Wicked Little Secrets (15 page)

“Did you find what you wanted in
The
Proceedings
?” Teakesbury asked. “Any note of the Jenkinson woman?”

Vivienne swiveled her head and blasted Dashiell with a hot glare. “How did he know about Mrs. Jenkinson?”

Dashiell tried to sound casual. “I just asked him if he knew her.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I have engaged Mr. Teakesbury as my solicitor.”

Teakesbury reached out and rested his hand on hers. “Dashiell spoke to me because he could trust me. I helped convict his father’s murderer. “

She blinked, her face flushing. “I’m sorry.”

“A terrible affair,” Teakesbury muttered. “I didn’t mean to cause you any distress. Dashiell mentioned the other evening that he was looking for Jenkinson in connection with your uncle. Suffice it to say, I assumed that was why you were looking in
The
Proceedings
.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I assure you that all our conversations will be in utter confidence. You can trust me completely with any matter that may trouble you.” He tilted his head. “
Is
something troubling you?”

Vivienne studied the man, then Dashiell. She bit down on the edge of her lip. Before she could speak, the side door opened and Albert returned, holding a tray. He carefully treaded across the room. The cups and pot rattled and threatened to tumble for the entire journey. “Would you like a bit of tea? Would you like a bit of tea?” he muttered over and over. He set the tray on the table and turned to Vivienne.

“W-would you like a bit of me?” he asked. His ears grew blood red and he cried, “Tea! I mean tea. Not me.” The poor lad was undone by Vivienne’s beauty. Dashiell had a malicious, schoolboy-like urge to brag that he had indeed kissed her luscious lips, and they were every bit as soft and delicious as they appeared.

“Thank you, Albert,” Teakesbury said, adopting that false cheery voice again. “Now if you wouldn’t mind fetching the carriage.”

The enamored clerk lumbered out the door, murmuring “Fetch the carriage. Tea, not me.”

The solicitor held up his palm. “Now don’t tell me, Miss Taylor. I can always guess how someone will take their tea. People marvel at my talent.” He lifted the pot high, letting the air cool the steaming tea as it flowed into a cup. He tossed in two chips of sugar and then added as much milk as he had tea. “Tell me if this is to your liking.” He handed it to her.

Vivienne blew across the surface and took a small sip. “Very nice,” she conceded.

“I’m never wrong.”

He didn’t offer Dashiell any tea, nor did he pour himself a cup. He leaned back on the chair cushion. “Dashiell tells me you’re engaged. Who is the lucky gentleman?”

“Mr. John Vandergrift.”

“John Vandergrift. John Vandergrift. Why is that name so familiar?” He snapped his fingers. “Ah, he is employed by my good friend, Mr. Montag. Tell me more about him.”

Vivienne went into a polite description of her fiancé, including his proposal—a trite, down-on-one-knee affair—and the plans for a honeymoon in Scotland.

“Ah yes, I’ve traveled to Scotland several times,” Teakesbury said approvingly. “It is beautiful.”

“Really? I’ve traveled to Scotland several times myself and it was miserable, wet, and filled with Scots every time,” Dashiell quipped.

Vivienne’s shoulders shook with repressed laughter.

Truly only an unthinking imbecile who had no understanding of her nature would take her to some frigidly cold, damp place like Scotland… where lovemaking was a quick tryst under mounds of blankets. She deserved adventure, to be taken to a climate where she didn’t have to restrain her passionate nature. He envisioned Greece where the warm night breeze smelling of the sea and olives would waft through the window, rustling her hair. She would be on top of him, the indigo moonlight playing on her bare skin. He would run his thumb over her soft nipples as she whimpered his name, her head thrown back, her thighs pushing him deeper into her.

Dashiell’s cock threatened at the image in his head, and he turned around and pretended to be interested in a Viking rune. He wanted to make love to her. Desperately. He would know how to pleasure her. In fact, Dashiell was a master of pleasure and little flirtatious games. He drew ladies in, played upon their weaknesses and physical desire, all the while feeding some dark insecure place in himself. A place he never wanted Vivienne to see.

The front door creaked and Albert lumbered inside. “The carriage is here.”

***

Teakesbury made a great fuss of installing Vivienne in his brougham. He lifted down the steps himself and held her hand.

