Wicked Little Secrets

by Ives, Susanna

  Vivienne curtsied to the Prince and Dashiell gave his farewells to the others. “I’ll see everyone in court.” He swung Vivienne up into his arms. “Hang on, my love,” he whispered. Her muscles were quavering and jellylike, and a cold perspiration broke over her skin. They were free. She pressed her lips into the warm skin under his ear, ignoring the shocked stares they received as Dashiell, coatless and shoeless, carried a woman in a red wig and garish gown out of the brothel and into the street.

  Under a streetlamp, his carriage waited. His groom and a footman, lounging on the carriage perch, threw down their cards and tankards of whatever they were drinking and leaped to the ground.

  The groom opened the door and then yanked down the steps. “Do you still want me to go to—”

  “Yes,” Dashiell said.

  Vivienne stepped inside and slid onto the cushion. Dashiell leaned across her lap, his shoulder brushing against her breasts as he yanked down the window blind. He grabbed a brown wool blanket from the floor. While he was tucking it about her neck, she stole a kiss. He groaned as he pulled the wig from her head and buried his face in her falling hair.

  “Don’t leave me tonight,” she whispered.

  His mouth sought hers. She savored the taste of him, his scent, his feel, everything she thought she had lost.

  “I’m never leaving you again,” he said. “I’m going to be a human burr, stuck to you wherever you go. Just try to stay away from bawdy houses in the future.”

  The carriage lurched forward.

  “Are you taking me to a flat?” she murmured, imagining their bodies entwined on a soft bed. Knowing again that amazing sensation of him moving inside of her, and then drifting off into lovely sleep in his arms, leaving this dreadful day far behind.

  “A flat?” He chuckled softly in her ear and then nibbled its edge.

  She became nervous. Didn’t men keep their mistresses in rented rooms? For a woman who’d almost sold herself into prostitution and spent an entire day in a brothel, she really should know these things.

  “Well, you’re my mistress, remember?” she joked to cover her uncertainty. “Isn’t that where I should put you?”

  His lips brushed the side of her jaw. “Don’t you worry, my dear, I have the perfect love nest for us.” His mouth covered hers again.

  An anxious thought pricked her conscience and she pulled back, taking his face between her hands. His eyes were wild and glassy, and his hoarse breath warmed her face. “Are you truly going to take care of my family?” she asked.

  “Your sisters, your father, your aunt, your mother, any yet unknown half-siblings, whoever and whatever.”

  She gazed down. “It’s all so ugly, isn’t it?”

  “Hush now.” He brushed a lock of hair from her face and threaded it behind her ear. “Maybe to the more proper and dull-minded, but not to me. I come from a deep, colorful line of scoundrels, rakes, and blackguards. My family tree is a wonder of the forest. It grows in directions no other flora does.”

  She laughed as she ran her hand down his face, gingerly brushing her fingers over his bruised jaw.

  “I love the sound of your laughter,” he said, his lips caressing her eyelids, her cheeks, her chin. “I love your brilliant mind. I love the fanciful way you see the world. I love your courage. I love you. You’re perfect.”

  She shivered. “Say it again.” She moved closer until her lips barely touched his.

  “You’re perfect.”

  “No, the ‘I love you’ part.”

  “I love you.”

  She closed her eyes and released herself to his kiss. The chatter of pedestrians, the neighing of horses, and the rattle of the wheels sounded miles away as they held each other. Lost in a lull of Dashiell’s embrace, she didn’t know how much time had passed when the carriage stopped.

  “We’re here,” Dashiell murmured. “Our little love nest.”

  She gave him a shy smile. “Is it bad of me to say that I can’t wait to touch you? To feel that amazing, quivering release when you caress me down there, to see the beautiful light in your eyes when you’re moving inside me.”

  He raised a quizzical brow. “I don’t know if they allow that here.”

  The groom opened the door, and in the dim gaslight, Vivienne could make out the brick and stained glass arched windows of Wesley Congregational Chapel.

  “What? No!” She pushed against Dashiell’s biceps. “I can’t go in here. You’re mad.”

  “Mr. Charles is waiting for you.” Dashiell gestured to the minister who was hurrying across the courtyard, dressed in a dark evening robe. A brass lantern dangled from his hand.

  “You told him!” Her face heated.

  “I had your aunt send him a letter.” He kissed her fingers. “Everyone was worried about you.”

  The minister, whom Vivienne had known since she was a tiny girl, gazed over Dashiell’s shoulder. She was ashamed that he should see her this way. The edges of his eyes were crinkled with sympathy. “Come, my poor child,” he said. “We have a warm chamber prepared for you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Charles,” she cried. “But I don’t think I should stay here. So much has happened—”

  “Nonsense, you need to rest,” he insisted, beckoning her out of the carriage. “You’re going to have a very busy day tomorrow.”

