Lauren Willig - [Pink Carnation 04]

by The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

  “St. George?” said St. George diffidently.

  “Yes!” cried Aunt Imogen, her hat tipping drunkenly. “You shall be my Saint George!”

  “That is my name,” said Mr. St. George hesitantly, not wanting to give any offense.

  “What Aunt Imogen means,” said Mary hastily, well aware of Vaughn’s sardonic gaze, “is that she wants you to take part in Lady Euphemia McPhee’s latest play. It is a history of Britain.” Avoiding Vaughn’s eye, she got out the worst of it. “In rhyme.”

  Vaughn’s lips quivered at the corners. “A rhyming history of Britain, in fact?”

  Mary couldn’t quite control an answering smile. “Some have called it that.”

  “Will you be taking part?” asked St. George earnestly.

  “I play a princess of ancient Britain,” said Mary, smiling at him.

  “Preferably painted blue,” drawled Lord Vaughn. “As princesses of ancient Britain were wont to do.”

  “In that case,” said St. George, oblivious to mockery or rhyme, “I shall most decidedly accept.”

  “Lovely, lovely.” Vaughn cut off further declarations by the simple expedient of shooing Aunt Imogen along in front of him. “I’m sure you’ll rhyme brilliantly, St. George. Say your good-byes, Miss Alsworthy. There’s a good girl.”

  Acceding to the inevitable, St. George bowed over her hand. “Good day, Miss Alsworthy.”

  “The company made it so.” Mary lifted one hand in a little wave as Lord Vaughn propelled her towards the door. In an undertone intended for Vaughn’s ears alone, she added, “Some company much more than others.”

  “I shan’t demand to know which is which.” Vaughn ushered her after Aunt Imogen. “I doubt my amour propre could survive the experience.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” murmured Mary, waiting just that crucial moment before adding, “I would have thought your self-regard was too firmly rooted to be struck down by such an insignificant creature as myself.”

  In a tone drier than kindling, Vaughn said, “You appear to have made an impression, even if not the one intended.”

  Mary slid her arm out from Vaughn’s grasp. “I was seen. Wasn’t that the point?”

  “It would have been better had you been seen to take an interest—in something other than St. George and his dancing turtles.”

  Mary glanced up at Vaughn from under her lashes. “Jealous?”

  Vaughn stifled a yawn with one jeweled hand. He made no move to reclaim her hand—in any sense of the word. “My dear, I’ve never had any aspirations to sainthood. Or hard-shelled amphibians.”

  Mary matched his tone of brittle boredom. “I hear they make excellent soup.”

  Holding the door open, Vaughn ushered her through into the main room of the tavern with an elaborate sweep of the arm. It was still early enough in the day that only one ale-sodden sot sprawled across the hard wooden benches. “I’m sure I can find hot water enough for you, if you so desire.”

  Mary cast a glance back over her shoulder at the gaunt figure still orating in the next room. “Haven’t you already?”

  “Ah, yes. I noticed your little tête-à-tête with Mr. Rathbone.”

  Mary lowered her voice. “Apparently, he has some background with incendiary devices, as well as radical politics.”

  “Did he have anything interesting to impart?” Beneath the well-tailored elegance of his clothes, Vaughn’s lean frame was taut, alert, like a swordsman poised for an attack.

  “He might have done. We were interrupted.”

  Vaughn’s lip curled. “For which you can thank your estimable St. George. The man appears congenitally incapable of ignoring a maiden in distress.”

  “Aren’t the dragon jokes a bit too easy?” scoffed Mary, but her heart wasn’t in it. She frowned down at the worn planking. “If we hadn’t been interrupted, I might have learned whether he was our quarry.”

  “St. George?” Lord Vaughn raised a sardonic brow.

  Vaughn knew very well what she meant. “Rathbone,” replied Mary, with a quelling glance.

  “No.” Vaughn dismissed the vice-chairman of the Common Sense Society with a brisk flick of his fingers. “He’s all bluster. Not the sort to manage a delicate operation and keep it secret for a decade.”

  Unlike someone else she knew. Mary favored Vaughn with a brief, sideways glance. “You seem remarkably sure of his character for such a short acquaintance.”

