Lauren Willig - [Pink Carnation 04]

by The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

  Looking in polite incomprehension from one to the other, St. George shook his tawny head as though to clear it. “Would you be so kind as to excuse me? I really ought to see if I can find my sister….”

  His honest blue eyes lingered just a moment too long on Mary, as though waiting for her to forestall him.

  “Happy hunting, my dear St. George,” drawled Lord Vaughn, shattering the moment.

  St. George forbore to respond in kind. With a polite nod to Vaughn and a warmer salutation to Mary, he set out in search of his lost sister and her latest pet turtle. But he could not quite resist casting a look back over his shoulder at Mary.

  Seeing it, Mary smiled and waggled her fingers at him.

  St. George continued on his quest with a spring in his step that hadn’t been there before.

  Lord Vaughn’s dry voice broke into their byplay. “Don’t worry. I won’t keep you from your saintly suitor long.”

  Mary, who had been worrying about nothing of the kind, felt the color rise to her cheeks—with irritation, she assured herself. “You might have been more subtle with him,” she said, hating the carping note she heard in her own voice.

  “Subtlety is wasted on such as he,” Vaughn said dismissively. Mary wished she could have detected jealousy in his voice, but it wasn’t there. There was nothing but a faint tang of impatience, with St. George—or with her? Vaughn’s eyes scanned the crowd beyond her shoulder.

  Searching for the blond woman?

  “I met your quarry,” Mary said, her tone harsher than she had intended.

  Vaughn’s eyes dropped back to her, as though almost surprised to find her still there. Resting both hands on the head of his cane, he said mildly, for him, “So I surmised.”

  Was there nothing that would light a spark of interest in those pale gray eyes? She remembered the way they had flashed silver last night, in the cloistered confines of the Chinese chamber, where the whole room had closed about them until it had shrunk to the space of her arms around his shoulders, his lips on hers.

  But that had been a different night, a different place. A different man. Her shoulders still ached from the Black Tulip’s bruising grip. Mary’s brows drew together dangerously as she regarded her supposed coconspirator, urbane and unruffled in his black brocade coat and immaculately tied cravat.

  Where was he while she was being molested by dangerous French spies? It was one thing to stay out of sight, so as not to alarm their quarry, but he might at least have lurked in the bushes. But, no. Lord Vaughn couldn’t be bothered. He was too busy engaging in tête-à-têtes with short blondes.

  Mary folded her arms across her chest and favored Lord Vaughn with a look that would have felled a lesser man. “He wants to meet again,” she said abruptly.

  Vaughn lifted one brow. “You?”

  Mary’s temper frayed dangerously. “No, the Queen of Sheba. Do you think that could be arranged?”

  Reluctantly, Vaughn’s lips split into a lazy grin, his teeth white against his shadowed face. “A few draperies, a little blackamoor to carry your train, and we’ll have Solomon himself swooning at your feet.”

  She didn’t want Solomon and she certainly didn’t want the Black Tulip. At the moment, she wasn’t even entirely sure she wanted Vaughn, unless it was to strangle him.

  Before she could pursue that happy line of thought, Vaughn spoke again, his voice brisk and business-like. “When?”

  “The King has announced his plans to review recruits in Hyde Park on the twenty-sixth of this month. The—your friend has requested that I meet him there to receive further instructions.” Mary couldn’t quite suppress a slight shudder of distaste.

  “The twenty-sixth…” Vaughn paused a moment for mental calculation, one hand on the head of his cane, head tilted in the classic pose of cogitation. “He gives us the better part of a fortnight.”

  “Us?” Mary arched an inquiring eyebrow, deciding to forgo strangulation for the present. She rather liked the sound of the word “us.” It had a pleasant ring to it, almost as pleasant as “Lord and Lady Vaughn.”

  Tapping the end of his walking stick against the gravel, Vaughn turned abruptly to examine one of the large paintings by Francis Hayman that decorated the open portico of the Pavilion. Frozen in paint, falsely accused Hero swooned in the arms of her cousin Beatrice in a convincing counterfeit of death.

