by Лорен Уиллиг
But what was the purpose of respectability? She had already been nearly ruined once, for a man who meant nothing to her and a title that did. Better now, to be ruined in truth for the sake of the man she wanted, the man she — Mary shied away from the word. The man she loved. There. She had admitted it. She loved him. Was that so very strange? She loved him for all the dark and dismal reasons he loved her, for all his vices and inconsistencies, his selfishness and his pride, his inconvenient honesty and his devastating wit.
Reaching back, Mary untied the tapes at her waist. Her petticoat slid down over her hips, crumpling on the floor around her feet. Stepping daintily out of the pile of fabric, Mary kicked it aside. Her stays came next. One tug and the light canvas corset joined her petticoat on the pink and yellow pattern on the ground.
Bending over to tackle her boots, she tugged at the knots in the laces. Without her stays, she felt marvelously free, her unconfined waist bending without the press of whalebone. She kicked off one boot, then the other, flexing her feet in their silk stockings like a dancer at Covent Garden. She was sure her legs were as good as theirs.
Vaughn could be the judge of that.
With a flick of her fingers, Mary undid the bows on her garters, letting the blue ribbons flutter to the ground. With quick, precise movements, she rolled down the silk stockings over her calves, until she stood in Vaughn's wife's room in nothing but her chemise. Above the dressing table, her mirrored lips curved in a red, dangerous smile. The fine lawn whispered easily over her head, floating to the carpet like an emblem of fallen virtue.
The silk of Vaughn's robe slithered sensuously over her skin as she slid both arms into the broad sleeves, cinching the heavy fabric closed with its own broad sash. The brocade was the color of expensive wine, the color of the claret in Vaughn's glass that night in the Chinese chamber, embroidered with exotic Oriental dragons who swished their golden tails through a burgundy forest and played hide-and-seek in the folds around Mary's legs. As the fabric washed over her, Mary remembered that night, with the candlelight flickering off the porcelain plaques and the gold thread in the crimson cushions, in that doorless, windowless, jewel box of a room, and Vaughn, more exotic and glittering than any of it by far, his hair disheveled and his shirt open, drinking to her only with his eyes — with his eyes, and lips, and a hundred indecipherable endearments.
On an impulse, Mary reached up and drew the pins from her hair, letting it tumble down around her shoulders. She had been too vain of her hair to succumb to the current fashion for short curls. Loosed, it fell nearly to her waist, heavy and straight. Rather than use the countess's brush, with its telltale blond hairs still caught in the bristles, she combed her fingers through the tangles, feeling the heavy mass shift across her shoulder blades, black on crimson.
She rubbed her cheek against her right shoulder, enjoying the sleekness of the silk. The fabric smelled like Vaughn, with the tang of claret and sandalwood, exotic and familiar all at once.
She scarcely recognized herself in the mirror, with the dressing gown open at the neck and her hair falling free around her shoulders. The girl reflected in the candlelight was exotic and wanton, with the crimson of the robe casting an echoing color in her cheeks and lips, contrasting with the pale skin of her throat and hinting at more interesting valleys below. She had worn ballgowns cut far lower, and yet she had never felt so bare.
She had never worn silk next to her skin before, without layers of linen and lawn, cambric and canvas forming a barrier in between. The fabric slid fascinatingly around her legs as she walked towards the door, every ripple a caress. The girl in the crimson silk didn't stride; she swayed, as the heavy fabric nipped at her heels and played peek-a-boo with her calves. The fibers of the carpet tickled the soles of her bare feet.
As she slipped through to the earl's chamber, leaving behind a decade's dust and decay, she wondered what Vaughn would say when he saw her. And what she would say to him.
Or perhaps there would be no need for words at all.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Benedick: I pray thee now, tell me for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?
Beatrice: For them all together; which maintained so politic a state of evil, that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?
Benedick: Suffer love — a good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will…. Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, V, ii
"What are you still doing here?"
The voice, hoarse but distinct, came from the tousled linen on the great bed on the dais, giving the impression of animated and disgruntled bedding.
