Wicked Little Secrets (17 page)

She grasped John’s arm, pulling him toward the box door when, half-blind from her headache, she slammed into someone rounding the corner.

***

A large blond woman whirled about laughing before falling on the floor in front of Vivienne, John, and the Montags. Her pale pink gown was hiked up above her knees, exposing her torn stockings.

Mrs. Montag gasped and covered her daughter’s eyes with her hands. “Don’t look, Elise!” she cried, shoving her daughter back into the box. “It’s a bad woman.”

The bawd, reeking of gin, gazed up at Vivienne with small, glossy eyes. “I know you,” she slurred. “You were with that gentleman and the little doggy.”

“I say,” Mr. Montag cried.

“You are quite mistaken,” Vivienne stammered. “I have never seen you in my life,” she lied and yanked on John’s arm, trying to drag him to their seats.

“Mama Dellie is right vexed at you for what your gentleman friend did to her place.” The woman pushed herself off the floor, coming to her wobbling feet. “That ugly bawd is stirred up like a hot bee. She likin’ to sting you,” she called back as she weaved toward the lobby.

The corridor turned silent except for the muffled sound of singing.

Vivienne’s head felt like it had been jammed into a nutcracker and split open. She gripped John’s arm, trying to stay upright. She knew she had to say something for John’s sake. This was supposed to be his evening to shine before the Montags, and she had embarrassed him. “I-I truly don’t know that w—”

“John, please escort Miss Taylor home,” Mr. Montag said with finality that brooked no argument. Then he placed a firm hand on her fiancé’s shoulder. “Call in the morning, and we can finish our discussion.”

“Come, Vivienne,” John said, his mouth tight with disappointment.

Why
didn’t I leap to my death from the balcony when I had the chance?

***

John didn’t speak again until they were in his carriage, pulling onto the street, then his words ripped into her like bullets. “You say you didn’t know that woman, but she seemed to know you. Who was the gentleman she spoke of?”

“I said I don’t know her. She is mistaken.”

John fell silent for a moment, but his anger was tangible.

“Mr. Montag said there was a question of creditors and fraud with your father’s company,” he said. “Are you keeping something from my father and me?”

“No!” She stared at her hands, clasped tight in her lap. “The insurance company is fraudulent, not my father. They refused to pay after the fire, despite all the money my father had given them over the years. B-but my father’s company is f-fine now. We have n-no debts.” Vivienne felt the nausea come back, and she clenched her hands and swallowed hard. She hated to lie, but she had promised her father. “I-I love you,” she cried, the words sounding so desperate.

John didn’t respond but turned to look out the window. The lamplight cast shadows across his hard cheekbones.

She scooted across the carriage seat and tried to cuddle next to him. “Please don’t be angry with me. I’m trying so hard to please you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my father’s business.”

He leaned his elbow against the window and rubbed his forehead. “I just didn’t want to hear it from the Montags. If I had known…” His eyes flickered over her face. “How they must look down on me.”

Vivienne ran her thumb across a tiny pick in the satin of her dress. “Would you rather marry Miss Montag than me?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

“Would you?”

“I asked her, but I was turned down,” he said, his voice hard yet brittle. “So it’s really not a question, is it?”

“I guess… I guess I just want to know who I’m supposed to be for you.”

He exhaled and covered his eyes. “I’m marrying you,” he said, as if he were answering an annoying child’s question for the thousandth time.

“I’m going to be a perfect wife to you. I am.”

“I know. You’ve told me that.”

When the carriage stopped before her aunt’s home, he leaned over and gave her cheek a cold, perfunctory peck.

She turned her head and captured his mouth with hers and pressed against him. “You shouldn’t,” he whispered.

“I want to.” At that moment, she would do anything to please him.

She felt his body rise and fall with his uneven breath.

“Behave yourself,” he said and slowly extracted himself. “I shall come again on Sunday. You need to go inside.” He reached for the door latch and swung down onto the walk.

A few minutes later, she stood alone in the parlor, watching from the window as his carriage drove out of the square.

He wasn’t going home; she could feel it. He was going to his
little
wedding
present
at Seven Heavens. His gift to himself for not getting the lady he wanted, for being saddled with one who embarrassed him and lied to him about her father’s debt.

