It had never occurred to her that he might not be home. Or, that being home, he might not want to see her.
She wasn’t quite sure what she had expected, but it had something to do with being shown into a warm room, with a fire in the hearth and Vaughn lounging arrogantly in a chair. When she entered, he would draw deliberately to his feet and drawl out a remark that might sound like an insult, but contain within it a hidden kernel of welcome, equal to equal. And she would insult him back, in perfect harmony and understanding, no fussing, no false politeness.
None of which could happen if he weren’t there.
Mary twisted her head and contemplated the great front door. Perhaps tonight hadn’t been the best time to call. All it would take would be a quick twist of the knob and a good, strong shove with one shoulder. If the butler hadn’t seen her face…
“Madam?” It was too late. The erstwhile butler had reappeared.
Mary gave him her haughtiest glance, trying very hard to look as though she hadn’t been caught contemplating a precipitate flight back out into the night.
The butler was not impressed.
“If you would be so good as to follow me?” he intoned, in the sort of voice that would have filled Drury Lane Theatre twice over.
Mary gathered her cloak about her with as much dignity as she could muster and followed. They proceeded through a stately procession of reception rooms, each more ornate than the last. The butler’s single candle struck gold glints off the ornately curled frames of innumerable pictures, hung one above the other in a dazzling display of connoisseurship and raw wealth. Overhead, the passing light revealed glimpses of azure sky. Pink-skinned goddesses, bearded patriarchs, and dimpled nymphs yawned down upon Mary and her guide as they passed below, disturbing their slumber.
Even the very shadows seemed shinier than the ordinary run of shadow, richer and sleeker. That might merely have been the effect produced by the smooth sheen of Venetian mirrors and silk-hung walls, Gobelin tapestries and floors polished to so slick a sheen that the light wriggled in the amber surface like fish swimming just below the surface of a river. Mary’s boots seemed even older and shabbier against the glowing patina of the parquet floor, and her woolen cloak rasped dully against Savonnerie carpets that must have cost more than all the contents of her childhood home put together.
At the end of the last room, the butler opened a door in the paneling that Mary hadn’t seen before, cleverly cut to blend into the rest of the wall. Beyond lay a short stretch of hallway that seemed dark and dull in comparison to the richness of gilded woodwork and painted ceilings in the chambers through which they had passed. There were no windows on either side, merely a series of matched sconces set at intervals down the wall, paired serpents whose open mouths each held the base of a candle, while their tails twined together in a love knot below.
At the far end, Mary could make out the shadowy shape of a stairway. Not the grand stair that curved around an immense statue of Hercules in the central rotunda, but a plain, workmanlike stair, narrow and steep, leading up to the upper stories.
Mary covertly eyed the staircase, wondering just what Vaughn intended. Upper stories tended to contain more private sorts of room. Like bedchambers.
Instead of the staircase, however, the butler turned the knob of a door in the center of the wall, so insignificant that Mary hadn’t noticed it. With an inclination of his head, the butler gestured her into the room.
Mary swept regally past him, so intent on her grand entrance that it took her a moment to realize that it was being wasted on empty walls.
Mary came to an abrupt halt, the sole of her boot squeaking against the polished floor. She scarcely noted the click of the door as it closed behind her. There was no Vaughn. The room was empty.
Revolving in a slow circle, Mary took in her surroundings. There was certainly no place for Vaughn to hide. The room was scarcely larger than her dressing room at her brother-in-law’s house, the walls paneled in a polished rosewood inlaid with precious porcelain plaques painted with scenes of life in the Orient. There were eight panels in all, angling inward to form an octagon. The parquet of the floor echoed the shape of the walls, sloping inward in an ever-narrowing pattern that drew the eye towards the center of the room, where a fancifully carved table held a silver salver.