She paused. “Mr. Vandergrift was busy today, else he would have helped me. He might be disappointed to learn he couldn’t be of use. I do hope you will remember to keep our meeting in confidence.”

“Of course,” Teakesbury said without missing a beat, his fingers still encasing hers. “I am the soul of discretion.”

As the carriage drove away, the man’s pleasant expression hardened. “I warned you the other evening to stay away from her.”

“I’m helping her with a family matter.”

“Dashiell, I wouldn’t trust you to help my hound!” he thundered. “Now why is this Jenkinson upsetting her?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Is that so?” Anger flared in Teakesbury’s eyes. “Well, I’m going to find out. In the meantime, you leave Vivienne Taylor to her fiancé. She doesn’t need you sniffing around like a tomcat.”

“It looked like you were doing a bit of sniffing yourself, old boy.”

“Lord Dashiell, I am a married man, faithful to my wife. Stop thinking that other men abide by your shabby morals.” He began walking away, his cane pounding the pavers. “And don’t forget you’re speaking at the Imperial Society,” he called out. “I have you slated—”

“After Newberry,” Dashiell finished. “Yes, you’ve already reminded me.”

***

Vivienne couldn’t run the risk of letting Harold, her aunt’s groom, see her exit Teakesbury’s carriage. Surely, he would tell her aunt. She needed to stop a block or so away from the London Ladies’ Flower and Garden Society and sneak around the back of the building.

She leaned forward in her carriage seat and tapped the glass. The solicitor’s driver peered over his hunched shoulder at her.

“I’m not actually going home,” she said. “I’m visiting my former headmistress, Mrs. Highgate. She’s infirm with gout and has a terrible wart condition. I forget the address, but she lives near the London Ladies’ Flower and Garden Society. Please drive in that direction. I’ll recognize her address when I see it.”

He nodded his head and grunted.

When Vivienne could see the columns of the Society in the distance, she knocked on the glass again. The groom pulled the reins, and she stepped down before a filthy brown brick tenement building. All the windows were closed and caked with dirt.

Perhaps
this
wasn’t the best address for Mrs. Highgate to reside.

“’Ey now, are you sure this is where ya headmistress lives?” The driver studied her, chewing the inside of his cheek. “You don’t seem like the sort.”

“Why, um, she is a widow,” Vivienne lied in a sunny voice. She looked about, pretending to see nothing amiss. “Very much down on her luck these days. So sad. Good day, then.” She opened the door to the building and closed herself in.

The communal hall was narrow and dim and stank with old urine, rodents, and some kind of exotic floral scent—like dried flowers and sugar.

Vivienne kept her ear close to the entrance, listening for the carriage to pull away. A headache that had begun to blossom in the solicitor’s office now filled her whole head, like invisible hands trying to squash her brain.

The door to her left cracked open, and a woman with tight, hooded eyes peered out. “I help you?” A thick oriental accent hung on her words.

“No, thank you. I’m just waiting on a friend.”

“Ah.” The oriental lady nodded and smiled. She opened the door a bit more, letting out a big waft of that warm, sweet scent. “You look so tired,” the lady said. “Come, rest. Opium very good. It make you forget.”

Raw opium! The substance so vilified by the proper, yet extolled by the artists. Curious, Vivienne strained her eyes to see inside. Within, gold and red fabric fell in swags from the ceiling like a Turkish caravan tent. A well-dressed gentleman lay curled up on a low bed that was draped with purple and yellow sheets. In his mouth, he held a long stick that resembled a flute. White smoke curled about his face. His lids were shut, and his face was relaxed with a gentle smile on his lips as if he were in comforting sleep.

The swirl of smoke was hypnotic. Its sweetness filled her nose, rushing to her head, massaging its taut, aching fibers. Oblivion suddenly appeared so lovely and smelled so delicious.

Then the cold realization hit her head like a hard slap. She was supposed to be sneaking into the London Ladies’ Flower and Garden Society and pretending to learn how to irrigate box gardens!

“I must go!” She bolted out the door and back into the bitter, drizzling gray.