  Dashiell drew her close, pretending to arrange the blanket about her. In truth, he wanted to feel her again, one last time, before he carried her inside the church.

  “First, I must have a word with her, alone,” he told Mr. Charles. “In the chapel.”

  Dashiell lifted her in his arms again and trailed the minister up the steps. Inside, the chapel was dim except for the glow of the minister’s lantern. Dashiell set her on the front pew and draped the blanket over her shoulders.

  “Brother Lord Dashiell, I expect you know your duty,” Mr. Charles said, as he placed the lantern below the altar. Its flame cast an orb of light that reflected off the gold and rich mahogany on the apse and stained glass windows. “I’ll check back in a few minutes to make sure you do.” He nipped through a side door to his connected home.

  Then they were alone. Dashiell was nervous. He didn’t know what to say. He had been too busy running about town, getting beaten up, sneaking into a brothel, and wearing women’s clothes to think of the actual words of his proposal beyond “I’m a jingle-brained scoundrel. For the love of God, marry me.”

  He took a deep breath and did the customary thing: dropping to one knee, taking his beloved’s hand. “My beautiful Miss Taylor, I have loved you since I first saw you.” That sounded rather peculiar. “Well, not in the same way that I do now. My love was more innocent then, now it’s… never mind, I’m digressing. I know I’m not worthy of your affection, but if you would take mercy on me and consent to be my wife, I would—”

  “No.”

  He leaned in. “That’s not the right answer, love.”

  “We can’t get married. It is wrong. I’m not respectable anymore. Can’t I just be your mistress?”

  He flung up his arms. “By God, Vivienne, I was ready to kill someone to get you free. I nearly got shot… again. I danced before all those men. And now you won’t marry me! This is a direct violation of our Bazulo vow.”

  She jumped to her feet. “There is no Bazulo tribe in Africa. You made it all up.”

  “I did not,” he said rising to meet her. “The third paragraph near the bottom of the eleventh page in very fine print states: If one member of the sacred vow is disgraced in the eyes of society, the other must marry said disgraced member.”

  She arched a brow and considered him. “Well then, I don’t think I was disgraced. It’s a matter of semantics.”

  “I was certainly disgraced. Didn’t you see that angel ensemble I wore? And my exotic dance?”

  Vivienne started to giggle, her back shaking.

  “I’ve fallen from society because of you, and you must do the honorable thing by me and then hide me away in Egypt or Greece or
Arabia or Africa.”

  “Stop being silly.”

  “I’m not being silly.” He captured her hands in his and rubbed her knuckles with his thumbs. “This is an earnest question: Do you want to travel the world together, hand in hand, husband and wife?”

  She nibbled the corner of her lip. He could see the debate behind her eyes.

  “Tell me the truth,” he gently prompted.

  “It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” she admitted, her eyes glistening.

  “Then say, ‘Dashiell, you’re marrying me. I’m dragging you around to all corners of the globe. We’re going to have a passel of children who are just like us: wild and unruly. And we’ll adore them. We won’t keep any secrets from each other. And we’ll be completely loyal, trusting, and in love with each other until death do us part. And death had better not come a’knockin’ for a long, long time.’”

  Tears now streamed down her face. “Marry me” was all she could manage before he swept her into his arms.

  ***

  Vivienne flashed Dashiell a mischievous smile as she gazed at the members of the Wesley Congregational filing into the church pews for the wedding.

  “You aren’t nervous, my darling?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Are you?”

  “Yes! This could be a terrible mistake.”

  “Now, you shouldn’t worry about a thing,” Mrs. Lacey said from the pew behind them. “I’ve heard reformed rakes make the best husbands. You wouldn’t believe it, but my Walter was rather rumbustious in his day.” She giggled, causing her white curls to dance. “Still is when I put on my—”

  “Thank you,” Vivienne said, keeping a straight face while Dashiell’s lips trembled with silent laughter. They turned around to face the altar.

  He leaned in. “I plan on getting rather rumbustious in our bedchamber tonight,” he whispered in her ear, sending a tingling through her body.

  Still, she gave him a sharp rib. “We are in a church!”

  The clouds outside the massive stained glass windows drifted apart, and beautiful sunlight illuminated the chapel. Mr. Charles raised his prayer book and began to speak, his jowls quivering. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony. A man whose sins were so numerous that many believed his soiled and sullied soul irrevocably lost to Satan. But through the miracle of God’s love, the faith of an honorable woman, and the financing of the construction of the library wing, he hath found redemption.”

  Vivienne watched as her mother, the bride, gazed demurely into her fiancé’s face, a lovely blush coloring her cheeks and a gentle smile lifting her lips. She no longer took her tonics and elixirs, finding true love to be the miracle cure for her pesky nerves. Her adored Lord Baswiche stood beside her, his jaw slack, his eyes shining with amour.

