in the hall. Of course, he might have retired to his room or gone out to the gardens or climbed up to the battlements to howl at the moon. He could be anywhere in the vast old pile. He might even have left — really, truly left.

That was too dreadful a prospect to be thought of. She had to find him. Because anything, anything at all was better than spending the winter hearing her mother sing an endless chorus of the wonders of her sister, while she herself faded into something not quite alive. She would see just what sort of price Lord Vaughn's theoretical flowery friend was willing to pay. And if Vaughn himself was the Black Tulip…well, then, surely the government must provide rewards for that sort of discovery.

But where had he got to? She couldn't very well seek him out in his bedchamber. That would spell ruin, and Vaughn, Mary could tell, was not the marrying kind.

Not like Geoffrey.

Of course, even being truly ruined would be more interesting than another evening of game pie.

Hands on her hips, Mary stalked over to the red velvet curtain by which Vaughn had posed when he first appeared earlier that evening — and stopped, her eye caught by a glimmer of light where there had been none before. The archway half-concealed by the curtain led off into the western half of the wing that fronted the garden, the bottom half of the second long stroke of the H. Earlier that evening, both corridors leading off the gallery had been dark and still. Now, lamplight seeped across the floor, coming from a partially open door just a little way down the corridor.

A superstitious shiver snaked down Mary's spine. Framed in red velvet, the deserted hallway might have been a stage set for Don Giovanni, black as a scoundrel's heart except for the reddish tint of hellfire to come. She could, of course, go back to the safety of the Great Chamber. She could fix her mother's plate and listen to her tales of success at the Littleton Assemblies.

Brimstone, it was.

Squaring her shoulders, Mary set off to strike her bargain with the Devil.