Lady Vice

by Wendy Lacapra

  He stopped at a quiet area, thick with vegetation.

  “Vinia,” his whisper was deep and breathy, “what the devil are you doing here?”

  Her body joined her traitorous mind and thrilled at his protective anger. She might have confessed all, but experience had trained her to distrust impulse and assumption.

  “How did you know I would be here?” she asked. “Did you follow me?”

  “Answer my question and I will answer yours.” His fingers clamped her shoulders with the force of a snapping fox trap.

  “My reasons for coming are my own. And your failure to answer is confirmation enough. I do not appreciate being followed.”

  “Do you realize the danger?” he asked. “What if I had not been there?”

  “I had them in hand.”

  “Oh, right. Certainly. My mistake.”

  “Please, Max, I am grateful for your concern, but I will not tell you why I am here.”

  His neck stiffened. “You refuse to confide in me. And yet earlier today, I attended the coroner’s court session strategizing how to prove your innocence. Imagine my surprise when Lord Randolph blithely verified your whereabouts. Is Randolph here again? Is he expecting you now as he was last night?”

  “Insult me. Very nice.” She pushed his hands off her shoulders. “He saw me. I did not see him.”

  “What is going on?” Max demanded.

  “I must go.”

  He gripped her waist and swung her into the shadows. The night air was alive with the rustling of branches as he threw aside her veil.

  “Is Randolph your lover?”

  His eyes were too wide and fierce for her to send him to the devil.

  “Of course not, you dolt,” she said. “Lord Randolph testified at Sophia’s request.”

  Jealousy bled from his face and his shoulders edged down. Did he think her denial made everything better?

  “I told you,” she added icily. “I will not depend on any man.”

  “Not even me?”

  Her heart contracted with a howling cramp. “Especially not you.”

  “Especially not me,” he repeated slowly.

  He cradled her burning cheek and his rough fingers chafed. He radiated more heat than a bustling inn’s kitchen—and his warmth was every bit as alluring. Comfort, his body promised. Care and sustenance.

  “If you can,” he said, “tell me truthfully you wish I was not here.”

  Her chest deflated with a sting as he gathered her close.

  He ran his cheek along her hairline. “I thought not.”

  “Do not ask me to explain—” she started.

  “—because you cannot,” he interrupted. “So you have said. I failed you when I left for India. I cursed your marriage in my heart. But I have admitted my wrong. Vinia, I can help, but not without your consent. Why are you fighting me? I may be the best chance you have. The only chance you have.”

  His tightening arms were as unyielding as Newgate bars. She could deny him at a distance but not when his breath caressed her cheek.

  She fortified her resistance. What reason had she to trust his words? And even if his actions offered proof, which they had not, Vaile had left her ruined. She’d only ever experienced a pantomime of the act of love—and that within the walls of a brothel.

  Whatever Max was seeking, she was no longer the woman who could provide it.

  “Intimacy between us is impossible,” she said.

  “Impossible? I will tell you what is impossible. I will lose my position. I will lose my current home. But impossible is controlling what happens to me when you are near.”

  “I am sure you wished you could have blotted out my memory when you learned of my marriage.”

  “How could I have wished such a thing, when the memory of you is the reason I survived prison?” His voice was gritty as a rusty nail driven into creaking wood. “Yet, if I thought you believed all you say, I would stay away.”

  The nail lodged between her ribs. “I must leave the past in the past. For my own good, as well as yours.”

  “Damn the past.” Abruptly, he let her go, staring down with determined eyes. “Trust me, and we can have a future.”

  Oh. She could have beaten him with her fists. How dare he make her feel and want and need when he knew nothing of the black sludge sloshing around in her soul?

  “Trust you—when you are only here because you had me followed and when, moments ago, you accused me of being Randolph’s mistress? I trusted Vaile when he offered a friendly ear and an innocent garden walk—and I ended up ruined. I trusted you when you said you loved me and wanted more than anything for us to marry—and I ended up alone. I have paid in spades for those mistakes.” She gasped to catch her breath. “Stop chasing a girl who no longer exists. Vaile left me a broken woman.”

