Wicked Little Secrets (5 page)

Vivienne pulled off her gloves and tossed her bonnet back. “What is this plague of Egypt?”

“Aye, it is indeed a plague. A plague of vile rats.”

Vivienne released a long breath. She thought something truly terrible had happened. “Just have Harold put out some traps.”

“No, miss, the human kind of rat: a wee man in a blue coat. But, like I said, you don’t need to distress yourself about him. Or worry that he brings an envelope, just for the missus’s eyes. Then she starts to cryin’ for her coca wine and shuts herself in her chamber, talkin’ to no one, not even to me. Then a day or two later, the man would come again, and the missus would give the envelope back and that would be that. But you need to be thinkin’ about your wedding dress and what flowers you’re going to wear in your pretty hair.”

“And you don’t know what was in the envelope?”

“The missus said she would let me or Harold go if we were to have anything to do with the man.” She edged closer, lowering her bushy brows. “I just thinks it curious that some of missus’s jewelry is goin’ a’missin’. But perhaps I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about. I’m getting old and my mind is slipping,” she said, though her green eyes were sharp as cat’s claws.

“Good Lord. Do you think it’s extortion?”

“I don’t know, Miss,” the housekeeper said, shaking her head. “But the missus had been givin’ all her money to your father on account of the workshop. Now all those funds her husband had are fair near gone. But don’t you fret. We’ll manage, even if we have to go to the workhouse. Harold says he knows how to trap and skin a rabbit if we run out of food.”

Vivienne chewed the edge of her nail.
So
that’s why she sent that letter saying she couldn’t help Papa anymore.

Was her entire family on the brink of ruin and she the only person who could save them? Hard resolve formed in Vivienne’s heart. If she couldn’t keep John from wandering, she could at least stop a vile man from taking advantage of her aunt. “Well, she can’t let go of me! I’m blood.”

“You’re the missus’s favorite niece. Loves you like her own daughter, she does. She be always a’sayin’, ‘That little Vivvie is so clever.’ I never believed Mr. Bertis when he said you were a bad seed and would come to ruin.” The housekeeper’s face soured. “But you know how he was.” She remained silent, her words still lingering like a frightening organ chord in play when the villain enters. “But Lord, I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Now don’t you agonize that your aunt will lose all her money on account of an ugly rat in a blue coat and have to die in a cold workhouse. You’re young and need to be enjoyin’ yourself.”

But between John’s early wedding present and the rodent in blue, the last thing on Vivienne’s mind was enjoying herself. Just what was in those envelopes that the tiny man delivered?

Three

That morning, Dashiell confined himself to his dining-room table—the only clean surface he could find in the house—with a pot of black tea, a plate of beefsteak and mustard sandwiches, and the cracked stump of his beloved Athena’s neck, all he had managed to piece together of the goddess in the last two hours. His fingers ached from holding the tiny tweezers, his eyes burned from gazing through a magnifying glass, and his head still throbbed from last evening’s overindulgence.

Yesterday, after Lily had finished destroying his prized possessions, his ballerina friend had gone back to the theater, and he had expressed his intentions not to speak to his grandfather for another ten years, he strolled down St. James, found a dark corner in a dark club, and began pouring from a bottle of brandy. He leaned back in the leather chair, extended his legs, and watched the burning coals reflected on his glass—a hypnotic, soothing pattern. He marveled how he always felt more at home when he wasn’t at home.

He thought of his first residence, that pile of mildewing bricks outside of Oxford where he was essentially “stored” as a boy while his parents dashed about England and into the arms of lovers. He had been a quiet runt of a child. The physician said he had a delicate constitution and should stay indoors and away from crowds. So he was always walking about the quiet corridors with a fat history book hugged to his chest like literary armor, asking when his parents were coming back and if perchance one of the boys from the village could come and play with him. No one ever came. One day when he was seven, the maid brought him breakfast on a tray, and on the side of the china was what looked like a tiny painted rock. He rolled it in his palm.

“The gardener said to give that to you,” the maid had said. “He found it in the garden. He thinks it’s from a Roman mosaic.”

