“But… but he was praying.”
“Praying to crawl inside your pretty, delicate drawers, I wager!” Aunt Gertrude cried, slamming her cane on the floor. The carriage halted with a lurch.
“That’s all he wants,” her aunt continued, her voice building to a crescendo, her eyes becoming dark and wild. “To touch your lacy chemise, to get a glimpse of your female places, to put his turgid—”
“I think I understand,” Vivienne said quickly before her aunt went any further. “Oh, what a lovely day it is outside.” She forced a pleasant voice. “Have you ever seen such a lovely day?”
A rotting gig hauling turnips had pulled up beside them. Its disgruntled driver possessed a quashed, ugly face and was spouting an equally ugly stream of profanity at them.
The ladies’ door opened, and the loyal elderly Harold peeked inside. “Do you require anything, ma’am?”
Behind him, the swearing driver shoved two stubby fingers into the air, forming the Longbowman Salute. “Dammit, you can’t stop in the middle of the street. Move your arse.”
Her aunt’s body began to tremble. Her nostrils flared with her rapid breath as her brow furrowed. At that moment, she very much resembled her dog. “Just you be quiet, you dirty sinner,” she shouted, shaking her cane at the turnip man. “You committer of adultery… you… you coveter of your neighbor’s wife. Move your own Satan-filled arse!”
Vivienne gasped. The gig driver turned white. He clicked his tongue and hurried his horse along, away from the scary ladies.
Aunt Gertrude’s mouth hung open, shocked by her own words. She released an anguished cry. “The devil has my tongue.” She grabbed her black reticule. “I need my pills. Where are they?” She began pulling out handkerchiefs, smelling salts, a tiny notebook, and coins, tossing them on the seat. “I’m so glad Mr. Bertis wasn’t alive to hear me. How furious he would be. He was always quick to point out my errors when I strayed.”
“Allow me.” Vivienne removed her aunt’s reticule from her shaking hands and drew out a square tin that read: Dr. Turner’s Serenity Pills for Ladies. Restorative for Sensitive Nerves and other Female Complaints. Tasting of elderberry. “Take us home,” she told Harold.
The servant closed the door, and the carriage shifted as he climbed back on his perch. A shrill whistle pierced the air, and the landau began rolling again. Vivienne restored all the items to her aunt’s reticule.
The older woman popped two pills in her mouth and leaned her head back on the carriage cushions. “I’m sorry, my dear,” she said. “I worry about you. You’re innocent and can’t understand the ways of an evil man. He seems so handsome, so beguiling. He makes everything seem like a fun game, but all the while he has designs on your virtue. Tell me you haven’t been speaking with Dashiell.”
“I have already made a promise to John that I wouldn’t.” And she had kept her word for almost ten hours before she kissed Dashiell in a dark alley and then tried to show him her lady parts in his bedchamber the following evening. It seemed that all she did now was lie and deceive, desperate to keep her world afloat. Was God trying to see just how much shame he could lay on her before she broke apart? She couldn’t help but feel envious of Dashiell—that supposed serpent in the garden, slithering around with his shiny red apples, never burdened with any guilt.
The only course left that didn’t require any further lying and sneaking behind walls to meet Dashiell was to confront her aunt about Jenkinson and the blackmail.
Vivienne paused several moments to prepare her words. “You speak of the ways of evil men as if you know. Surely Uncle Jeremiah wasn’t such a man.”
“How can you even dare think such a thing?” her aunt cried, outraged, as if Vivienne had committed some sacrilegious act. “Your uncle was an honorable, God-fearing man. He didn’t commit a single sin in his life. Not a one!”
Maybe this wasn’t the best course. Vivienne held her palms up. “I didn’t mean—”
“He was a fine man! How—how could you imply—”
“I’m sorry,” Vivienne murmured. So much for the truth; back to good old lies and deception. Would God take into consideration extenuating circumstances on Judgment Day?
She took a deep breath. “As my wedding approaches, perhaps you can tell me about your wedding to Uncle Jeremiah? What gown did you wear? Was Uncle Jeremiah very handsome?”
