Wicked Little Secrets (2 page)

The way she saw the situation, she would just continue to let down her father and uncle, and there was only one sensible solution to the problem: to stow away on a boat to Egypt and raid tombs. She was thinking of the specifics of her plan, which included dressing like a boy, eating hard tack, perhaps even bugs, when she heard a rich, resonant male voice say, “What a fine climbing tree you have.”

She had gazed down through the leaves at Lord Dashiell and gasped. He could have stepped straight out of her imagination, filled as it was with blood-thirsty pirates, fierce Mongols, and courageous Templar knights. He was about twenty-one years old then. His dark hair flowed loose over his collar in disheveled curls, and his bronze skin was so tanned that he could have been Marco Polo himself. With his high cheekbones, strong chin, and blue shadows under his eyes, he appeared quite Gothic, like the heroes in those books her older sister was always reading. Though the ironic twist to his full lips and sparkle in his chocolate-colored eyes belied any dark, stormy thoughts of the Gothic variety.

“I’m Dashiell,” he had said, in a kindly voice meant for children, as he pointed to his home. “I just moved there. Our home in Berkeley Square burned down.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of you,” she said. “My uncle told my aunt that you’re a heathen, whoremonger, and adventurer, and that we’re not supposed to talk to you.” But looking at this striking species of heathen, her uncle’s orders flew from her head. “What’s a whoremonger?”

He blinked and his smile tightened from easy to nervous and he started to edge away. “Er, maybe you should ask your uncle.”

“Why do adults always answer my questions by saying I should ask another adult?”

He stopped, tossed his head back, and laughed—a welcoming, musical sound. She turned on the branch until she was hanging by her knees and gazing at him from upside down. “I wish I could be an adventurer. I would go to Egypt.”

“Well, I just got back from Egypt.”

“Really!” She spun down from the tree and landed with a soft thud on her feet. “Did you dig for a Pharaoh’s lost treasure? Have you ever found a mummy?”

He knelt down, putting himself at her level. “I have, but most everything of value had already been stolen. It’s extremely difficult to find a fresh grave.” He dug into his pocket and drew out what looked to be a pale rock. “I did find this in the Valley of the Kings.” He turned the curious rock over. It was sanded flat and carved with tiny pictures.

She squealed. “Is that a real hieroglyph?”

“Made over three thousand years ago. Perhaps during the reign of Ramesses the Great.”

“Do you know what it says?” she asked.

“Two pots and a goat, I think.”

She scrunched her eyebrows. “No, that can’t be right. These things were supposed to be about Pharaohs, Isis, and cobras.”

“I’m sorry if I procure boring relics.” He would have her believe that he was terribly offended, but the quiver on his lips gave him away. “You might as well take it, as no one will want dull hieroglyphs.” He took her by the wrist and dropped the stone into her palm. Then he winked.

Her young heart swelled with love. For the first time in her lonely life, she had met a kindred spirit. Except he got to live out all the adventures she could only dream about.

For the next few weeks, she told her uncle that she still wasn’t sure what happened to wayward girls who didn’t mend their wild ways, and that she should continue reading his law book to find out. Then she would secretly wait in the tree in hopes that Dashiell would come out with another ancient treasure or another fabulous tale of his journeys. Only later did she realize that she was getting the child’s versions of these stories—missing all the exotic details that titillated society such as concubines, mysterious lovers, and duels.

A month after she met her hero, she came outside to find his carriage being loaded down with trunks and him dressed in somber gray wool. Traveling clothes.

“Good-bye, my secret little sister,” he told her. “I’m heading to Cypress. I’ve gotten into too much trouble again.”

Tears burst from her eyes. “You can’t leave me.” Her father had written and said she shouldn’t come home for another month. And although she loved her aunt with all her heart, she couldn’t bear any more of Uncle Bertis’s constant scolding and calling her a bad seed.

Dashiell knelt, withdrew a handkerchief from his coat, and wiped her eyes. “Ah, my little Vivienne, don’t cry. All I do is make women cry.”

“Take me with you. I’ll run away. I can help you dig, and we can explore wonderful places together.”

“You know that’s impossible,” he said gently.

“No, it isn’t!” she screamed and stamped her foot.

He sighed and raised her fingers to his lips. For a moment she thought he might kiss them, and she felt a strange, almost scary, quickening of her heart. Instead, he gently nipped at her pinky finger.