Nine

Miss Banks tucked Vivienne deep into her covers, adding another wool blanket from the clothespress to “make sure you stay warm, love.” Then she blew out the lamp and quietly shut the door behind her. Vivienne stared at the dim ceiling and waited for the black nothingness of sleep to relieve her mind, but the horrible scene at the opera was stuck in her head and wouldn’t let her rest.

She turned and turned, buried herself under the blankets, covered her head with the pillow, but couldn’t block out the anxious thoughts clogging her brain. She couldn’t spend the entire night in this helpless state. She had to do something.

She yanked the covers off and stepped barefoot onto the cold floor. She grabbed the tallow candle in a tin holder on the mantel and held it over the coals until the wick caught aflame. Holding the candle, she tiptoed down the stairs.

Her aunt’s door was cracked an inch. Vivienne could see Gertrude’s sloping form beneath the blankets. Her soft, whistling snores mingled with Garth’s wheezing ones as he lay curled at her feet. Vivienne pulled the door shut, careful not to make a noise, continued down the corridor to her uncle’s study, and locked herself inside.

“Tell me your secrets, you dirty, lecherous old man,” she whispered.

She began her quest at the bookcases. There were five books relating to law, none of which contained a reference to Teakesbury or her uncle. The remainder of his collection were volumes describing the rural villages of England.
Who
knows? Maybe his spanking preoccupation carried him beyond the confines of London,
she thought. She moved to the desk, pulling out every drawer, checking for a secret chamber or unaccounted space. Nothing but a few buttons and old folded receipts for coal delivery from 1833.

She stepped back, squeezed her eyes, and took in the old desk’s dimensions, trying to think like her father, the engineer. Could there be a secret chamber accessible from the back? She sat on the floor, braced her back against the fabric panels, and pushed the desk’s left side with her bare feet. The ugly thing wobbled but grudgingly relented, allowing her to push it out at an angle from the wall. Along the edge, she could see the outlines of the long flat panel. Another secret chamber!

Please, please, please
, she whispered, as she wedged her fingernails into the wood and pulled. The flimsy wood fell off and revealed the back of the drawers.

Poorly
made
piece
of
rubbish!

“What the hell have you done?” she heard a muffled man’s voice say. Cold bumps crawled over her skin. Oh God! She was being haunted by Uncle Jeremiah’s ghost for insulting his bureau!

“Why don’t you let anyone help you?” said another male ghost.

What? Wait! Vivienne turned and stared at the dusty faux tapestry behind the desk. The fabric panel ran about three feet across, four feet high and five inches from the floor. She leaned in, setting her ear against the cloth.

“I let people
help
me all the time.” She recognized Dashiell’s rich baritone. “But this is not help.”

“When was the last time you had a woman? A week ago? It isn’t healthy for you. If you don’t get a woman regularly, you start buying more of those old relics and curiosities,” Dashiell’s grandfather said. “And we ain’t got any more room.”

Vivienne poked at the dust-caked panel. The fern green fabric gave as if it were stretched over an embroidery hoop. Her finger was positively shaking when she pressed against the adjacent panel. Beneath the cloth, she felt hard wood.

“Bloody hell,” she whispered. She curled her fingers around the frame of the hollow panel and tugged.

***

Dashiell stared disbelievingly at his grandfather. “I’m not interested in meeting a courtesan you and the boys have found for me.” He slicked his hands across his face and into his hair.

“She’s not a courtesan but an actress. A good one, too. Has that black hair and blue eyes like Vivienne,” the earl said as he preened before the mirror on the commode.

“Firstly, I fail to see how looking like Vivienne has anything to do with one’s acting ability. And secondly and finally, Vivienne has green eyes. Green eyes!”

“You can pretend.”

“Leave.”

His grandfather picked up Dashiell’s cologne, pulled out the stopper, and sniffed. “If you’re not going to ask that saucy Vivvie to ma—”

“I said leave!” Dashiell grabbed the bottle before his grandfather could fumigate himself and slammed it down on his commode, rattling the various Greek and Egyptian statues there.