  Vaughn’s eyes dwelled on Hero’s lifeless features as he spoke in a voice as flat as the paint. “I will, of course, escort you. It was, after all, part of our agreement.”

  Mary didn’t like the sound of that nearly as much.

  On an impulse, she scooped a glass of wine off the tray of a passing waiter. The liquid gleamed garnet red in the light of the lanterns, like the wine in Vaughn’s glass in the Chinese chamber last night as he offered it to her. She had declined then. Now—Mary lifted the glass in a silent toast, an invitation.

  She didn’t need to explain what it meant; he knew, as he always seemed to know.

  Vaughn propped himself against his cane, the picture of languid unconcern, but his pales eyes glittered like the diamond on his finger as they narrowed on hers.

  “I thought you didn’t indulge.”

  “Perhaps I’ve changed my mind,” Mary said recklessly, tilting the glass to her lips without breaking their gaze. Using her tongue, she flicked a stray drop of wine from her lower lip. “It is a woman’s prerogative, is it not?”

  Taking care not to brush her fingers, Vaughn reached out and abstracted the glass neatly from her lifted hand.

  “Some prerogatives, Miss Alsworthy, are best not employed.”

  “Why not?” Mary demanded, wishing she could stamp her foot as she had when she was a child and thwarted in some small desire. But one didn’t stamp one’s foot in front of a peer of the realm, however much one wanted to.

  “Because”—Vaughn’s lips twisted into a crooked smile—“they have grown out of date.”

  Placing the glass firmly back down upon the tray, he looked inscrutably down at her, in a way that made Mary wonder if she had a smudge on her cheek or had suddenly grown a third eye in the center of her forehead. “If you ask him, I’m sure Mr. St. George will fetch you a lemonade.”

  Over Vaughn’s shoulder, Mary could see her sister bustle across the Grove, dragging her tall husband by the hand, anxiously scanning the crowd. Spotting Mary with Vaughn, Letty raised her hand in greeting, her pace quickening.

  Mary made an impatient gesture. “What if I don’t want lemonade?” she protested, her blue eyes urgent on his. “Lemonade is so…insipid.”

  “Perhaps.” Vaughn’s bland countenance was a study in indifference. “But it is far better for your constitution. Enjoy your lemonade, Miss Alsworthy.”

  With a curt nod to her relations, Lord Vaughn strode off into the glittering crowd and was gone, leaving Mary with nothing but bruised shoulders and the sour taste of lemons.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Dempster.”

  If the archivist was pleased to see us, the same definitely couldn’t be said of Colin. Dropping his hand from my elbow, he shoved both hands in his pockets, his attention entirely fixed on Dempster. He looked like a gunslinger about to face off at the OK Corral.

  Dempster’s eyes went from me to Colin in open speculation. His lips curved at the corners in a way reminiscent of Siamese cats and other creatures generally associated with snatching canaries from cages.

  “You never told me you knew the Selwicks, Eloise,” he said, in a way that made it sound like we were old and intimate acquaintances, as opposed to our five-minute chat that day.

  The implication was so entirely at odds with the reality, that I was rendered momentarily speechless. I looked at him sharply, but before I had time to phrase a reasonably coherent comment, Colin had jumped in.

  “Small world, isn’t it?” said Colin in a voice with an undertone that made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. “Especially where certain people are concerned.”

  My h
ead swiveled back around to Colin. I was beginning to feel like the monkey in monkey-in-the-middle—a very confused monkey. I wished someone would explain to me what was going on, instead of just glowering at each other through me. To be fair, Dempster wasn’t glowering. His expression could be more aptly described as a gloat. And for Colin to have glowered, he might have had to use his facial muscles, which were frozen in an expression of such complete impassivity that I feared it would take a hammer and chisel to crack it.

  “You two know each other?” I said belatedly and entirely inadequately.

  Neither bothered to reply. I didn’t blame them. It had been a completely inane question. If they didn’t know each other, they were certainly putting on a pretty good pretense of it.

