“Oh capital, Garth,” Vivienne yelled. “Couldn’t you have gotten angry a few seconds ago when it mattered?”
Why was she upset with Garth when this was entirely her fault? She couldn’t let an innocent man—well, somewhat innocent man—perish on account of her reckless actions.
“Wait here,” she ordered Garth as she wrapped his leash around a lamp pole. Then she swung open the brothel door. Dashiell stood at the threshold. He had a red circle on his jaw and three parallel scrapes that looked as if fingernails had been slashed across his cheek. Rose-scented white powder covered his clothes. Behind him, all was silent inside the brothel.
The crowd broke out in applause, as if Dashiell were a champion pugilist.
“I’m so, so, so sorry,” Vivienne cried.
He ran his hands down his chest, straightening his coat, and then stretched his neck to the left, then the right. “Don’t talk to me,” he growled.
Four
Dashiell stalked through the streets back to Wickerly Square, keeping his hand tight on Vivienne’s wrist to keep her from scurrying to some other squalid rookery and getting him killed. She hurried alongside, trying to keep up with his stride, as she held traumatized Garth. The hound pleaded to Dashiell with his round buggy eyes as if to say, “Don’t leave me with this mad lady!”
Dashiell found a narrow alley running beside a wine merchant’s shop and pulled her inside. The lane was empty except for a bony black cat pawing at something small and dead in the gutter. Garth leapt from Vivienne’s arms and the cat shot off, disappearing into a small opening at the bottom of a rotting door, leaving Garth to sniff and then roll on the deceased creature.
“You’re going to tell me what the hell is going on,” Dashiell ordered.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was… was… a brothel. You should have told me.”
He flung up his arms. “And how was I supposed to know that?”
Her head jerked back, confused. “But… but y-you’re a rake.”
He let out an exasperated sigh and clamped his hands on her shoulders, drawing her so close to him that her subtle vanilla and jasmine scent filled his nose. “My dear Miss Taylor, I would have trembled to say this before, but clearly you are no longer a little girl.” He leaned down until his lips just touched her little shell-shaped ear. “I do not have to pay for pleasure, my little sugar muffin,” he whispered.
She was all too much. Her smell, her feel clouded his brain. His pulse, still wild from the fight, surged even higher and he took a small nibble of her lobe, letting his tongue glide along its edge. He heard her gasp, and her breasts brushed against his chest, unleashing a low animal desire in his body. In his mind flashed an image of her against the alley wall, her legs around him, as he took her in a wild frenzy of pent-up desire. His secret little sister. Oh God, she had become so dangerous to him. He let out a long, ragged breath and withdrew.
The pink edge of her tongue showed through her parted lips. Her green eyes were large and lush, like a Scottish landscape after rain.
“Why did you follow this man with the blue coat?”
She leaned against the brick and rubbed her lips together. “I shouldn’t tell you.”
He took a curl of her hair and wound it on his finger. “But you want to tell me,” he said. “You can trust me. Remember the Bazulo vow.”
A smile flickered momentarily on her lips, and then her features tensed back to that tight worried expression. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“Of course I won’t. You know that.”
She related a story about coming home from the Royal Academy to see the man in the blue coat leaving her house, her aunt in hysterics, and her suspicions of blackmail. “So I followed him to see where he went,” she concluded.
“Why didn’t you go to your fiancé for help—or to me, for that matter?”
“I couldn’t tell John. He would…” She gazed down. “He wouldn’t approve.”
“Hell, I don’t approve. You could have gotten really hurt.”
She flashed him a hot eye. “Don’t patronize me. I knew what I was doing. I had all I needed to know and was about to leave, without busting out the windows, mind you. But you stormed in, acting like some overgrown Ajax.”
“Ajax?” he echoed incredulously. “This is what I get for saving your life? Oh, and that six children act was quite convincing. I should warn this John fellow that he has his hands full with you, cracked lady.”