Mary shut the door of the countess's chambers carefully behind her, disposing of her candle on the table by the door.
"You're not supposed to be awake," she said softly. "I gave you enough opium to stun a goat."
"A flattering comparison," rasped the voice from the bed.
"Don't complain," admonished Mary, wending her way across the room, the heavy silk undulating around her legs. "It might have been an elephant."
Lifting his head from the pillow, Vaughn said, with great effort, "Hellfire Club…Played with opium…unexciting."
Mary had to lift up the long ends of the robe to ascend the two steps to the dais. "So those stories are all true."
Vaughn's head dropped back against the pillow as though the effort of holding it up were too much for him. His eyes drifted closed. "Not as interesting…as they sound."
"You can tell me more later." Mary settled herself on the edge of the bed, her long hair brushing Vaughn's pillow. His forehead felt warm to the touch, although that might have been nothing more than the heavy blankets. "After you rest."
Vaughn's gray eyes, filmed with pain and opium, moved speculatively from her unbound hair to the deep V left where the robe crossed at her chest. But he declined to comment.
"Is there any water?" he asked in a dry croak.
"Port?" suggested Mary, reaching for the rounder of the two decanters. "You lost a great deal of blood."
Vaughn moved his head slightly to the side, the movement barely making a dent in the pillow.
"Water," he repeated.
"If that's what you want…"
Mary shook back her too-wide sleeve, allowing him to admire the effect of her white arm against the deep red silk as she poured water from the crystal jug Derby had left on the tray with the decanters. There was no glass for it, so Mary poured the water into the brandy glass, looping both hands around the rounded bowl as she lifted the glass to Vaughn's lips.
Giving her an inscrutable look, Vaughn reached for the glass himself, using his good right arm, although even that movement made him grimace with pain. His fingers seemed to have trouble closing around the bowl, and the glass would have fallen if Mary had not been there to catch it when he released it.
As Mary replaced the glass on the tray, Vaughn struggled to push himself up on his elbows, going an unfortunate gray with the effort.
"Stop it!" Mary scolded, flinging herself into the breach. "You're supposed to be lying still."
"Would you?" croaked Vaughn, sliding back down into a bank of goose down.
"No," admitted Mary, extracting a pillow and giving it a good hard whack before replacing it behind him. "But that's beside the point. I'm not the one who was shot."
Vaughn's eyes gleamed a dull obsidian beneath his lowered lids. "You might have been."
"I refuse to argue hypotheticals with you while you're ill," said Mary loftily.
"Really?" murmured Vaughn. His voice might be barely audible, but he still managed to exude sarcasm from every pore. The fingers of his right hand fluttered in what was meant to be a wave. "What's all this, then?"
Even weak and drugged, Vaughn didn't miss a trick. He had, Mary realized, deliberately declined to comment on her scandalous state of undress in o
rder to spring the argument on her when she would least expect it. She didn't know whether to cry with relief, laugh, or smack him.
Smacking him would have to wait, so Mary combined the two earlier options. Smiling crookedly, she said, "It's a robe. Your robe, in fact. Derby was kind enough to lend me the use of it."
Vaughn's brows drew together over his nose. Only Vaughn could contrive to look down his nose while almost entirely prone. "That's not all."
"Actually," said Mary airily, struggling with an absurd urge to laugh, "it is all."
Vaughn was not amused. "I can't marry you," he said flatly.
Mary brushed back a short lock of silvered hair. One of these days, she would have to ask him whether the silver was a matter of nature or art. Given the unalloyed darkness of the hair on the other portions of his body, she suspected the latter. "I know. You told me earlier."
Vaughn scowled forbiddingly. "My wife — Anne — she's still alive."
Mary smiled blandly down at him. "I met her, if you recall. Right before you were shot."
Vaughn pressed his eyes tightly together.
Mary leaned hastily over. "Is it your arm? Do you need more opium?"
