Lady Vice

by Wendy Lacapra

“You know I did not shoot him. I was here waiting for you. And, by the way, where were you last evening? Perhaps it was you who murdered Vaile.”

  “Please! Why would I kill me best customer? Don’t be tellin’ those tales. Ye accuse me, ye fool, and I bring yer secrets to light.” The madam snorted again. “More gold. Next month, regular-like.”

  “I haven’t any.”

  “I hear there’s a jury at the Red Lion. Maybe I will stop in.”

  “You would not dare.”

  “Don’t think ye can threaten me,” the madam growled low. “I know all about yer parties, and I know yer bringin’ in far more gold than twenty guineas.”

  “I am in mourning. I cannot host any more parties.”

  “Ask yer little friends—what do the Grub Street gents call ’em? Decadence and Scandal? They will give ye a cut.” Iphigenia leaned in. “Then there’s the little matter of yer trust.”

  “How do you know about my trust?”

  Iphigenia laughed again; this time the sound popped like an unpleasant cough. “I ain’t at Magdalene Hospital, I never got charity and I don’t give charity. I keep yer secrets ’cause ye pay me. If ye stop, they’re out. Bring twenty more in a fortnight, if ye know what’s good for ye. It is the best offer ye’ll get from me, now.”

  “Twenty more next month but, after that, we are finished. I haven’t access to my own funds.”

  “I have plenty of rooms. If yer so short of coin, maybe ye’d like to give a few gents a go? Vaile bragged about yer talents, but he lacked imagination, did he not? No matter, me customers will make up yer education. And so many of my customers already seen what ye got to give, masked or not.”

  A vile taste suffused Max’s mouth. He stifled the urge to spit.

  “Hush,” Lavinia whispered.

  “Get yerself off yer high horse. Twenty more in a fortnight.” A twig cracked beneath her feet as Iphigenia turned to leave.

  “I can try.”

  “Ye’ll do more than try, me lady.” Iphigenia leaned over in a fit of hacking coughs. “Just think of the looks on the faces of all those lords and ladies when they discover how you played the lady by day while puttin’ on performances in my place at night. All those protestations…but yer an actress, I know. I ain’t so sure others don’t know, too. One look in those eyes of yers and I can see plain as day what yer hiding. You think yer foolin’ people?”

  “Be silent.” Lavinia’s voice hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Yer no better than I am. I whore for money, you whored for what?” Iphigenia paused. “Love? Takin’ coin makes me the smarter one, methinks.” She delivered her parting shot and tramped back out into the lane with her prize.

  Max’s blood rushed in his ears. He remembered the whispers about Vaile. A watcher. But even a man like Vaile would not have sunk so low as to sully an unwilling wife with his appetites! Would he? Had he?

  Max swallowed the nasty truth.

  Yes, Vaile would. Yes, Vaile had.

  Since Max had first met Lavinia’s shadowed eyes last night, he’d known something had snuffed her light. He’d asked if Vaile had beaten her, but never imagined that the man had violated his own wife.

  No gentleman would do such a thing. For God’s sake, Lavinia could have been the mother of Vaile’s heir. Such offense went against everything a gentleman valued. Bloodlines were sacrosanct. Innocence and purity were protected.

  Rage at a dead man burned up his arms, down his spine, and straight into his chest, petrifying his muscles, rooting him to the earth. What had she said when she told him Vaile did not beat her? There are more ways than one to ruin a woman’s spirit.

  Now he understood why she found trust so difficult.

  He cursed in silence. He had not truly listened to her words. His mouth dried as if full of cotton. Yet the sour taste lingered, thick like spoiled gravy in the back of his throat.

  Her cloak rustled against the cypress as she straightened her hair. The dark of night obscured her form as she hurried back to the path. He followed her in silence, making sure she reached the hackney unharmed.

  He’d told her he would not go to her again, and she’d replied she did not care.

  He hoped to God she had lied.

  Vaile had not only dishonored his wife, he had held in contempt the foundations of primogeniture. A man so thoroughly without morals could create a lethal quagmire of enemies. His murder was first, but was it the last?

