by Лорен Уиллиг
Mary managed to hold the corners of her smile in place. "But, of course, Mr. St. George," she said smoothly, drawing back on her hand. "I esteem myself honored in the friendship of so worthy and honorable a gentleman."
St. George's grip tightened around her fingers. "Your friend and — "
Behind them, someone cleared his throat, forcefully enough to scour the inside of a chimney.
"Miss Alsworthy," Vaughn drawled, standing at his ease with his quizzing glass poised at one eye. The glass flicked to her companion. "St. George."
St. George hastily dropped Mary's hand. "Vaughn."
Vaughn wagged the quizzing glass in St. George's general direction. "What a penchant you have, my dear sir, for conversing in corners. Are these country manners?"
St. George drew himself up to his full height, which put him at least an inch over Vaughn. "In the country, sir, we are accustomed to the luxury of completing a conversation unmolested."
"Indeed?" Vaughn affected an expression of polite interest. "What a charming, rural custom."
Ignoring him, St. George bent over Mary's hand. "I hope we may continue our conversation on a more auspicious occasion?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Mary could see the flash of Vaughn's glass as he dangled it languidly from one finger, the silver winking in the light. "I should like nothing better."
"In that case…" St. George pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, his lips brushing glove, not air. "I shall call upon you. Soon."
"Do," Mary said, the word sounding stiff on her lips beneath the lowering influence of Vaughn's cynical gaze. Fixing her attention firmly on St. George, she repeated, with a flirtatious smile, "Do."
Mary watched St. George depart, wishing she could feel anything at all. He carried himself well. Even if his coat was ill cut, the breadth of his back stretched pleasingly beneath the fabric and the candles caught the gold in his tawny hair. He was a respectable figure of a man, a solid one, a kind one, and she ought to feel something, if only gratitude for the prospect of rescue from spinsterhood. She ought to be relieved. But, instead, as she watched him clap his hat on his curly head, all she felt was a dull sense of resignation.
"Am I to wish you joy?" Vaughn's breath was warm against her ear.
"Coming from you," Mary said tartly, turning towards Vaughn, "it would undoubtedly be a barbed gift. Did you have something to say to me, my lord?"
"Other than the usual pleasantries?"
Tipping her head to one side, Mary indicated that she was not amused.
Vaughn cocked one dark brow. "Unless other affairs have intervened, I believe we have an outing to arrange."
"An outing," Mary repeated.
"To Hyde Park," Vaughn reminded her smoothly. "For matters of a martial kind."
So they were to continue with their association then. Having not heard from him for a week — Mary's lips tightened automatically at the memory — she had assumed that their bargain had ended. After all, he knew that the Black Tulip was to be at Hyde Park at the appointed day and hour. He didn't need her anymore. He didn't need her or want her — and she most certainly didn't need him.
Even now, though, the prospect of a day with Vaughn thrilled her. It was painful and embarrassing to be so drawn to someone who had already proven his indifference to her twice over. Yet there was no denying that words seemed sharper, colors brighter, ideas clearer, the very air more exhilarating when he was there, taunting, teasing, baiting. In short, being himself.
"I suppose my other affairs can wait the day."
"I am relieved," Vaughn said smoothly. "I should have hated to disappoint our friend."
"But you have so many friends," murmured Mary. "In all sorts of places." Down the hall, for example.
Vaughn regarded her lazily though his quizzing glass. "Some are more demanding than others."
Despite having opened the topic, Mary decided she didn't want to know. "What time do you call for me?" she asked abruptly.
"It will be early," Vaughn warned her. "Well before noon."
"I believe I can contrive to drag myself from my bed," Mary said with heavy sarcasm. "I'm scarcely such a hothouse flower as that."
To her surprise, instead of replying in kind, Vaughn just looked at her. His eyes, without their accustomed armor of the quizzing glass, dwelled on her face for what felt like a very long time.
"No," he said quietly. "I don't believe you are."
Mary couldn't figure out whether or not she had just been insulted. It was hard to be sure of anything under the dizzying force of Lord Vaughn's concentrated regard.
