Lauren Willig - [Pink Carnation 04]

by The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

  Sweeping up his glass, Vaughn saluted her. “To women who know their own worth.”

  With one fluid motion, he knocked back the contents.

  “Enough to know when to leave.” Mary dragged the corners of her cloak around her and turned to look for the mechanism that operated the hidden door.

  It couldn’t be that complicated; architects seldom had much imagination when it came to concealing such things. It was the fourth panel from the fireplace; Mary had marked that much when Vaughn entered.

  She poked cautiously at a particularly protuberant curlicue.

  “Don’t.” Vaughn spoke softly, and yet his voice seemed to carry to fill the whole room, like mist at twilight. “Don’t go.”

  Mary’s fingers stilled on the filigree border, the finely chased gold biting into the pads of her fingers. “Why should I stay?”

  Mary heard the chink of crystal against wood as he set down his glass on the teak table. His soft-soled slippers made hardly any noise on the polished floor.

  Staring at a Chinese village, a long-poled house poised beside a hypothetical river, Mary was reminded inescapably of the Long Gallery at Sibley Court, that very first night of their association. He had come up behind her just so then, standing so close that his shirtfront brushed her back, so close she could feel the warmth of his skin, so close that his breath stirred her hair. They had so stood so then, and he had stepped away, another calculated move in a game played more for intellect than passion. It had been a feint, a ruse.

  But this time, Vaughn didn’t step away. He smelled of soap and sandalwood and spilled spirits.

  He bent his head, and whispered in her ear, “Because I want you to.”

  Mary made a Herculean effort not to squirm.

  “It isn’t good for you to always get what you want,” she said primly.

  “Perhaps not,” Vaughn agreed solemnly, his breath ruffling the hair at the nape of her neck. His hands cupped her shoulders, warm even through the wool of her cloak. They moved downwards, exploring the shape of her upper arms through the fabric. There was something mesmerizing about the movement, the power of human touch. “But so very, very pleasant.”

  Swallowing hard, Mary twisted in his grasp, turning to face him, the porcelain plaque hard and cold against her back. “Lord Vaughn—”

  “Sebastian,” he corrected.

  There was something in his face as he said it, something raw and vulnerable, that robbed the words from Mary’s tongue.

  She bit down on her lower lip in confusion, not knowing what to say. It was one thing to spar with Lord Vaughn, sleek and polished, but this Sebastian, with his hair tousled and his shirt open at the throat, was another matter entirely, and infinitely more unsettling.

  Taking advantage of her bewilderment, Vaughn ran an exploratory finger along the curve of her cheek, like a master sculptor marveling at his creation. Even his very breath seemed to intoxicate, rich with the smell of heady foreign wine. Mary seized on the scent with the last vestiges of common sense.

  “You’re foxed,” she protested.

  “Intoxicated,” Vaughn corrected, using his fingers to trace the arch of her brows. His lips formed the words very deliberately. Mary couldn’t take her eyes off the sight of them. “Drunk on the sight of you.”

  Mary tilted her chin, looking him straight in the eye. Her show of bravado might have been more effective if her heart wasn’t pounding quite so hard, all but drowning out the sound of her own voice. “Eyes don’t inebriate.”

  “Yours do. Stronger than port wine, sweeter than champagne, more biting than brandy. One gaze and a man is left staggering, sotted.”

  “I think you confuse me with the claret, my lord,” she managed.

  “Who needs claret?” His hand infiltrated the carefully arranged locks of her hair, twining through the long strands with a fine disregard for her hairdresser’s art.

  “You did, an hour ago.”

  Vaughn’s thumbs smoothed over her eyelids, coaxing them closed. “‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’” he murmured, his voice pitched deep and fathomless as midnight, “‘and I will pledge with mine.’”

  One finger brushed across the sensitive skin of her lower lip in a pledge of things to come. They both knew how the verse ended, but Mary found herself waiting breathlessly for the final line, like the final words of an incantation.

  Vaughn’s voice dropped to something scarcely above a whisper, his breath soft against her lips.

