It was very hard to argue with someone whose head was right up against yours, but Mary tried.

"I won't have you tormenting yourself," she said tartly, somewhere in the vicinity of his left ear.

Vaughn lifted his head and smiled at her, a genuine smile through the grime and fatigue. "No, that's your job, isn't it?"

There was such a wealth of meaning in his voice that Mary felt, suddenly, more than a little bit wobbly and oddly unsure of herself. She looked at him uncertainly. "Is it?"

Whatever Vaughn might have said was lost, as a sound like a convulsion of the earth erupted above them. Shifting her gaze hastily up, Mary saw that it wasn't an earthquake or a reenactment of Pompeii — Lady Euphemia devoted her energies purely to English scenes — but her sister's husband, clearing his throat loudly enough to do that organ permanent damage. Similarly smeared with soot, Geoffrey looked tired, and harried, and distinctly put out at Mary's using Vaughn's lap as her own private chaise longue.

"Is Letty all right?" Mary asked hoarsely, heading off any comments about her undeniably compromising position.

"Yes." Geoffrey's harried expression briefly lightened. "She is organizing the bucket brigade."

The stiff muscles of Mary's face involuntarily quirked into an answering smile. "I should have known it wasn't Lady Euphemia."

"Letty has matters well in hand," said Geoffrey proudly, turning to look back at the small figure of his wife, who was bustling up and down the line, making sure everyone had buckets, and understood they were to pour the water on the fire and not on one another.

Unwisely drawing attention to himself, Vaughn broke in, "Has there been any sign of — "

"St. George?" said Geoffrey, blessedly misinterpreting Vaughn's concern. "I don't see how anyone else might have got out. He was the Black Tulip, I take it?"

Vaughn nodded in assent.

Geoffrey allowed himself a grim smile. "Lady Euphemia is convinced the bomb was set by French agents determined to stymie her patriotic pageant. She's quite chuffed about it, despite the loss of her theatre."

"The more reasonable assumption," countered Vaughn, "would be an enraged poet determined to stop such an execration taking place ever again."

Geoffrey shrugged. "She's planning to publish the verse in a memorial volume and present it to his Majesty as a gift."

"Good God," shuddered Vaughn. "With allies like these, who needs the French?"

Geoffrey turned a jaundiced eye on Lord Vaughn's seating arrangement.

"You seem to have adopted certain French manners," he said pointedly. With the air of a man making a great concession, he added, "Given the events of the afternoon, no more need be said. But you might want to rectify the situation before anyone else notices."

"I don't see anything the least bit improper about it," said Vaughn blandly, as if it were entirely normal to be having a conversation sitting cross-legged on the ground with a woman on one's lap. He smiled down at Mary. "Do you, my dear?"

Mary narrowed her eyes impartially at both men in a universal condemnation of masculine folly. Neither of them paid the least bit of attention to her.

Geoffrey folded his arms across his chest in the classic pose of offended guardian. "You may not see anything wrong with it, Vaughn," he began darkly, "but as for the rest of civilized society — "

"Since," Vaughn smoothly overrode him, "Miss Alsworthy has done me the honor to agree to be my wife."

"Mmph," said Geoffrey, or at least as near as Mary could tell.

"Of course," Vaughn added, with a devilish glint in his eye that belied the studied indifference of his voice, "we could always elope…"

Geoffrey's soot-smeared countenance went stonier than Lady Euphemia's fallen columns.

"…but I think St. George's, Hanover Square, is much nicer, don't you?"

Geoffrey looked like he wanted to say something decidedly improper. Calling on the reserves of self-control that made him one of the War Office's more trusted agents, he gritted out, "Have you set a date yet?"

Vaughn waved a dirty hand. "Sometime soon. You can tell your wife to start making the arrangements. Once she's done with the buckets," Vaughn added generously.

"Brilliant," said Geoffrey, and turned on his heel, presumably to report the news to his wife, although from the stiff set of his back, he looked as though he might first seek out a discreet spot where he could punch something in private and pretend it was Vaughn.

Vaughn watched his future relation's retreating back with unconcealed pleasure. "Poor Pinchingdale. He's spent months trying to make me out to be the Black Tulip. It must kill him that our offspring will be first cousins."