  He buried her in the folds of his greatcoat. “You,”—the force of his voice caused his body to tremble as he spoke against her ear—“you left me a broken man.”

  “No!” Horror raised gooseflesh. “I never left you.”

  “A broken man, damn you. Broken.” He yanked down her hood and thrust his hands into her hair, sending pins flying. “Look at me and tell me I lie.”

  “You…pah!” She spit out the half-spoken falsehood. “I can’t, Max. Oh God, I can’t.” Whatever her pain, whatever the protection she’d built, she could not lie to Max. She could see and feel the pain he carried.

  “Heal me, Vinia,” he asked. Then, softer, “You know you can. I know you can.”

  His mouth captured hers. Shock, at first, though her muscles did not harden. His kiss elicited her surrender. He was fervor and softness, rage and need. She clung to his shoulders, slipping on wet, uneven ground toward a spreading, hungry abyss.

  His fingers tightened in her tresses as he tilted her head toward his—up, up. Straining. Gasping. Reaching. His kiss grew urgent and deep, passionate and possessive. Her belly quivered. She grew wet with sensual invitation.

  Max. Her body staked a claim. My Max.

  Where Vaile was separation, debasement, and darkness; Max was union, devotion, and light. His presence was life, and the shivering absence where she lived was death.

  Could they learn to trust each other once again? Could Max free her of Vaile’s expertly forged shackles? Could she, in turn, heal Max’s lingering hurt? Would love be enough to carry them both through society’s condemnation?

  She made fists in his hair. For one mad moment, she was suspended beyond time and betrayal, floating above chaos in a place where neither of them had been sullied or broken.

  She ceased struggling. Fight drained from the cracked vessel of her body, and she offered up the pieces of her resistance through softly yielding lips.

  Abruptly, he pulled away. He growled through his breath like a sorcerer casting a curse. He did not need to speak coherent words for his self-condemnation to rend her gut.

  Abandoned by passion and with all anger spent, desolation flooded her emptiness—exactly the emotion she had been trying so desperately to avoid.

  She slammed a fist into his chest.

  Chapter Ten

  “This,” she hissed, “is why I cannot trust you. You want me and then you war against your need. You ask for my trust, but you refuse to trust me. I knew you would pull away the moment I surrendered.”

  “I am here. Feel my heart beat.” He held her hand to his chest. “I want to trust you. How hard is that to believe?”

  His heart’s thud—so steady after such a savage kiss—unnerved. She yanked back her hand, but he tightened his hold.

  “Yes, I had you followed—for your protection. Yes, jealousy overtook my reason. But, I have done nothing but risk my own reputation since I heard of the murder. I have done everything I can to stay by your side. Does that count for nothing?”

  She chilled, thinking of Vaile, enslaved by his devotion to perfect, changeless statues.

  “Have you stayed by my side, Max? Or by the side of some fantasy girl, some younger, inno
cent version of me that no longer exists?”

  “You, Lavinia. You. I am not holding the hand of a fantasy. I did not just kiss a figment.”

  A terrible spasm of pain exploded in her chest. “You believed the worst of me when I broke our understanding—”

  “Engagement,” he said. “Not understanding. Engagement.”

  “You see? I knew you had not forgiven me. No papers were signed.”

  “First you accuse me of living in the past, and then you throw the past in my face. Damn you, Lavinia.”

  “Stop cursing at me. Never curse at me,” she said, slashing imaginary lines in a barrier around her heart. “I will not allow it.”

  “Why must every conversation disintegrate into accusation and argument?” He sighed with rough frustration. “If it means you will finally hear me, I promise not to curse at you again.”

  “Let. Go. Of. Me.” Her breath cut the words into small, thin slices.

  His eyes grew hard and he dropped her hand. “I do not know what you want.” His voice lowered. “But how can I love you when you care so little for yourself?”

