Лорен Уиллиг - The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Not well-reasoned was one way to describe it.

Vaughn's lips tightened as he remembered the sight that had greeted him in the drawing room of his cousin's town house in Dublin. He had seen Teresa in many poses over the years: dazzling a salon full of French radicals; prancing about disguised as a wild-haired adolescent boy; dressed in widow's weeds; naked in his bed. But nothing like that day in Dublin, with her head bent back as though her neck — that long, graceful neck of which she had been so proud — could no longer stand the weight.

There had been a blade protruding from her chest, but that he had only noticed later. It had been her face that held him. Her black eyes, flat, obsidian, filmed over in death, all the keen intelligence that had animated them gone. Her lips, pale and slack in her chalk white face, never more to debate or command or cajole. Not that Teresa had ever been much of a one for cajoling. Commanding had been more in her line.

There was nothing more she could say, nothing more that could be said. She was gone, as rapidly and perhaps with more justice than the men she herself had sent to the guillotine in the past. Her stiletto had pierced more than one man's ribs. Even so, the vision of her, cold and quiet, brought with it a raw ache that gnawed at his bowels like cheap French wine.

"Ill-reasoned indeed," said Vaughn dryly.

Lost in her own thoughts, Jane gazed off over Aristotle's head. "The Black Tulip is growing reckless. It makes him unpredictable."

"Reckless enough to fire at the King in the middle of Hyde Park?"

Jane flung up her hands in a gesture of controlled confusion. "Who can be sure? I had thought, when I saw the supplies in Rathbone's laboratory, that I might have found the answer."

"Ah," said Vaughn, moving gratefully away from the image of Teresa, stiff as a waxwork against a blood-dappled sofa. "You believed that the Tulip intended to surprise His Majesty and the rest of his family by setting off an infernal machine."

"It would make sense," said Jane seriously. "It would be far too easy for a revolutionary faction to have slipped one of their own among the volunteers to be reviewed and have him fire at His Majesty as he rides down the rank. His Majesty's guards will be prepared for that. But if there were to be a larger explosion of some kind, something akin to what we saw in Ireland…"

"Grenades," Vaughn supplied. "And rockets."

"Or some combination thereof," Jane agreed. "Even if the King himself emerged unscathed from an explosion, in the confusion it would be very easy for a rifleman to fire."

Vaughn regarded her approvingly. "Remind me to hire you the next time I need to assassinate someone."

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 letters — both 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 expedient — and, 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 assistance — there'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."

Lifting 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.