“Roman!” Dashiell cried and whipped his head around to the heavy glass window where the gardener was tearing blighted shrubs from the lawn.

After the maid left, he cast aside his tray, snuck downstairs, out the front door, and onto the lawn. From that moment, no physician’s order, pleading tutor, or housekeeper could keep him confined inside. By summer’s end, he had uncovered an entire mosaic and the foundations of a Roman home by himself. One afternoon, as he was breaking off cake-like soil from a Roman brick, several local boys, older than he, studied him through the leaves.

“Little Lord Dashiell, is it true about your mama?” a brave one with severe buckteeth asked while the others giggled.

He set down his shovel. “What about my mama?”

“That she ran off to Holland with another man,” the boy said, causing another round of giggles.

“That’s a lie!” Dashiell threw his shovel at them. “She would have told me.”

But she hadn’t. And in Holland she took up with a Frenchman and resided in Paris for a few years, before heading off to India with another fellow. Young Dashiell learned of her scandalous rambles like everyone else, from the society columns, for she only sent him a letter once a year after his birthday. The lines were littered with trite endearments, how much she missed him, and other such lies. Even now, the only times he heard from her were when she needed money.

And his father hadn’t been any better. He died in a courtesan’s bed, having been shot by the woman’s former lover. The memory of that night took another glass of brandy to forget and then another two for the memory of his own affairs. When he was in his late teens, there were the jaded matrons who seduced him and used him for sport, and as he got older, there were the grasping actresses who bled him for money, the bored cheating wives like Lily who thought he held the answer to their misery, and the exotic women in foreign lands who all blended together in his mind. His affairs were a nasty cycle of degradation for all participants. So he made it a practice to keep his emotions safe from the claws of women.

He poured the last of the brandy into his glass. But then Vivienne turned up again, all grown up and dangerous. That precocious, lonely child he had befriended had turned into a beautiful lady possessing a magnificent spirit. He should have left that little girl in the tree, never felt sorry for her, never let her wiggle her way into his feelings. He felt that old restlessness in his heart, as he did whenever things became emotionally dangerous. He needed to leave.

After opening another bottle, he set his new destination: Hong Kong. A few more sips of brandy later, he decided to stand on the chair and state his intention to the club by giving an impromptu lecture on the Silk Road. An appreciative crowd, those drunken men.

Now, his head and body hated him. He picked up another shard of his broken goddess with the tweezers and held it to the window light.
Where
the
hell
does
this
piece
go?

At that moment, the very object of last night’s obsession passed the window, with Garth on a leash. A soft shiver came upon him like an unexpected pleasant breeze and his headache lifted. She was wearing a straw bonnet decorated with delicate ivy leaves that matched her rather worn cloak. The wind flushed her cheeks a lovely crimson and tossed her black curls around her face.

The hound sniffed Dashiell’s fence, raised his hind leg, and squirted a little doggy calling card on the railing. “Stop that, Garth,” he saw her say as she tugged on the leash. A playful smile drew on his lips, and he instinctively rose to join her, just like years ago. Then he stopped and sat down. He couldn’t encourage her anymore or allow her to share in his hobbies. She was an engaged woman and he was a rake, a blackguard, a rogue, and all those other names ladies called him before they picked up a three-thousand-year-old relic and threw it at him.

Yet as he gazed at her, he realized something was wrong. Her brows were drawn, causing those little lines above her nose, and she bit down on the edge of her lip. Perhaps he should go to her after all.

The door swung open and crashed against the sideboard. The left side of the Athena’s neck split apart and broke into pieces.
Dammit
to
hell!

“I heard from the boys that you’re leaving for China,” the earl yelled. He wore a high-collared coat, padded so as to restore his chest and shoulders to their approximate build of forty years ago, and tight trousers on his thinning legs. His hair flowed as wild as his addled mind. “Now, the boys and I have been discussing your problems. They believe that what is wrong with you is that you keep running away. That you think you’re going to find happiness in some old thing in the sand. What else did we say… oh yes… that you refuse to grow up.”