"Not all of us have hothouses," retorted Mary belligerently.
"You wouldn't want one," said Vaughn softly, his eyes never leaving hers. "They aren't all one thinks they would be."
Mary tossed her head. "As opposed to the common wildflower?"
"Never common," countered Vaughn, with just a glimmer of a smile. "And only a little bit wild."
There was a strange ache at the back of Mary's throat. Why wouldn't he just let her hate him? No, not hate; despise, revile, all those other socially acceptable emotions. Why did he have to look at her like that?
Because, she reminded herself bracingly, he was a rake, a rogue, and a seducer. They did that. The rake looked at a woman as though she were his sole hope for salvation — and then he went right on along to the next one, to the opera singer, the blonde in the back room, and heaven only knew who else.
"My lord Vaughn?" Lady Richard's country cousin interposed herself between them.
Lord Vaughn's face reverted to its habitual urbane detachment.
As one of Vaughn's women, the cousin was an unlikely choice. Her hair was straight, with no hint of a curl, an indeterminate shade between blond and brown that might have been pretty had she taken any pains with it. Her dress was equally plain, a high-necked blue muslin that wouldn't have looked amiss on a Quaker. The color was a pale blue so dreary as to be nearly gray, the sort of color that blended back into the wainscoting. Her only ornament was the locket she wore on a ribbon around her neck, a simple gold oval with a flower delicately worked in enamel on the front, a pretty enough trinket for a young girl, but nothing to draw the eye.
Mary made an effort to remember her name. It was something to do with sheep. Lambsdale, Oviston…
Whoever she was, she had placed a hand on Vaughn's arm as though it had a right to be there. It was a very elegantly shaped hand, with long, tapering fingers, a most inappropriate hand for a country bumpkin.
"Will you pardon me if I borrow Lord Vaughn for a moment, Miss Alsworthy?" she asked in a pleasant alto voice, unmarred by any regional accent.
Mary smiled brittlely. "Borrow?' She gave an affected little laugh. "My dear, you may have him for as long as you like."
"Shouldn't that be as long as I like?" countered Vaughn, looking like a self-satisfied pasha.
"I'm sure it will be," said Mary sweetly. "It is, after all, as you like it."
"'As the ox hath his bow, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires.'"
"If you can make any sense out of him, you have my commendations," remarked Mary to the cousin.
The cousin smiled demurely, revealing a set of even, white teeth. "I'm afraid you do me too much credit, Miss Alsworthy. I am merely the messenger. I come on behalf of Lord Uppington, who wishes to see Lord Vaughn in his book room. About the impending parliamentary session, I believe?"
Mary didn't believe it for a moment. It was difficult to imagine a more whiggish Whig than Lord Vaughn, whose ancestors had been among those responsible for the expulsion of the last Stuart king in 1688, while the Uppingtons were staunchly Tory. They were as firmly members of Pitt's faction as Vaughn was of Charles James Fox's.
It was, Mary supposed, not entirely inconceivable that Vaughn might wish to broker a deal with Uppington on an issue of interest to both factions. Given the weakness of Addington's government, there might even be plans afoot for a coalition, although Mary was
hard pressed to imagine the ministry that could combine both Pitt and Fox.
Mary smiled prettily at Vaughn. "I certainly wouldn't want to keep you from your parliamentary duties. Good evening, Miss — er."
And with that effective parting snub, she was gone, wending her way back along the hallway with all the deliberate provocation of a latter-day Cleopatra. It only lacked a few flute boys.
"Flute boys?" queried Jane.
Vaughn regarded her blandly. "A momentary lapse in concentration."
"More than a moment, I would think," replied Jane, arching both her brows in obvious amusement.
"You wished — pardon me. Lord Uppington wished to speak to me?"
Jane took the hint. Forbearing to quiz him further, she indicated one of the two corridors branching off the entryway. "Shall we?"
In the entryway, Mary was being helped into her wrap by her new brother-in-law and sometime suitor, her back very pointedly turned.
Looking away, Vaughn found Jane's knowing eye on him. It was a distinctly irritating sensation. He was the one who was supposed to be doling out the sardonic looks, not the other way around. It was an unacceptable inversion of the established world order.