  Lavinia had not murdered her husband, but someone had. Lavinia could be next. Max could not protect her without her trust. How could he convince her he could be trusted before it was too late?

  Chapter Eleven

  Lavinia held still until Iphigenia passed beneath the lamplight. If horror manifested as insects, her body would be crawling with vermin. A tingling sensation rushed down the outsides of her legs and the tender skin of her neck pinched.

  Iphigenia’s words rang louder than the bells of St. Paul’s. You are no better than I am. I whore for money, you whored for what? Love? Her stomach pitched.

  Perhaps she could forgive herself if she had lost her way because of love. But, in caustic irony, she had lost everything she had held dear, first to preserve her reputation, and then to preserve her sham of a marriage.

  Vaile’s demands had made her shudder with revulsion…and her revulsion was what he had craved. Was there anything she could have done?

  She wiped her sweating palms against her cloak and tried her best not to ask the persistent, answerless question: what if?

  What if my father had allowed me to marry Max before Max had left for India? What if I had refused a London debut? What if I had been stronger? What if I had left Vaile earlier and lived as a spinster?

  Monte had controlled her husband. Could she have influenced Vaile as well?

  Lavinia checked her hair with shaking hands—the disarray was worse than she feared. Clumps of hair poked out in every direction. She rewound the strands, attempting to pin them into some semblance of order.

  Iphigenia’s accusation had been a slap, jolting her from stunned stillness.

  She had tried to convince Vaile to fulfill his marriage vows in private. He had mocked her notions of fidelity. He had mocked her outrage. He had warned her that, if she refused, he would make her into the next Grace Drample.

  Grace had been a leader of the fashionable world, until Parliament had granted her husband a divorce. Grace’s husband had included a clause in his petition that had left Grace in a netherworld, unable to marry and unable to demand support. She had been forced by circumstance to sleep with men for money.

  Already estranged from her family, though not by her choice, the prospect had terrified Lavinia. Vaile had sewn that terror to her wrists in order to make her dance to a marionette’s reel.

  Vaile had offered her a Hobson’s choice—do as I wish or be a whore in truth—no choice at all. But there had been other choices, hadn’t there? Why hadn’t she been able to see them? She could have found another way.

  Her knees weakened under guilt’s unbearable weight. She had carved a place with Sophia and Thea where she thought she could not be touched by guilt.

  She had been wrong. Guilt lived just beneath the surface. Guilt castigated her for her past. And, when she turned toward the future, guilt demanded: how dare you want something pure and strong and good? How dare you think you deserve Max?

  Love, peace, and refuge.

  She pressed her flattened palms against smoldering cheeks.

  Those things were real. They had to be real. Wasn’t the memory of their promise the reason she had survived?

  She had nurtured her love for Max in secret. She had tended her memories in a walled, guarded part of her heart like a faded letter she could take out and reread when the prospect of a bleak and loveless future would threaten to steal the last of her courage.

  Seeing him now was more than she could bear. Having him close, taunted. The beauty and perfection of being wrapped in his arms scratched against the g
uilt in her heart, screeching like nails on slate.

  When he had kissed her in the lane, she had very nearly believed the promise in his embrace. In spite of the dark threats she faced and in spite of her own resistance, she had yielded.

  And what had he done? He had pulled away.

  But had she not been the one who continued to insist he leave her be? She winced.

  Faithfully, she had followed Max’s Parliamentary exploits in the weeklies. She had been so very proud of all he had accomplished. She was happy, then, that he would never know the desperate decisions she had made under the worst of circumstances.

  She believed herself to be scarred, used, and unworthy, forever tainted by the sordid world of Vaile’s creation—a world she had never known existed before they had wed.

  How can I love you, when you care so little for yourself, Max had asked.

  She had accused him of deceiving himself, of seeing her only as she had been. But, truthfully, it was she who wanted to believe that girl she had been still existed. She wanted to believe that, simply by choice, she could reenter a life of light and love. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything.