“W-what are you doing?”

He flashed a mischievous grin. “Performing the sacred ritual of the cannibalistic Bazulo tribe in Africa.”

She wanted to be angry with him, but giggled in spite of herself. “There is no Bazulo tribe in Africa.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“No.”

“Well then,” he chuckled. His features grew grave and he placed his hand over his heart. “When you make the sacred Bazulo vow, you swear that you will always keep the other in your heart and be there should that friend ever need you. So even if I am hundreds of miles away, I promise that I shall always come back to my secret little sister.”

Since that time, Dashiell had popped in and out of her life, exciting her imagination and then leaving again. They would never again be as close as they had been that summer. Although her family might attest otherwise, Vivienne had grown up. And Dashiell continued to be, well, Dashiell. The Bazulo vow was forgotten; it was just something silly he made up to comfort a distraught child. She knew she could never run off with him, being a heathen, whoremonger, and adventurer, and perhaps that was why he still filled her imagination like a bad-behaving, handsome Dionysus—an untouchable Greek god. Of course, her aunt never learned about her niece’s secret kinship with the notorious rake, else she might have an apoplexy, and if her father found out, he would truly disown her once and for all.

She knocked on Dashiell’s white front door, quite an unassuming entrance for the so-called Babylon. Rivers, the earl’s reed-thin, graying butler, answered and looked down at her with weary eyes, like an old man who had seen too much. Behind him was a museum of antiquity and curiosities. Japanese warrior masks, Viking helmets, and various armor from around the globe ran up the stairwell. In the hall stood an upright wooden Egyptian coffin painted with an image of the poor bloke once entombed within it.

“You lying, cruel-hearted scoundrel!” a woman screamed out from an opened door on the first-floor balcony. “You can go back to hell and crawl up the Devil’s arse where you belong!”

Vivienne’s veins pulsed with excitement.
Oh
no, what has Dashiell done now?

The butler didn’t react, his face as blank as ever, as if this were just another ordinary day in the Earl of Baswiche’s household.

“Good morning, Mr. Rivers.” She smiled, pretending not to hear the violent stream of curses ringing out in the high ceiling. “It’s been several months since I’ve last seen you, but I must say, you look to be in good health.”

“Thank you, Miss,” he answered in a deep monotone. “I’m afraid Lord Dashiell is engaged at the moment.”

***

“Why the hell did I come back for this?” Dashiell muttered between gritted teeth. He had been in England only a few weeks and already he was embroiled in an ugly romantic entanglement—one that might have flustered a more proper gentleman. However, after having survived being kidnapped, ransomed, robbed, drugged, and held at the point of knives, guns, and other weaponry in stinking bum holes around the globe, two cracked women on the verge of killing him or each other was just an annoyance.

“I think we all need to calm down.” He held up the palm of one hand and gripped his falling trousers with the other.

“Mad lady need to calm down,” spat his lovely French ballerina, pointing an ornate medieval executioner’s sword at the other woman’s creamy throat. Her lithe dancer’s body was clad in Dashiell’s coat, which she had snatched off the floor when Mrs. Lily Harmon rushed into his chamber—an angry flurry of gold silk and red hair—and interrupted their lovemaking.

Dashiell wasn’t concerned with Lily’s threatened throat, but the bust of his precious gray-eyed goddess Athena that Lily held over her head. “Lily, take several deep breaths and think about what you are doing. Three thousand years ago, some craftsman put his soul into creating that Athena. The soil of Greece has preserved her all this time. Her history is far greater than this tiny misunderstanding.”

“How philosophical of you,” Lily said, a wicked grin spreading over her mouth, and she dropped Athena, letting the goddess of wisdom shatter on the floor.

Dashiell emitted a gut-wrenching groan akin to the cry of a wounded wolf. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you what is
wrong
with me!” Lily screamed. “I waited for you all night. And the whole time, you were with… with… that dancing whore!”

“You ugly dog woman!” The ballerina threw the sword. The blade made a limp arc in the air, missing Mrs. Harmon entirely and slamming into the Roman frieze of Minerva that Dashiell had dug up in Bath. Crumbling stone showered the floor.

“Everyone just stop!” Dashiell thundered, holding up his hands, causing his trousers to fall. “Dammit!” He quickly snatched them up again.