Aunt Gertrude’s eyes lost focus, seeing an old memory. “We were married on the last day in February. My mother gave me a fur-lined coat. But I don’t remember what Mr. Bertis was wearing.” Her brows knitted, forming lines across the bridge of her nose. “After the minister said we were man and wife, I fainted away.”
“You fainted?”
She nodded.
“How old were you?”
“Just a few weeks shy of twenty,” she replied. “You were not a month old. Such a tiny thing, you couldn’t even hold your head up.” She brushed Vivienne’s cheek and down her chin, right over the spot that still tingled from Dashiell’s touch. “My little Vivvie, you have such a kind heart. I once said you had managed to catch the best bachelor in all England. Yet I think Mr. Vandergrift has caught the best wife. I’m so proud of you. Whenever I look at you, I remember the little baby…” Her voice faded out.
But Vivienne didn’t feel proud. If her aunt only knew about Vivienne’s lies, Dashiell’s kisses, and all those lewd dreams of him that filled her head. If a virtuous wife was above the price of rubies, Vivienne’s worth, at the moment, was hovering around the price of dirt.
***
By the time the carriage pulled into Wickerly Square, Aunt Gertrude’s pills had begun working their restorative magic. Meanwhile Vivienne still quietly boiled away in her cauldron of guilt. Outside, nature seemed uncaring of her suffering. It truly was a lovely day. The sun shone, hampered only by an occasional wispy cloud. Delicate green buds had begun to sprout on the trees in the center of the square.
Miss Banks burst out the front door and hurried down the steps to open the carriage. Once Aunt Gertrude and Vivienne were safe on the sidewalk, Harold made that sharp whistle, and the horses started for the alley.
Gertrude watched them leave. “I don’t need to keep that old carriage.”
“Now, how would you go on getting about, then?” asked Miss Banks. “Those omnibuses full of sinners would tax your sensitive nerves, they would.”
“I only leave the house to go to church. Harold could hire a comfortable carriage for me when I need one. It would be cheaper than feeding those horses.”
“Oh, come now. Don’t talk that a’way.” The housekeeper took Aunt Gertrude’s arm to assist her into the house. “Harold loves taking them horses around. Like his own children, they are.” Miss Banks shot Vivienne a worried glance.
“I think I shall retire to my room before dinner,” her aunt declared. “I feel a bit fatigued.”
Twelve
Dashiell left Wesley Congregational Chapel twenty minutes after Vivienne. In that short span of time, he’d somehow managed to pledge ten pounds to repair the roof on a girls’ orphanage, as well as buy Bibles for an entire village of converts in India who couldn’t read anyway.
Returning to Wickerly Square, he gazed up at Vivienne’s window. The white curtains were shut tight. He waited a second and fabric rifled as if she had passed by the window.
His heart quickened and he sprinted up the steps to his house. His grandfather opened the door, wearing his banyan that reached to the tops of his bare, scrawny calves. His hair flowed like gray tangled vines down his neck.
“Where the hell have you been?” He looked his grandson up and down, his lips twisting to a horrified grimace. “And what the hell are you wearing? Are you ill?”
“Good God.” Dashiell grabbed his grandfather’s shoulders and pushed him back inside, then slammed the door. “The neighbors will see you.”
The earl put his face an inch from his grandson’s. “Did you beat up Vivvie’s fiancé at Mrs. Fontaine’s last night?”
“A little? I heard you broke his nose and a few ribs. That you tore up Seven Heavens something awful. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Clearly, I wasn’t and that’s the problem. I made a mistake. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The old man shoved Dashiell’s chest with the heel of his palm. “Damn right you made a mistake. That John chap is out disgracing Trudie’s niece and you didn’t have the courtesy to let me and the boys know.”
“Well, you tend to injure yourself at Fontaine’s, so I doubted you could be of much help. Now please excuse me.”
He attempted to step around his grandfather, but the earl gripped Dashiell’s shoulder.
