“Lavinia, my earlier offer stands. We can leave tonight and set sail for the continent. Farther, if we need to.” His suggestion was mad, just as it had been before. He would come to regret it, but the flame burned too fierce to ignore.
“Would you give up everything for me?”
She met his gaze with eyes full of longing. For one terrifying breath, he thought she might actually agree.
Then, she stepped back.
“I thought not—your silence is answer enough.” Her harsh laugh was clothed in despair and disillusionment. “We are strangers, now. What’s more, I cannot hide from what Vaile left…” she placed the base of her palm against her forehead and winced, “…here.”
Footsteps sounded in the adjacent room, startling them both into silence. He released her arm as a woman burst into the chamber.
“There you are, Lavinia, I have been looking everywhere. My goodness! What have you been doing? You look as if…” The woman’s gaze lit on Max and narrowed.
Instantly, he recognized the duchess of Wynchester from the single portrait the duke retained. The painting sat on the duke’s study floor as if ready to be taken to the attics. No one had dared touch it in the year he had known the duke.
In the flesh, the duchess was as forbidding as her likeness. Her rich blue turban matched stunning eyes. If she had been shorter, her angled cheekbones and full lips would have overwhelmed her face. As it was, her presence was arresting.
The duchess cleared her throat.
Lavinia glanced from Max to the duchess and back. “Your Grace, may I present Mr. Harrison?”
He swept into a proper bow.
“I have heard of you.” The duchess tilted her head in acknowledgment, though her voice brimmed with disdain. “You are my husband’s man, the one who occupies Lord Eustace’s intended place.”
He stiffened. “I am nobody’s man. His Grace is a friend.” How could she speak of the duke’s dead brother in such a vicious tone?
The duchess dismissed him with a piercing glare. “Sophia bested Randolph and wishes to end the night. She is waiting for your return, but clearly,” she tossed her head and assessed Max anew, “you cannot go back with your dress in such a state.”
“Mr. Harrison has just delivered distressing news.”
“Did he?” The duchess pinched her lips like a constable taking a thief’s measure.
“Lavinia,” he ignored the duchess, “the magistrate may arrive at any moment. Perhaps it would be best if you greeted him in more appropriate attire.”
“The magistrate? Here? But why? Illegal gambling is never any real concern to the magistrates.” The duchess turned to him with one hand on her hip. “I suppose you have something to do with this.”
He raised a brow while the darkness within him roused his menacing beast. Let her try to give him a dressing down. He would relish an argument.
Lavinia stepped between them. “Thea, someone murdered Vaile.”
“Well!” The duchess clamped her mouth closed, blinked, and then recovered. “Distressing,” she said in a softer tone, “is not the word I would choose.” She touched Lavinia’s shoulder. “Shall I bring out champagne?”
“Your Grace may jest,” Max said, “however, the situation is serious. Lady Vaile may be under suspicion.”
“Impossible,” the duchess snapped.
“Someone shot him, Thea.” Lavinia shook as she inhaled. “They shot him in the manner I threatened to shoot him.”
“The bastard deserved such an end,” the duchess replied.
Hell and damnation, had he heard Lavinia correctly? Had she actually threatened to murder her husband in the unspeakable way he’d been shot? Why?
“Pardon, Your Grace, but I must speak with Lady Vaile,” he said.
The duchess took Lavinia by the arm and drew her through the passage. “As you said,” she replied, “Lady Vaile must change. You, however, may go.”
The respectable, honored gentleman he’d become heard get out whispered in the wind’s hollow rush through the kitchen hearth flue. He’d delivered the news. He could walk away, duty satisfied.
Lavinia forced her friend to stop and cast a glance over her shoulder. Her eyes met his.
Escape’s illusion disintegrated like paper in flame. He held his breath. Tell me to stay. Tell me you need me.
“Thea,” Lavinia said quietly, “I would like him to stay…if he still wishes to advise.”