  Unfair! She took a step back and drew herself to full height. “I care little for you.” The lie tasted bitter, like tears. Trembling, she replaced her hood.

  “Very well, then.” His voice could have chipped rubies. “I would fight the world for you, but I will not fight you. If you decide to confide in me, you must come to me. I will not trouble you with my presence again.”

  She opened her mouth to protest but, in the distance, the three-quarter-hour bell chimed. Her time had run out. Only fifteen minutes remained for her to reach the spot where Iphigenia would be waiting.

  “Goodbye then, Mr. Harrison.” She turned away, lifted her skirts, and ran.

  The evening breeze whispered against her face, cooling her heated skin. If she could have, she would have torn away her cloak and calmed her fever by bathing in the chilly night. Her heart beat thunderous and hurting, but she ripped Max from her thoughts.

  She reached the designated spot and glanced behind to make sure Max had not followed. Perspiration dampened her underclothes. Her slippers were covered in mud and her cloak, full of snag. She stepped into the sheltered grove, feeling truly a mess. Inside and out.

  Believe in a second chance, should she? What an awful, terrible lie. Trust him? Why? Heal him? How? When she hadn’t the strength to heal herself?

  His sweet kiss had left a savory aftertaste. His words of love itched like a burning rash.

  Was he right? Had she pushed him away because she “cared so little for herself?”

  She closed her eyes. What did Max understand? What could he know?

  Love, peace, and refuge—lies.

  She was ruined because of false duty to reputation and to marriage. She would not allow herself to be destroyed by false hope.

  She did not need him. She would not go to him. She would find another way. She had the Furies, after all. She slammed together the broken pieces of her heart’s fortification.

  The grass rustled near the walk. Tentatively, Lavinia pulled aside her veil and caught the madam’s eye. She stepped back into the darkness and waited.

  …

  Max stalked through the brush, each footfall fueled with fury. She had surrendered and then he’d frozen. But not—as she had accused—because he had had second thoughts. He had frozen because they’d melded with a far-too-perfect symmetry, and he’d mistrusted the sensation. Nothing on this earth could proffer such a consummate sense of belonging. The moment she had yielded, dread—stronger than an open-sea gale—had seized his limbs.

  When she’d kissed him with unrestrained passion, his compass had spun and the last of his tethers had snapped. At the center of the relentless storm, Lavinia had emerged as his home. He may have traveled countless miles, but without her he would be forever adrift.

  She had always been his anchor.

  The revelation had astonished him. He’d pulled back, meaning only to catch his breath and ground himself in the familiar lines of her face. But she’d grown so hateful and angry; he’d told her he’d had enough.

  Hell.

  He should have known better, should have been stronger than her doubt. Trust, once broken, grew at the painstaking pace of summit-top lichen—if ever it grew again.

  He had returned from India with remembered horrors rendering him skittish as an injured colt. No one had understood until Lavinia’s father, hat in hand, had called. Wiggins had realized his challenge had cast a green young man off to the wilds of a foreign land the same way he himself had been sent to face a brutal war in the Canadian wild, and so had offered Max his help.

  Without Lavinia’s father’s patience and understanding, Max would never have recovered enough to work with the duke. Her father had, with calm purpose, set about restoring Max’s sense of dignity, his trust in a world of order and honor.

  Max thought he’d repaid the kindness when he’d saved the brewery, and again, when he’d taken charge of the widow Wiggin’s affairs, but Lavinia had been his true charge all along.

  Perhaps her father had expected Vaile would come to a bad end, and Lavinia would need his help.

  Her absence stung. He loved Lavinia. He had loved her for as long as he could remember. But, never before had he understood that his feeling was so much more than infatuation.

  Now, he knew. He knew she was a part of him the way the mountains and lakes were part of Cumbria. He knew she was a part of him the way the moors were part of Yorkshire. Impossible to separate. Utterly united.

  Until she healed, her injury would be his burden.