“You can just go to… to…” She tried hard to repress the expletive, but it burst forth. “Hell! I told you not to follow me, anyway.” She turned with a frustrated cry and stomped off.
Garth, left shivering by Dashiell’s leg, looked up at him with frightened bulbous eyes and whimpered. “Wait!” Dashiell called. “You forgot your dog. He’s scared.” In fact, Dashiell was scared too. What has Vivienne gotten into?
She spun around so fast that her cloak and gown formed an ellipse about her body. She stalked back and scooped up Garth, squeezing him to her bodice. Tears were spilling out of her eyes, running down her cheeks.
The pain in his chest hurt more than any blow Sidney could give. “Good God. What did I say?” he whispered, hearing the deep quiver in his own voice. “I-I didn’t mean to call you cracked. I’m the cracked one. Everyone knows that. Please say that you will forgive me?”
“It’s not that,” she choked. Unable to wipe her tears, she ran her face over Garth’s wrinkled head. “My father is in terrible financial straits. His workshop burned down, and the insurance company claimed he started the fire intentionally. They called him a criminal so they wouldn’t have to pay. So he had to borrow funds, but by the time the workshop was rebuilt, he’d lost his customers. Now these vile men are threatening him, but he can’t pay his debts, certainly not at the interest the money lender is charging. We could lose everything.”
“Oh, Vivienne, why didn’t you say something?” He’d had no idea that Vivienne’s family was going through such hard times. That she had been suffering so while he was off playing around the globe. “Let me lend you some money. Let me do something. Anything.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s all better now. I’m marrying John. His father is the manager at South Birmingham Railroad and he can give Papa enough work to begin paying down his debt.” She tried to smile but failed. Garth licked a stray tear that was rolling off her chin. “It’s just been hard watching Papa get hurt. Please don’t tell anyone. It’s just… I didn’t have anyone to talk to.”
“Of course.” Dashiell took Garth from her arms and set him on the ground. Then he wrapped her in his embrace. “Don’t worry,” he said, wishing that damn bonnet wasn’t there so he could kiss her soft hair. “We’ll figure this out together. I promise.”
Vivienne closed her eyes and felt the muscles of his chest contract beneath her cheek, hard and powerful, making a protective wall around her. She didn’t feel secure and safe in John’s arms, where she was constantly trying to make him like her, trying to be what he wanted. But with Dashiell, a man reviled by her family and all of polite society, she drifted in easy, drowsy peace. She snuggled closer, wishing she never had to go back. Just she and he, together, her head resting on his heart, the feel of his thigh gently rubbing against her as their bodies swayed together. She wished the tender quivers in her heart could continue, unabated, for the remainder of her life.
What are you thinking?
She leapt away and stared at him. His chest rose with fast, shallow breaths like hers. His eyes were dark with fear and another scary emotion that she couldn’t name but tingled down to her bones. How did what was meant to be a kind embrace turn so dangerous?
“You called me your wife at the brothel.” Her voice was tense and brittle. “In olden days, we would be as good as married for that statement,” she said, trying hard to make it sound as if marrying him was as absurd as her becoming the Queen of Denmark. “I’m afraid John will be quite put out.”
He laughed nervously. “Sorry to be
g off, but that’s what we rotten, no-good scoundrels do. I think you are better off with this John fellow in marriage. But I’m great at solving mysteries and setting blackmailers straight.”
Vivienne exhaled, feeling safe again, yet disappointed. Both knew a line had been crossed, waking dangerous emotions best kept dormant. Still, she wouldn’t easily forget the powerful sensation of his embrace and how it stirred her heart and senses in ways John’s touch never had.
“Come on, Garth, it’s time to go home,” she said.
***
They strode out of the main shopping streets and into the narrow lanes of residences. Garth zigzagged about their feet, sniffing the street lamps and doorways. The morning’s frantic tempo had eased, and the walks were clear but for a few servants sweeping the steps and nurses pushing baby carriages.
“So if we are to begin this investigation of the man in blue, we should start with what we know,” Dashiell said, sounding more like his old self.
