Wicked Little Secrets (9 page)

Her aunt lifted the small brown bottle of
Dr. Melvin’s Brain Restorative for the Special Disturbances of the Female Nervous System
on the table beside her chair. “You are a fine gentleman not to stoop to that blackguard’s d-despicable level.
Whosoever
shall
smite
thee
on
thy
right
cheek…
wait, or is the left cheek the one? Oh, dear. Well, he should turn whichever cheek hadn’t been smitten before.” She took a sip and made a discreet hiccup.

“I did not turn the other cheek!” he cried, indignant, then reddened to have been so ill-bred as to contradict his hostess. “I am above making a spectacle of myself in public, which is more than I can say about that miscreant.”

All
you
care
about
is
appearances,
Vivienne thought as she studied his immaculate blue coat with the fresh white carnation in his lapel.

“I never want you to speak to that scoundrel again,” John ordered her. “Not even a simple ‘hello.’ If you see him on the street, don’t even look at him.”

“But what if…” She bit down on the inside of her lower lip.
What
if
you
share
a
sacred
Bazulo
vow
to
keep
said
scoundrel
as
your
bosom
confidant
regarding
a
potential
terrible
family
secret?

“I said, never speak to him again.” John came to kneel before her and took her hands in his. “Dearest, you have no idea the depth of depravity of that man. I’m here to protect you and keep you safe. You must obey me, because I know what is best for you.”

She looked into his cobalt eyes and felt a jab of guilt. If he knew where she had been today and with whom, he would rescind his proposal on the spot, leaving her father at the mercy of the debt collectors and her aunt to a vile St. Giles madam. She had to choose between John—and her family’s security—or her dear old friend, the depraved blackguard. The correct choice was obvious. Angry fiancé trumps secret scoundrel friend every time. “I-I won’t speak to him again,” Vivienne whispered. Her chest felt heavy and hollow, like those months after her mother died. “I promise.”

“Good girl,” John said, rising to his feet. “I’m sorry, but I must take leave of you. Naturally, I had not intended to stay so long. Vivienne, in the future, you must stay in the square when walking Garth, for propriety’s sake and your own safety.”

***

Dashiell gazed up. The sky had turned a deep indigo color with the coming of night. He stood outside the door of the one place in England more dangerous to him than St. Giles: Christie’s. Just last week, his man of business had warned Dashiell that he was down to seventy-five pounds in the bank, and that he shouldn’t waste any more money on antiquities until his quarterly dividends arrived. “No more relics unless you dig them up from the London streets yourself,” were the man’s exact words.

Dashiell drew a long breath and braced himself.
You
will
buy
nothing, Dash. Rien. Nullus. Niente
. Not even that bust of Queen Hatshepsut he had been lusting after. He was here only to see Robert Teakesbury, the famed solicitor, secretary of the Imperial Society for History, Cartography, Exploration, and Related Matters, and the man who annoyed Dashiell most in the world.

Yet up for auction that evening was an irresistible gem of a painting titled
A
Venetian
Woman
by Lawrence James. On the canvas, a luscious, olive-skinned beauty reclined on a bed of green velvet. Her loose dark hair curled about the gentle mounds of her breasts and then down the taper of her waist. In the arched window just above her right shoulder, the lights from the Rialto Bridge burned like hazy globes in the night, casting a slant of light across her golden-bronze eyes, making them appear to gleam like a wild tiger’s in the bush.

Vivienne
, he thought when he first saw the creation, but he couldn’t figure out why. The image didn’t look a thing like her except for something about the model’s eyes: a mysterious invitation—seductive, yet innocent, eliciting that same primal gut hunger he felt whenever he was around Vivienne.

He tried to ignore the painting, but those alluring eyes followed him as he edged about the auction room, teasing, taunting, daring him to look again at her luscious body. “Buy me, big boy,” she seemed to whisper. “You want me.” No weeping Greek theater masks or noseless busts of Roman generals could silence her siren call. Finally, Dashiell did what he always did when temptation beckoned: succumb to it. He planted himself firmly before the canvas, letting the Italian Vivienne’s seductive power wash over him and pool in his loins. In his mind, he pulled her down onto her lush velvet bed, blew the air of life into her lungs, and made love to her in a wild burst of released sexual frustration. And then again—slowly, calmly, tenderly—when the passionate storm had abated.

