Lauren Willig (6 page)

 

 

If he had deliberately followed her out of the Great Chamber, his ennui must be quite overwhelming indeed. Well, he was just going to have to find other entertainment. She was not for hire. Not by him, at any rate.

 

 

“You might beguile the time with contemplation of art,” she suggested primly. “There is a great deal in the gallery of interest to the educated eye.”

 

 

“How very true.” Vaughn’s quizzing glass traveled the sweeping circumference of her neckline. “I consider myself something of a connoisseur.”

 

 

Mary rather doubted they were discussing the same type of art. “My brother-in-law informs me there are several fine works by Mytens, as well as the Holbein portrait of the first Baron Pinchingdale.”

 

 

Vaughn rolled the head of his cane idly between his fingers. “I was seeking something a bit more modern. Perhaps you might be able to assist me.”

 

 

Mary seized the opportunity to drift away from the confines of the window embrasure. With Vaughn standing next to her, the arch felt uncomfortably close. She waved a graceful hand at the portrait of Spotte, liberally spotted with dust. “Sibley Court tends to the antique.”

 

 

“You mean the antiquated.” Vaughn strolled easily in her wake. Mary felt as though she were being stalked by a particularly graceful beast of prey. “I find that being surrounded by decay generally renders one all the more eager to gather one’s rosebuds.”

 

 

Mary paused in front of a painting of a sour-faced dowager holding a sullen pug. “You’ve come at an inauspicious time for rosebuds. I’m afraid in winter we must be satisfied with the memory of summer’s bounty.”

 

 

Vaughn moved to stand directly behind her, so close that she could feel the tickle of his cravat against her bare shoulder, the burr of his breath against the nape of her neck.

 

 

“But my dear Miss Alsworthy,” Vaughn’s cultured vowels teased the edge of her ear, “it is not winter yet.”

 

 

Mary’s skin prickled with a heat that had nothing to do with the few sullenly smoldering torches that lined the unheated gallery. His posture echoed hers so closely that all it would take would be the merest whisper of movement to bring them into embrace. If she tilted her head just the slightest fraction, if she permitted her taut shoulders to relax…

 

 

She would be the greatest fool in all the West Country.

 

 

“I assure you, my lord,” Mary said frostily, staring straight ahead at the dowager’s bad-tempered pug, “there is a definite chill.”

 

 

And so there was. One minute he was looming behind her, the next he had casually strolled away, as though they had been discussing the weather! Which, in fact, they had been. Mary’s lips quirked in sour amusement.

 

 

“I could offer to warm you,” Vaughn said meditatively, as though it were a matter of intellectual speculation, “but that would be far too commonplace.”

 

 

Mary’s sapphire eyes narrowed as she faced him across the width of the gallery, where he leaned casually against the plinth of a marble bust. “Not to mention unwise.”

 

 

Vaughn wagged his quizzing glass approvingly, a miracle of urbane detachment. “I couldn’t agree more.”

 

 

Where was the man who had been oozing illicit intentions a moment before? At the moment, his demeanor was positively avuncular. Mary’s head was beginning to ache in a way that had nothing to do with the smoke from the torches.

 

 

“Good,” she said shortly. “I’m glad we agree.”

 

 

“How agreeable,” drawled Vaughn.

 

 

Mary felt rather disagreeable. Disgruntled, even. Had he never intended to seduce her? It wasn’t that she wanted him to seduce her—of course not!—but it was very off-putting to be defending one’s honor one moment and spiraling through empty space the next. She certainly hadn’t welcomed his interest. A flirtation with Lord Vaughn was the very last thing she needed.

 

 

Mary had the uncomfortable feeling that the entire interlude, from that very first honeyed compliment, had been an extended joke. On her.

 

 

Pasting on her very best social smile, Mary gathered her skirts and swept past the painted faces of a censorious crowd of Parliamentarian Pinchingdales. She hoped all of them were preparing a particularly thorny berth in hell for one Sebastian, Lord Vaughn. “If you would be so kind as to excuse me, my lord, I should be getting back. My sister does fret so.”

