Лорен Уиллиг - The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

"Successfully bargained," Mary corrected.

"That," replied Lord Vaughn, "is exactly what I mean. Has anyone ever told you that you haggle divinely? That the simple beauty of your self-interest is enough to bring a man to his knees?"

Mary couldn't in honesty say that anyone had.

Vaughn's eyes were as hard and bright as silver coins. "Those are the reasons I want you. I want you for your cunning mind and your hard heart, for your indomitable spirit and your scheming soul, for they're more honest by far than any of the so-called virtues."

"The truest poetry is the most feigning?" Mary quoted back his own words to him.

"And the most feigning is the most true. Now tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm lying. Tell me what I really want."

"I can't." Mary waited just long enough for Vaughn's silver eyes to light with triumph, before adding, "Because you didn't pause long enough to give me a chance."

Reaching for her as though to embrace her, Vaughn stopped himself just in time. His hands closing over her upper arms, he shook her lightly instead. "Do you know what it's been these past few weeks to constantly see you and know I couldn't have you?"

"It's no more than I've had to bear," Mary shot back, and only realized too late just how she had exposed herself. The look of satisfaction on Vaughn's face was all that was needed to show her that she had said too much. Seeking to distract him, she blustered, "You're just trying to evade my question, aren't you? If you had the choice — "

Vaughn's hands tightened on her shoulders. "Choice, again, is it? Let me assure you, once and for all. If I had my choice, there would be no need for any of this. If I had my choice, you would be buying your bloody bridal clothes. If I had my choice, Monday night would never have ended with a kiss."

"Bridal clothes?" echoed Mary.

"I would crown you with coronets and deck you with ancestral jewels. If I had my choice. But I don't." Vaughn's grip loosened so suddenly that Mary stumbled back against the tree. His face was hard and ugly in the unforgiving noon light. "I don't have that right."

Mary had to swallow hard before she could speak. Her throat was dry, and her tongue felt too thick for her mouth. "Why not?"

She had her answer. But not from Vaughn. Before he had time to answer, a shadow fell across the space between them.

"Because," said the newcomer, twining her arm possessively through Vaughn's, "he already has a wife."

The newcomer planted herself firmly in the space by Lord Vaughn's side. She came no higher than his shoulder, her blond curls bobbing against the black superfine of his coat like boats on a midnight sea. The broad-brimmed bonnet she wore cast a deep shadow across her face, leaving her as little more than a walking fashion doll, in a walking dress of fine burgundy wool, far more suited for the crisp autumn air than Mary's twice-turned muslin. Her kid gloves had been dyed to match her dress. The deep burgundy looked like streaks of blood against Vaughn's arm.

Or maybe it was merely that Mary's thoughts were bloody. Who was this ridiculous interloper? Mary waited for Vaughn to make short work of her with one of his cutting remarks, but Vaughn, for a wonder, said nothing at all. He appeared to be in the grip of an emotion too strong for words.

Instead, the bonnet brim lifted and fell as the lady in red raked Mary up and down with a distinctly appraising stare.

"I am Lady Vaughn," she announced. "And you are?"

"You," said Mary flatly, feeling her command of the English language escape her. "Are Lady Vaughn."

There must be other Lady Vaughns. Cousins, perhaps. Wives of minor peers or cadet branches of the family, preferably distinguished by alternate spellings, like Vaughan or Voyan or other Elizabethan execrations.

"Yes, that's right," said the little blond woman, in the tone of one speaking to the mentally impaired. "I'm so delighted to see that my husband has been entertaining you in my absence."

Her "husband" looked as though he would rather be entertaining himself with a good, hearty throttling. His hands flexed around the head of his cane hard enough to bend the silver, as he breathed heavily through his nose, in the manner of dragons and other fire-breathing creatures.

But he didn't say anything to deny it. Not a word.

"Haven't you anything to say?" Mary demanded. "Anything at all?"

The self-professed Lady Vaughn smiled with sickening sweetness beneath her broad-brimmed bonnet. "Knowing Sebastian, he's probably said quite enough already, haven't you, Sebastian? He never could seem to help himself. You really must forgive him, Miss — oh dear. I'm afraid I still don't know who you are."