“You just stop right there, young man,” he said. “You and I are going to have a little talk. I want you to own up that you love little Vivvie.”
“Certainly.” Dashiell smiled. “If you own up that you love Gertrude.”
His grandfather’s head jerked back. “I… I don’t.”
“Well, then, I don’t love Vivienne.”
The two men stared at each other, waiting for the other to relent.
“This has been an enlightening little talk,” Dashiell concluded after a few seconds, turned, and continued up the stairs to his chamber. “We should deny our feelings more often.”
He fished his key from behind the frieze of Isis and locked the door. Then he walked over to his bed, pushed the table away from the wall, and removed the panel. On the other side of the hole, he could see the dull back of the green tapestry. He leaned in and whispered, “Vivienne.”
No reply.
She’d better not ignore him. By God, he had to go all the way to church to talk to her.
He strode to his commode, picked up his decanter, and poured brandy in a crystal tumbler. The burn on his tongue brought memories of clubs and gaming hells that seemed at odds with a Sunday morning spent at church.
Bloody hell. Was he turning Methodist?
Tossing back his head, he shot down the rest of the dram. He just wanted to sink like a contented toad back to the muddy bottom of his pond of sin and depravation.
He poured another brandy and then lay down on his bed, setting his glass on the table. He resumed his book on the Norman Conquest of England. He read two paragraphs, then settled back into his ongoing fantasy of Vivienne as his little Celtic captive. He took her down to the dungeon of pleasure and—
He heard a scraping sound, and his Celtic prisoner poked her head through the hole. He blinked, jarred by the sight of the cotton gown she had worn to church instead of the sheer, transparent silk of his fantasy. She had removed her bonnet, and her hair, parted in the center, fell in long glossy spirals by her cheeks. She studied him as he reclined on the covers. A thought darkened her eyes, and she shivered. She quickly stiffened and jutted her chin. “1823,” she said. “The year I was born.”
Dashiell swung off the bed and kneeled before her. “Look, I’m sorry. I—”
She held her open palm to his face. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve been praying very hard for forgiveness, and I’m going to be good for the rest of my life. John will never know.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, holding onto the s. “About John. You see, we had a little—”
“My aunt and uncle were married in 1823,” she said. “Isn’t that what you wanted to know when you rudely slipped that note to me during prayer, which I’m sure God saw and promptly added to your ever-expanding list of sins? Now what has this to do with Lawrence James?”
“I saw a sketch of James’s that had the same technique as the, um…” He cleared his throat. “…caricatures we found in the wall.”
She hiked one of her lovely, curving brows. “Where did you see this sketch of James’s?”
He let out a long breath. No sense in trying to spare her; the truth had to come out. “Seven Heavens.”
She sucked in her breath; he could see the mental explosion behind her eyes. “You went from me to Seven Heavens?”
Before he could answer, she grabbed the tapestry-covered panel and flung it back into place.
“Vivienne,” he whispered to the fabric backing. “Vivienne.”
Nothing.
Dammit.
Then she yanked off the panel and glared at him, angry green sparks in her eyes.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I was trying to help you—”
“H-help me!” she cried.
“Shhh.” He tried to put his finger on her mouth.
“You’re just like John,” she said, swatting him away. “You would rather hold a courtesan than me. Why can’t I drive you to those ‘heights of unbridled passions’ and such that they write about in novels? Why can’t I be some man’s grand passion? You’re supposed to be the worst rake in London. You can barely control yourself around women. Do I disgust you that much?”
“First of all, don’t insult me,” he spat. “I’m not John. Were you a man, I would be getting out my dueling pistols for that odious comparison. And second, I stopped because I—” love you. Terror gripped his heart at how easily those three words I love you nearly slid off his tongue. All these years, he had fought to contain his affections for Vivienne. Had he finally slipped over the edge? By God, he hadn’t… he wouldn’t. He ran his fist across his mouth. “…like you,” he finished. “And I didn’t want to ruin you because you know as well as I do that we have no future together. But if it makes you feel any better, at that moment, I had never desired a lady more in my life. An unbridled grand passion, if you want to call it that.”
