Jane clasped her hands at her waist as demurely as a schoolgirl. “Only if he is French.”
Vaughn’s expression turned wry. “Pity.” The only person he wanted removed just now was an English she.
You wouldn’t,
Anne had said. And she was right. He didn’t like blood on his hands. It was a messy substance, blood, and damnably hard to remove from one’s clothes and one’s conscience.
It was, he reflected, doubly ironic that it was Anne who had brought him into Jane’s toils.
Six months ago, the letters had begun arriving at the house in Belliston Square. Love letters, but not addressed to him. They had been written from Anne to her Fernando, or Francisco, or whatever the blasted music master’s name had been. They arrived along with a demand for money, and the threat of publication if he refused.
There were only two people who might have possession of those lettersboth of whom he had supposed dead, killed when their coach went over a cliff one stormy night in Northumberland. The music master. Or Anne. Within a week, Vaughn had had his answer. The carriage crash had been a sham. Anne’s path led to Paris, to seedy inns and seedier taverns.
It was in France that he had first crossed paths with Jane. At the time, an alliance seemed the most reasonable means of progressing. Under Bonaparte’s new laws, it was illegal for an Englishman to visit Paris. As the cousin to one of Bonaparte’s most obsequious followers, Jane moved about the city unmolested. In exchange for Jane’s help in locating Anne, Vaughn had agreed to lend his assistance in infiltrating Teresa’s organization.
The arrangement had been expedientand, perhaps, he admitted to himself, something more than that. It had been a chance for atonement. He had turned a blind eye to Teresa’s activities in Paris, until the deaths grew too gruesome to ignore. And then he had left, simply packed up his bags and gone. In one fell swoop, it seemed, he could amend the omissions of his past, by putting an end to his sometime mistress’s murderous activities and satisfying himself that his missing wife was gone beyond reclaiming. He would finally be free of both them.
Instead, Teresa was dead, killed under his roof, and Anne was back. So much, then, for redemption. And he was left with a mess of his own making. Once again, the gods laughed.
Steepling his fingers on his chest, Vaughn said casually, “That project with which I had required your assistancethere’s no longer any need.”
Jane regarded him steadily. “You mean?”
“Break out the drums and sound the trumpets. The prodigal wife has returned.”
Jane knew better than to wish him joy.
“What are you going to do?” she asked quietly.
“What else can I do?” Vaughn swept open both hands, lace fluttering. “I will be escorting Miss Alsworthy to His Majesty’s review.”
Chapter Twenty
Then straight commands that, at the warlike sound
Of trumpets loud and clarions be upreared
His mighty standard
.
Th’ imperial ensign; which, full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind
With gems and golden lustre rich imblaz’d,
Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds.
John Milton,
Paradise Lost
, I
L
ifting a hand to shield his eyes, Lord Vaughn scowled at the crisp autumn sunlight. “It’s England,” he grumbled. “Shouldn’t it be raining?”
In the harsh noon light, the bags under his eyes were turning a perfectly lovely shade of purple, which contrasted nicely with the greenish tinge of his skin. Whatever he had been doing last night after his disappearance with Lady Richard’s country cousin, it had clearly involved a great deal of spirituous liquor.
Mary regarded Vaughn’s unhealthy color with no little satisfaction. Every now and then, justice really was served.
Mary shot him a smug, sideways glance. “It’s a perfectly glorious autumn day. Don’t tell me you aren’t enjoying it.”
“I might enjoy it more from within a carriage,” commented Vaughn, nodding at the vehicles arrayed a slight distance away.
“In a carriage, we would be harder to reach,” returned Mary, positioning her own sunshade more directly over her head. “And that is the sole point of this exercise, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t the pleasure of your company reason enough?” inquired Vaughn, in a way that suggested her company was anything but.
He had been decidedly surly ever since calling for her that morning, at the unhallowed hour of ten. True to her word, Mary had been dressed and ready, wearing her sturdiest walking shoes and carrying her thickest sunshade. Although the air was crisp, the skies were clear, promising the sort of perfect autumn weather that seemed nature’s way of apologizing for the bleak winter days to come.
Aside from a raised brow, Vaughn had made no comment on either her punctuality or her attire. Mary had answered the brow with a brow of her own, and thus they had begun their journey in perfect silence, without so much as a good morning between them.
Mary had used the opportunity to study her companion. She had, she realized, only rarely seen him by daylight. Her acquaintance with Vaughn had taken place largely by candlelight, in the flare of the torches at Sibley Court, the lanterns at Vauxhall, the flickering candles of the Chinese chamber.
In the unforgiving morning light, with his skin sallow from lack of sleep, deep paunches beneath his eyes, and long furrows in his cheeks, Vaughn looked his age and then some. Even in his youth, his face must have been more distinguished than handsome, his cheekbones too sharp, his nose too aquiline for the Corinthian ideal of manly beauty. Mary compared him with St. George, broad of shoulder, sensuous of lip, quick to smile, and eager to please. St. George would never have greeted her with a raised brow and a shadow of a shrug. He would have helped her into the carriage, showered her with greetings, offered her a lap rug, and made polite commentary about the weather. The sunlight suited St. George.
Even so, Mary realized gloomily, even lined, sallow, and surly, she would far rather be sitting across from Vaughn than any other man of her acquaintance. It gave her more pleasure to exchange scowls at him than to smile at St. George, and his arrogantly raised eyebrow said more to her than the stumbling paeons of all her past admirers.
Mary had spent the rest of their short trip frowning out the window. Morning, she decided, was a highly overrated time of day. It made it far too difficult to ignore things one had no desire to see.
