The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Four

A skull made a very restful companion.

Stretching one leg out in front of him, Vaughn settled more comfortably into the squashy interior of a squat wooden chair. In front of him, paired peasants shouldered the burden of the hooded mantel, grinning at an unpleasant rural secret. The little room must once have served an undistinguished purpose, antechamber to a grander room or perhaps even a privy, but at some point in the last century the room had been converted into a private den, lined with books and tricked out with the latest in the Gothic style. A blackened walnut table had been fitted out with an illuminated medieval manuscript, placed next to a decanter and goblets hammered out of semi-precious metal and set about with misshapen chunks of colored glass meant to look like a prosperous chieftain's hoard. The skull, grinning winningly from one corner of the table, completed the scene. A tentative tap of the fingernail confirmed that it was not, in fact, a plaster facsimile.

No detail had been neglected. Gargoyles stuck out their tongues from the joins in the vaulted ceiling, and a mirror had been cunningly angled above the fire to mirror and magnify the stained-glass window hung above the door. The distorted reflection transformed the tiny chamber into a towering cathedral, licked at the edges by the orange flames of the hearth. A cunning illusion, reflected Vaughn, as long as one didn't look away from the mirror.

But then, that was the way of illusions, wasn't it? All charlatans, whether the stage magician or the amorous rake, relied upon man's yearning to be deceived, to gaze in the mirror of his own desirings and be gulled by the image therein. It was a tempting prospect, to look and believe, like Faust panting after Helen's shadow. In the end, however, the mirror always cracked, revealing the images for the shams they were. Loyalty, love, the joys of home and hearth — no more substantial than an opium dream and just as debilitating while they lasted.

Of course, none of the earnest young people cavorting in their innocent frolics in the Great Chamber would admit a word of it. They all believed in fates worse than death, True Love in capital letters, and the innate goodness of man. Even Jane, for all her perspicacity, suffered from an unaccountable attachment to abstract notions of honor. Except, perhaps, for Miss Alsworthy.

Now there was something out of the ordinary.

Hooking an arm over the side of the chair, Vaughn gazed reflectively into the mirror. He was, he realized with some surprise, suffering from an entirely unaccountable sense of disappointment. But, then, the whole evening had been entirely unaccountable. Enjoyable, even. Her opening jab about solitude had been nicely done, very nicely done indeed, although she had lost ground later on by letting herself be rattled by his abrupt switch away from seduction. Conversation, when conducted properly, wasn't unlike a good fencing match, a constant attempt to sniff out one's opponent's weak spots and throw him off guard. Under that carefully cultivated mask of vapidity, Miss Alsworthy harbored a natural knack for the sport. In want of training, certainly, but with an acid tongue that boded well for future bouts.

The last thing he needed just now was yet another black-haired beauty getting in the way of his plans. And yet, the complications might have been adjusted to his advantage. He might have sworn off raven-haired agents, but surely one more, employed in just the right way…What were vows for, but to be broken? No one knew that better than he.

Ah, well. After the way their little interview had ended, the point was decidedly moot.

Drumming his fingers against the blackened wood, Vaughn addressed his new friend, Yorick Redux. "Another lost opportunity, my dear chap. I would imagine you know something about those."

"My lord?"

It wasn't Yorick. Not unless Yorick had suddenly become a good deal more talkative and female. The voice was a woman's voice, low and imperious. A voice recently heard and even more recently remembered. A shadow swayed over the table, falling across Yorick's bald pate and the barbaric splendor of silver and gems.

Vaughn stilled, his hands closing over the arms of the chair. Beneath his languid demeanor, anticipation thrilled through him, sharp as a foeman's steel. It was merely an antidote to the grinding ennui of the past week, the anticipation of a verbal duel with an unexpectedly adept opponent, nothing more.

"Miss Alsworthy," he murmured, rising smoothly from his chair.

Lapped in shadow, her graceful figure looked insubstantial and oddly fragile. The hearth light picked out the hollows beneath her collarbones and the shadows under her eyes, whittling away the armor of the flesh to the brittle bone beneath.

He had, reflected Vaughn wryly, been spending altogether too much time in the company of corpses if he could look at a beautiful woman and think only of the grave.

He moved swiftly to shut the door behind her.

"What a pleasant…surprise."

Miss Alsworthy's shoulders stiffened as though the door had thudded into her back rather than its frame. She hid it well, though, taking the moment to stroll forwards, one pale hand trailing lightly along the edge of the table. Only her shoulder blades betrayed her, brittle as glass above the scalloped back of her dress.

"A friend of yours?" She nodded to the skull with commendable sangfroid.