She scurried down the walk, then turned and hurried up a narrow pathway that led to the seats in back of the building. She slipped into the last row of the lecture hall and checked the clock hanging on the wall: five minutes to spare. Letting out a quiet sigh, she settled in her chair. At the end of the room, the matronly lecturer held up stems of flowers and other fauna and pronounced their Latin names. “
Lonocera
pileata, Digitalis ferruginea.
”

Vivienne pressed her fingers into her temples, trying to ease the pressure in her head. However, after a moment, she felt her neck heat with the sensation of being watched. At the end of the row sat a lady in a turquoise dress that hung like a loose sack over her round form. Perched atop her tower of auburn hair was an old-fashioned leghorn hat decorated with a big fabric geranium. A brown dog that resembled a furry bat peeked his nervous head out from the paisley carpet bag on her lap. The woman smiled and picked up the dog’s tiny paw and waved it at Vivienne.

Oh
Lord!
She had managed to sit near a mad person. Vivienne flashed a polite smile and then pretended to concentrate on the lecture.

“
Leucanthemum
vulgare, Buxus sempervirens.
”

Undeterred, the lady in the leghorn hat leaned across the expanse of empty seats separating them and said in a whisper that could be heard several rows up, “Pardon me, do I know you?”

The other attendees turned their heads, their faces scrunched in disapproval.

“I’m sorry, you must be mistaken,” Vivienne said, scooting to the side of her chair, away from the lady.

“But your eyes…” She waved her fat fingers over her features. “Yes, I’m quite certain that I know you!” she insisted, impervious to the shushes they were receiving.

“I’m afraid not.”

Vivienne rose and hurried outside just as her aunt’s landau lumbered up. Once Harold the groomsman dropped the steps, she ran down the walk and leapt inside the safety of the carriage. She leaned her head against the old cracked leather as the events of the afternoon whirled about her ailing brain. That solicitor had better be as trustworthy as Dashiell claimed. If John found out about—ah! A sharp pain flared in her temples.

***

Vivienne just wanted to slip through the house undetected, curl up under her covers, and try to make this headache go away before her command evening performance as the perfect fiancée.

But she had no such luck.

“Is that you, my little Vivvie?” her aunt called from the parlor. There was a strange, airy lilt to her words. “Come here.”

The moment Vivienne entered the parlor, she felt something was wrong, a foreboding change in the air like the drop in pressure before a storm. Beside her aunt’s Bible, a half-empty bottle of
Milner’s Coca Tonic Wine
sparkled in the sunlight streaming from the window. What had happened? Had the man in the blue coat returned?

Aunt Gertrude was standing under her husband’s portrait, dressed in her customary stiff black, her eyes large and glassy. She hummed “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” in a high, off-key warble. Garth stared at Vivienne from around his mistress’s skirt. His face was more wrinkled than ever. He emitted a gurgling whimper as if he were trying to say, “You are in so much trouble.”

“W-won’t you sit down?” her aunt said, making a wobbly gesture to her chair. “I think we should have a little d-discussion.”

Vivienne obeyed like a small apprehensive child being called into her father’s library after she had galloped through the house pretending to be a horse, thrusting a broom handle as if it were a jousting stick, and then accidentally tipping over the cupboard, smashing all the family’s dishes.

“Did you have a lovely time at the nude lecture?” her aunt asked in a pleasant voice, soothing an errant curl from her cheek.

“What? I—I didn’t go to that one. I went to the gardening lecture. Remember?”

“Oh, yes. Mr. Vandergrift would approve. All those quivering pistils and stamens.”

“Quivering… Aunt Gertrude, how much coca wine have you imbibed?”

“What my physician recommended, of course. Two spoonfuls. Why do you ask?” Her aunt burped and dabbed her mouth with her finger. “My nerves, you know, are so poorly lately. So poorly. I must ask the apothecary to make something stronger.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Only the Lord knows how I suffer,” her aunt snapped and then released a long breath through her nose, recomposing herself. She pressed her hand to her chest. “I was thinking that soon you will be moving into your husband’s bed and—”

“Pardon?”

“I said soon you will be moving into your husband’s home. Do listen.”

“But you said… never mind.” Vivienne reached for her aunt’s tonic bottle and discretely shoved it up her sleeve.

“And this will be your last time together with your beloved sisters. I think it would be best if you were with your family before the wedding. I’m selfish to keep you.”