"After you, Miss Wooliston," he drawled in tones of exaggerate ennui.
Jane cast him a shrewd look, but said nothing. Instead, she took up a candle from the collection on the table in the hall and led the way down the right hand corridor. Her silence was more damning than any knowing comment.
Jane led him to a small parlor, lined with books and furnished sparsely with furniture as heavy and dark as the weather outside the window.
"Well?" Jane inquired, with an arch of one light brow.
It was, Vaughn had to admit, an effective trick. By never identifying the question, one got all sorts of interesting answers.
Dropping into a red-cushioned chair, he rested his palms comfortably over the arms. "Miss Alsworthy and I have a further appointment with your friend. We meet in Hyde Park, the day after tomorrow."
"His Majesty's review of the first division of the London volunteers."
"None other." Vaughn watched the drops of rain splatter against the windowpanes. "Are we meant to be party to an assassination?"
"I don't know." The words cost her an obvious effort. Jane's well-shaped lips pressed tightly together. "He managed to evade us at Vauxhall."
"He?"
"I use the masculine pronoun for the sake of convenience. Nothing more."
Vaughn crossed his legs at the ankle, admiring the sparkle of his silver and diamond buckles. "I trust you investigated Rathbone?"
"Naturally." Jane circled the room, her muslin skirts whispering softly against her legs. "He possessed the usual revolutionary paraphernalia. Tattered tracts, treasonous correspondence with like-minded colleagues, a half-written treatise on political philosophy — none of it the least bit of use."
"No telltale manuscript by the bed? No sampler over the hearth embroidered with charming pictures of black tulips?"
"Rathbone isn't the embroidering kind," returned Jane. "His laboratory, however…" She paused, as though calculating how far to confide in him. "I believe you have some experience with natural philosophy, my lord."
Vaughn shook his head in demurral. "Only that of an amateur, a dabbler, a dilettante."
"That," commented Jane severely, "is far too many words to describe a nullity."
Vaughn accepted the rebuke with a casual inclination of his head.
"We found something curious in Rathbone's chambers," said Jane, watching Vaughn closely.
"Natural philosophers are curious sorts," provided Vaughn.
"We found vials of liquid mercury, several bowls of red crystals, lenses" — Jane ticked the items off on her fingers — "and a large canister, carefully stoppered, which, when we opened it, appeared to contain nothing at all. Yet someone went to the trouble of keeping it hermetically sealed with several layers of wax."
"An empty container?" Memory shifted and fell into place, an explanation far from simple but laughably prosaic. "Rathbone's experiments are beyond my humble powers, but I might be able to shed some little light on the discovery."
"Please do," invited Jane.
Vaughn ignored the light vein of sarcasm. "Have you ever heard of Priestley's treatise on air?" Without waiting for Jane's answer, he went on, "Apparently, like the rest of us, air is a deceiver. Rather than one element, it is several."
"Rather like the petals of the Tulip," mused Jane.
Vaughn acknowledged the point with a nod. "According to Priestley, by applying the right sorts of heat or chemicals, one could isolate the elements within the element, creating different sorts of gasses from the original air, all invisible to the naked eye. I can't imagine why one would want to," Vaughn added as an afterthought, "but there you have it."
"And Rathbone," concluded Jane, "was a student of Priestley."
"Precisely." Vaughn stretched out his legs before the fire. "Your empty container in fact was filled with a distilled element of some sort, which you unknowingly released back into the air whence it came. Tsk, tsk, Miss Wooliston. Weeks of scientific endeavor lost in the curiosity of a moment. Pandora's legacy lives on."
Jane frowned at him. "But what of the red powder? Miss Gwen believes it to be a new incendiary of some sort."
"A distillation of mercury, turned to crystal." Vaughn dabbed at his mouth with a lace-edged handkerchief. "I am unfamiliar with the process, but I believe it is one of the chemicals Priestley used in his experiments."
Jane looked like a cat who had licked at a bowl of cream to find it gone sour. "There were scorch marks on several of the tables, and yet not of the sort left by a candle."