“No. This is not your problem.”
“Clearly, you don’t remember the section of the Bazulo vow that claims if one party is hereto in some way connected to or the target of blackmail, it is the responsibility of the other party to make it their problem,” he said in comic severity.
She chuckled nervously, still feeling her insides prickly and excited. “I missed that section.”
“You really should know all the terms and conditions before you make such an important vow,” he said, still serious. “Now, what of your aunt? Can you think of anything that might tie her to a brothel’s madam? Any scandals in your aunt’s past that are blackmail-worthy?”
“Aunt Gertrude?” Vivienne laughed that a sentence could contain both the words “scandal” and “your aunt.” “The only scandal in her life floats over from your house.”
“What about your uncle’s death? Anything that would signal foul play?”
She thought for a moment and then shrugged. “No, after years of claiming I would send him to his grave, he ate a pigeon pie, crossed Holton Street, and promptly had a heart attack. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Any affairs that you know of? Any by-blows?”
Vivienne cringed with embarrassment just thinking of her uncle in these terms, but Dashiell didn’t seem the least bit fazed, as if it were the natural order of things that men had affairs outside their marriages. Again, she thought of John at the Royal Academy, and her belly tightened.
“I-I don’t think so,” she stammered.
“Perhaps his hand was padded to give a certain verdict,” Dashiell speculated. “Can you go through his personal effects and see what you find?”
“Of course,” she mumbled absently, for her mind was still focused on John and his early wedding present.
“Meanwhile, I’ll discreetly ask around town. Married men tend to live different lives outside their homes.”
Vivienne’s gaze shot to Dashiell’s face.
He raised a brow, anticipating a question. “Yes?”
She opened her mouth, but couldn’t form the words. How do you ask if it is acceptable for a man to keep a mistress outside of his wife or fiancée? But then, who else but Dashiell, a man who never bothered with the trivial niceties of society, would give her a straight answer. This was her chance. But she just couldn’t ask something so monstrous, so personal. “N-never mind.”
Vivienne fell quiet, and that little crease of worry appeared again between her brows. Dashiell could feel anxiety radiating from her, causing his nerves to tense. Some worrisome thought was circling in her head like wasps around their nest. He knew she wasn’t going to leave this mystery alone; she was too much like him. But unlike him, she was naïve and innocent. He couldn’t very well tie her down while he looked into the matter, although this option had its appeal in his illicit imagination. So he was going to force his way into her problems. Be vigilant that nothing happened to her until that blissful wedding day when he gave his beautiful friend to someone else.
Overhead, he could see the smoky chimney tops of his home rising above the roofs as they entered the street running behind their square, where the ivy grew pell-mell over the walls. They continued around the corner into the shadows of the narrow alley beside Dashiell’s home.
“Well, good-bye,” she said and then reached up and gingerly brushed his bruise. “I’m sorry I caused you such trouble.” Even over the tender skin, her touch felt like a feather and sent some tingles of pleasure through him.
“It’s nothing.” He gave a nervous chuckle. “What else was I going to do today, anyway?”
She didn’t leave but stood there, biting down on the edge of her lip.
“Out with it, Vivienne. I can feel your brain buzzing away in there.”
She took a deep breath. “Yesterday at the Royal Academy, I stumbled upon the Lawrence James exhibit.”
He smiled to himself, thinking he knew where this conversation was heading. Poor innocent and infinitely curious Vivienne. “Did you enjoy it?”
She flashed him a hot look, and he stifled his laugh. “I overheard some gentlemen—married gentlemen—talking about having women tucked away at a place called Seven Heavens? Is it a brothel?”
Maybe he didn’t know where this was going, after all. “Yes,” he said, slowly and carefully. Seven Heavens was a flashy bordello that had moved into Mayfair five years ago and had threatened the upscale conservative brothels that had long served the upper echelons of British society. The place was a gaudy circus, taking in beautiful ladies from around the globe. The services had themes like African Safari, Japanese Tea, or Wild American Frontiers.