  Vaughn placed a hand on her back to boost her into the carriage, his touch warm through layers of linen and twill. “One should never speak unless one intends to do so with conviction.”

  “Even when there is nothing on which to base that conviction?”

  “The one has nothing to do with the other.”

  Mary moved aside to make room for Aunt Imogen. Twitching out the folds of her skirt, she said irritably, “And what you say seldom has anything to do with what you mean.”

  Lord Vaughn paused in the act of climbing into the carriage. With one hand on either side of the door frame, he stood silent for a long moment, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Mary’s face. “On the contrary, sometimes I say exactly what I mean.”

  Despite her better judgment, Mary couldn’t help but be drawn in. “Such as?”

  “Tomorrow. Five o’clock. We ride in the park.” Vaughn swung himself into his seat, resting his cane between his knees. “Is that direct enough for you, Miss Alsworthy?”

  “Eminently.” Mary squirmed to the side as Aunt Imogen’s brim scraped across her cheek. “Do you intend to tell me what we mean to do in the park, or must we play twenty questions for that, too?”

  “What does one always do in the park?”

  Mary had conducted a series of clandestine meetings, in the interest of arranging an elopement, but she decided not to bring that up. Lord Vaughn had already made quite clear his feelings on the subject of matrimony.

  “Whatever my esteemed employer wishes me to do—or isn’t that the correct answer?”

  “A bit testy this afternoon, aren’t we? Fear not, my dear, I’m sure your hero will sally forth eventually to rescue you from the big, bad dragon.”

  “The park?” Mary asked pointedly.

  “We go to see and be seen. Just as everyone else does.”

  By whom they went to be seen was another matter entirely. Mary had some notions of her own on that score. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that a sporting gentleman, missing his usual country pursuits, might take to the paths of the park on a sunny autumn afternoon for a brisk canter.

  Mary resolved to tell the maid to set out her most becoming habit. After all, as Mr. Rathbone had said, if the spirit was willing, the opportunity would present itself.

  Across the carriage, Vaughn was gazing idly out the window, hands resting loosely on the head of his cane. In profile, he resembled nothing so much as a portrait medallion of one of the Roman emperors, austere and slightly alien, accustomed to pomp and no stranger to intrigue. Plots and counterplots, alliances and betrayals had all left their mark on his form. They were written on the thin, flexible line of his lips, designed to laugh or sneer as the occasion required; the hooded lids that shielded his eyes from scrutiny more effectively than any number of hats; the lean swordsman’s body disguised beneath an incongruous armor of lace and jewels. Vaughn, Mary thought, would have made an excellent Caesar, raw power clothed in deadly pomp.

  Mary leaned forward, swaying with the motion of the carriage. “Why did we leave so early?”

  Vaughn waved a lazy hand. “Pas devant, my dear.”

  “Pas devant whom? Aunt Imogen? She can hardly hear a word. And she wouldn’t care if she did.” Mary leaned towards Vaughn. “Had we stayed longer, I might have prized more particulars out of Rathbone.”

  Vaughn’s posture was just as lazy, but there was something watchful in his silver eyes as he countered, “Come, come, Miss Alsworthy. You can’t expect me to believe that Mr. Rathbone was the primary attraction.”

  In any other man, M
ary would have suspected jealousy. But in Vaughn, nothing he said was ever as it sounded. If he pretended jealousy, it was clearly for some ulterior motive. Why bring her there and dangle her in front of Rathbone only to pull her away again? Unless, of course, Vaughn was playing a game of his own, quite different from the one he had represented to her.

  “I was merely following your advice,” returned Mary primly. “Finding myself a reforming gentleman, as you suggested. Can you think of any reason why I should do otherwise?”

  “If you cannot think of it on your own,” said Vaughn very softly, “there’s very little point in my telling you.”

  Mary could think of several reasons, but she wasn’t at all sure they were the ones Vaughn meant. She was about to say as much, when an imperious voice rang out like an impromptu cannonade, bringing the carriage to a jarring halt that made Vaughn’s hat tip forwards over his face and Mary’s elbow bang against the wall hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. As Mary rubbed her aching elbow and righted Aunt Imogen, a gargoyle galloped up to the window.