  “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to keep you,” Dempster said smoothly. “I look forward to our coffee, Eloise.”

  I wished he would stop saying my name. Every time he did, Colin moved just a little farther away. My elbow felt very cold without his hand there.

  “Thanks.” I smiled tightly. “See you then.”

  With his umbrella sticking out under his arm like the Kaiser’s sword, Dempster trip-trapped smartly across the square. Even his back looked smug.

  “What was that all about?” I demanded.

  Instead of answering, Colin jammed his hands in his pockets and looked straight ahead. “Where is that Greek restaurant of yours?”

  We were definitely back into Mr. Hyde mode.

  “Leinster Street. In Bayswater.”

  “Right. Shall we?”

  He didn’t wait for a response. I trotted along after, wondering what the hell was going on, but Colin’s pace didn’t leave much breath for interrogation. It had to have something to do with the Pink Carnation papers, but I couldn’t imagine what Dempster might have done to elicit that sort of hostility. Admittedly, Colin had reacted with an entirely unwarranted vitriol when I’d sent in my humble request to be allowed to view the family papers. And that was before he’d even met me in person. His reaction when he met me in person, on his aunt’s drawing room floor with the papers scattered around me like a child surrounded by the crumbs of purloined cookies, had been even more extreme. That was just plain not normal. In fact, we were entering the realm of creepy. I don’t care how proud you are of your family heritage; it doesn’t justify treating perfectly innocent historians like psycho serial killers just because they want to have a peep at your papers.

  I was getting pretty damn fed up with this whole Jekyll and Hyde routine. By the time we’d made it to Leinster Street, I was windburned, breathless, and thoroughly out of patience with Colin, his mood swings, and his little dog, too. Sailing past him as he held out open the door for me, I held up two fingers to the maitre d’ and squirmed into the banquette he indicated, letting my bag slip from my shoulder and fall to the floor with a defiant thump.

  “A carafe of your house red, please?” I asked, before the maitre d’ could escape. Just because I was pissed with Colin was no need to be rude to the staff. Just because some people couldn’t control their tempers didn’t mean I couldn’t. Just because…

  I realized a waiter was standing over me, waiting for me to take the offered menu. Belatedly, I took it from him, glad for the dim lighting that hid my flush, part irritation and part windburn.

  Taking the chair across from me, which looked ridiculously little and spindly with him looming over it, Colin sat himself gingerly down. Whether that was because he feared the staying power of the chair or because he had picked up on the ominous tilt of my menu was unclear. I suspected the former.

  I had meant to continue in cold silence, blasting him with the frost of my displeasure, but irritation and curiosity got the better of me. Abandoning any attempt to read the menu, I tossed it aside and leaned forwards with both elbows on the table.

  “What was all that with you and Nigel Dempster out there?”

  Instead of answering the question, Colin planted both his elbows on the table. “How long have you known Dempster?”

  “Since about six o’clock this evening,” I answered automatically, and then kicked myself for it. What was I doing answering his questions? I had asked first. Just because his elbows were bigger than mine didn’t give him any right to bag first answer.

  “Really,” said Colin, managing to inject a world of mistrust into that one simple word.

  “Give or take half an hour,” I added. “I wouldn’t want to be anything less than perfectly accurate. How long have you known Dempster?”

  “Awhile.”

  That was certainly informative. He was just lucky I had left my thumbscrews in my other bag.

  “Right,” I said. “Okay. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Dempster, but if you want to be mad at him, be mad at him. Don’t get all pissy with me.”

  It wasn’t the most elegantly phrased argument I’ve ever made, but it got the point across. Colin removed his elbows from the table and looked at me curiously. “You really don’t know?”

  “I don’t even know enough to know what I’m not supposed to know,” I said irritably. “I met Dempster for all of five minutes this afternoon while I was doing research at the Vaughn Collection. He’s the archivist there, you know.”

  “I knew that,” mumbled Colin.