Good
God, what is Vivienne doing to me?

Dashiell shook his head and found a seat in the empty back row of the mostly empty auction room. He slumped down in his chair, his legs extended, arms crossed at his chest. Being auctioned was a catalog of sermons that was being fought over by a foursome of uptight antiquarians. Bored, Dashiell’s mind drifted back to fantasies of the Italian Vivienne. This time, they made slow, gentle love in a gondola as it floated under the arched bridges of Venice. Her mouth open with ecstasy, her hair splayed about her head as the tiny boat rocked with their rhythm.

A warm, strong hand clamped onto his shoulder, and a large diamond flashed in his eyes. “Lord Dashiell, I’m surprised to see you.”

Dashiell jumped. He turned and found himself staring into the bright dry glitter of Teakesbury’s hazel-gold eyes and his omnipresent bemused smile. The scent of starch and sweet cigar smoke wafted from his immaculate black coat and deep gray cravat. His dark hair swept across his forehead in a silken wave, and he wore a trim mustache that drew into fine points on the sides.

He gripped a cane topped with the gold head of what many mistook for an odd cat but which was actually an Indian mongoose. “I heard you had gotten yourself in a bit of trouble, old chap, and were headed off to Hong Kong after you promised you would speak at the Society.”

Several heads turned in the rows in front of them. Teakesbury nodded his greeting.

“I don’t know what trouble you’re talking about,” Dashiell said, trying to sound both casual and innocent.

“Oh, the usual Lord Dashiell variety—cheating wife, ambitious courtesan or actress, crying, vows of revenge, a ship bound for the East.” Teakesbury drew a cigar out of his coat and beckoned a footman for a light with a mere bend of his finger. “You’re rather predictable, my boy. Maybe you should try something new. Perhaps growing up.”

Dashiell clenched and unclenched his fist. The solicitor was always just a few words away from having Dashiell land him a facer. And the man knew it.

Teakesbury took delight in being an antagonistic arse because he possessed a valuable gift that made him the most sought after solicitor in London: he knew everything about anyone of consequence. He was the human mongoose who could sniff out information from the very air and dirt. Dashiell first met Teakesbury when the solicitor helped put away his father’s murderer. Over the years, Dashiell developed a grudging respect for the man despite the ever-present urge to darken his daylights.

“I need to talk to you later,” Dashiell said through his tight jaw.

“Of course you do, good man.” Despite the dozen or so empty chairs around them, Teakesbury took the one beside Dashiell, sat, and crossed his legs. “Need some legal counsel?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Dashiell said, turning back to the auction and pretending to be interested in the prints of King George III that were on the block. But the smoke from Teakesbury’s cigar seemed to curl around his face like ghostly fingers, tickling his nose and coating his throat. The glass eye of the mongoose appeared to wink at him. Even when the solicitor was doing nothing, he still managed to grate on Dashiell’s nerves.

An ugly garnet brooch fashioned in the shape of a hedgehog and a deceased vicar’s library of books detailing the weather patterns of Scotland were auctioned before the James painting was presented. A hush fell over the crowd as the Italian Vivienne lay unabashedly naked before them. Her painted eyes seemed alive and staring straight at Dashiell.

“I want you,” she whispered to him from her easel.

His blood started to flow south to his loins.

“The bidding starts at five pounds,” the auctioneer said.

“Put me in your bed chamber, big man,” she cooed.

No, Dash, don’t do it…

But his sex had taken over his brain, and his hand shot up with the alacrity of a love-fevered adolescent’s penis. Teakesbury gave a low rumble of a laugh. “You don’t want her,” he quipped. “She’s a bad bargain.”

Go
to
hell!
Dashiell kept raising his hand until fifteen pounds later, the tiger-eyed Italian Vivienne was his.

***

As Teakesbury was oiling his way about the patrons at Christie’s, Dashiell and his treasure stood outside the auction house. He couldn’t wait until he got home to look at her stunning body again and ripped back the paper wrapping, letting the gaslight bathe her naked skin in golden light. He released a long, low ahhh, feeling a pleasant tingling in his percy.