  “‘Or leave a kiss but in the cup, and I’ll not ask for wine.’”

  She could taste the claret he had drunk, headier from his lips than from the glass. He gave her a sporting chance to pull away, his lips a mere whisper on hers, his hands braced on the wall behind her. She could so easily have leaned away, have broken the fragile contact, as good sense and all her upbringing commanded. There was no profit in his kisses, no prospect of matrimony to follow.

  That, at least, was what she should have been thinking. Instead, she found herself leaning forwards, sharing the draft he was offering. She could feel the warmth of his skin through the fine linen of his shirt as her hands moved up his arms to his shoulders, the muscles tensing beneath her touch, moving to hold her closer. His skin was warm, so warm, warding off the chill of the cold porcelain behind her back, the echoing gilded rooms, the night outside. His hands slid beneath her cloak, molding themselves to her waist, drawing her nearer, warming wherever they touched. Perhaps it was the wine, tingling on her tongue, inebriating by extension. Or perhaps it was just Vaughn—Sebastian—cradling her as though she were more precious than the porcelain on the walls, his lips exploring hers with the skill of a decade of assorted debaucheries.

  At the nape of his neck, his hair feathered against the back of her hands, surprisingly soft, just as the skin beneath his collar was warm and supple, a world away from the starched shirts and stiff coats with which the Lord Vaughn she knew always barricaded himself. Mary let her hands slide further beneath his collar, feeling the muscles of his back undulate beneath her touch. Her fingers roamed over his shoulder blades, like an explorer traversing a mountain range in a strange, new land, and she could hear a roaring in her ears like the fall of a distant waterfall.

  Until the hands holding her abruptly pulled away, and she opened her eyes to see Vaughn, her hair tousled and his eyes the color of an old silver coin.

  Blinking a few times, Mary touched her fingers to her lips. She had been kissed before, more times than she cared to admit to. In her first Season, fresh from the country, she had allowed liberties in the hopes it might bring someone up to scratch—and, if she were honest, because she had been curious. It hadn’t always been unpleasant. There were men who knew what they were doing, who didn’t grab, who didn’t slobber, who didn’t try to colonize her vocal cords with their tongues. But it had never, ever so absorbed her attention or scattered her senses.

  Despite her four Seasons, Mary suddenly felt as callow as any girl on her first balcony, all her worldliness in tatters around her.

  Perhaps it was the claret.

  “My lord—” she began, before realizing that she no idea where the sentence was supposed to end. “Sebastian…”

  The name felt awkward on her tongue, despite the license he had given her to use it.

  Vaughn’s arm stiffened beneath her hand. Stepping back with unflattering promptness, he stared at her as though seeing her for the first time, his gaze raking her face as though he were seeing straight through the skin.

  Pressing his eyes tightly shut, he took a deep breath. “Mary—” he began, and then stopped, scraping a hand through his hair in an entirely uncharacteristic gesture of confusion.

  “Yes?” said Mary, trying to keep her voice neutral and failing utterly.

  Vaughn’s lips twisted. “I can’t say I never intended it, because I did. When I saw you standing there, I thought…”

  Mary waited for him to finish the thought, but Vaughn turned abruptly away. “The time has come to restore
you to the bosom of your family. I’ll have Derby ready my sedan chair to take you home. You shouldn’t be abroad at this time of night.”

  Bending, he yanked violently on the tongue of one the gilded dogs. The tongue rolled forwards. Somewhere in the depths of the door, a catch clicked and the panel sprung smoothly open.

  “What of Vauxhall?” Mary asked.

  Vaughn paused with one hand on the panel. “Vauxhall,” he repeated, as though it were an unfamiliar term.

  “The reason for my visit,” Mary reminded him lightly.

  Vaughn’s brows drew together. “Of course. I knew that.”

  He looked rather adorable when he was befuddled, Mary thought giddily, although whether he was befuddled with claret or the kiss was unclear. She preferred to credit the latter.

