Лорен Уиллиг - The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Easy for Alex to say. She's been with the same guy since freshman year of college. It only seems fun if you don't have to do it.

Hurrying away from Belliston Square in what I hoped was the right direction, I found myself smack in front of an array of footware. Like a homing pigeon with expensive tastes, I had gone in precisely the wrong direction, landing myself on New Bond Street, directly in front of Jimmy Choo. Oh well, it wasn't a disaster. At least, it wouldn't be as long as I didn't go in and buy anything. One shoe there could wipe out my stipend for the entire month. A pair would be completely out of the question.

Fortunately, I had made my way to Bond Street before. All I needed to do was follow New Bond Street all the way up past the glossy shop fronts until I hit the grotty hubbub of Oxford Street, and from there it was a straight twenty-minute walk back to Leinster Street and my basement flat. I wasn't taken any chances on the tube. If it knew I had a date, it would be sure to break down.

I was just scurrying off in that direction, when two men stepped out into the street right in front of me. They were coming out of Russell & Bromley, that most veddy British of men's shoe stores, and my first thought was, Ha! So men do go shopping together in pairs, too.

My second was much less coherent and involved ducking around or under or behind things, if only there had been anything to duck around or under or behind. Somehow, I had the feeling that crashing through the plate-glass window of Jimmy Choo would be far more conspicuous than staying put. The fight-or-flight instinct had taken hold, and flight was well on its way towards winning.

Because those weren't just any two men.

The one carrying a shoe box, who looked as if someone had just shot his pet dog, I vaguely recognized from the night of my disastrous blind date with the man of Grandma's choosing. But I wasn't concerned with him. It was Colin who worried me; Colin, who was strolling blithely along beside him, right in my direction. My unshowered, ungroomed, decidedly unkempt, anything but seductive direction.

In the glow of light from the shop windows, cutting against the November dusk, Colin's hair shone like tawny gold of an old coin, back before they started diluting the currency with lesser alloys. Next to his stockier, darker friend, he looked like a Plantagenet monarch with Thomas а Becket in tow, ready to conquer France at a single blow and sweep single heiresses off their feet. I, on the other hand, looked like a mugwump.

Since it was too late to duck or flee, there was nothing to do but brazen it out. "Hey, there!" I called out, waving my arms like a one-woman semaphore competition. "Yoo-hoo! Colin!"

I'm not sure if it was the yoo-hooing or the waving that did it, but his tawny head turned in my direction and his face broke into a great big smile. It looked rather nice that way. He didn't seem to notice that my hair was greasy or that my Barbour jacket was two sizes too big, or that I was wearing pants that had probably been designed for a circus clown. He just seemed genuinely glad to see me.

How very bizarre.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, with real interest.

"I've been archiving in the area," I explained airily. "I was just on my way off home."

"Archiving?"

"I archive, you archive, he/she archives…."

"Naturally," Colin said with a grin. "I ought to have known." Belatedly remembering his friend, he turned and gestured in his direction. "Eloise, have you met Martin yet?"

"No, I haven't," I said pleasantly, rather liking that "yet" and the sense of inevitability that came with it, as though it was a matter of course that I would be introduced to his friends. On the other hand, I was also friends — or friendish — with his sister, so the odds were that I would meet them socially sooner or later, even if not through him.

As you can tell, I analyze way too much, especially when there's nothing there to analyze.

I held out a hand to Martin. "Pleased to meet you."

Martin held out a hand back. It was a nice enough hand, but his clasp lacked conviction. He looked, quite frankly, as though he were somewhere far, far away. Wherever that place was, it wasn't a pleasant one.

"So, I see you've been shopping?"

Martin nodded.

"Shoes," said Colin informatively.

"Useful things, shoes," I commented.

Martin nodded again. His conversational repertoire appeared to be limited.

"Well, if you two are still in the middle of shopping, I wouldn't want to keep you," I said, beginning to edge away. I pointed a finger at Colin. "I'll see you at eight?"

"There's no need for that," said Colin.

I frowned. Did this mean he had noticed the lack of shampoo and rather inadequate application of deodorant?

"We're just finished," Colin clarified. "So if you're hungry now…?"

I could hear my friend Pammy's voice in my head, whispering, "Hungry for what?" I made it stop. Dinner early was an awful idea. I still needed to shower and change and shave — not necessarily in that order.