Vaughn closed the short distance between door and table. Resting a caressing hand on Yorick's bald pate, he traced the brow with a deliberation that would have brought a blush to a more susceptible maiden's cheek. "I've only just made his acquaintance. A decent enough sort, although his conversational style appears to be somewhat lacking."

"I thought all men desired such a complaisant companion." Mary's deep blue eyes glinted up at Vaughn from beneath lowered lids. "Someone to offer unconditional agreement."

"'The grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace,'" Vaughn recited meditatively, lingering on the last word. "Rather a high price to pay for unwinking devotion, don't you think?"

"One pays a price for everything."

"And what, Miss Alsworthy, is your price?"

He had expected her to answer with coy digressions, but she surprised him. "A dowry," she said abruptly, the train of her skirt whispering against the table leg. "The cost of a Season."

"Is that all?"

"All?" Mary glanced back at him, bitter humor lengthening the corners of her lips. It was, he thought, more becoming to her than the mask of placid sweetness she donned in front of society. "You might ask the same of the young man who begs the cost of a commission, or a sea captain in want of a ship. Trifles to you, but ruin to those who lack them."

"Surely, you have a sister."

"And now a brother, too," Mary said grimly. "Would you take charity on such terms?"

Having spent the better part of a month in Dublin in enforced proximity with Miss Alsworthy's estimable relations, Vaughn would sooner bunk with Methodist missionaries. But he certainly wasn't going to afford her the gratification of saying so.

Vaughn stretched lazily, setting the silver strands in his lace sparkling. "I can only be grateful such a situation has never arisen."

"Not all of us have that luxury."

"This sudden interest in my company…" Vaughn propped a shoulder against the wall, affecting an expression of well-bred surprise. "Are you trying to tell me that you have reconsidered the merits of my little offer?"

"Yes," said Mary shortly, her head bent low over the illuminated manuscript on the table.

"Despite your, er, earlier objections? I wouldn't want to force you to anything you find unworthy of your energies."

"It is I," murmured Mary, "who am unworthy of such solicitude from so great a personage as yourself."

"Brava," said Vaughn gravely. "There are few who condescend so well to condescension."

Without looking up, Mary flicked over page of the manuscript. Sturdy peasants cavorted in a pastoral fantasy on the red, blue, and gold page. "It is not, however, a marketable skill."

"Not on the marriage market, at any event," agreed Vaughn. "Philistines, the lot of them."

Mary lifted her chin, her gaze like a gauntlet. "Are you offering to remedy their lack of discernment?"

With the words quivering in the air between them, Vaughn caught her gaze and held it. He met her stare for stare, challenge for challenge, before saying, slowly and very deliberately, "No."

Mary smiled without humor. "I didn't think so."

Well done! applauded Vaughn. He found himself seized with a most unusual desire to render genuine praise. Since praise might be taken for approbation and approbation for encouragement, he quashed the impulse and turned instead to the assortment of barbaric drinking vessels. Raising the decanter, he poised it above a misshapen silver goblet.

"May I offer you a glass of brandy — in the spirit of our future partnership? Our future business partnership, that is."

Mary closed the Book of Hours with a decided snap. "Hadn't we better come to an agreement before we celebrate it?"

Vaughn lifted his glass in a toast. "A lady as shrewd as she is beautiful." It wasn't intended as a compliment, and she was astute enough to know it. "To business, then. I assume you have no objections if I prefer not to commit the terms to paper?"

"As long as I can trust you to abide by them." Her tone suggested that she couldn't.

It was lovely to see cynicism in one so young. It positively restored his faith in human nature. Vaughn placed his hand over his heart. "You may trust to my honor, dear lady, as you would to your own."

She rose beautifully to the insult, like a trout to the hook. "Do you ever come to the point, my lord?"

"Not when I can avoid it." Vaughn toyed with the stem of his glass, sending the amber liquid swirling within the bowl. The metal, while picturesque, lent the brew a tinny flavor. "I prefer the circuitous route. The scenery is more entertaining."

"Linger too long," Mary said, angling her head pointedly towards the door, "and the scenery may change."

"The gods would weep," replied Vaughn politely.

A branch cracked in the hearth, sending reddish sparks flaring upwards. Mary's eyes strayed from the hearth towards the skull. "I doubt God has anything to do with this."

"You don't believe in divine providence, Miss Alsworthy?"

"Only when He is on the side of the strongest battalion."

A glimmer of Vaughn's pale eyes acknowledged the quotation and the point. "The clash of arms is merely a diversion. The real battles occur in little rooms such as these. That," he added smoothly, "will be your task."

"What sort of little room did you have in mind?" Mary asked warily.

"Not a bedchamber, if that was worrying at your conscience."

