Lauren Willig (43 page)

 

 

“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.”

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

 

Which watch not one another out of fear;

 

For love, all love of other sights controls,

 

And makes one little room an everywhere.

 

—John Donne, “The Good-Morrow”

T
he 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.

 

 

“After I learned that she might still be alive, I went to Paris. I retraced her steps, as best I could. It had,” he added with a tinge of bitter humor, “been a very long time.”

 

 

“But you succeeded,” Mary said. It wasn’t a question.

 

 

“Success?” Vaughn turned the word over on his tongue, examining it from every angle. “I suppose you might call it that. I followed her trail to a cheap boardinghouse—or what had once been so before it reverted to a private residence. Finding the business less than lucrative, the proprietress practiced a secondary trade.”

 

 

Vaughn paused, giving Mary time to think over his meaning. There were so many secondary trades it might be, but two in particular came to mind. She had heard of women who disguised their brothels as boardinghouses—young ladies weren’t supposed to know of such things, but one heard the rumors. And then there were those places where one went to get rid of unwanted children. There had been that girl, two Seasons ago…The story had been garbled in the retelling, but the point had been clear enough.

 

 

“There was a child,” said Vaughn, with chilling finality. “Whether it was mine or his, I don’t know. It makes no difference now.”

 

 

The thought of it made Mary a little ill, although whether it was the act itself or the notion of Vaughn’s child by another woman, she couldn’t say for certain. “You’re quite sure?”

 

 

“Are we ever afforded the luxury of certainty in this life? The woman kept no written records, if that’s what you mean.” Vaughn’s head rustled against the pillow. “If there had been a child, Anne would have trotted it out. She would never have neglected so convenient a tool. At the time, it would have seemed only an impediment.”

 

 

“So she took steps to get rid of it.”

 

 

“She did get rid of it,” Vaughn corrected, and Mary found herself shamed by the flood of relief that washed over her at those uncompromising words. To have a mysterious wife barring her way was bad enough, but a child would be that much worse, making demands upon Vaughn, threatening the rights of her children.

 

 

Their children. How quickly those hypothetical shadows had become flesh in her imagination. The thought of anyone threatening their patrimony made her nails curve into claws. She would rake out the throat of anyone who came near them. Even though they didn’t exist yet, and possibly never would.

 

 

“She killed her own child. Your child.”

 

 

“No,” said Vaughn, his voice heavy with gallows humor, “she hired someone else to kill her child. Anne never performed for herself what she could order someone else to do for her.”

 

 

A woman who would kill her own child as an encumbrance wouldn’t scruple to take aim at an inconvenient husband—or hire someone to do so. Something niggled at Mary, a connection she couldn’t quite place.

 

 

“Would she inherit anything were you to die?”

 

 

“Not enough. The estate is entailed upon my nearest male relation—a cousin. Currently, the bulk of my personal fortune goes to my mother.”

 

 

Mary’s head lifted in surprise, pulled to an abrupt stop as her hair caught under Vaughn’s arm.

 

 

Vaughn’s eyes glinted with amusement in the uneven candlelight. “Did you think I had leapt into the world full grown, like Minerva from Jove’s head?”

 

 

Since that wasn’t terribly far from what she had thought, Mary could only shrug feebly. It was almost impossible to imagine Vaughn as a small child. The closest she came was a miniature adult in an impeccable cravat, wagging a rattle at his nurse in lieu of a quizzing glass.

 

 

“My mother,” explained Vaughn, “is hale and hearty and fully occupied in lording it over the family pile in Northumberland. It’s all still quite feudal up there, and Mother plays the role of chatelaine to the hilt. I have no doubt she would happily defend the castle against an invading army if the occasion called for it.”

 

 

Mary extracted her hair from under Vaughn’s arm and levered herself up on one elbow, just far enough to see his face. “What do you think she’ll think of me?”

 

 

“I think you’ll get along famously.” Vaughn smiled wolfishly. “Eventually.”

 

 

Before Mary could delve into that equivocal statement, Vaughn went on, “If my mother were to predecease me, the money gets parceled out in various bequests, none of them to Anne. She is, after all, supposed to be dead.”