“Have you been there?”
“Of course not!” Which wasn’t exactly true. God, she had such a trusting face; he couldn’t lie to her. He slicked his hands down his face. “Fine, once, a year or two ago, but not to… you know. My grandfather hurt his back there. Look, I told you I don’t pay for pleasure. I’m not—”
“Is it like that brothel we just saw?” she swallowed. “Because Willie—that’s the little man’s name—said that I didn’t belong there. That they could sell me to a Mrs. Fontaine. That it would be a great honor or such. Do you know this woman?”
What was Vivienne not telling him? Something about Judge Bertis? “She is the madam of Seven Heavens,” he said, gazing at Vivienne’s angst-ridden eyes. “Look, it’s entirely possible that your uncle had a little—”
“It was my fiancé John I overheard talking about Seven Heavens.” Her words burst forth. “Do most married men have mistresses? Please tell me, I don’t know—”
“Jilt this John right now.” Dashiell felt his fists ball as black anger gripped him. He was going to kill John. And not the modern way of a quick painless bullet, but a slow, torturous medieval disembowelment. Granted, most every married man of means in London kept a hidden mistress or visited brothels. But Vivienne’s husband sure as hell wouldn’t. “I’ll lend you money, whatever you need.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think you understand the extent of my father’s debt. Besides, how could I explain it to Papa? He despises you as much as my aunt does.”
He opened his mouth to say something vile about John, but her distraught face arrested the nasty words. “Do you love John?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” she said, then looked down to where Garth’s leash was wrapped around her hand. “I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.” She blew a sharp, frustrated breath, lifting the tiny wisps of hair about her forehead, and tugged Garth. “Let’s go.”
She took a step onto the square. The dog released a low, teeth-baring growl. She suddenly whirled around and pressed her palms on Dashiell’s chest, pushing him back into the alley.
“What the hell?” he cried, slamming the wall. “Is the man in the yellow coat here now?”
“It’s John!” she cried, her face turning porcelain white. “He’s come for a call.”
Five
Vivienne
clutched the squirming Garth to her bosom and pressed her back against the alley wall. “If John sees us together, he’ll be so upset.” She could hear the quiver of panic in her whisper. “I’m supposed to be… well… perfect.”
“What? You are perfect. You know who isn’t perfect? That John arse. But I’m about to change that. Tell me, do you have any reservations about adopting children?”
“Stop, Dashiell, I probably just misunderstood him, and it’s all nothing. Now just wait here until we are inside.”
He tilted his head at a rakish angle. “Perhaps,” was his cool response.
Why did she feel like she was asking the ravenous lion not to eat the lost and injured gazelle?
She set down Garth, smoothed her cloak, and again stepped out onto the square with a bright, stiff smile on her face.
“Why, John, when did you arrive?” she said in a cheery voice, as if nothing were out of the ordinary—just a casual, relaxed stroll with Garth, whose eyes were bulging as he growled and pulled on his leash to get at her fiancé.
John did not answer her in kind. In fact, he was quite angry. “Where have you been? The servant has been combing the streets, looking for you. Your aunt is so upset. She had to take a special elixir. I came out here to search for you.”
Oh Lord!
“I-I was just walking Garth.” She tried to sound innocent. Garth leaped for John’s cuff. Vivienne yanked him back and trapped him under her skirt.
“For two hours!”
“Has it been that long?” A hot flush crawled up her neck. Garth hissed and flailed in the layers of her petticoats. “I guess I lost track of the time, thinking about our wedding and planning my trousseau.”
“I was worried to death about you. You’re far too trusting and naïve of worldly ways. When we are married, I shall employ a proper companion to watch over you. Not all men are gentlemen.”
“Haaalllllo, Miss Taylor,” Dashiell’s voice echoed in the square. He rounded the corner, weaving about, unstable, as if he’d managed to get wildly drunk in the last two minutes. What the hell is he doing?
Wicked Little Secrets Page 6