"There is one ever so slight problem with your plan," Mary pointed out.

Vaughn looked quizzically down at her.

"What might that be?" His face darkened as he inclined his head slightly towards the smoldering theatre. "There can be no further impediment."

The expression on his face made Mary sorry she had spoken, but she shouldered gamely on. "You seem to have forgotten that I can't have agreed. Since you never asked me."

Vaughn arched a sooty eyebrow. "Do I need to?" he asked mildly.

Mary had meant to return a lighthearted answer, the sort of sophisticated riposte to which she was accustomed, but the airy words wouldn't come.

Instead, she found herself saying, with schoolgirl earnestness and a tongue that was suddenly too thick for her mouth, "Are you sure you want to?" Mary's eyes searched his blackened face. "After — "

She inclined her head feebly towards the burning building. The movement made her head ache. A cheer went up among the clustered members of the ton as a still-standing section of wall went tumbling down, crashing into the rubble in an explosion of smoke and ash. Mary caught the involuntarily flicker of Vaughn's eyes in that direction, the fleeting look of pain he couldn't quite suppress as the stones thudded down, a cairn for his wife's grave.

Vaughn's hand tightened around hers. "The real question is, are you? The women in my life seem to have an uncomfortable time of it."

He might not mourn for the woman who had left him thirteen years ago, but what about the woman who had turned against the Black Tulip for him today and lost her life in doing it? He had turned back for her, in that stony trap of a building. The last word on his lips, before the theatre had exploded, had been her name. Whatever he might claim, Anne's ghost was still there, an impediment in death as well as in life.

Unless someone contrived to exorcise it.

"Woman," Mary corrected.

"Huh?"

Mary squirmed to a sitting position, ignoring the reverberations the movement sent through her battered skull. "One woman. Singular. You are not allowed any others. Any discomfort or deadly danger is reserved solely for me and me alone. I'm not sharing you. Any bit of you."

Eyes bright, Vaughn lifted her hand to his lips.

"Bossy, aren't you?" he murmured over her knuckles. "The vows haven't even been said yet."

Mary regarded him challengingly. "Haven't they?"

"In more ways than you can imagine," Vaughn said soberly, thinking back over the past few weeks. "Pledged first in wine, then in blood, and now in ashes. I can't imagine a more thorough set of vows than that."

"More thorough than your first?" asked Mary.

"You," said Vaughn, twining his fingers through hers, "are first and last, alpha and omega. I've had enough of letting the past rule me." When Mary still looked uncertain, he added, with deliberate levity, "Think how much I'm giving up for you. Loose women, French spies…"

"Ha!' exclaimed Mary. "What about all I'm giving up for you? Adoring suitors, sonnets to my elbows…"

"I can think of better things to pay tribute to," said Vaughn, and did.

It was unclear whose lips were sootier, but neither seemed to mind. The taste of blood and ashes only lent urgency to their kiss, a reminder of all they had nearly lost. With a happy disregard for his bad shoulder and assorted other aches and pains, Vaughn wrapped his arms around Mary and kissed her so thoroughly that most of the grime surrounding his lips transferred itself from his face to hers, like a misplaced beard.

"What was that about sacrifice?" he asked blandly, once he had got his voice back.

Mary blinked. "I don't remember," she said, "but tell me again."

Vaughn was more than happy to oblige.

They parted to an arm's length, smiling foolishly at each other. Vaughn noted that Mary's hair was filmed with ash, matted and tangled into a coiffure that wouldn't have looked amiss on one of Macbeth's witches. Despite his best efforts, her bare arms and neck had been scraped by flying bits of debris, and the less said about the remains of her royal robes, the better. Dried blood streaked the left side of her face, and the soot had lent her a rather remarkable mustache.

He had never seen anything lovelier.

A bath, however, would not be amiss. Preferably for both of them. At the same time.

"The devil," said Vaughn. "I've left my carriage in Westminster. We'll have to prevail upon your sister to take us back."

"Once she's finished with her buckets, you mean," said Mary, struggling to her feet, and holding out a hand to Vaughn.

He took it without the sarcastic commentary Mary had half-expected, silently accepting her help and pulling heavily on her arm as he rose. She didn't like the sallow look of his skin beneath the soot on his face, or the stickiness matting his shirtfront.