  Hope, like a fingernail cracked to the base by hard toil, caused unbearable pain.

  Why could she not cry? Her tears were permanently lodged at the base of her throat. Regret and anger and fear rested heavily in her chest.

  Lavinia steeled her spine as she snorted at her whining resistance. If there was one truth in life, it was that those who pity themselves never find their way. Yes, hope caused pain, but less pain than despair. Hope only cost more in the currency of courage.

  She had failed to see all her possible choices when she’d been with Vaile. Was she blinded to choice now?

  She wanted to be dipped in the love that ran like a river current through Max’s voice. She wanted to be washed and made new by the power of his trust.

  Guilt whispered, “Who do you think you are?”

  She pressed her lips together in a firm, unyielding line.

  I am Lavinia—a woman who has loved and who will love again. She inhaled the scent of the cypress trees. It fortified.

  She would, despite her fear of betrayal, try to give Max a chance to prove she could trust him yet again.

  The chess pieces were all on the board, but her plays, until now, had been defensive. She needed to fight. She adjusted her cloak and replaced her veil. She pulled up her skirts and carefully picked her way back to the lane.

  She’d bloody well suffered enough.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lavinia led her friends to the dining hall in Vaile House. It had never been home, but knowing Vaile had been shot upstairs in his sleeping chamber imbued the air with sinister undertones.

  Ghosts be damned. She sat down in the opulent dining chair that had once been reserved for Vaile.

  Sophia touched the back of another intricately carved chair with reverence.

  “These are quite dear, aren’t they?” she asked. “The work of Thomas Chippendale, I think.”

  “Only the best for Vaile,” Lavinia replied, “so long as he could pay with my funds.”

  Sophia sat down as well. “The workmen did a nice job with the hatchment. Even the earl would have been impressed.”

  “How are you, Lavinia?” Thea asked, sliding into a chair opposite Sophia.

  “My mind has been fogged but is beginning to clear.”

  “I am glad to hear it.” Sophia smiled. “But explain. Is your mind fogged because of Vaile’s death or fogged because of your feelings toward your would-be knight errant?”

  “Both.” Lavinia drew together her brows. “Are my sentiments so obvious? Does my…” she searched for the appropriate word, “…attachment to Mr. Harrison show?”

  “Your feelings are obvious to me.” Sophia patted Lavinia’s hand. “But that is not a reason to worry. Remember, I know you well.”

  Thea snorted. “Sophia is dripping honey on the truth. Your feelings show, Lavinia. You are more obvious than opera singers’ rouge.”

  “I feared as much,” Lavinia said.

  “Let us see if we can clear away the rest of the fog.” Sophia nudged her chair closer to the table. “As I see it, we are concerned with two questions: first, how to discover Vaile’s true murderer and, second, how to handle Mr. Harrison. Or, more to the point, your response to Mr. Harrison.”

  Lavinia laughed, bitter as barley ale. “Is that all?”

  “Let us start with the first,” Sophia continued, ignoring her. “Randolph has placed you at Vauxhall, which means we’ve bought time. But I’m concerned something could still go wrong unless we find the real killer. Now, who would kill Vaile by shooting him through the cock? Any thoughts, ladies?” Her cheery voice oddly contrasted her words.

  “An irate mistress, perhaps?” Thea suggested.

  Lavinia pushed back her chair and rose, restlessly seeking the window. “He had no mistress.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “To my knowledge, he associated with only one woman—Iphigenia.” She wrapped her arms about her waist, resisting the cold trickling down her spine. She glanced over her shoulder. “I doubt her involvement.”

  “She was not his mistress?” Thea asked.

  “No.” Lavinia opened the side shutter.

  Outside, a vendor pushed an apple cart through the street sludge. His calves, barely covered by his muddied, mended hose, bulged as he struggled.

  Here, in a warm house and comfortable gown, had she truly cause to complain? She withered under a burden of her own making. Her secrets could hold the key to this murder, and revealing them was the only way to find out.

