Лорен Уиллиг - The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

The old guards clamped down across Vaughn's face. "Never my wife."

"Clearly."

Mary could feel the moment when Vaughn's tense muscles relaxed beneath her cheek, as her silence won out over reticence. "She was my lover. In Paris."

"Your mistress," Mary translated.

"Not as such," replied Vaughn thoughtfully. She could feel his chest shift beneath her cheek as he settled back further against the pillows. "The term never suited her. She would never have admitted to being anything other than an equal partner."

"You cared for her." Mary did her best to keep her tone neutral.

"I admired her," Vaughn corrected. "She was clever. Strong-willed."

"Beautiful, too, no doubt," said Mary acidly.

She could hear the smile in Vaughn's voice. "Very."

Shifting out of the circle of Vaughn's arm, Mary swished her hair back over her shoulder. "I can't imagine how you could bear to part with her."

"She was also," said Vaughn very delicately, "an agent of the French government."

"Oh." There didn't seem to be anything else to say. Mary looked down at him, at the deep circles beneath his eyes and creases in his cheeks, tokens of years in which she had had no part. Years of Hellfire Club outings and trysts with French spies and heaven only knew what else. "Did you know that at the time?"

Vaughn raised one eyebrow. "In the beginning, it wasn't really a consideration."

Mary folded her arms across her chest, very conscious of the robe hanging open with the belt lost somewhere among the bedclothes. "I'm sure you were too swept away by her manifold charms to care."

Vaughn considered that for a very long time. "Not really," he said, after a pause that seemed to go on forever. "The question never arose."

Mary's skepticism must have been readily visible, because Vaughn raised his good hand in a gesture of graceful helplessness.

"Paris in '91 was…different." His eyes drifted past her, fixing on a fold of the blue velvet bed hangings as his memory roamed back a decade along the twisting streets of Paris. "Oh, the Bastille had been taken and the mobs had marched on Versailles, but it all still felt like a game — a dangerous game, to be sure, but what's the joy of playing for low stakes?" His lips twisted in reminiscence, a smile with a sting in its tail. "We used to place bets on which concession the King would make next, which ridiculous acts the Assembly would pass, which district would be the next to go up in arms." His eyes darkened. "We never thought they would kill the King. And then the Terror…"

His gaze settled on Mary's face, where she sat as still and solemn as a marble statue of Justice. With an effort, he mustered something of his old urbane demeanor. "As you can see," he said, with a nonchalant shrug that might have been more convincing but for the lines of strain around his eyes, "events took me somewhat by surprise. As they did us all."

"But not her," Mary supplied, sticking doggedly to the main point.

"Who can say? It may have been her goal all along, or she may merely have seen her chance and seized it. I only knew the extent of it once the Terror was well under way. By then…" Vaughn let his silence speak for itself. "Having no desire to tangle with a pack of maddened ideologues, I chose the route of least difficulty to myself. I left."

Mary ignored the self-condemnation and seized on what she saw as the more important point. A woman scorned was always dangerous; a woman scorned with a habit of executing her enemies was even worse.

"Will she be back to haunt you, too?"

"No."

Arms akimbo, Mary shook back her hair. "You seem to have a talent for inspiring resurrections."

Despite himself, Vaughn's cheekbones lifted with amusement. "Setting me up as your savior?" As Mary made a face at him, he shook his head, his amusement fading. "There'll be no resurrection this time. Teresa is dead. Quite genuinely and indisputably dead."

"How?" Mary asked apprehensively. She had a suspicion she wasn't going to like the answer.

Vaughn's face was grim. "She was killed this past summer, by her own master. The Black Tulip."

"That's why," Mary said abruptly, her nails digging into the feather tick. "That's why you told me the Tulip was running short of petals. Let me guess: She had black hair, too."

"Yes." The candle threw strange shadows across Vaughn's face, throwing one cheek into relief, the other into shadow, like the parti-colored costume of a harlequin in an Italian commedia dell'arte. Only there was nothing lighthearted about Vaughn's expression. His hand sought hers among the bedclothes, his fingers closing tightly over hers. "I should never have got you involved."