  Drawing himself up with exaggerated dignity, Vaughn addressed the air somewhere beyond her left shoulder. “There are arrangements to be made for our trip to Vauxhall. I’ll see to them. It is,” he added, with a crooked smile, “the least I can do.”

  “Until tomorrow, then?” Mary asked archly.

  “Yes,” Vaughn said, and there was nothing to be read in the silvered mirrors of his eyes. “Until then.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “So…,” Colin said.

  “So,” I agreed, nodding heartily.

  Now that I had him, two hours before schedule, I had no idea what to do with him. Here we were, out in the middle of Mayfair, me in my sloppy archive clothes, Colin as dishy as ever, and all I could do was bob my head like one of those Chinese dolls.

  Needless to say, I had had it all planned out. There was a charming little Greek restaurant next to my flat—well, Cypriot, but close enough—with coarse red tablecloths, heavenly food, and a rough but surprisingly potent Greek wine. Between the impact of the wine, the conveniently dim lighting, and the exotic strains of Greek music playing softly in the background, it was the perfect place for a first date, the sort of place where they would let you sit for hours, intruding only to refill your wine glass and bring you yet another plate of olives.

  I had pointedly ignored my friend Pammy’s advice to spend the week practicing seductively extracting pits from olives. I didn’t see anything the least bit seductive about an olive pit. That was, Pammy informed me, precisely my problem. On the other hand, trying to ditch the olive pit could provide an icebreaker if conversation ever got slow.

  But my little Greek restaurant—and my sleek, black going-out pants, my deodorant, and my hair dryer—were all back in Bayswater. We were in Mayfair. It was what one might call a slight logistical problem.

  “So,” I repeated, since it seemed to be the word of choice. “What shall we do?”

  “Eat?” Colin suggested, with a little lift of the eyebrow that made the grainy November dusk as bright as any Technicolor fantasy land. It was, I realized, going to be okay. In fact, it was all more than okay.

  “Squirrel stew?” I suggested, pointing to one who was regarding us curiously from his perch on a metal railing.

  “I’m sure we can do better than that.”

  And it was as easily done as that. In one moment, his hand was at my elbow, as if it had always belonged there. Either he was, as my friend Pammy would say, a first-class smooth arse, or he liked me. Like really liked liked me. That’s also Pammy, only circa sixth grade.

  “True,” I agreed giddily, leaning happily into the hand on my elbow and feeling the brush of his Barbour jacket against mine. Perhaps our Barbour jackets could give birth to a litter of lovely little Wellies. “There must be a pigeon or two somewhere. We could have pigeon pie.”

  “You have to be fast,” cautioned Colin. Away from Bond Street, in the gloom of a residential street, I couldn’t quite make out his face, but I knew the glint was there. “They’re speedy little buggers.”

  “Dangerous, too. There was one time—my little sister had just left to go to school. Next thing we know, poof! She comes back in, absolutely covered—” I broke off with something that was half-hiccup, half-snort, trying to choke down the silly giggles.

  I couldn’t believe I was launching the Date to End All Dates with a disquisition on pigeon poo. I’d never read The Rules, but I was sure there had to be something in there about saving scatological humor for the third date. After all, he’ll never respect you if you give it to him on the first date. And there was no reason Colin needed to know about Jillian’s close, personal acquaintance with the Metro New York pigeon population.

  “Um, how’s your sister doing?” I gabbled quickly, in an awkward attempt at a save.

  “Pigeon-free, last I heard,” Colin said dryly.

  I did what any sensible, adult person would do. I slapped him on the arm. Then I giggled. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  I’m sure I was batting my eyelashes, too, but fortunately it was too dark for him to see. In the space of five minutes, I had regressed straight to middle school. It could have been worse. I could have been wearing leg warmers and a My Little Pony sweatshirt.

  “You’ve seen her more recently than I have,” Colin pointed out.

  “By about two hours,” I protested. Pammy had invited us all to an expat Thanksgiving dinner at her mother’s posh town house in The Boltons, a quiet crescent in South Kensington. Needless to say, there wasn’t anything the least bit expat about either Colin or his sister, but Pammy knew Serena from the all-girls school where they’d both gone to high school together, or whatever they call high school on this side of the Atlantic.