"Anne," said Vaughn on a low groan. "Of all the damnable…"
"Ah," said Mary, leaning back. "I do agree with the adjective. How is it that she comes to be alive when you were meant to have murdered her years ago?"
"One…only wish," murmured Vaughn hoarsely. Filling the brandy glass with water, Mary held it to Vaughn's lips. He drank gratefully before falling back again against the pillows. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer. "She ran off more than ten years ago. Music master. I believed — I hoped — she was dead."
Mary paused with the glass suspended above the tray. Brandy was beginning to seem like a very good idea. For her. "The tomb in the family vault?"
"Empty."
"And the rumors?"
"All false." Vaughn's lips twisted into a whisper of a smile. "But so entertaining. They added…a certain cachet. Kept the debutantes away."
"You," said Mary in fond exasperation, "are quite mad."
Vaughn's smile winked out like a snuffed candle. "And quite married."
Mary set the glass down on the tray, concentrating on the sparkle of crystal against silver. "How long have you known?"
Vaughn wasted no words. "Vauxhall."
The purple-red of the port reflected against the silver base of the tray like Homer's wine-dark sea, treachery in its unfathomed depths, capable of swallowing ships and their crews whole, with no one ever the wiser. Vauxhall. That had been when Vaughn had gone from flirtatious to indifferent. No, not indifferent. Distracted at first, and then deliberately rude. All due to the appearance of one small, cloaked figure.
"So, you see…you should leave me. Go home." Vaughn pointedly turned his head on the pillow in a deliberate gesture of renunciation, presenting her with a profile as imperious and as cold as that of an emperor on an antique coin. As he turned, she could see the brownish stains on the bandage that tied beneath his arm.
"No," she said, very simply and very clearly.
Rolling his head slowly back over, Vaughn regarded her with narrowed eyes. Like most autocrats, he was unused to being disobeyed. It would do him good, Mary decided giddily. He needed a little less deference in his life. With her choice made, she felt oddly light and free. There was no turning back now, no thinking of what lay ahead or behind. There was just Vaughn. And that was enough.
"I'm not leaving you," Mary elaborated. She added, with false nonchalance, "I can't, in any event. Derby is having my dress cleaned and pressed."
Vaughn's elbows made dents in the goosedown as he pressed himself up against the pillows. "Don't you understand?" he demanded hoarsely. "It isn't going to change. She isn't going away this time."
"Neither am I," said Mary calmly, reaching behind him to plump his pillows. "Do you think you could move just a bit to the left? Ah. There. Perfect. I haven't had much experience of nursing, but I hear that one is supposed to pay special attention to the patient's pillows."
Even the poorer for several pints of blood, Vaughn wasn't that easily put off. "Why?"
Mary considered prosing on about the pillows, but thought better of it. There was no way out but through; the admission had to be made, and the longer she put off making it, the harder it would become.
"Because I want to." Now that the moment had come, Mary realized that the flippant answer wasn't entirely honest. If one was going to tear out one's heart and lay it at someone's feet to be trampled on, there was no point in doing it by halves. "Because I want you."
Vaughn didn't say anything. He just looked at her, like a spectator at Astley's Amphitheatre, waiting to see what absurd stunt might come next.
"I want you." Mary repeated, her voice gaining strength with each word. "Not your title. Not your money. Oh, I won't deny those would be lovely — but if I can't have you with them, I'll have you without them. That's why."
Vaughn's fingers moved weakly on the counterpane, as though missing the comforting presence of his quizzing glass. "How very…impractical of you."
"I know." Shrugging, she raised both brows, challenging him to contradict her. "I've never done anything so utterly idiotic in my life."
He returned her gaze impassively, arrogant even in illness, his stark features affording no encouragement, no quarter. One would have thought he could have spared her a nod, a smile, any kind of acknowledgment that she had just laid her future into his hands in the single most selfless gesture she had made in her life.
But, then, he wouldn't be Vaughn.