Everything in the room was rich and strange, from the unexpected shelves that held vases made of jade so fine that Mary could see the light reflecting through it, to the Oriental dragons who stood in pairs beside the crimson-cushioned benches that sat at the base of seven of the eight walls. The eighth wall was occupied by a mantel of rare red marble, in which a fire had been laid but not lit. Even without the fire, the room didn’t feel cold. Candles had been lit in gold filigree holders at even intervals all along the eight walls, and their light reflected warmly off the rich rosewood and the pale parquet floor, striking off the hidden gold threads in the shot-silk crimson cushions and turning the lolling tongues of the brass lions red-gold.
Standing in the center, beside the carved teak table, Mary felt as though she had been placed in a velvet-lined jewel box. There were no windows, no door, nothing but rosewood and porcelain, filigree and marble. Even the ceiling had been plastered and painted in imitation of the roof of a pagoda, tricking the eye with the illusion of successive layers of intricate architectural detail rising ever upwards.
Tipping her head back, Mary squinted at the ceiling, knowing that it had to be flat no matter how her eyes insisted otherwise.
The only warning she had was a light click, and then the door burst open, followed by a velvety voice drawling, in tones of barely veiled menace, “How very kind of you to call. It saves me all sorts of trouble.”
Mary dropped her head so quickly she nearly wrenched something in her neck. It was so like Vaughn, to catch her at a disadvantage, gawking at the ceiling like some poor provincial who had never seen trompe l’oeil before.
Drawing herself up, she slowly turned to face him with all the outraged dignity of Elizabeth I confronting a disorderly courtier. She was doing quite well at the regal outrage until Vaughn came into view. The stinging rejoinder Mary had prepared fell unuttered from her slack lips.
Vaughn lounged in an expansive pose, the billowing white folds of his shirtsleeves filling the doorway. Without waistcoat or cravat, the ties of his shirt undone, Lord Vaughn looked more like the caricaturist’s ideal of a dissolute poet than a belted earl. His shirt hung open at his neck, revealing the strong lines of his throat and a surprisingly impressive display of musculature, the smoothly honed physique of a swordsman rather than a pugilist. The shirt had been loosely tucked into his pantaloons, but seemed to have come free in the back, the shirt-tails hanging over the tight kerseymere of his breeches. The large diamond still winked on his finger, its richness only serving to underline his shocking dishabille.
Mary found herself incapable of doing anything but stare. It was impossible to envision Lord Vaughn without his armor of brocade and lace, but there he was, in little more than his linen, the lithe grace of his form admirably displayed by the sheer folds of fine fabric. It was…Mary blinked rapidly. It was unmistakably Lord Vaughn, but a Lord Vaughn such as she would never have imagined. And yet, it was undeniably he. Who else could be so arrogant even in dishabille?
In the meantime, Vaughn seemed to be having equal difficulties comprehending her presence. At the sight of her face, he rocked back on his heels, taking an inadvertent step back and catching at the door frame for balance in a movement that made his sleeves flatten against the corded muscles of his arm.
Regaining his usual self-possession, he propped himself against the door frame, folding his arms across his chest.
“Well, well,” said Vaughn mockingly. “What have we here?”
Chapter Eleven
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove….
—John Milton, Comus
“I believe the usual greeting is good eve
ning,” returned Mary, as Vaughn wavered in the doorway.
“My most abject apologies,” drawled Vaughn, sauntering into the room and kicking the panel shut behind him. “I had expected someone else.”
Mary stood primly beside the marble mantel, her hands clasped at her waist. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
Vaughn’s eyes conducted a leisurely inspection of Mary’s person, from the scuffed toes of last season’s kid half-boots straight up to the folds of the hood draped around her face.
He lifted one eyebrow in a lazy tribute. “Did I say I was disappointed? On the contrary. I am merely rendered dumb by the unexpected apparition of such loveliness in my humble bachelor abode.”
Easing back her hood, Mary wrinkled her nose at the inlaid porcelain plaques, straight from the Orient, the gilded dragons, the precious rosewood carelessly used to line the walls. “You have a curious notion of humility, my lord.”