Leaving the carriage at the gates of the park, they had made their way on foot towards the martial display. Despite their early start, the park was already crowded with loyal subjects of the Crown, jostling and standing on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of their monarch as he reviewed the twelve thousand volunteers who were to help protect English shores from the vile French threat. By some miracle of military maneuvering, the twelve thousand troops had been drawn up into three sides of a square, as symmetrical as the joinery of a master cabinetmaker. It was impossible to get anywhere near the King. Mary saw him only as a bobbing white wig on horseback, distinguishable only by the star of the garter winking from his breast.
Having seen the press of people in the park, Mary could only imagine that the Black Tulip’s object was exactly as he claimed, to give her further instructions. How the Black Tulip intended to find her was another matter entirely.
Mary staggered as someone bumped into her from behind, but it was only a lanky teenager elbowing his way to a better position.
Unfortunately, patriotism seemed to exist in an inverse relationship to the use of soap. As Mary and Vaughn picked their way gingerly across the park, the air around them was pungent with unwashed bodies, spilled drink, churned dirt, and the unmistakable scent of horse. In front of them, a small child dribbled a steady stream of drool down the back of its mother’s dress. A crusting of crushed crumbs and spittle, long since dried, testified that this was by no means the infant’s first offense.
The woman in front of her patted the baby’s back, eliciting a ripe burp, redolent of sour milk. “‘Ave you ever seen the like?” she demanded of her neighbor, who was chiefly notable for a towering ruin of a bonnet, the plumes cracked and sagging, the silk water stained. “Old Boney ain’t going to mess with them.”
“Don’t reckon he would, dearie,” her companion replied comfortably. With the affairs of nations thus so satisfactorily settled, she extracted a glass bottle from the pocket of her skirt and helped herself to a hearty swig of gin.
Vaughn turned a deeper shade of green.
“Shall we attempt to find some higher ground?” he asked, lifting his lace-edged handkerchief to his nose.
Holding on to the edge of her bonnet, Mary edged sideways, heading towards a relatively untenanted stand of trees a little ways away. “If you find this so unpleasant, there was no reason for you to come.”
“Naturally,” said Vaughn with heavy sarcasm, using his cane to clear her path. “Any gentleman would allow you to wend your way through this charming assembly alone.”
“I’m sure Mr. St. George would have been delighted to accompany me. And been a good deal more good-natured about it.”
“If good nature is all you demand, may I recommend the acquisition of a lap dog? You shall find its company just as stimulating.”
“Pets bite,” Mary said tartly, using her elbow to good effect on a group of teenage boys who showed no inclination to step aside. “And they don’t generally come with estates in Warwickshire.”
“I would advise against rushing into rustication.” Vaughn slipped through the gap after her.
Mary employed her sunshade as a walking stick, not looking back. “I hear it’s a lovely country. The climate is most salubrious.”
“But the inhabitants leave something to be desired.”
Mary arched a glance back over her shoulder, her eyes inscrutable beneath the brim of her bonnet. “Unless one desires the inhabitants.”
Joining her beneath the tree, Vaughn plunked his cane down beside a tree root like a conquistador planting his flag. “You don’t,” he said, with altogether too much assurance.
“Isn’t that for me to judge?” Mary shook out her crumpled skirts, paying particular attention to the smudges of something sticky just above the right hip. It had the texture and consistency of old oatmeal. Mary flicked experimentally at it with one gloved finger. She could feel Vaughn’s eyes on her, not the least bit deceived by her seeming inattention.
“Don’t do it,” he said shortly. “There is nothing more unpleasant than finding oneself inescapably yoked to a person for whom one has no regard.”
Mary abandoned the stain. “Nothing more unpleasant? You have a very limited imagination, my lord. I can think of a great many things more unpleasant.”
With one hand braced on the silver head of his cane, Vaughn radiated worldly skepticism. “Can you?”
“Yes, I can,” retorted Mary. “And better than you. Do you know what it is to be a pensioner in someone else’s house? Of course not! You’re Lord Vaughn. You have houses and estates and”
“Horses,” supplied Lord Vaughn helpfully.
“Servants,” finished Mary, with a quelling glance. “All rushing to do your bidding. Yours. Not someone else’s. You don’t know what it is to have to wait upon the whims of others. And all because no man has deigned to offer me the protection of his hand.”
“Protection? An odd way of describing the institution of matrimony.”
Mary’s lip curled. “How else would you describe it? Marriage is protection against poverty, protection against all the carping old women who say, ‘Oh, poor dear, no man would ever have her,’ protection against the advances of unscrupulous cads who think nothing of taking advantage of a woman alone. Why else would anyone ever bother to marry?”
“One has heard that there are occasionally other reasons,” interjected Vaughn mildly.
Mary bristled at the implied mockery. “Don’t even think of talking to me about
love
. It doesn’t make a difference, whatever your beloved poets say.”
Vaughn’s lips twisted into a humorless smile. “I, of all people, am in no position to do that.”
“You, my lord? You’re in a position to do whatever you like. You, after all, are a
man
.” Mary imbued the simple word with enough venom to damn a dozen Edens. “And not just a man, but the great Lord Vaughn, master of all he surveys. You have only to snap your fingers, and your every desire is gratified.”
Vaughn’s gaze never strayed from her face. “Not every desire.”
Mary waved aside his words with an impatient hand. “Most of them, at any rate. And then you have the consummate gall to stand in judgment over me for taking the only way open to meI don’t see any other, do you? I can marry or I can rot. It’s not admirable, and it’s not glorious, and I don’t deny your right to mock. But I would think that some notion of noblesse oblige would mandate more condescension to your struggling inferiors.”