Vaughn had to give her credit; she didn't flush or affect maidenly flutters. Having determined to do business, Miss Alsworthy was nothing if not direct. "My conscience," she said levelly, "isn't the problem. My reputation is."

"Not virtue, but the appearance of it," Vaughn agreed with all seriousness, saving the sting for last. He smiled pleasantly as he added, "One wouldn't want to risk being compromised…again."

Mary's fingers clenched almost imperceptibly within the folds of her skirts, but there was no sign of it in the perfectly sculpted lines of her face. "I don't believe you would enjoy the outcome any more than I would."

"Touché," Vaughn acknowledged the point with a fragment of a nod. "Your solution?"

Mary addressed herself to the fire rather than him, her expression remote. "It would be the last word in foolishness to obtain the means to get a husband only to render myself unmarriageable. In order to prevent that occurrence, I must insist on the presence of a chaperone at all times."

"As you are chaperoned now," murmured Vaughn. "Our presence in this room is in itself highly suspect. Alone. A closed door. Tsk, tsk, Miss Alsworthy."

"In my sister's house." Mary shrugged. "None of her guests would dare make a fuss. Letty wouldn't allow it."

"And you?" Vaughn braced both hands against the table, closing the distance between them. "You don't feel the least bit uncomfortable?"

"In a business discussion?" Mary cast back at him.

"Business, my dear Miss Alsworthy, is a very broad term. And this" — Vaughn's voice dropped to a slumberous murmur — "is not a very broad place."

Mary stood straight and still, a perfect marble figurine. He might have believed her entirely unaffected, except for the telltale flutter of the pulse at her throat.

"Are you quite finished, my lord?" she asked coolly.

It took more strength than he would have liked to pull casually away, to shake out his cuffs with every appearance of unconcern. "For the moment. I have no objection to the notion of a chaperone in principle — as you say, it could be deuced inconvenient to us both otherwise — but you may find yourself in some odd situations."

"All the more reason for a chaperone," countered Mary.

"Have you one who is blind, deaf, and dumb?" asked Vaughn sarcastically. "Such a one would be perfect for our purposes."

Mary's eyes lit like stained glass. "I believe I might," she murmured, her mouth quirking with private amusement.

Vaughn knocked back the remains of his brandy with uncharacteristic haste. Tense and guarded, she was magnificent. Alight with mischief, she was…

A tool to be used for a limited set of circumstances, he reminded himself, gulping down the astringent brew. And those circumstances did not include his bed, his settee, his carriage, or any other horizontal surface his undisciplined mind might devise.

Vaughn set his glass down on its tray, locking his hands behind his back as he paced rapidly away from the table. "I leave the procurement of a chaperone to you. At the end of the house party, you will return to London with Lord and Lady Pinchingdale."

"I hadn't heard that they were planning to return to London."

"Hadn't you?" Vaughn shot over his shoulder. A few words from Jane would rapidly put the Pinchingdales' plans to rights. There were benefits to being associated with the Pink Carnation. "I imagine the new viscountess will wish to avail herself of the shops. If you are lucky, you might even share in the largesse."

All animation fled Mary's face, faster than a ship before a gale. Regarding him with a hauteur that Vaughn found immensely reassuring, she demanded, "Once I return to London, what then?"

Once in London…Vaughn banished thoughts of beds, lounges, and settees. He tapped a finger lightly against Yorick's bald skull. "Once in London, we bait our trap."

"With me."

Vaughn smiled at her in a way that would have sent any sensible bait scurrying for cover. "Precisely."

"And if your fish doesn't bite?"

"Don't worry. You will still be paid."

This time, Mary didn't flinch. "In full."

"As agreed. You have my hand on it. Or shall we, as our feudal ancestors would, seal it with a kiss?"

Mary had no doubt that Vaughn would delight in exercising his droit du seigneur. "Your hand will do."

The crispness of her tone brought a smile to his narrow lips. Lifting her proffered hand, Vaughn held it suspended for a moment, cool and pale in his own, before very deliberately turning it over and brushing a kiss against the tender skin of her palm.

What use was fire, after all, if not to be played with?

With the skill of long practice, Vaughn folded her nerveless fingers around the palm, pressing her hand in his own before releasing her. "There. A doubly sealed bargain."

Snatching back her hand, Mary said briskly, "I need no further assurances." Her skirts whispered secrets against the Turkey carpet as she swept grandly towards the door. "Good night, my lord."

It would have been a magnificent exit but for the intransigence of the doorknob. Turning the moment to good account, she glanced regally back over her shoulder as her fingers grappled with the knob. "I look forward to a profitable partnership for us both."

Lord Vaughn's lips spread over his teeth in a decidedly wolfish smile.

"As do I, my dear. As do I."