“And what of bachelordom?” Vaughn propped himself against one of the priceless porcelain plaques as carelessly as if it were common plaster. “Now, there’s a curious thing, bachelordom.”
He was properly a widower, not a bachelor. Not that it made any difference. Either way, he could marry if he chose. He simply chose not to.
Mary permitted herself a sour smile. “I wouldn’t know. My only experience is of spinsterhood.”
“You sell yourself short, my dear.” With no regard for the antiquity of the materials behind him, Vaughn pushed away from the wall.
The movement overset his balance, and he stumbled a bit, putting out a hand against the wall to catch himself. Mary revised her earlier opinion of his dishabille. Not mere insolence, then, but—could the unflappable Lord Vaughn possibly be in his cups?
It was a practically unimaginable notion, but there was no denying the uncharacteristic flush lighting his cheekbones and his slight unsteadiness, almost but not entirely masked by the studied deliberation of his movements. But even that deliberation was just the tiniest bit miscalculated, like a drawing with the proportions off by the fraction of a hair. And what she had assumed was a shadow, in fact, upon closer viewing, looked suspiciously like spilled wine, a dark blot against Vaughn’s otherwise immaculate linen, in the general region of his heart.
The white linen of his sleeve billowed dramatically about his arm as he gestured grandly at Mary. “What mere mortal could aspire to such loveliness?”
“Anyone with ten thousand pounds a year,” said Mary caustically.
Vaughn clucked disapprovingly. “Can the world buy such a jewel?”
“And a case to put it into.” Mary matched his quote and topped it. Every now and again, Shakespeare actually said something sensible; Mary had always taken that particular line as her personal motto. “No one has offered me a suitable case yet. My lord, I did come here for a reason.”
“To see me,” Vaughn provided, with a winning smile.
“To convey some intelligence to you,” Mary corrected, with a frown. Inebriated men needed to be dealt with firmly, since they had a way of wandering from the point.
Of course, Vaughn had a way of diverting the conversation even sober. And for a man in his cups—if he was, indeed, in his cups—he sounded surprisingly lucid. Ever since that first stumble, his posture would have been the envy of any dancing master, and all his sibilants were exactly where they should be.
“Wounded!” cried Vaughn. “Struck to the heart! Did you think I had not intelligence enough already?”
“I think, my lord, that you could fright an academician out of his wits,” began Mary carefully. “But—”
“Child’s play,” Vaughn interjected. “Academicians are a witless lot to begin with. I require more of a challenge. What of you?” he asked silkily. “Could I deprive you of your wits?”
“I wouldn’t be of much use to you in that event, would I?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” murmured Vaughn, with a decidedly improper glint in his eye.
Mary could all but hear Letty’s I told you so echoing in her ears. What was it Letty had called him? A reprobate? A rake? Whichever it was, he was doing his best to live up to the appellation.
She had enough of her wits left about her to nip that right in the bud. Straightening her spine, Mary cast him her best dowager-in-training expression, the one designed to cow dogs, servants, and small boys.
“I must beg your pardon for calling at such an unorthodox hour. I would not have done so had the circumstances not been exigent.”
“Exigent.” Vaughn rolled the word on his tongue as he strolled towards her. “The imagination quivers with anticipation. Have you left the hounds in hot pursuit? Shall I find a pack of creditors panting at my door? A love-maddened marquess anxious to sweep you away to his mountaintop lair? Or, perhaps,” he added delicately, raising one brow, “a jealous wife, baying for your blood?”
Mary knew exactly which wife he meant.
“Neither,” she snapped, biting off the word on her tongue. “Merely an overworked French spy, seeking an assignation with a likely operative.”
The statement had an effect, even if not necessarily the desired one. Vaughn went still, his expression remote.
“Ah,” said Vaughn.
“I had expected some response other than ‘ah,’ my lord,” Mary pointed out with heavy sarcasm.