  “They look like smitten adolescents,” Vivienne whispered to her husband.

  “That’s because my grandfather’s mind stopped maturing at age fifteen,” Dashiell quipped.

  “I remember not a year ago, we were standing before that very altar looking just as in love,” she sighed, thinking back to that beautiful morning when Dashiell slid a Roman ring on her finger, how Vivienne had called her aunt “Mother” for the first time, and her mother called her “Daughter,” the tears they shared, and then that evening when Dashiell showed her some of the many ways they could love each other: on the bed, across the desk, in the chair, against the wall, with silk ribbons and feathers.

  “We’ve been married a year!” he murmured and winked. “It seems like an eternity.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him.

  “And I relished every moment of that eternity, my love,” he assured her.

  “One year,” Vivienne whispered, turning the ancient ring on her finger. The world she had left behind twelve months ago for Greece, Egypt, Africa, and Arabia had radically changed. Dashiell sold some stock to lend money to her father. Her father in turn received a huge order from a railroad that rivaled Mr. Montag’s and paid Dashiell back, including some extra money that he claimed was Vivienne’s dowry. The case of art theft never came to the courts. Mrs. Fontaine and Mr. Teakesbury accepted minimal sentences, their careers destroyed. Meanwhile, poor and powerless Mrs. Jenkinson was transported back to Australia. Vivienne understood that John, through mismanagement of funds, had lost his position and fled to Canada.

  Now Vivienne and Dashiell were back in London and could scarce move through the house for all the crates of antiquities they had shipped home. In the evenings, they would gather in her mother’s parlor where her mother would read to the earl from Songs of Solomon. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for their love is better than wine,” and then the two would titter, causing Dashiell to make terrible faces at Vivienne and cough into his balled hand as if he might vomit.

  Mr. Charles continued to thunder from the altar. “I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful Day of Judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it.”

  Dashiell started to raise his hand to tease Vivienne. She clamped onto it, lacing her fingers through his and keeping them by her side. His touch always elicited a warm, melting sensation inside her.

  “What about a sojourn to South America, love?” he whispered. “Leave the sickening love birds alone?”

  “I’m afraid I might be otherwise engaged.” She glanced coyly at him from the corner of her eyes.

  When he arched a suspicious brow, she slid his palm over her belly. He blinked as the realization fell on him.

  “You wanted a passel of wild and unruly children,” she reminded him quietly.

  “Yes, but… it’s too soon.” His eyes started to dart about as he grabbed his cravat. “I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I have… have to get away.”

  Members of the congregation turned to look as her husband tried to edge down the aisle, but Vivienne held him tight.

  “I’ll make a terrible father!”

  Mr. Charles’s head jerked up from his prayer book. “Brother Lord Dashiell, do you know of an impediment? I beg you to confess.”

  “Now, son, we talked about this,” his grandfather said. “Trudie has already forgiven me for that—”

  “He doesn’t have an impediment,” Vivienne quickly interjected. “I mean, none to their marriage.”

  She drew her husband back. “Calm down,” she whispered in a soothing voice. His reaction didn’t alarm her. After a year, she intimately knew the ebb and flow of his personality—the initial panic, followed by a shaky resignation, then whole-hearted exuberance. “You’ll be a wonderful papa,” she assured him. “It says so in the Bazulo vow in the third paragraph of the seventh page.”

  At the altar, Mr. Charles united the right hands of the groom and bride. “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

  Acknowledgments

  A heartfelt thank you goes to my critique partner and best writing friend, Catherine Scott/Catriona Iams. She holds my hand in the scary writing places and articulates my characters’ struggles and desires, lighting the way through the hard scenes. Her wisdom and understanding of craft infuse these passages. I also would like to thank sage teacher and writer, David Fulmer, for believing in my work, teaching me the craft, and pushing me to become a better writer. I have so much gratitude for the brilliant Laura Valeri who sees to the heart of the literary problem. I sincerely thank Nancy Mayer for her generosity and patience in answering my numerous British history questions. To my wonderful agent, Paige Wheeler, for her professionalism and faith in my work. To my editor, Deb Werksman, whose guidance and vision for Wicked Little Secrets sent the story to greater heights than I could have achieved alone. And finally to Tina Whittle, who always has my back, Abigail Carlton, for the “fruity bits” and “nether regions,” as we
ll as Virginia Hall, Kevin Moreau, and Liz Fichera. It’s been a wild, crazy journey.

  About the Author

  Susanna Ives started writing when she left her job as a multimedia training developer to stay home with her family. Now she keeps busy driving her children to various classes, writing books, and maintaining websites. She often follows her husband on business trips around Europe and blogs about the misadventures of touring with children. She lives in Atlanta.