Teakesbury strolled through the doors, smile intact, cigar in mouth, cane in hand, the coveted Queen Hatshepsut under his arm The warm happiness in Dashiell’s loins drained away.

“Lord Dashiell, even in art you manage to choose the wrong women.” The solicitor shook his head, his annoying smile in full beam. “I was interested in this beautiful lady myself when I first ran across her. You see, I represent Mrs. Lawrence James, and I was instrumental in putting together the exhibit at the Royal Academy. This one simply wasn’t good enough for such a prestigious venue.”

Irrational anger ripped through Dashiell that the solicitor would dare suggest that his stunning Italian Vivienne wasn’t “good enough.”

“The painting has sentimental value to me,” Dashiell said through his gritted molars. Conversations with Teakesbury were hard on his jaw.

“The technique is poor, probably one of James’s early works.” The solicitor pointed at the canvas with the bejeweled hand holding the cigar, delighting in pointing out Dashiell’s foolishness. “The perspective is off in the background, and the colors are muddled. But you can see the man’s potential in the detail of her body. I estimated it to be worth five pounds and you paid twenty.”

“Thank you for the art lecture. But I said I bought it for sentimental reasons.”

“And my client thanks you. No doubt you’ve heard that times have been hard on the poor widow and her infant.” Teakesbury’s eyes grew large like a sad puppy’s, but the cynical glitter remained.

“And I don’t suppose you are offering her free legal counsel from the kindness of your black heart?”

“You amuse me,” Teakesbury said with a low chuckle that caused the ash to fall off his cigar. “By God, I think you are my favorite gentleman in London.” He threw the nub of his cigar down and ground it under his cane. “What did you want to speak to me about? Has it something to do with that scratch on your face? In a bit of a scrape, lad?”

Dashiell lowered his voice so the people streaming from Christie’s couldn’t hear. “What do you know about Judge Jeremiah Bertis?”

Teakesbury arched a brow. “Are you asking for free legal counsel from the kindness of my black heart?”

Dashiell’s fingers itched to blacken the twinkle in Teakesbury’s eyes.

The solicitor laughed, an expansive magnanimous sound from deep in his belly. He patted Dashiell on the back. “Let’s talk in Rupert’s Club.”

Dashiell cleared his throat. “I was thinking we should go to Brooks’s.” A respectable place, devoid of the usual riffraff that Dashiell attracted.

“Come now, what’s wrong with Rupert’s? It’s just around the corner.”

Teakesbury didn’t wait for him to answer, but began to stroll toward St. James Street, his cane clicking on the pavers.

***

The pub was crowded with bleary-eyed lords and sirs, exhausted from a day spent gambling in the nearby hells. Drunken parliament members and civil servants debated each other around the bar. Meanwhile, lightskirts flitted about on the catch for a wealthy customer. The crystal chandeliers and elaborate plaster friezes were blurred in the haze of smoke, drifting like a stratus cloud just above his head.

Dashiell had not been in the establishment more than a minute when he was accosted by some of the more colorful ladybirds. Welcoming, come-hither smiles curled on their red-stained lips. “What happened to your face, love?” “Was a lady mean to you?” “Oh, let me comfort you.”

Teakesbury chortled. “Why do I bother with the theater when your company is far more amusing?”

Dashiell bit back his curse and tightened his grip on the Italian Vivienne, pushing through the crush to a table by the marble fireplace where the coals burned a deep luminous orange. He set the painting in the leather chair beside his.

The naked Italian Vivienne brazenly gazed at the club with her lusty, tigress eyes as if she could consume every man there. He felt embarrassed by her lack of modesty, and quickly arranged the paper wrappings to conceal her bare breasts and thighs.

A comely barmaid in a yellow gown, laced so tight she looked like a champagne cork about to pop, traipsed over. “I say, Lord Dashiell, I haven’t seen you for a few months. I feared you had died in some faraway place. Would you like the usual crank?” She leaned down, exposing the valley between her breasts. “Or something different?” She ran her tongue over her upper lip.