  “So if you’d like to sit here and fume about Dempster or whatever else it is that’s eating at you,” I said, warming to my theme, “feel free to go right ahead. I’ll just head off home and spend the evening watching the snooker championships.”

  “It’s not snooker season, actually,” offered Colin, in a conciliatory way.

  “Fine. Darts, then.”

  “Envisioning them thrown at my head?” he asked ruefully.

  Despite myself, I smiled back. “We were getting there.”

  We both leaned back as the waiter appeared and placed the carafe of wine in the center of the table between us, expertly flipping glasses right way up. He took our order, too, but don’t ask me what I ordered, or how I ordered. When he had sidled away again, we both leaned forward, as at an unspoken cue.

  After a long moment, Colin said, “Would an apology do, or does it have to be the darts?”

  I melted in an instant. But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook quite that easily. “I’ll accept an apology if it comes with an explanation.”

  Colin rubbed his neck with his hand, regarding me like a hopeful puppy dog. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer just to fling something at me and get it over with?”

  I leaned back against the cushioned back of the banquette, folded my arms across my chest, and waited.

  “Dempster?” I prompted.

  Colin considered for a moment, contemplated the olive plate, considered some more, and came out with, “We don’t get on.”

  “That much I figured out on my own.”

  Colin shifted restlessly in his seat. “It’s a long story.”

  I patted the side of the glass carafe. “We have a large carafe of wine.”

  Colin let himself relax into a rueful grin. “I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into it.”

  “Since I’ve already been dragged,” I suggested, grasping the carafe with two hands and tipping it forwards over his glass, “it would be nice to know what’s going on.”

  “Thanks.” Colin took the glass I held out to him. He raised it an ironic salute. “Cheers.”

  “So?” I urged. “Story?”

  After a moment’s consideration, Colin gave me the short version. “Dempster dated my sister.”

  That was not quite what I had been expecting.

  But it did certainly make a lot more sense. For a man to leap to the defense of his archive was just kind of odd; for him to leap to the defense of a sister was really rather sweet. Especially when that sister had just gone through a particularly nasty, self-esteem-destroying…

  From the dark reaches of memory, in a completely different part of my brain, a snatch of gossip came floating up to the fore.
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  “He’s that one!” I yelped.

  Colin gave me a look.

  I shrugged. “Pammy told me.”

  “Pammy talks a lot.”

  “She means well. She just wanted to make sure I didn’t say something that might upset Serena. Wait—let’s not stray from the point. Dempster is Serena’s evil ex?”

  I was still grappling with this key concept. It wasn’t totally inconceivable. He was a reasonably good-looking man, if one went for the tall, dark type, and the little bit of gray at his temples only gave him a distinguished look, reminiscent of up-and-coming politicians and the better-looking sort of college professor. I put Dempster’s age at late thirties, early forties, but that wasn’t too ridiculous a leap for a girl in her mid-twenties, especially one looking for a replacement father figure. Grant, of unlamented memory, had been thirty to my twenty-two when we started dating. He liked them young, young and adoring. Hence my eventual replacement. But that’s another story. Grant had no business butting in on my date.

  Colin was watching me over the small bulb of the candle, the uncertain light playing off the planes of his face, making his eyes seem even more shadowed and wary than they were. “How much did Pammy tell you?”

  “Only that Serena had just gone through a particularly nasty breakup.” I think Pammy’s phrasing had been more along the lines of “royally dumped,” but that wasn’t something that needed to be repeated to Serena’s brother. I can be tactful. When I remember to be.

  “Right,” said Colin. “Serena’s always been a little bit…”

  “Vulnerable?” I suggested.

  “Quiet. Shy. Defenseless. Our family—” Colin broke off with a brisk shake of his head. “That’s too much to go into. At any rate, Serena wasn’t in a good way. She met Dempster at an arts course. Something to do with authentication. Ironic, really.”

  “I gather Dempster turned out to be in-authentic?”

  “At the time, Dempster seemed like a good thing. Steady, devoted, solicitous.”