 

 

Vaughn’s soft voice interrupted her just short of Praise-God-For-Your-Salvation Pinchingdale (Proggy, to his friends), a grim fellow in black chiefly famed for having even more warts than his friend Cromwell. “Before you go…”

 

 

It was said very quietly, but it carried all the authority of a command. Mary found herself pausing, her skirt drawn back over one white satin slipper. The toe, she noticed, was beginning to show signs of wear, the fabric rubbing thin over the stiffened frame.

 

 

“Before you go,” Vaughn repeated, in that same, well-modulated tone, “you should know that I was, in fact, sent to seek you tonight.”

 

 

“To seek me?” Vaughn, being dispatched, must have decided to amuse himself with a little spot of dalliance along the way. It was all beginning to make a certain amount of sense. Mary allowed herself the luxury of a small eye roll. “I suppose my sister sent you. She seems to think I ought to be fed.”

 

 

“Does she?” Vaughn’s gaze moved lazily over Mary’s form in a way that suggested he found nothing whatever the matter with her proportions. “No. Your sister had nothing to do with it.”

 

 

Mary looked at him quizzically. Her mother? Mary couldn’t see Vaughn voluntarily playing lackey for her mother; he would more likely just shrug and walk away. As for the rest of the party, most of them were better pleased by her absence than her presence. She was under no illusions as to that.

 

 

“I don’t understand,” she said.

 

 

“I rather wish I didn’t,” murmured Vaughn. Bracing his cane on the ground between his knees, he looked at Mary over the silver serpent’s head. “What do you know of the current blight of flower-named spies?”

 

 

“As much as anyone here,” Mary said shortly, and couldn’t for the life of her understand why that seemed to amuse her companion so. “I do know how to read, my lord. Occasionally, I even employ that skill. Why do you ask?”

 

 

“I come here tonight as emissary.”

 

 

“From a flower-named spy.” Mary didn’t bother to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

 

 

The only flowery spy at Sibley Court, as far as Mary knew, was Lord Richard Selwick, the spy formerly known as the Purple Gentian. The likelihood of his seeking her out for anything—other than a good gloat—was nonexistent. Lord Richard had all but ordered fireworks in celebration when he discovered that his best friend had escaped from her clutches (his words, not hers) and married her younger sister instead.

 

 

“What does our esteemed Purple Gentian want of me?” Mary asked.

 

 

“Oh, it’s not the”—Vaughn coughed discreetly, as though the name came with difficulty to his tongue—”the Purple Gentian for whom I happen to be acting.”

 

 

“Oh?” said Mary acidly. “Have we been honored with the presence of other flowers? A Roving Rosebud, perhaps?”

 

 

Vaughn spread his hands wide. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? But the most ridiculous tales are often the truest.”

 

 

“Unless one were to deliberately invent a ridiculous tale, trusting that others might follow that reasoning.”

 

 

“Why would I go to the bother of such invention? Unless…oh no. Oh no, no, no.” Vaughn chuckled, a rich full sound that resonated along the vaulted ceiling.

 

 

To her horror, Mary felt the color rise in her cheeks. With anger, she assured herself. She never blushed—and certainly not for the likes of Lord Vaughn.

 

 

The lines around Vaughn’s eyes deepened with sardonic amusement. “You didn’t truly believe…you and I? No, no, and no again.”

 

 

“I find myself exceedingly relieved,” Mary said stiffly, “to find that we are once again in agreement.”

 

 

Vaughn wasn’t the least bit fooled. He smiled lazily. “My dear, if I had wished to arrange an assignation, I would hardly have been so clumsy as to leave you in any doubt of my intentions. This matter is purely business.”

 

 

“But whose business is it, then?” Mary challenged. “Why didn’t they contact me directly?”

 

 

“My dear girl, if you were meant to know, why do you think our friend would have sent me?”

 

 

“I find it even less likely that you would agree to play errand boy, my lord.”

 

 

Vaughn refused to be baited. He contemplated the serpentine head of his cane, twisting it so that the fangs glinted in the light. “I prefer go-between. So much less menial.”

 

 

“Whatever you choose to call it, you still haven’t explained why.”