“See what I mean? You’re frustrated. Now I ain’t been to Seven Heavens in a bit, but the boys say Angelica has a new beauty from India. She can bend her back and—”

“Absolutely not!” Dashiell grabbed his grandfather’s upper arm and forcibly escorted him into the corridor. “I would recommend that you continue to stay away from that place. You’ll just injure yourself if you go and then have to send for me. And I’m not going to explain to the physician what happened.” Dashiell slammed the door.

“You’re frustrated,” he heard his grandfather say from the other side. “You need a woman.”

“Good night,” Dashiell shouted back, crossed over to his bed, and lay down.

He wasn’t frustrated. So it had been three days and eleven hours and approximately forty minutes. Some people spent their entire lives celibate—just none of his relatives.

He picked up his new book on the Norman invasion of Britain he had bought after leaving Teakesbury’s office. He had been reading for three hours, yet only managed to get to page five. His mind kept veering off the lines into some daydream with him clad in chainmail armor and bearing a weighty sword. He would storm the keep of some Saxon castle, fighting off a dozen or more men in blood-letting sword battles, and then race up the winding tower steps to the tower where fair Vivienne waited upon a bed of silken sheets. Then his little fantasy went sordidly downhill as he took her prisoner.

Tap, tap, tap.

“I’m not frustrated,” he called out.

Tap, tap, tap.

“I said—”

Wait. That knocking wasn’t coming from his door. He turned his head and stared at the mahogany side table littered with his history books and journals.

“Dashiell, can you hear me?” a muffled female voice whispered. “It’s me, Vivienne. I’m on the other side of the wall. There’s a hole in the brick.”

He slid off his mattress and pulled the bedside table from the wall, sending his books crashing to the floor. He knelt and tapped on the dark wooden panel. Beneath his knuckles, he felt her knock answer his.

“Well, blow me,” he said. “Wait! Don’t go anywhere!”

He hoofed down two stories and through the concaved rooms in the stone cellar. Startled servants leapt up from their various chores which seemed to require an inordinate amount of empty ale glasses. Dashiell curtly nodded and muttered, “As you were,” like some sort of military commander, and hurried on. Hanging on the mews wall, he found what he was looking for: a crowbar.

He returned to his room and locked the door.

“Vivienne, are you still there?” he asked, tapping on the wall panel.

“Yes,” she whispered. He could hear a fearful tremble in her voice.

He grabbed his pillow, removed the cover from it, and jammed the crowbar into the empty pillow case. He wedged the crowbar’s edge between the panel and the wall and pulled. The panel opened as easily as a welcoming lover.

The brick had been cut out in a square about three feet in dimension, making a frame around Vivienne. A candle at her knees bathed her face with gentle light. Her loose hair flowed down to where he could see her nipples pushing against the fabric of her ivory robe. Below her breasts, set on the brick, was a garnet-colored bottle of wine.

“Oh God,” he whispered. Was this some sort of early Christmas present?

But she gazed at him with wide, troubled eyes. “I found this gun hidden in the wall.” She gingerly held an old Nock’s flintlock pepper-box between her thumb and index finger, as if she were holding the tail of a rodent.

Dashiell took the gun and examined the barrels. The metal glinted in the low lamplight. He couldn’t see a scratch. Either the gun had never been used or had been cleaned exceptionally well.

“Do you think my uncle killed someone and Mrs. Jenkinson knows it?” Vivienne asked.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would he feel the need to hide the gun in a wall?”

“But it’s evidence of something.”

“This isn’t an unusual gun. They were very common, and they can’t hit anything. A nice American pistol is what I use when I need to inflict some damage.”

She tilted her head and studied him. “Are you very dangerous, Dashiell?” she whispered.

“Extremely.” He flashed a reckless grin. “I wouldn’t play with me.”

Yet she did play with him, tease him, taunt him, whether she realized it or not. For her robe gaped, giving him an enticing eyeful of her generous breasts through her sheer muslin nightdress. Her gaze traveled down his shirt where the tails bunched just below his waist. A gentle flush colored her cheeks, and her eyes glowed with a tantalizing mixture of fear and desire. He could see her nipples grow taut under the fabric.