  As for Colin…well, let’s just say that Pammy had gotten fed up with my attempts to organize my love life for myself, and had decided to barge in, more like a charging herd of water buffalo than a fairy godmother. Bless the girl. All I could say was that it had worked. After all, I was here, wasn’t I? More importantly, Colin was here.

  “—the rest of the dinner?” he was saying.

  “Oh, it was the usual thing,” I said blithely. “We all ate until we felt ill, and then we had dessert.”

  Next to me, Colin chuckled, and I felt the boost of it go straight to my head, like a shot of Red Bull on an empty stomach. I was clever, I was charming, I was Super-Date!

  Thus emboldened, I informed him, “It’s not a proper Thanksgiving dinner unless you have to roll yourself groaning out the door at the end of the evening, swearing that you’ll never eat again.”

  “I’m so sorry I missed it,” he said blandly.

  Making a face up at him, I made a big show of trying to recall what happened next. “Aside from the indigestion, you missed out on a great bit of social satire. All the financial people stared fishily at the fashion people and the fashion people made fun of the financial people.”

  “Which camp did you join?”

  “Neither. Serena and I slunk off into the parlor and drank all the rest of the gin. We had a lovely chat.”

  Suddenly, the hand at my elbow had gone as limp as last week’s lettuce. Trepidation came off him in waves. “Did you?”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “Serena told me all sorts of interesting things.”

  She hadn’t, actually. Mostly, we’d talked about her job at a gallery, and then Pammy had barged in, and it had been all about Pammy’s latest boy, who had gone off to Hong Kong and didn’t seem likely to return. What with all that, there hadn’t been much time for pumping Serena about Colin’s childhood peccadilloes. But I was enjoying making Colin squirm.

  In the shadows, I could see Colin mentally cycling through his catalogue of potential disasters. I was just grateful my own sister was safely on the other side of the Atlantic.

  “Weren’t we going to get dinner?” Colin asked hastily.

  I made a mental note to myself to pump Serena for information in the not-so-distant future. Even better, I could have Pammy do it for me. With Pammy at hand, there’s no need for thumbscrews. She could wring information from a turnip.

  Taking pity on him, I indicated the quiet street around us with a sweeping gesture. “We seem to be in a r
estaurant-free zone. There’s not even a Pizza Express in sight!”

  “Impossible,” returned Colin. “They’re everywhere. I even have one under my pillow.”

  I wondered whether the pillow he was referring to was a Sussex pillow or a London pillow. The only times I’d seen him in London, he’d been staying with his great-aunt in Onslow Square, which would seem to imply that he didn’t have a London flat of his own. There was the huge old family pile out in Sussex, a lovely Georgian mansion with a late Victorian library that I coveted with every last breath in my body, but it was hard to imagine someone our age actually living full time out in the country, all alone, in a house meant for a large family and hot-and-cold running servants.

  “Are you staying with your aunt while you’re here?”

  “I usually do when I’m in town,” he said, which didn’t answer anything at all. I wanted to know what he did in town, where he lived when he wasn’t in town, and what his views were on long distance relationships. Did London to Sussex count as long distance?

  “Do you live at Selwick Hall full time?” I realized how silly it sounded the minute the words were out of my mouth. “Sorry. It’s just that you don’t usually see people without a family living out in a big house in the country. I mean, at least not in New York. Is London different?”

  Damn. Open mouth, insert whole leg. Now I’d made it sound like he was some weird sort of family-less freak.

  Fortunately, he took it in the spirit in which it was intended. “I used to live in London,” he said easily. “Up until two years ago. I had a flat in Crouch End.”

  “I haven’t been there,” I said, just to say something.

  “You aren’t missing much. It’s very modern, very trendy.” He shrugged, in cynical commentary on life’s little vagaries. “It seemed the thing to do at twenty-two.”

  “And then?” I asked.

  “When my father died—” was it just me, or did his lips seem to pause over the words? “When my father died, someone had to look after the old place.”