  How could she have told him she did not care and then walk away? Lunacy, to have given her an ultimatum…

  Whatever the end of this endeavor, be it bliss or torment, their destiny would be shared. He had accepted it. Why could she not?

  She had come to Vauxhall for a reason, damn the garden’s cursed, dark lanes. And he had come to learn the truth. He would discover her reason, if not by her confession, then by witness to her action.

  Once again, he set out in search. He knew better than to think he’d spot her by sight. Luck had smiled on him earlier. They’d spoken by the Thames last night. He had thought she might again seek the river’s comfort. She had, which meant he’d been on her mind. A small consolation—he didn’t want to imagine what could have happened if those dandies had recovered their wits. He was not sure if he should thank Maggie-the-Former-Prostitute.

  Few ladies would have employed someone with Maggie’s past as an abigail. That alone proved Lavinia believed in second chances, did it not? What would make her believe they were ready for one of their own?

  He stalked through the godforsaken maze of pathways. Sweat curled his hair even as cold air gnawed his ears. He checked the height and shape of every woman alone. His heart surged on a few false starts. Lovers, apparently, used the spectacle of the nine o’clock cascade to cover assignations.

  He approached Grand Cross without a sign of his lady.

  Yes, his. Or, she would be as soon as she saw sense.

  A woman sauntered off the main walkway humming an off-key bawdy-house tune. His neck tingled. His reaction could mean nothing, but he trusted his senses when all else failed. He slowed, careful to keep his steps soundless.

  The woman paused and examined a flowering bush with overly feigned nonchalance. From the flamboyant shape of the woman’s skirts and the indecent plunge of her neckline, he guessed the woman numbered among the demimonde. While she appeared entranced by the flower, Max concealed himself, sliding out of the light.

  His eyes adjusted to the almost complete darkness. The doxy glanced in both directions before stepping into the brush. Two female shapes moved like spirits, deep into the cluster of trees. Through leaves and shadow, he discerned the vaguest outline. Instinct proved correct: the second was Lavinia.

  “Madam,” Lavinia said, her voice layered with irony.

  “Cease your sneer,” the doxy snorted. “My
profession is as good as any and don’t shame me. Life’s the give and take of coin just like what we’re doin’ ’ere.”

  “I doubt you capable of shame.”

  “Comin’ from you, that’s a laugh.” The madam cackled with breath but no voice. She made a hideous, heaving sort of sound. “Do ye have my gold?”

  “Twenty guineas, as promised,” Lavinia replied. “You smell like pipe.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  Max tried to see through the shadows, but his gaze was blocked by trees and brush. The muffled clink of coins echoed through the darkness.

  “The gold I promised is all there,” Lavinia said.

  “Patience, dearie, let me count,” the doxy replied.

  What the devil was going on? Max closed his eyes, willing the swerving sensation in his gut to pass. Lavinia could not have paid someone to kill her husband. But why else would she be paying a woman of this person’s character?

  “Hurry, Iphigenia,” Lavinia prodded. “Someone could be looking for me.”

  “Hush!” the madam snapped. “There could be ears all about, fer all ye know. I will not use yer name, and I will be expectin’ the same. Now I have to start again!”

  Fabric rustled, coins clinked—both sounds were blanketed by Lavinia’s heavy, panting breath.

  “The money’s all here—” Iphigenia said.

  “And then some. If the court officer comes asking about Vaile, you never met him and you have certainly never met me, is that clear?”

  “As soon as me girls brought me word about poor Vaile, the price of my silence went up.”

  “No,” Lavinia said firmly. “This was a one-time increase.”

  “Never you mind, then. I will just take me information to the papers.”

  “No!”

  “Oh yes. The bloodsuckers will eat up all the tasty bits about your ladyship’s secret life. And the good folks of the ton will say it ain’t natural what ye’ve done.”

  Max placed his palm on a tree and leaned forward.

  “I warn you…” Lavinia said.

  “What, you will shoot me as ye did him?”

  Lavinia’s gasp ripped through Max as if they shared lungs.