Lady Vice

by Wendy Lacapra

  The unexpected pressure of Max’s hands smarted against her shoulders, fixing her to earth. She looked up at him, confused. He was near. Near enough, obviously, to be touching her, but he seemed far away and slightly blurred, like the landscape background in a portrait.

  She searched for something to lean on, anything but him. He was not real. He could not be real. The man she had once loved could not have told her that her husband—whom she hated with all her blackened soul—was dead. Gone. Murdered.

  She stepped back against a tree. She looked away from Max’s too-vivid presence and up into the canopy of branches. They were dotted with leaves. There would be flowers soon. Keeping her head tilted up, she pressed her spine against the tree’s solid trunk and tried again to inhale.

  The heavy morning air burned like smoke but, thank God, she could breathe once again.

  She tried to think of Vaile, but could barely recall her husband’s features. She skated on fragile ice above tumultuous, conflicting emotions. What did she feel? Sorry? For what? Scared? Of what? Heavens. Was she feeling relief? Her head swam. What kind of a woman wished death upon her husband?

  She desperately pushed the question away, but the answer pulsed with each beat of her heart. Me. Me. Me. A terrible woman like me.

  What had she become? When had her heart filled with so much godless hate?

  “I…I…” Fruitlessly, she searched the murky soup of her thoughts for words.

  Behind her, on either side, the tree trunk dug into her perspiring palms. If she could sit, she was certain she could speak. Inch by careful inch, she slid down, dimly aware of a scraping friction. Her beautiful dress would be ruined. Did it matter? Did anything matter?

  “Lavinia, for God’s sake, talk to me.”

  Max sounded urgent. He crouched and reached out. His touch was gentle and his hands were warm. Skin against skin. He must have removed his gloves. His palm’s heat warmed her chilled cheek.

  He was real. This warm, vital man caressing her face was the reason she had survived the dark days of her marriage. Whenever the night had seemed frightening or endlessly lonely, she had lulled herself to sleep by silently repeating his name. She’d used him like a blanket, curling his image close and tucking herself into remnants of remembered love.

  The memory caused another searing pain, and she pulled her legs into her chest.

  “Hush, love, hush,” he whispered.

  His breath tickled her face, contrasting the cool breeze blowing across the water.

  Strange. Breathing was so much easier with him close. But everything was wrong. She was angry at him. Why?

  Because he left me to find his fortune. Because he left me alone and vulnerable to men like Vaile. She waited for her anger to pulse to life. Instead her heart said, he is here now.

  She made no move to push him back and may have even leaned toward him.

  His lips touched—softly—against her forehead. He spoke, but she could not understand his words. He was saying something about protection and safety…

  Yes, safety.

  What an inviting thought.

  How long had it been since love surrounded her? Since she had been warmed by place and family and home? After she had left Vaile, every letter she’d sent home had been returned to her as if home had never existed, as if she had never existed. But she’d been loved once, hadn’t she? Max was living proof.

  She raised her eyes to his. Past and present, fantasy and reality, they all swirled together.

  “Oh, Vinia.”

  She parted her lips as he spoke the affectionate name she had not heard for an eternity. He brushed his mouth against hers. His kiss’s warmth was soothing and tender.

  Yes, tenderness.

  Need uncoiled in her belly, and her knotted shoulders miraculously loosened. She floated—soft and sentient.

  Yes. Please. More. His hands were heaven. He cupped her cheeks as if she were precious. She closed her eyes and savored the tingling sensation as he traced a meandering line along her jaw.

  Again and again his lips met hers. Bliss.

  Seeking greater solace, she grasped his face and sunk into his welcoming warmth. He tasted better than warm honey—not sweeter, but rich and smooth, delicious and calming. Each taste was a morsel stolen.

  She’d thought desire as dead in her as wheat in a drought-stricken field. But, lured by his scent—soap, sweat, and male—desire raised its weary head. She’d played a role for so long she’d forgotten how true want could bubble up like spring water through earth.

  Then, she heard Vaile’s voice as if he were standing by her side. When will you cease dreaming of the man who abandoned you? If he ever loved you, he would not want you now.

  God in heaven, what was she doing? Desire was a snarling, snapping dragon who breathed an obliterating fire. Max kissed an illusion of his memory, not the shamed and black-hearted woman she’d become.

  And Lady Vaile did not permit any man liberties, not anymore. In a swell of panic, she broke away and shoved.

  The magic disintegrated and she gasped—the dew had seeped through her petticoats. Her legs shook with cold.

  “How dare you?” Without waiting for an answer, she ran the back of her hand across her lips, wiping away the remnants of their kiss. She leaned forward to stand, but her wobbly legs refused to hold her weight.

  Max reached out.

  “Keep away!”

  Max jerked his head to the side, as if she had smacked him. His face grew grim and he stood. He stilled his half-taken step.

  “I apologize, Lady Vaile.” He folded his hands behind his back. “I—I have no explanation.” He turned toward the water and squinted into the morning.

  She braced against the tree and willed herself to stand. Max made no effort to assist again, which was fine, just fine, just as it should be. She ran her hands over her rumpled, dampened skirts but only succeeded in spreading mud. No one who saw her would believe she had not…

  Well, she had been doing exactly what they would believe. But the circumstances…

  She groaned. The circumstances left even less room for explanation. She settled her racing pulse with a few reassuring breaths. She would live through this. She had lived through worse.

  But Max must leave. She could only get through this mess the way she got through everything else: alone. His presence was a lie that made her long for things clearly never meant to be hers, if they had ever existed at all—love, peace, and refuge.

  “Go, Max,” she choked.

  He glanced sideways. “Is that what you want? Truly?”