  It took Mary only a moment to determine that the object floating in the window frame was not a gargoyle but merely a singularly ugly woman, her craggy face contorted into an expression of extreme distaste. Reining her horse alongside them with the ease of a practiced horsewoman, she stuck her head imperiously through the window frame. She looked like one of the gnomes Mary’s childhood nursemaid had warned her about, the ones who snatched up naughty children and bore them away deep beneath the earth.

  “So it is you,” she rasped, in a voice as low as Mr. Farnham’s had been squeaky. “I thought I recognized your carriage, but I had hoped to be mistaken.”

  Vaughn bowed as elegantly as any man could from a semireclining position. “It is an ill wind, my dear Lady Hester. I hear it blows nobody good.”

  “One of these days,” replied Lady Hester icily, “it will blow you straight to perdition.”

  “Before that happy day occurs, may I introduce my companions to you? Lady Cranbourne and her niece, Miss Alsworthy.”

  “Alsworthy?” Lady Hester nearly cracked her head on the window embrasure. “But I thought—” Her eyes narrowed, and she pulled back slightly, her broad shoulders rasping against the window frame. “No. No. I see that it is not. How very curious.”

  “Miss Alsworthy,” broke in Lord Vaughn, seeming to apply undue emphasis to the repetition of her name, “you have the honor to be addressed by none other than Lady Hester Standish.”

  “The Lady Hester Standish?” inquired Mary breathlessly, since such a reaction seemed to be called for.

  This time, it was Vaughn’s turn to look a warning. “Yes,” he said pointedly. “The Lady Hester. Meddler, schemer, occasional republican—except, of course, when it gets in the way of the proper order of precedence. One would not, after all, wish to make do with a lesser seat at dinner. Have I left anything out, dear lady?”

  “Pots and kettles,” returned Lady Hester disdainfully, before turning her icy gaze back to Mary. She looked her up and down with the sort of piercing assessment that made Mary wonder if she had remembered to don clean linen. “So you’re Imogen’s niece, are you? Paugh.”

  Mary had never actually heard anyone say “paugh” before. It grated off Lady Hester’s tongue like sandpaper on granite.

  “Lady Cranbourne is my great-aunt, yes,” Mary said carefully. “I hadn’t realized you were acquainted.”

  Lady Hester’s nostrils flared, highlighting her resemblance to her horse. She had very large, square teeth. “She nearly caught my brother,” she rasped, speaking of Aunt Imogen as though she wasn’t within two feet of her. “Might have got him, too, but she never could stay the course. Always was a flibbertigibbet, was Imogen. Kisses for votes, dashing about with Scottish poets—deuced rackety sort of gel.”

  “And a pretty one, I hear,” put in Mary helpfully, and watched the gargoyle features harden to granite. “One of the great beauties of her day.”

  “Only men put store in beauty,” retorted Lady Hester, her masculine voice even harsher than usual. “Weak vessels, the lot of them. Always ready to be led astray by the next pretty face.”

  “Wouldn’t know about that, would you, Hester?” cackled Lady Imogen from under the depths of her hat, causing Lady Hester to crack her head rather satisfyingly on the top of the window frame. “Frumpy as ever!”

  Lady Hester’s rough features turned a very unbecoming red, although that might have been due largely to the blow to her head. “Some of us put store in greater things.”

  “Hopeless spinster,” murmured Aunt Imogen to herself, although, with the uncertain volume of the mostly deaf, her murmur could be heard halfway to Hyde Park.

  “My brother had a lucky escape. And you.” Lady Hester turned on Vaughn with an expression that wouldn’t have looked amiss on Medusa during one of her crankier days. “What would Teresa say to your strutting about with this chit?”

  Vaughn’s face didn’t change, but Mary could see his fingers tighten on the handle of his cane. “It is very difficult,” he said mildly, “to strut while sitting. And,” he added, “equally difficult to ride with one’s head stuck in a window.”

  “Don’t think you’ve seen the last of me, Vaughn.”

  “I know,” yawned Vaughn. “You’ll be back.”

  Lady Hester didn’t deign to answer. Wheeling about, she cantered off in the direction of Hyde Park, her horse’s hooves striking an angry tattoo against the paving stones.