"I was just off home, anyway," Martin put in, proving he could manage not only words but whole phrases.

I looked at him worriedly. If he were my friend, there'd be some serious "Is everything okay?" going on. But men don't operate that way — at least not in the presence of members of the opposite sex.

"Are you sure?" I asked, looking from him to Colin, which was the closest I could get to an "Is he going to be okay?" without actually saying it.

Martin answered by raising the hand not holding the shoe box. "Cheers."

"Cheers," Colin responded.

Neither of them sounded particularly cheery.

"Is he going to be all right?" I murmured. "He looks like his dog just died."

Colin glanced down at me in complete comprehension. "Not his dog, his girlfriend. She gave him the shaft last week."

"Oh!" I said, as memory hit. "Martin. The one who just had the bad breakup."

Colin nodded. "He's not exactly at his most sociable right now. They were together for four years."

"Ouch." I craned my head back over my shoulder, much the way one might rubberneck at roadkill, but Martin had already been obliterated by the shifting patterns of the crowd. "Poor guy."

Colin looked grim. "She rang him while we were in the store."

Since another ouch would be redundant, I said, "Does she want him back?"

"No. She wants to be friends."

"Poor Martin," I said softly. There's nothing worse than being strung on by an ex. Not that I would know. When I dumped Grant, I had done it cleanly — if it can be called cleanly to fling a ring in someone's face and hang up on all his subsequent calls. But at least I left him in no doubts as to my sentiments. Once you've called someone lying, cheating scum who belongs under the nearest rock, and called him that loudly and in public, there's just no going back.

"So," said Colin, looking down at me in a way that banished both Martin and the memory of evil exes from the horizon. "Shall we?"

Absurd as it sounds, we'd been so companionably chatting about his friend's angst that I'd nearly forgotten we were supposed to be on a first date. And that I was unshowered, untweaked, and otherwise unkempt.

I looked down at the silly pants, at my computer bag bumping against my hip, and thought of a hundred reasons to say no. I could tell him I wanted to drop my things off at my flat. Even half an hour would buy me enough time to hastily shower, put on a sweater without dyed-in deodorant stains under the arms, and give myself an extra inch with a pair of super-tottery going-out heels. I could make the usual big, predate fuss.

Or I could just go along with Colin.

"Sure," I said, smiling up at him through the tousled strands of my greasy hair. "Let's."

It had been very clever of Lord Vaughn to wait until she was already ensconced in his carriage before he announced the location of their first foray. Since the alternative was leaping out into traffic, Mary chose to disbelieve him instead. The very idea of her, going to a…well, it was palpably absurd.

"All right," she said tolerantly, since nothing needled more than amused forbearance, "you've had your joke. Now where are we really going? Or would you prefer to tell me another tall tale?"

Whatever his valet had used to polish his boots, it had created a mirrorlike sheen that reflected Vaughn's smug expression with unnerving accuracy. "My dear lady, would I jest?"

Mary didn't even need to stop and think about it. "At my expense? Certainly."

Mary was surprised the English government hadn't leased Vaughn out as a secret weapon of torture. They could make a fortune in fees. He needled; he baited; he drawled. His eyebrow rose more regularly than Pauline Bonaparte's hemline, and he never spoke directly when a means of confusion was to be had. If Vaughn swore the sky was blue, it probably meant it had turned green when no one was looking.

It made for a refreshing change. After a week of living with Letty and Geoff, Mary welcomed the distraction provided by Lord Vaughn's mercurial shifts. Having her sister and brother-in-law tiptoe around her made Mary feel as though she were suffering a slow death by cotton wool, smothered in good intentions. They were painfully solicitous of her feelings, with the sort of solicitude that did far more for the giver than the recipient. It wouldn't sting nearly as much watching them hold hands beneath the breakfast table as it did when they instantly sprang apart as soon as she entered the room, exchanging a look more intimate than any handclasp, a look, that in the private matrimonial lexicon, roughly translated to, "Mustn't upset Mary." That upset Mary. It was pure wormwood and gall to be treated as an emotional invalid needing cosseting and special care. For the first time, Mary understood what drove animals to bite the hand that fed them — sheer irritation at being patronized. It made her want to growl and snap.