Лорен Уиллиг - The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Lady Hester had mentioned a woman's name. But it hadn't been Anne.

Behind them, one of Lord Pinchingdale's footmen helped Aunt Imogen from the carriage. Mary looked quizzically at Vaughn. "I had thought," she said slowly, "that your wife was named Anne."

Lord Vaughn's eyes followed Aunt Imogen as she ascended the short flight of steps into the house. No hint of emotion illuminated his features. His countenance was as still and cold as a plaster saint's.

"She was."

Who, then, was Teresa?

Mary slowly followed Aunt Imogen into the foyer of her brother-in-law's London mansion. All around her, white marble nymphs sneered down at her from their niches, arrogant in their chilly perfection. One held an urn as though ready to dump water over the head of anyone so unwary as to walk directly past. No hint of color enlivened the entry hall, not so much as a black tile on the floor. The octagonal room had been executed all in icy white, like a Roman temple — or a tomb for the living.

Mary's boots echoed sharply on the white marble floor, in counterpoise to her thoughts. She could picture Vaughn, his hand clenched on the head of his cane in the sort of reaction she herself had failed to elicit. What had this Teresa been to him? Or, rather, Mary corrected herself, what was she to him. There was nothing to indicate that a use of the past tense would be more appropriate to the occasion.

Was this Teresa Vaughn's mistress? Mary hadn't heard any rumors linking Vaughn to a particular member of the demimonde, but that would explain Lady Hester's use of a first name alone, without title or honorific. It was a form that might indicate either familiarity or contempt. A devoted aunt might be deemed to have reason for reviling her niece's husband for his extramarital antics.

But Vaughn's wife had been dead. For ten years. Most men didn't remain constant in wedlock, much less after it. The only reason Mary's father hadn't strayed was that he was more interested in his books than in women. And an income of three hundred pounds a year didn't leave much room for supporting a mistress.

Mary became aware of a certain bobbing and fluttering on the corner of her vision. A maid, in a neat gray dress and white cap was trotting along beside her, jogging anxiously up and down in an unsuccessful bid for her attention.

"Yes?" Mary asked sharply.

The maid melted into relief. "It's her ladyship. Her ladyship said as to tell her — "

"Yes, yes." Mary cut her off with a wave of one hand, and the maid subsided into alarmed silence. Mary had a feeling she knew all too well what it was her ladyship wanted. She seized on the most expedient means of delaying the inevitable. "I'd like a bath brought up to my room."

Chewing on a hangnail, the maid hovered indecisively, torn between following her original orders and the unmistakable tone of command. Mary's back stiffened. Someday, she was going to have her own household, where her servants obeyed her orders. The operative word being hers. Hers, hers, hers. Not her parents'. Not her sister's.

"Sometime today," added Mary, with a pleasant smile ringed with steel. Vaughn's conversational habits appeared to be catching.

They were also effective. With one last anxious glance over her shoulder, the maid went. A moment's observation confirmed that she was, in fact, heading for the nether regions where servants and hot water were to be had and not to her mistress's chamber to tattle. That should earn her at least fifteen minutes before Letty came banging on her door.

Tugging in turn at each finger of her glove, Mary proceeded pensively up the broad marble stairs. Even without the added incentive of delaying her sister, a bath wasn't a bad notion. She could still feel the grime of the tavern like a film on her skin, laced with the nauseous scent of stale beer and day-old sausage rolls.

She wondered, idly, if Lord Vaughn was doing the same. She couldn't imagine he liked the stench of sausage any better than she did. Lord Vaughn with his impeccable lace and linens. And yet…Mary closed the door of her temporary bedroom behind her, tossing her gloves onto the bed. And yet, Vaughn had seemed awfully at ease with the group of radicals in the tavern. For a man who had been on the Continent for the last decade, he had been surprisingly familiar with their proceedings.

Yanking free the ribbons of her bonnet, she sent the straw and silk confection skimming after the gloves onto the white eyelet bedspread that Letty had chosen for her. Embroidered with a twining frieze of white flowers and vines about the edges, the coverlet was all that was pristine and virginal, a perfect haven for an innocent young girl's maidenly dreams. Mary hated it. It jeered at her of her failure, frozen at twenty-five in an inappropriate and attenuated girlhood.