  “Never liked her brother, anyway. Dull old stick,” contributed Aunt Imogen in a deafening aside. Poking her great-niece in the arm with a bony finger, she added, “If Hester gives you trouble, come to me. I’ll soon set her right. Heh.”

  And she subsided once more beneath her hat, a smug smile visible just beneath the brim. It boded ill for Lady Hester.

  Rapping to the coachman to drive on, Vaughn returned to his perusal of the passing scenery as though he were accustomed to a daily diet of threat and invective. Given his winning manners, the prospect wasn’t all that unlikely. Mary was sure there were many people who would be delighted to see Vaughn tumble off a cliff…or down a flight of stairs…or out a window.

  “And what did you do to alienate Lady Hester Standish?” inquired Mary lightly. “Not the same as Aunt Imogen, I trust.”

  “No,” replied Vaughn at long last. “Don’t be fooled by that display. Lady Hester was—and remains—a very clever woman. A clever woman, and a determined one.”

  Mary had her doubts about the former part of that description. Between her face and voice, Lady Hester’s gender was entirely unclear. Her habit, cut to accommodate her wide shoulders and angular frame, accentuated the impression. But for the fact that she was riding sidesaddle, Mary could have easily taken her for a man.

  “Clever?” she prompted.

  “Do they discuss nothing more exigent than the properties of lemonade at these soirées you attend? Lady Hester was, at one time, one of our foremost philosophers. She schooled Wollstonecraft in the rights of women, flirted with physiocracy, corresponded with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mme. de Stael—you do know who Mme. de Stael is, don’t you?”

  Mary thought Mme. de Stael might have something to do with poetry…or was it painting? Nor could she have said with any confidence just what physiocracy entailed, other than a vague notion that it was something to do with political economy. But she wasn’t going to let Vaughn know that.

  “Of course,” she said, putting her nose up in the air. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “My apologies,” said Vaughn ironically, in a way that made it quite clear he had seen through her bluff. “Perhaps later we might discuss some of her works. At your convenience, naturally.”

  Mary made a mental note to raid her brother-in-law’s library for anything by a Mme. de Stael. “I shall look forward to that,” she said coolly. “I gather your friendship with Lady Hester was an intellectual one?”

  “It certainly wasn’t amorous. Before the war, Lady Hes
ter hosted one of the most celebrated salons in London. As her views became more radical, her guests trailed off to more peaceable pleasures.”

  “Like you?”

  The only answer she received was an infuriating little shrug, which might have meant anything from assent to an unidentified itch.

  With the carriage pulling up before the portico of Pinchingdale House, Mary abandoned the subtle approach. “Why does she hate you so? Not simply for abandoning her salon, surely?”

  Lord Vaughn swung his long legs onto the folding steps as a footman rushed to open the door. “Do you doubt the power of politics?”

  “To produce that sort of venom?” She accepted Lord Vaughn’s hand as he reached up to help her descend. “Yes.”

  There was no sound as he handed her to the ground except for the swish of her hem against the bottom step. His reserve was so marked, his withdrawal so complete, that Mary thought he meant to abandon the topic entirely, as he had so many others.

  She was framing a suitably light and flippant farewell when Vaughn said with studied blandness, his arm stiff beneath the light touch of her fingers, “Lady Hester’s brother was the Earl of Petworth.”

  “I see,” murmured Mary.

  And she did. Even before Vaughn added, with chilling finality, “Lady Hester is the aunt of my wife.”

  Or, more accurately, was the aunt of his wife. Even now, over a decade later, dowagers still whispered over the mysterious death of Lord Vaughn’s wife. No wonder Lady Hester resented her presence in the carriage with Vaughn. Another woman, taking her niece’s place…or, as Lady Hester had so vividly put it, strutting about in her niece’s place.

  Only one thing niggled at her. In preparation for her debut, Mary had pored over Debrett’s, memorizing the lines of all the great houses, their spouses, their offspring. She could see the page as though it were in front of her, the paper creased from wear, the print small, the ink smudged, but still readable for all that. A list of all Vaughn’s titles and honors—followed by the name of his wife. Lady Anne Standish, daughter of the Earl of Petworth.