 

 

“That would pose a problem,” agreed Mary, relaxing against him. “How very foolish of her.”

 

 

Vaughn’s lips brushed the top of her head “I’m sure you would have planned it much better. If she can prove her existence, she has her dower rights—but it would make little sense for Anne to kill me merely to acquire a dower house and a quarterly allowance.”

 

 

“Unless
she
wanted to marry again,” Mary pointed out. “In which case, it might be worth her while to have you out of the way.”

 

 

“No,” said Vaughn. “More’s the pity. She wants to come back. As countess.”

 

 

Resting her head against the side of his chest, Mary pondered that unwelcome information. If the Lady Anne chose to return as countess, what was there to be done about it? It would be the easiest course for Vaughn to accede and take her back and breed his pure-bred heir, an earl’s son begat on an earl’s daughter. After the initial flurry of shock from the
ton
, he could go back to life as it would have been, as though the last thirteen years had been nothing more than a wrinkle in time. In contrast, she had no official position, no claim, nothing to hold him. If he chose that route, this night in his bed would be her last, and there would be nothing she could do about it.

 

 

“Would you take her back?” she asked quietly.

 

 

As though he sensed something of what she was thinking, Vaughn’s hand moved possessively through her hair. “Even were matters not as they are? No. Matters being as they are—absolutely not. You won’t be rid of me that easily.”

 

 

Mary rubbed her cheek against his chest. “Perhaps she thought in a weakened state, you would be more likely to agree.”

 

 

She could hear the smile in Vaughn’s voice. “Just as you prevailed upon me in my weakened condition?”

 

 

“You seem suspiciously eloquent for a man at death’s door.”

 

 

“Never underestimate the healing power of love’s gentle balm,” intoned Vaughn in saccharine tones.

 

 

Mary looked up at him, her brows a straight, dark line above her eyes. “Is it?” she asked seriously. “Love?”

 

 

“It isn’t the opium,” replied Vaughn.

 

 

Mary waited, unwilling to let him off that easily. After a very long moment, as Vaughn’s arm grew heavier and heavier beneath her neck and the ticking of the clock grew louder by the moment, he spoke.

 

 

“Yes,” he said heavily. “I suppose it is.”

 

 

“Much against your will,” Mary supplied for him.

 

 

“Rather like you.” Vaughn’s lips quirked in a twisted smile. “Diamond cuts diamond. Two hard-hearted souls rendered fools by Cupid, brought low like lesser mortals. I find myself experiencing absurd urges to go out and slay dragons on your behalf.” He dismissed the problem with a nonchalant wave of his hand. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll pass in time.”

 

 

“Twenty or thirty years,” Mary agreed, yawning. “By then, all the dragons will have died natural deaths, asphyxiated by their own smoke.”

 

 

“One can only hope,” agreed Vaughn. “I’ve never aspired to the heroic.”

 

 

“Are you sure you haven’t any other wives roaming about?”

 

 

“Quite sure. After the first one, I was taking no chances.”

 

 

“Except on me,” Mary corrected sleepily.

 

 

“Except on you,” agreed Vaughn. His voice made a pleasant burr in the back of Mary’s head. “You are the exception that proves the rule.”

 

 

Mary mused over exceptions and rules, while the words blurred and shifted in her brain, leading off along all sorts of irrelevant byways. In the end, she contented herself with murmuring, “That’s nice.”

 

 

“Tired?” Vaughn’s breath ruffled her hair.

 

 

“No,” Mary said emphatically. And she wasn’t really. She was just a little bit…The last sound she remembered hearing was the soft burr of Vaughn’s chuckle reverberating through his chest.

 

 

When Mary woke the first time, the last of the candle guttered within a wall of wax, sending uneven shadows flickering across the silk lining the walls. In a sleepy stupor, Mary’s eyes followed the swaying shadows, idly watching their progress across the wall as she struggled to remember where on earth she was. There was a heavy weight across her chest that, upon examination, turned out to be a leanly muscled male arm, entirely devoid of any sort of clothing. Ah. Mary’s lips curved into a sleepy smile. Vaughn. That was all right then.