The outlines of the trees, silhouetted in relief against the walls, reminded Mary just a little too much of that deserted copse deep in the heart of Vauxhall gardens. She could very well have done without ever having made the acquaintance of the Black Tulip. Of course, if it weren't for the Black Tulip and his machinations, she wouldn't be here with Vaughn.

"You didn't know me then," she said mechanically. "I was expendable. Anyone would have done the same."

Vaughn's thumb brushed caressingly across the vein at the base of her wrist. "Spoken like a true pragmatist," he said tenderly, but Mary's mind was too full of other concerns to be distracted by compliments.

"The other petals," Mary asked apprehensively. "Did you…know them, too?"

"Certainly not in that way."

Vaughn's voice was getting hoarser again. Reaching for the carafe of water, Mary measured a generous portion into the glass and offered it to Vaughn with both hands, like a feudal page serving his lord a ritual draft. "For a time, I thought you were the Black Tulip."

Vaughn's eye crinkled at her over the rim of the glass. "Am I to take that as compliment or insult?"

"Neither," said Mary primly, placing the glass back on the tray. "Merely common deduction. You were recruiting black-haired agents — "

"On behalf of the Pink Carnation," Vaughn corrected.

"I had only your word for that. You do not" — Mary's blue eyes slanted down at him — "inspire confidence."

Vaughn drew her down again into the comfortable hollow by his side, the mattress already dented with the shape of her body, as though she had been there always. "I'll simply have to resort to other means to impress you with my sincerity."

"I won't be easy to convince," warned Mary, as she curled into the crook of his arm, stifling a yawn against the back of her hand. It had, when all was said and done, been a very long day.

Vaughn's fingers stroked lightly down her shoulder. "Then it's fortunate that I shall have a lifetime to wear you down."

The room was so still that Mary could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantel and the gentle whisper of Vaughn's breathing, in and out, in and out. Outside, there was the rustle of the leaves in the square and a rhythmic creak where someone had left a shutter unlatched and the wind was batting it back and forth, playing with it for its sport.

"From another man," said Mary quietly, "I would have taken that as a proposal of marriage."

Vaughn's fingers tightened on her shoulder. "In any other circumstance, it would have been." She could feel the movement as his head turned on the pillow, staring out towards the window. "It might still be."

Mary marched her fingers idly up along his chest, toying with the dark hairs in her path. "I didn't think a wife was that easily disposed of."

"Generally, no." Vaughn's tone was conversational. They might just as well have been discussing the prospects for the new management of the Covent Garden theatre, or whether it might rain on Sunday. "There have always been ways. The madhouse, the attic — the Continent."

Mary caught the subtle change in tone on the last word. "You think you can persuade her to go back?"

"It's a tempting thought," Vaughn confessed. "Out of sight and out of mind. I tried that once already. It didn't serve."

"With enough gold," suggested Mary, "she might be persuaded to stay out of sight."

"We would have no guarantee — other than her word."

Mary's lips curved in memory of a long-ago conversation. "Which you value as you would your own."

Vaughn rested his chin against the top of her head. "Precisely the problem. The moment necessity struck, she would return. I won't have her cast a cloud on our children's parentage."

"Children," Mary repeated. She lifted her head, bumping Vaughn's chin in the process. "Children?"

Wincing, Vaughn said dryly, "They are the natural consequence of marriage."

Mary raised a brow. "I've heard that marriage isn't necessarily a factor."

"In our case, it is." Vaughn tucked her head once more safely beneath his chin, his good arm holding her tighter. "I would hate to see the title go to my cousin by default."

"You had no children by — " Mary found she couldn't quite bring herself to pronounce the name. To say it made it real, like introducing an extra party into the bed. " — her," she finished lamely.

"No," said Vaughn, but there was a telltale pause before he spoke the word.

Mary shifted her head to look up to him, achieving a very good view of the underside of his chin. There was very little to be learned from it, other than the fact that he had missed his usual evening shave.