The “boys” were a bunch of graying men who, along with his grandfather, had been terrorizing the clubs and gaming hells of Mayfair for the last forty years.

“I would appreciate it if you would not discuss my so-called problems with your friends,” he said, trying not to choke on the earl’s powerful cologne. “And I’m glad to see you finally got dressed.”

“You’re a fine one to speak. Vivienne came over here yesterday, and you’re wandering about with your trousers loose and no shirt. Now what kind of impression is that going to make?”

“Funny, if you hadn’t had your piece hanging out, she wouldn’t have come over at all! You should apologize.”

“Apologize? Last time I darkened Gertrude’s door on account of those actresses getting our addresses confused, she hit me with her cane. I found it a bit exciting, I must say.” The earl picked up Dashiell’s cup and took a long sip. He nodded out the window to Vivienne. “Just look at her. Pretty as they come. I was thinking—”

“Please don’t,” Dashiell inserted, yanking his cup back.

“—that you should marry Vivvie. Such a saucy little thing. She is perfect for you.”

“And you thought showing her your naked body would entice her to join the family?” he said drolly.

His uncle shrugged, seeing nothing amiss. “Well, you didn’t seem too inclined to show her the family gift.”

“She’s happily engaged to someone else,” Dashiell said with finality, hoping to put an end to the subject both in conversation and in his heart.

“So?”

“Naturally, you don’t perceive a moral conflict here, do you?”

The earl tried to run his hand through his thick, wild hair, but got stuck on a tangle and gave up. “It’s in the Bible that they are constantly reading over there: Love thy neighbor as you would have them love you, and such.”

Dashiell rose with a long, put-upon sigh. “As usual, you have gotten the meaning turned around. But for the sake of argument, let us follow your logic.” He held up a finger like some Cambridge don. “I
love
Vivienne like a friend. So as a friend, I want her to be happy, loved, and wanted. Things, to be honest, that I don’t think she has had much of in her life.” He paused. “Now, you don’t want your friend near someone who would hurt her, do you? A man who would break her heart, her spirit, and leave her to cry.”

He envisioned tears in those pale emerald eyes of hers, pain he would cause by infidelity or abandonment. Just the idea was a knife filleting his insides, but he knew he would do it—all that desire turning to disgust and restlessness as it did every time he got close to a woman. “You want someone to give her love, devotion, and happiness. Everything you are…” he swallowed, “incapable of providing.”

“What? I thought she loved those little curiosities you were always giving her.”

“I was speaking in emotional terms.” Dashiell picked up a shard of Athena’s ear and rolled it in his palm. “If I really loved Vivienne, I wouldn’t
love
Vivienne. She is the one female I care about whom I haven’t hurt, and I’m keeping it that way.”

“Good God, I get a headache just talking to you,” the earl said. He banged his knuckles on the table. “Why don’t you join me and the boys? We’re going to that artist’s exhibit at the Royal Academy.” A bright, childish light sparked in his eyes. “You know, the one with all the naked women.”

Truly, his grandfather should live in a bathhouse for how much he loved nudity both in himself and others. “Thank you, but no. I understand Lawrence James’s few masterpieces were stolen, so I have little interest in the rest.”

“But they’re
naked
.” He stared at Dashiell for a moment before shaking his head and quitting the room. “I just don’t understand you.”

“That could only be a good sign,” Dashiell muttered to himself.

He sank into his seat and stared at the fragments of Athena scattered across the table. “This is impossible.” Nonetheless, he picked up his tweezers and, piece by piece, began to rebuild the goddess again. He was plucking a section of her ear lobe from the wreckage when, out of the corner of his eye, he spied his grandfather conversing with Vivienne in the square.

Dammit!
No telling what that lunatic was out there saying.

Vivienne was nodding at the earl’s words with a patient yet strained smile. Then his grandfather pointed straight at Dashiell and waved for him to come outside.

That did it. Dashiell was leaving for Hong Kong tomorrow.

He sighed and grabbed the plate of sandwiches. By the time he got outside, his grandfather was gone, no doubt in his disarrayed mind thinking he was leaving the two love birds alone.