Instead of replying, Vaughn twisted a piece of filigree, revealing a cunningly constructed cabinet hidden behind the porcelain plaque. The opening of the cabinet had been cut in the shape of the plaque, the filigree edging hiding any break in the wall. Within sat a crystal decanter with a delicately rounded base and two matching glasses.
The number of glasses made a certain amount of sense. More than two people and the room would start to feel crowded. All the same, Mary couldn’t help but wonder just whom Vaughn had entertained in the Chinese chamber before—and whom he had been intending to entertain tonight. Her eyes strayed to the little red cushioned benches that lined the walls. They were too narrow to support two comfortably, too shallow for dalliance of a more relaxed nature. Private the room might be, the furniture was inappropriately constructed for impropriety.
Looking up, Mary encountered Vaughn’s amused gray eyes, watching her as though he knew exactly what she had been thinking.
Holding up the decanter, Vaughn enquired, “Claret?”
It was amazing the innuendo the man managed to pack into an entirely innocent word.
Lifting her chin, Mary gave a sniff worthy of a spinster chaperone. “I don’t indulge.”
Vaughn paused with the stopper poised above the decanter, one eyebrow raised. “No?” he said softly, and Mary had the uneasy feeling that they were talking about more than wine.
“No,” she said shortly. “If we might return to business…”
“Business is it? How extremely…lowering. And just what sort of business would you care to transact?”
“Exactly the sort you engaged me to pursue. Or, rather, the individual you engaged me to pursue. The Black Tulip.”
“And if I told you my interests had changed? That my circumstances had altered?”
Mary frowned at him. “We have a bargain, my lord.”
“Bargains change. People change.”
“How poetic.” Mary’s voice was so acid it nearly burned a hole in the exquisite marquetry of the table.
Setting down the decanter with a decided thump, Vaughn’s face spread in a grin of genuine appreciation. “Well said, Miss Alsworthy. And as we all know, the truest poetry is the most feigning. As You Like It,” he added, for Mary’s edification.
“I don’t like it,” Mary said repressively.
Glass in one hand, Vaughn gestured expansively. “Don’t all young ladies love poetry?”
“Not this one.”
Vaughn’s voice dropped intimately. “Generations of cavaliers have spun pretty lies for pretty faces—and what face prettier than yours? Would you prefer an epic, with ships dashed across a foreign shore in your honor? A b
allad, perhaps. ‘Come live with me and be my love / And we will all the pleasures prove…’”
Mary cut through Vaughn’s recitation before he could enumerate them. “The Black Tulip has suggested a meeting place.”
Vaughn bowed to the inevitable. “Very well,” he sighed, motioning with his glass. “Since you seem determined to do so, tell me about your spy.”
“Your spy has summoned me for an audience tomorrow night at Vauxhall Gardens.”
“Vauxhall,” mused Vaughn, as the reflected points of light in his claret sparkled like candles of a drowned city. “An interesting choice.”
“An obvious one,” Mary countered. “With masks and dark walkways.”
“I am familiar with the gardens,” replied Vaughn, his lips curving reminiscently. “More so than you, I imagine.”
Judging from the glint in Vaughn’s eye, he had made good use of the darker corners. “Far be it from me to challenge your great experience, my lord. My own little knowledge of the world certainly can’t compare.”
Vaughn’s face darkened. He abruptly put down his glass. “Don’t even wish it. You are better served without my experience. It would put lines on your pretty face. Here.” He ran a deliberate finger down her cheek, his every move a challenge. “And here. It would be a shame to mar a thing of such beauty.” His hand moved to cup her chin, angling her face with the dispassionate expertise of a collector examining a miniature. “Such exquisite beauty.”
Mary steeled herself not to react, even as his touch tingled against her cheek.
“I know,” she said coolly. “Others have told me so before.”
Their eyes locked and held in an unspoken battle of wills, each daring the other to give way. With a rough laugh, Vaughn broke first, releasing his grip on her chin, staggering slightly as he did so.
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