 

 

“Wouldn’t you rather know
what
?” Vaughn inquired lightly. “I should think the substance of my communication ought to interest you more than my motivations, which are of no concern to anyone at all other than myself.”

 

 

“Aren’t they?” asked Mary, but left it at that. Vaughn’s tone might have been casual, but there was a fine edge of steel beneath that forbade further inquiry. “All right, then. What does your Roving Rosebud want of me?”

 

 

Vaughn winced. “A better name, I should think. No, no, don’t bother. It will do for present. My friend seeks your assistance in the removal of a particular thorn. A thorn called the Black Tulip.”

 

 

Mary took great pleasure in saying, “You are mixing your horticultural metaphors, my lord. Am I meant to know who this unusually thorny Tulip is?”

 

 

“If any of us knew who it actually was, there would be no need to enlist you.” Having scored his retaliatory point, Vaughn went on: “The Black Tulip is the nom de guerre of a spy in the employ of the French government. He started off, in the usual way of such creatures, by leaving arch notes in inconvenient places. Along the way, however, he developed an irritating habit of skewering English agents. The, ahem, Rosebud would like to see him removed.”

 

 

“And you want me to bring you his head on a platter?” Mary made no effort to hide her derision.

 

 

“Metaphorically speaking. I gather that the platter is optional these days.” Vaughn paused to admire the effect of his rings before adding, “You have, shall we say, certain attributes that would be most advantageous to the goal in question.”

 

 

Men had admired Mary’s attributes before. This was, however, one of the more ingenious stories she had been presented with.

 

 

“You must think I am very green,” she said gently.

 

 

“Oh, not so very green.” Lord Vaughn’s eyes danced silver. “Just a trifle chartreuse around the edges.”

 

 

“Inebriating?”

 

 

“Unschooled.”

 

 

That would teach her to fish for compliments from Lord Vaughn. “Not so unschooled as to believe that any spy would seek me out to serve as his personal assassin.”

 

 

“Ah, that explains it.” Lord Vaughn’s understanding smile was a miracle of polite derision. “Your role would be merely a—how shall I put this? A decorative one. You do have some experience in that field, I believe. Your services are required not as assassin, but as bait.”

 

 

Well, that certainly put her in her place. Mary raised a brow. “Weren’t there any other convenient worms to hand?”

 

 

“None so well suited as you.” Oh, bother, she had walked right into that one. Before Mary could come up with a suitably cutting rejoinder about snakes and their habits, Vaughn went on: “The Black Tulip has a curious conceit. He makes it a point to employ women with your particular coloring. They are”—Vaughn paused for good effect before delivering the pičce de résistance—”the petals of the Tulip.”

 

 

“How poetic. And how entirely absurd.”

 

 

“My dear girl, the whole lot of them are absurd, from the Purple Wonder in the other room to every fop in London who pins a carnation to his hat and tells his friends he’s turned hero. Nonetheless, they still manage to cause a good deal of bother.”

 

 

Torchlight slashed in a jagged angle across Vaughn’s face, slicing across his nose, leaving his eyes in shadow. In the orange light, the lines around his mouth seemed more deeply graven than usual.

 

 

“A very great deal of bother,” he repeated.

 

 

Despite herself, Mary’s attention was caught. The improbable tale of rosebuds and tulips might have been nothing more than a polished line of patter, designed to capitalize on the current craze for gentlemen spies. But a man didn’t feign that sort of bitterness. Not a man like Vaughn, at any rate. To acknowledge pain was to acknowledge that one was capable of sustaining a wound—in short, that one was capable of deeper feeling. It wasn’t in Vaughn’s style. Or, for that matter, in hers.

 

 

“And so,” said Mary, “you introduce the bait.”

 

 

“The Tulip,” explained Vaughn, “is currently running rather short of petals. Unless his habits have changed, the Black Tulip will be in want of fresh recruits. Women of your coloring are rare in this part of the world. Hence my errand tonight.”

 

 

“I see.” Mary took a small turn about the corridor. The train of her dress whispered along the floor behind her, dragging with it a decade’s worth of dust, undoubtedly turning her hem as murky as her musings. “You do realize that this is all highly irregular.”