She took pleasure in tossing her spencer onto the coverlet, the braided twill creating a wide blue blot on the pristine white. It was a petty sort of revenge, but it was better than nothing.

There were times her palms ached to close around a china ornament and fling it against the wall just as hard as she could, for the satisfaction of hearing it smash into a thousand tiny pieces. She would take the Dresden shepherdess on the mantel, blond and smug, and she would hurl it at the pink-patterned paper on the walls, that hideous pink paper covered with rosebuds that would never bloom, frozen in artificial sterility from here to eternity. And she would exult as the porcelain shattered, as the pattern cracked, as a million little pieces sifted sparkling to the muffling calm of the carpet.

There were times when just the thought of crashing china was all that kept her from running screaming down the hallways of Pinchingdale House. The idea of making a scene, causing a fuss, cracking all the codes that had held her all these years, watching her sister's and brother-in-law's faces as they came running in…

Followed by the inevitable clucking. The sideways glances, the concerned conferences, the smothering solicitude.

The Dresden shepherdess was safe on her perch.

At least now she had her little agreement with Vaughn to distract her. Whatever else Vaughn's faults might be, he worked excellently well as a diversion. As long as she took care to remember that a diversion was all he was. As Beatrice had said of the Prince in Much Ado About Nothing, he was too costly for daily use.

Mary reached back to untie the ribbon that held a sapphire cross in place against her neck. The sapphires were glass, of course, like all of her jewelry. An impressive gleam on the outside; worthless within.

As Mary let the black velvet slide into a small heap on her bedside table, a knock sounded tentatively against the door.

Servants never knocked, even such ill-trained ones as her sister employed.

Mary stiffened, fighting a craven desire to slip out through the dressing room and keep going.

"Mary?" her sister's voice called. It couldn't be anyone but her sister. No one else in the household called her by her first name. Even her brother-in-law had retreated into a respectful Miss Alsworthy, as though by that belated formality he could eradicate their embarrassing past.

Mary retreated hastily to her dressing table, sliding onto the low bench with its embroidered cover. Pitching her voice low, she called out, "Not now, Letty. I'm bathing."

The door cracked open, and a gingery head of hair poked through. It was followed by Letty, insufferably tidy in a green wool dress that brought out all of her freckles. "No, you're not," she said. "The water hasn't been heated yet."

The maid had gone straight to Letty, then. Ah, well. It was her own fault for being so careless as to neglect to follow up her request with a sixpence. A little bribery always worked wonders.

Without turning from the dressing table, Mary began taking the pins from her hair, letting the long, dark mass unroll down her back, section by section. "But I will be."

Letty rolled her eyes in the mirror. "Don't worry. I'll leave when the water arrives. I just wanted to talk to you about — "

"Lord Vaughn," Mary finished for her. Lifting her brush, she held it suspended, waiting. Her eyes fixed on her sister's in the mirror. Letty's eyes, usually as easy to read as a child's primer and just as wholesome, shifted uneasily away.

Letty shrugged uncomfortably. "Well, yes. It's just that…"

"You don't like him," said Mary flatly.

Letty flung up her hands. "I am capable of finishing my own sentences, you know."

Mary didn't bother to respond. She simply set the bristles of the brush against her hair, drawing it deliberately through the shining length. One stroke…another…

In the mirror, Letty made a face of annoyance. "It's very hard to carry on a conversation by oneself," she said.

Mary waited, drawing the brush downwards in long, languid strokes, the only sound in the room the swish of the bristles against her hair. If Letty was set on lecturing, lecture she would, whether she received any encouragement or not.

Letty shook her head at her in the mirror. "Oh, Mary…"

There it was again. That "Mary." That long-suffering, long-drawn-out rendition of her name that made her nails sharpen into claws. When had that begun? Five years ago? Six? Before that, Letty had been such a complaisant child, so easy to entertain with a bit of ribbon or an old doll, beaming all over her freckled face at the chance to play dress-up in her sister's clothes and have her hair dressed like a big girl's.