Her lips parted. He could see the wet, pink edge of her tongue. Her breasts rose with her uneven breath. In his mind flashed the memory of her nipples taut under his fingers.
He felt his cock stir. Bloody hell. He reached for his glass on the table and swirled the dark amber spirits, but didn’t drink. “And I went to talk to Fontaine about Adele Jenkinson. That is all. Remember the whole affair about your aunt being blackmailed?”
That splashed some frigid water on the moment. Her lips drew down in a frown. “Did she say anything about Mrs. Jenkinson?”
“She pretended not to know her.”
“How could you tell?”
A wry smirk hiked the side of his mouth. “I’m experienced with lying ladies.”
He went on to explain about James’s portrait of Fontaine that hung in her parlor and the caricature that Dashiell had smashed into, which matched those he and Vivienne had found in the wall. He further described how the pencil strokes and techniques were similar across all the works. However, he chose to leave out the more pesky details of his visit, including breaking John’s nose, destroying Fontaine’s place, and having a gun pointed at him.
“Still, why would it matter if Uncle Jeremiah owned caricatures by James?” she asked. “It all goes along with the bad things we already know about him.”
“Ah.” Dashiell crossed to his desk and slid out the illustrations flattened beneath the book. He sorted through them until he found the pages he wanted. “If we remove the caricatures, we are left with these two realistic sketches.” He laid them on the floor before Vivienne. Her cheeks flushed a lovely pale rose as she examined the nude lady lounging upon the bed.
“See how they are not centered on the page,” Dashiell said. “The covers and bedposts are roughed in with hasty strokes. They’re James’s originals.”
“What would be the difference between having the original versus a reproduction? In the end, he had them.”
Dashiell waved the page with the list of names before her face. “Consider these dates. They span from 1821 to 1822. Your uncle didn’t reside here then—just your aunt and her family.”
“Or these sketches may have no relevance at all,” she said slowly. He could see the calculations behind her eyes. “This hole goes two ways. It makes perfect sense for your family to have had these pictures, as well.”
“Perfect sense be
cause we here at number seventeen are depraved, shameless rakes.” He wagged his index finger. “Except, you see, my family, at least my father and my grandfather, weren’t living here. My late cousin Nigel leased the place then.”
“Does it matter? I’m not quite sure about these things, but I don’t think owning these pictures is worthy of blackmail. It certainly can’t be as terrible as that spanking business.”
“Unless you knew the person in these sketches,” he suggested quietly.
Her lips tightened with annoyance. “What part in this twisted strand of illogic do you see so perfectly that I don’t?”
“I may be a worse bedlamite than you, but…” He offered his hand to her. “Come with me.”
She didn’t budge, her brow creased.
“Just across the room.” He pointed to the space under the painting he had concealed with a plaid wool blanket. “Right there. No touching. I promise.”
She considered. “Give me a moment.”
She propped the panel back in place. He could hear the rustling of her dress, and when she opened the wall again, her skirt was flat, the bustle removed.
She crawled through the hole, ignoring his attempts to help, and marched to the appointed “right there” spot. She waited with a stiff neck, pursed lips, and her arms crossed over her bosom.
“Look at that sketch,” he said, handing her the illustration of the lady with the lovely curls lying atop the bed. He walked over to his commode and removed a silver-framed oval mirror. “Now, look in this mirror. Do you see any resemblance?”
“We both have hair and a nose and… um… a bodice.” Her brow arched as if to say why are you wasting my time?
“Wait. There’s more.” He exchanged the sketch in her hand for his mirror, letting the page fall on the floor. “Do you remember when I told you that I had bought a Lawrence James painting? Well, this is it.” In a smooth motion, he pulled the blanket down and the brazen Italian Vivienne gazed on with her pouting lips and sultry tiger eyes.
“Now study the painting for a moment and then look in the mirror. Look at your mouth and eyebrows and cheekbones.” He gave her a gentle mental nudge. “Has anyone ever said you look a bit like your—”
Wicked Little Secrets Page 17