His sense of relief felt disturbingly akin to hope. “I do,” he replied.
“Very well, remain where you are, Mr. Harrison.” The duchess’s arched scowl assigned him a value just below that of a rag-and-bone man. “I will send the housekeeper to show you to the library.”
Lavinia disappeared, leaving him alone.
What corruption lay in wait, he couldn’t fathom. But, clearly, Vaile had hurt Lavinia in ways she was too afraid to confess, and now someone else was out to blame her for his murder.
Max’s anger pulsed as if preparing for war. The beast he’d restrained for so long began to prowl. The animal—part fury, part desire, and part desperation—would grow in strength and determination until it broke free to capture or kill its prey.
But what, exactly, was he supposed to be hunting?
Chapter Four
“There now, my lady,” Lavinia’s maid urged. “The duchess told me to get you cleaned up and looking your formidable best, and I am not about to disappoint Her Grace.”
Lavinia smiled weakly. “Thea wants me prepared for battle.”
“As well she should, if they’re saying you murdered his lordship.” Maggie shook her head as she went to work on the cloth-covered buttons securing Lavinia’s bodice.
Lavinia tried to concentrate on the familiar feel of Maggie’s fingers against her back. When the last button gave way, she lifted her arms and Maggie pulled.
“Lord forgive me, I cannot shed a tear,” Maggie continued. “That man was never right in his mind. He was evil, if you ask me, same as his lordship’s cousin.” Reflected in the mirror atop the dressing table, Maggie’s expression turned dark. “Must we return to that awful house?”
“Likely, yes.” Everything within Lavinia rebelled at the thought of returning.
She tried never to think of that house, or the life she had lived while under its roof. She remembered standing in the half-finished townhouse with Vaile, his cousin Lord Montechurch, and the architect.
…My classical marbles I will place across from each window in my study, where they will best catch the evening light. And here, my desk will stand. I want the perfect place to view the most precious thing in my collection.
Vaile’s eyes had lit on her and Lord Montechurch had smiled, slow and cold.
Lavinia’s breath stumbled. How many times had she performed Vaile’s choreographed ritual within the glass-doored dressing room he had built across from his desk?
No, you lackwit; I said peel off your stockings. Yes, that is better. Unwrap yourself for me.
She’d spent hours a day disrobing for Vaile. By the time Vaile had invited Montechurch to watch as well, Lavinia had learned the utter futility of fight.
Or, so they had thought.
“When I undress, I still feel as if I am being watched.” Lavinia shivered.
Though fashion had once allowed courtiers to innocently assist married ladies with their toilette, Vaile’s forced ritual had been anything but innocent.
“His lordship treated you as if you were one of his statues.” Maggie tsked. “I saw plenty in the days before I went to the Magdalene House, but I never heard tell of a gentleman treating his wife’s naked body as a bauble for others to admire.”
Lavinia held Maggie’s gaze in the mirror. They both knew dressing room performances had not been his most depraved demand.
The night of their marriage, Vaile had informed Lavinia he would not be performing his husbandly duties unless appropriately appreciated by an audience. He told her of a procuress who understood his particular t
astes. Among other things, the madam brought together those of means who needed to be watched with those of means who liked to watch.
She had refused to go to the madam’s establishment at first but, night after night, he had reminded her of her vows to him and her duty to provide an heir.
Vaile’s voice rang through her memory. Which is more important? Your duty to provide an heir to your husband, or the preservation of your modesty?
She had been trained from birth to obey her husband, trained that a wife’s most important duty was to provide an heir. Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress warned girls of the dangers that waited if they strayed from the moral path. But no one had had told her what to do if the man you vowed to obey asked you to perform outrageous acts and took delight in your pain and distress.
Weary of his constant rage and without anywhere else to turn, she had finally agreed—with the stipulation that she be masked.
The marital transactions, as he termed their visits to the madam’s establishment, lacked any measure of sensuality. Instead, she and Vaile had come together in a display of protest on her part and unmitigated ownership on his—much to the delight of the men peering at them through peepholes in the walls.