“You assured me your husband was in Manchester with his mistress,” he told Mrs. Harmon, fumbling with the buttons on his trousers. “So I showed up at your house last night like you asked. And do you know who greeted me? Your ten-year-old son.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Fear and uncertainty began to shade Mrs. Harmon’s eyes.

“He thought I was Sir Harry and then asked if you were going to leave his papa and run away with me.”

And it was at that moment—having to reassure a weeping son that his papa and mama would love him no matter what might happen—that what Lily had promised him would only be a “fun” flirtation turned sour. He had fled her house, running down Drury Lane, feeling as if his skin was on fire. He dove into a theater and disappeared into the crowd on the ground floor. As the ballerinas whirled on the stage in flowing white skirts, he got lost in remembrances of his parents’ famed dalliances, and then his own sordid affairs with women. From there, he continued to emotionally spiral downward, which explained the beautiful French ballerina in his bed.

“You’re lying.” Mrs. Harmon shook her head, her curls flapping about her cheeks. “My son knows nothing about you. About anyone.”

“I think you would be shocked to learn what a child knows about his parents’ infidelities.” Dashiell took a deep breath, bracing himself for the impending violence. “You said it would be an uncomplicated affair. No emotions involved. But I think you were wrong, and we shouldn’t continue this… whatever
this
is.”

She was silent for a beat, the shock setting in. Then hurt and rage contorted her face. “You hateful duddering rake!” She snatched up a vase and scurried out the door.

“Bloody hell!” He chased after her. “That’s a canopic jar with Pharaoh Cheops’s liver in it. I paid twenty camels for that!”

Lily gave a bark of hysterical laughter and tossed the relic over the banister as she rushed down the stairs. Shattering pottery rang in the air.

“Noooo!” screamed a new female voice.

Dear
God, not another one!
Priesthood in some remote monastery in the Swiss Alps seemed very appealing at the moment. He jolted to a halt on the top stair.

Vivienne Taylor stood by the door, cradling a clay tablet in her arms like a jealous mama. Her shiny black hair had grown longer since last he had seen her and curled in tame spirals by her cheeks. Her high cheekbones were flushed a beautiful pink and her eyes glittered like pale emeralds in firelight. His heart felt like it dove out of his skin. He kept forgetting she wasn’t a roly-poly, mischievous, innocent girl any more, but this ravishing, mischievous, innocent lady.

“Not this one,” Vivienne told Mrs. Harmon, clutching the tablet to her breasts. “It’s Persian and very, very old. Why don’t you throw something else, like that frie—” She stopped mid-word. He saw her eyes light on his naked torso and a dark erotic wave of heat rushed over his skin.

Dammit, she’s your little sister. Get a hold of yourself.

He snatched a black and white spotted Zulu shield from the stairwell and covered himself. “I… I didn’t know you were coming.” He tried to sound casual.

Meanwhile, Lily had seized a porcelain clock from the Chinese writing desk and hurled it at his temple. He raised his shield, and the timepiece bounced off cowhide and smashed on the railing, raining tiny metal parts onto the floor.

“I hope one day someone breaks your heart into as many pieces,” the lady spat.

“No one will be able to break my heart if you kill me first,” he pointed out. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Taylor, but would you mind returning at another time? I’m being murdered at the present.”

“Let her stay,” he heard his little French dancer say. “Be good lesson for her.” She stood at the top of the balcony, his coat barely covering her female regions.

He peeked at Vivienne. What must she be thinking?

Vivienne’s bright gaze darted from him, to the ballerina, to Lily, and she burst out in laughter.

“Do you find watching someone have their heart broken amusing?” Lily cried, approaching Vivienne with a rather deadly swagger in her hips, ready to unleash her fury.

“Lily, leave her alone.” Dashiell leaped over the stairwell, and his foot landed on a shard of broken glass. “Damnation!” He grabbed his toe and yelped in pain, but no one paid him any attention.

“You are quite an exquisite creature,” Lily purred, running her finger down Vivienne’s cheek. “I wager you think that your beautiful face will hold some sway on this scoundrel. But let me save you some grief, my love. This rogue cares more about that precious Persian clay tablet in your arms than his own mother. Soon he will destroy your heart and bring tears to your pretty little eyes, just as he did all the countless ladies before you.”