"Your lenses," explained Vaughn. "One heats the chemicals with a so-called burning lens, by refracting sunlight through the lens to create heat and even flame."
Jane rested both hands on the windowsill. "In other words," she said, to the raindrops slipping down the glass, "there is a perfectly innocent explanation for all of it."
"I fear so," said Vaughn pleasantly. "As much as I regret to disappoint a lady."
"What a pity," said Jane wryly. "I had hoped it was an infernal machine in the making, rather than merely…empty air."
"I believe Priestley called it de-phlogisticated air," put in Vaughn helpfully.
Ignoring him, Jane took a slow turn about the room, coming to rest with one hand on the head of a bust of Aristotle. Her index finger tapped lightly against the great philosopher's carved cranium.
"Just because his scientific interests are legitimate doesn't mean that Rathbone isn't our man," said Jane, thinking aloud. "Even mad fanatics have hobbies."
"Stamp collecting, for example," put in Vaughn. "Collecting novelty porcelain."
Jane frowned at him. "Bedeviling one's friends and associates."
"I consider that less a hobby and more an avocation." Vaughn smiled serenely at Jane. "Every man needs something to give his life purpose."
"For now, I fear your purpose will have to be dogging Miss Alworthy's heels to His Majesty's review of the troops. I trust you shan't find it too onerous a task."
The gods planned their torments well: Sisyphus, doomed to roll the same rock eternally uphill; Tantalus, tempted with water, yet never allowed to drink; and he, poised as de facto bodyguard to the one women he wanted, but could never have.
It would, thought Vaughn grimly, be so much easier were she a member of the demimonde. Then he could simply make her his mistress, without regard to recurrent wives or the slings and arrows of the sharp-tongued harridans of the ton.
"I assume you will be there as well?"
"No," said Jane shortly. "I leave London in the morning. There are matters abroad that demand immediate attention."
Raising his quizzing glass to one eye, Vaughn regarded Jane in a silent demand for further information.
Jane regarded him right back. Her expression seemed to imply that she had no problem staring people out of count
enance without artificial aids, and if he thought she was going to answer, he was quite mad.
"You're leaving us to the Black Tulip's tender mercies?" Vaughn drawled.
"Or the Black Tulip to yours," replied Jane blandly.
"In other words," suggested Vaughn, watching Jane closely, "you want me to keep the Black Tulip busy while you go about your business elsewhere."
Watching Jane's lips curve in a Sphinx-like smile, it occurred to Vaughn that Jane's assignment might have as much to do with keeping him busy as the Black Tulip. Their alliance, such as it was, was an uneasy one at best, and he knew Jane's associates continued to regard him with outright suspicion. The notion amused him. But he knew it would be useless to try to get Jane to say anything more on the topic.
Accepting defeat, Vaughn lowered his glass and leaned back in his chair. It was clearly well used, the cushions molded themselves obligingly to his body. "What do you believe the Black Tulip intends?" he asked.
"One." Jane held up a finger in illustration. "The Black Tulip does exactly what he claimed. He uses this opportunity to pass further instructions along to Miss Alsworthy."
"Unlikely," interrupted Vaughn lazily. "If the Tulip wanted a tкteа-tкte, he wouldn't have tolerated the presence of an escort."
"He might, of course, stage a diversion to separate you from Miss Alsworthy. Or he might use more subtle means to communicate with her, such as a note tucked into her reticule, in which case your presence is immaterial."
"But you don't believe that is the case."
"No," said Jane heavily.
"Option two," provided Vaughn, holding up two fingers on her behalf. "The review is merely a diversion. The Tulip lures us to Hyde Park while he conducts his dastardly business elsewhere."
"By far the likeliest scenario," conceded Jane. "However, that's really option three. You missed one."
Vaughn raised a quizzical brow.
"An attempt of some kind on the royal family," prompted Jane, as though to a slow student. "Why your presence would be imperative for that, however, I can't think. Nor can I imagine how Miss Alsworthy would be of any use, unless the Tulip intended to use her to distract the guards protecting Their Majesties."
"But you find that improbable."