And didn't much care, if her tone was anything to go by. Mary might as well have been a weed in the garden, a misplaced chair in the morning room, a broken biscuit on the tea tray.

I married an earl's daughter, Vaughn had said, not ten minutes ago. The faded blonde in front of her held herself with the careless imperiousness of one born to the peerage. It wasn't, as Mary well knew, the sort of demeanor that could be learned, no matter how hard one tried to imitate it.

But Lady Vaughn, the former Lady Anne Standish, youngest daughter of an earl, was dead. Everyone knew that.

Mary looked frantically at Vaughn, but there was no surprise on his face, no indignation, no denial. Just a venomous, killing rage — the rage of a cornered creature, knowing himself caught, with no recourse but to sting.

Mary's stomach twisted.

"You are?" prompted the alarmingly corporeal Lady Vaughn.

"No one who need concern you," Mary said in a brittle voice. "Isn't that right, my lord? I was nothing more than this month's entertainment."

Lady Vaughn's gloved fingers left dents in Vaughn's sleeve. "Men will have their little amusements."

"No one would know better than you, would they, Anne?"

Lord Vaughn spoke at last, but the words weren't anything like what Mary had hoped to hear. The intimacy of that single word, that "Anne," hit Mary like an arrow to the gut, ripping through any last hope she might have had of its all being a hoax, a mistake, anything but what it was.

Her back arrow straight, Mary looked up over the blonde's bonnet, straight at Vaughn. "It's true, isn't it? You are married. To her."

Vaughn's eyes shifted briefly downwards to the bonneted head. "Such as it is."

Pain sharpened Mary's diction, lending her words an icy edge. "There isn't much room for doubt. Either you are or you aren't. It's as simple as that."

"Just what I've been telling him," chimed in Lady Vaughn. "Only with Sebastian, nothing is ever simple, is it, my dear? He delights in complication."

"Not this complication," clipped out Lord Vaughn.

Mary looked from one to the other, Lady Vaughn smug, Lord Vaughn looking daggers, and suddenly felt like the servant wench in a French farce, a side character used by the author to create complications in the midst of the main action. The operative word being "used," as Vaughn had used her. What for, she wasn't entirely sure, but it seemed to have something to do with the battle of wills being played out around her, between Lord and Lady Vaughn, earl and countess, linked by blood, by birth, by marriage bonds, leaving no place at all for her. Even in the richness of their attire, they were a match for each other.

It would make a brilliant woodcut, thought Mary with the flippancy of despair. Something by Gillray, clever and cruel. He could call it The Wife's Return.

"When you told me I was to be a pawn," said Mary, in a hard little voice, "I hadn't realized that this was to be the game."

"It wasn't," said Lord Vaughn tersely. "Believe me."

Mary smiled sweetly up at him. "I would sooner place faith in Signor Machiavelli. At least he was an honest rogue. Good day, Lord Vaughn. Lady Vaughn." Taking up her sunshade, she shook it ostentatiously open, using it as a barrier between them. "I shan't intrude upon you any longer. Good day."

She didn't look back.

Behind her, she could hear Lord Vaughn's voice, calling her name. Mary ignored it.

She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, heel to toe. Step after step she walked, head held high, looking neither left nor right, consciously deaf to the sounds of a minor scuffle between Vaughn and Vaughn's wife. Oh, but that voice was hard to blot out, an insistent buzz at the back of her ears, droning the word "wife" over and over, like a worm boring its way into her brain.

A wife. Mary's legs carried her forwards without destination through the fringes of the crowd, past the gaily covered booths that had done a brisk business earlier in the day selling pies and gingerbread and commemorative programs. This was one day she didn't want to commemorate. If she could, she would wrap it up in a little ball, along with the entire past month, wadded up like last month's washing, and fling it all into the Thames, to be drowned and forgotten.

The recollection of every thoughtless word, every heedless deed, every shameful, baseless hope made her cringe. How they must have laughed at her, night after night, flinging herself at a married man in the hopes of a title that was already taken.