Why couldn't she have felt this way about any of her other suitors? St. George, for example. Someone with a good disposition and a tidy income and no inconvenient spouses tucked away in the wings. But then there was Vaughn. Always Vaughn. He blotted out the others — like a plague of locusts, thought Mary irritably, darkening the sky and consuming everything in his path.
"I could have saved myself a great deal of bother today by just shooting you myself, instead of fighting with the Black Tulip for your blasted life," Mary informed him. "But for some reason, I like you alive. Alive and tormenting me." Folding her arms across her chest, Mary glowered down at him. "Heaven only knows there's no reason in the world I should. All you do is sneer and mock and quote ridiculous bits of Shakespeare at me. Half the time, I think you make them up."
Naturally, that got his attention.
Before Vaughn could muster a protest, Mary jabbed a finger at him. "You're rude and autocratic and — and married! Good heavens. You can't get any worse than that. Even Turnip Fitzhugh has the benefit of bachelordom."
Vaughn made a face. "No. Not Turnip. Please."
"No," agreed Mary, "not Turnip. Although Turnip has thirty thousand pounds a year and it would be child's play to get him out on a balcony. I could be established. I could be married. But then there's you." She let that sink in before going on, before confessing the rest of the horrible truth. "Next to you, everyone else seems dull. Everyone else seems pale. It's like water after wine."
Vaughn's lips twisted into a smile. "I didn't think…you indulged."
"I didn't," Mary said shortly. "Until you."
Vaughn's eyes held hers, unreadable beneath their heavy lids. Without the slightest hint of mockery, he said, "Neither did I."
For a wounded man, Vaughn had a surprisingly strong grip. His right hand caught the loose end of the robe and tugged. Since she had a choice of sitting or losing her robe, Mary sat, landing heavily on the side of the bed.
"Your bandages," said Mary anxiously, as the movement dislodged the covers, revealing the expanse of white linen wrapped about his chest.
"Never mind my bandages." With a bemused grimace, Vaughn shifted himself up against the pillows. "Was ever one in this humor wooed? Come here. Please."
Mary didn't move from her perch on the side of the bed. With victory in her grasp, it was easy to be ungracious. She raised both brows. "I t
hought you wanted me to go away."
Vaughn smiled crookedly. "I find that I'm not so noble as I had hoped. You can vouch that I did try, although it went sorely against the grain."
"I prefer you as you are — tainted and tarnished."
Vaughn's good hand tangled in her long, black hair. "Rotted black to the core, you mean."
"More of a light gray," Mary corrected. "Practically silver."
"'Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,'" quoted Vaughn, lifting one eyebrow in silent challenge.
There was only one way to stop Vaughn when he started abusing Shakespeare. Mary didn't scruple to employ it. With her long hair flowing down around them, she employed the excellent method recommended by Mr. Shakespeare and stopped his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak neither. His lips were dry and cracked beneath hers, not soft as they had been the other night. Where there had once been claret, she could taste the metallic tang of blood where he must have bitten down with the pain of the surgeon's probing. Mary welcomed the chafing, the sharp taste of blood where once there had been wine. He was hers, every bruise, every flaw, with blood on his lips and the musty aftertaste of opium furring his tongue.
There was a raised patch of skin just below his collarbone, where he had been wounded once before, and survived. It was a long, thin wound, slippery as snakeskin against the skin of his chest. Mary's hand slid sideways, exploring the contours of his muscles, the texture of his skin, the curious ridges and bumps of his bones, cataloguing them all for her own private inventory.
With one deft move, Vaughn twitched free the bow at her waist, his hands slipping beneath her robe. Inch by inch, the caress of silk gave way to skin, as his hands slid slowly up from her waist along the curve of her ribs, unfettered by all the layers of clothing that had thwarted her more adventurous suitors in the past. Unhindered by corset or stays, Vaughn's hands brushed delicately past her unbound breasts, the slightest whisper of a touch, but all the more tantalizing for that. Mary's breath caught in her throat as he circled back with deliberate slowness. Mary arched her neck, soaring miles above Belliston Square on her own private cloud as Vaughn leaned forwards to brush a kiss against her pulse.