Duty. She hated the word.
“Ah, Maggie.” She rubbed her stomach. “I prayed I would conceive so I could put an end to the madness. I am grateful, now, my prayers were never answered.”
“Come,” Maggie urged. “He cannot hurt you any longer. Let me loosen your stays.”
Lavinia nodded stiffly, and Maggie resumed. She exhaled as her stays fell away. Maggie released the ties that secured her petticoats and the heavy, wet fabric dropped to the floor. She stepped out of the circle of lace and linen.
“If I have a say, the house will be emptied and sold as soon as possible. Not that I wish to allow strangers to parade through the place.” She could not help another shiver, and not just because she was clad only in her shift. “Surely anyone who sees the glass door and my dressing room will guess how Vaile made me live.”
Maggie held up a dressing gown. “Truth is not as plain as we think.”
“I hope you are right.” Lavinia slipped her arms inside the comforting warmth and tied the garment at her collar. She swiveled and touched Maggie’s cheek. “I thank you for your loyalty.”
Maggie flushed and turned away.
Maggie’s years as a prostitute had hardened the maid. Three years out of the Magdalene House and several months more off the streets, and a kind word still caused her embarrassment.
Lavinia understood. When Max had offered to take her away she had frozen inside, suddenly certain she was unworthy of his sacrifice. His kindness had only served to make the cold pain of her shame more acute.
“Shall I ask Lady Sophia’s housekeeper to prepare dye for mourning clothes?” Maggie asked.
Lavinia’s heart stopped. She hadn’t considered a period of mourning. She understood what people would expect…the downcast eyes, the drawn expression.
Assuming her role in the theater of grief was not a worry. She was a competent actress—first she had acted the devoted wife, then the vicious harpy. Neither role had revealed what lay beneath. Both had sharpened her skills.
But mourning, and whatever inquiry into Vaile’s death that would accompany the nightmare, would require she withdraw from public interaction and would temporarily prevent her from hosting the Furies’ gambling salons—and the salons were her only source of coin.
Though the law made a husband responsible for his wife’s debts, neither Lavinia nor the duchess had wanted to sue in chancery for an allowance, and she, Sophia, and Thea had come up with the idea of exclusive gambling salons with games and wagers and betting books benefitting the hostesses.
If she could not host the salons with Thea and Sophia, how would she collect gold? If she could not collect gold, how would she continue to pay Vaile’s procuress to keep her silence?
Soon after Lavinia had left Vaile, the Madam, known on the streets as Iphigenia, had made her terms clear: gold for silence. With the coroner’s court about to convene, Lavinia needed, now more than ever, to keep her secrets. And she was already a payment behind, because last evening the Madam had not appeared at their usual meeting place.
Lavinia rubbed her forehead.
“My lady?”
She blinked. What had Maggie asked? Dye for mourning.
“Collect the clothes Vaile favored.”—designed to be stripped off the wearer on demand—“Dye those, not the ones I purchased this year.”
“Very well.” Maggie lifted Lavinia’s bodice and squinted.
“I ruined it.”
“No, I think not. A nice bit of embroidery will fix this right up.” Maggie turned with a knowing expression. “You have ruined less than you believe.”
Lavinia sank onto her dressing table chair. Maggie lied. She was ruined in body and soul. Soon the details of her shame would be fed to a ravenous public anxious to judge and condemn.
Maggie began gathering the clothes. “I will take these down to the press room while you rest a spell. Should I brush out the man in the library’s coat as well?”
Lavinia’s throat dried. Max.
“Yes,” she replied. “Thank you.”
She closed her eyes. The myth of the untouchable Lady Vice had drawn singularly aggressive male attention this past year, yet each man’s flirtations had left her unmoved. His kiss, however, had been heavenly. When they kissed, she had become young again.