  She returned to the table and grasped the high-back chair. If she could not tell Sophia and Thea the truth, how did she have any hope of confiding in Max, should he somehow prove trustworthy?

  “I believe Vaile held Iphigenia in affection. She, er, eased his way.”

  Sophia put her hands on the table. “I do not understand, dearest.”

  How could she explain? “Have you noted the many classical marbles in this house?”

  “Of course,” Thea said. “The collection dominates.”

  “Yes, well, Vaile was a collector in more ways than one.” Lavinia measured her friends’ reactions, but no light of understanding dawned in their eyes. “He wanted others to be impressed with the things he owned and was not satisfied until other people viewed his possessions.”

  “What do his antiquities have to do with his murder?” Sophia asked, perplexed. “Do you think someone wanted to steal his collection?”

  “No.” She took a deep breath. “I am attempting to illustrate his nature. Don’t you see? I was part of his collection. I was just another acquisition for him to flaunt. Every aspect of our marriage was on display, including intimacies.”

  “Oh.” Sophia turned dark red. “Oh, no.”

  “I still do not understand,” Thea insisted.

  “Vaile was only aroused when someone coveted what he possessed—antiquities or me.” She swallowed. “My husband was unable to be a husband unless someone else watched him perform and, by his demand, the performance always included my fierce resistance. Not at all, as it were, faked.”

  Thea’s jaw dropped.

  Lavinia pulled out the chair and collapsed onto the supporting cushion. “The woman I was referring to earlier, Iphigenia, provided men who were happy to accommodate my husband’s needs.”

  “You and he…” Thea bit her lip. “You let others see you?”

  Lavinia nodded.

  “Here?” Sophia asked.

  “No. We visited her establishment.” Lavinia put her elbows on the table and placed her fingers over her eyes. “He rented rooms in her brothel. My face was concealed. But…” Lavinia’s skin shrank over aching bone and muscle. “I had to go. A wife’s primary duty is to provide an heir.”

  “He used your sense of duty to compel you?” Thea asked.

  Lavinia nodded.

  “What a
n unholy bastard,” Thea said.

  If these, her closest friends, reacted with such shock and embarrassment, how would a man like Max react? And how much worse would her debasement appear to a jury?

  With gentle hands, Sophia removed Lavinia’s fingers from her eyes. “There now, dearest, we…we were just surprised. We just—”

  “Your reaction is perfectly proper. These things should not be discussed. But everything is sure to come out should there be a trial. Like that pitiful Lady Worsley, all of my husband’s proclivities and my tacit acceptance will soon excite tipple-drenched snickers in every London tavern.” She held Sophia’s gaze. “And where will the illustrious Mr. Harrison be then? Surely not by the side of a woman everyone will be calling a whore.”

  “The Worsley case,” Thea reasoned, “was a criminal conversation suit. Lady Worsley ran off with her lover after enduring her husband’s oddities. Lord Worsley sued the lover. The Worsley’s personal affairs had to become public for her husband to prove she committed adultery. And Lord Worsley’s proclivities were the lover’s only defense. This is a murder.”

  “Yes,” Lavinia replied. “A murder of a peer. Someone will be brought to justice, even if innocent.” Her worst fear danced on the edge of her tongue. “Someone must know Vaile’s secrets, Thea, can’t you see? They are casting suspicion in my direction, knowing I will not want these details made public. They believe I will not fight and there is no one to fight for me.”

  “They’ve already been proven wrong,” Sophia said.

  “Can you think of anyone in that category?” Thea asked. “How about one of the men who watched?”

  “The only person who knew for certain I was the lady beneath the mask was Iphigenia.” She froze. And Monte.

  But Monte and Vaile had been inseparable, and Monte was pressing the investigation with an almost touching need for vengeance.

  Why would Monte have killed Vaile?

  And if Monte had killed Vaile, how would they prove that the man responsible for funding the investigation was also the man who committed the crime? Monte was heir to a marquess. Utterly untouchable.

  Once again, she remembered the words Monte had spoken as she’d backed out of Vaile House, flintlock pointed with hammer stretched.