She grimaced. As if she could ever be young again. Young and full of hope for a future that would never come. Her future had never looked bleaker. Pain hunched her shoulders, and she bit her lower lip. She had been selfish and foolish to allow him to stay.
She reached for her quill, then changed her mind. Because Max had risked his reputation to prepare her for the worst, he deserved better than to be dismissed in a hastily written note.
“Maggie, will you send the man in the library to me by way of the servants’ stair?”
“I will.”
As Maggie left, Lavinia wandered to her window. Across the courtyard garden, light emanated from Sophia’s study window. Lavinia frowned with concern. Lately, the end-of-the-evening company Sophia kept with Lord Randolph had been lengthening with every salon, even as their mysterious ten-game-wager approached its much-speculated-upon finish.
By all appearances, Randolph was a dissolute earl whose interest lay more in women and gambling than in the management of his estate and the goings on in the House of Lords.
Sophia insisted she had no interest in a man who was a rogue through and through, but Lavinia was certain Randolph had designs on Sophia, just as she was certain there was more to Randolph than met the eye.
Lavinia pulled the curtain closed.
For tonight, she would have to trust Sophia’s judgment and assume Sophia would not yield to Randolph’s pursuit. No lady in England was able to hold her own with wit and strength like Sophia.
“Lavinia?” Max called through the doorway.
“Do come in.” Was that her voice—high, wavering and uncertain?
Max leaned against the door frame, his expression unreadable.
The fire in the grate and the taper on her dressing table dimly lit the doorway, but Max’s presence dominated, even in shadow. His broad shoulders and self-possessed air made him appear as if he was formed to command an estate.
Or a woman’s heart.
The Maximilian of her memory ceased to exist next to the real man. The former was a simple penny-lute tune. In the flesh, Max was the King’s Theater orchestra playing Haydn.
“You sent for me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Strange. Even across the room, he quickened flesh she had thought hardened and dead. Her body ripened with terrifying yearning.
“What is it?” he asked.
Maybe she needn’t send him away. Dare she hope that Max, who valued justice above all else, could learn the truth and understand?
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br /> “Lavinia.” His forehead wrinkled with earnestness. “If you are worried, know this: you are not alone.”
He stepped inside the chamber. He broke her heart all over again by smoothing her hair and placing a chaste kiss on her forehead. She folded his fingers into her palm and held on to his warmth in urgent silence.
Love, peace, and refuge.
Coldness fused her splintering chest.
All balderdash.
“You left me once before,” she said.
He hummed a low, dangerous growl. “What did Vaile do to you? How did he fill you with scorn and bitterness?” Within his eyes, fury hissed like doused-fire smoke. “Did he beat you?”
A simple yes would earn his understanding and sympathy, and she would never need to reveal the truth.
She blinked, and her eyelashes stubbornly stuck together. No! She had never given Vaile the pleasure of her tears. She would not cry now.
“He did, didn’t he?” He lifted her from the chair and gathered her into a fiercely protective embrace. Strangely, she did not bristle. Her cheek flattened against the swell of his chest and denial choked in her throat. She staunched her tears with a stinging inhale.
“No, Max. Vaile did not beat me.” …Not the way you mean. He’d belittled her and isolated her and raged every day against her stupidity, sloth, and common nature but, outside the marital transaction, he’d never laid a hand on her.
“Then what?” He released her, frowning.
She examined him in the dim light. Perhaps, if he had known in his heart that Vaile had used trickery to trap her in marriage, she could trust him to understand the darker details.
“My separation from Vaile,” she said, “was the last in a long line of humiliations, beginning with a forced marriage.”
He flinched with surprise, and her stomach lurched like a toppling cart.
“You did not marry him willingly?”
In his tone she heard a thousand nights of agony, nights full of self-recrimination, nights he spent believing himself a fool for having given her his love.
“We married,” she said, “after he had the means to shatter my reputation.”
“I thought…” he began.
“You thought me fickle,” she finished.
Lady Vice Page 3