  No. She wanted nothing more than to wind her arms around his neck and sink into the power and confidence he exuded.

  She studied the fine lines around his eyes and the creases in his forehead. She glimpsed the awkward, uncertain boy who had been her first and only love, beneath the man who existed in another world, a world that would never accept her again.

  They could never reclaim all they’d lost.

  Vaile was dead. Dead. But his cousin Montechurch still lived. What had Monte told her? You can leave Vaile, but your sins will haunt you until death. I will haunt you until death.

  Her mind conjured leering faces seen through a suffocating veil. The early morning breeze infused with the remembered stench of mating, sweating bodies.

  She blinked at Max—so respectable, so sincere. God, how he would hate her when he learned the truth.

  She no longer had anything to give. Vaile had taken everything. There would be no second chance. She would preserve her youthful love untainted. Losing that one pure thing would be her final undoing.

  A muscle twitched in Max’s jaw and an unfamiliar sensation of tenderness blossomed in her heart. He had risked much by coming here this evening. His patron, the duke of Wynchester, had broken alliances with men just for speaking to his estranged duchess, and the duchess numbered among Lavinia’s most intimate friends.

  She drank in his essence, taking one last look before sending him away. Sh
e tried to preserve the image of the light against his features, the smooth angle of his cheek, and the earthy green of his eyes.

  “Thank you—” she said, her voice cracking.

  He raised his brow.

  “—for being the one to tell me.”

  His shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly, but she saw and understood.

  He cleared his throat. “I had to come, Lavinia. If there is anything I can do—”

  “No. What you’ve done already was…” she searched for words, “…a true kindness.”

  Was that soft voice hers? She could not afford tenderness. She needed anger to give her the strength to make him go.

  I would not have met Vaile had Max stayed in Thistleton, where he belonged.

  “Mr. Harrison,” she made her voice low and resolute, “you must go now.”

  “Allow me to stay until the magistrate arrives.”

  “No.”

  Pity, enough to make her shudder, lit his eyes. Damnation. He held something back. “What is it?”

  He took her hands in his. “I have spoken with the surgeon. The coroner’s court will convene a jury later today. I still hold hope they will return a verdict of willful murder by person or persons unknown.”

  “Oh dear Lord,” she said.

  “He was shot through his manhood. The killer aimed well. Vaile died within minutes. Just after, a cloaked woman was seen rushing from the mews at the back of Vaile House.” His eyes softened. “I am so terribly sorry. Vaile’s cousin is insisting that you fired the shot.”

  She yanked back her hands. Panic and anger spiraled through her chest and coalesced into a tangible lump in her throat. She swallowed convulsively and squeezed her eyes closed.

  The night she had finally summoned the strength to leave Vaile’s wretched home, she’d pointed her lady’s flintlock directly at his cock, and his cheeks had paled to pea-soup green.

  “I am leaving now,” she had said. “If you come after me, I will shoot you and, I promise, you will die in the worst possible way a man can die.”

  The threat had risen from the darkest place in her heart, but her hands had been as steady as a Piccadilly pickpocket’s. Every two weeks since, she had faithfully changed the powder in that flintlock, reloaded the ball and sealed it with wax—always on guard. Never had she believed herself safe, but neither had she dreamed someone else would carry out her threat.

  Her once steady hands shook like leaves in a squall. “The murder of a husband is petty treason. And the sentence is still burning at the stake.”

  Chapter Three

  Max hammered his fear into resolute certainty. Arguing that the last woman convicted of the charge had been merely symbolically burned after death by hanging would hardly bring Lavinia comfort.

  “It will not come to that,” he said.

  “It could!” Her gaze flitted back and forth, reading his face like a worn letter. “The truth is there in your eyes.”

  His chest clanged with a sharp, cutting clapper. She could still decipher his thoughts. Yes, he did fear for her life. Why else would he risk so much to be here? How could he live with himself if he let her face such a threat alone?

  He steadied his voice and gentled his expression. “They cannot charge you without two witnesses.”

  “But there will be questions.” A crease crumpled her brow. “Oh, by all that is holy, answers to questions about Vaile will only lead to scandal and judgment.”

  “Your innocence can be proven.” Again, he clasped his hands behind his back. He would not give in to weakness and touch her again.

  “But how? What little is left of my reputation will be shattered.” She scowled as if he were a boy who understood nothing. “Gossips will gather like bees to a hive. The court might as well sell tickets. They have before—”

  “Lavinia—”

  She cut him off with a hand-wave and paced. “I am not a peeress in my own right, but the duchess of Kingston was a peeress-by-marriage, and they tried her for bigamy in the House of Lords. And when Lord William Byron was tried for murder, over four thousand tickets were sold.” She laughed, a harsh and choking sound. “A lady murderess would be such a better draw, don’t you think?”

  “Lord William Byron was not sentenced to death.”

  “Lord Ferrers was! Though, when he was hanged, they used a silken rope. Silk, I suppose, proved respect for his station. What would be the equivalent? Hard wood, perhaps, to ensure a hot, consuming burn?”

  “Stop!”

  She stilled and grew quiet, though her chest rose and fell as if she were pursued by the Reaper with scythe drawn and sharpened.

  His heart beat against his ribs, bucking with wild commands: Help her. Solve this. Bloody well act! But how? The distress in her eyes acted as a poultice, extracting his strength.

  “You have not been charged. I say again, the coroner’s court will need witnesses before making a decision. Even then, there will be time before an actual trial.”

  She placed her fingers to her forehead. “Witness testimony can be bought.”

  He sighed. “Yes. But bribing witness testimony will be harder in a case where the stakes are so high and public attention is so focused.”

  “Harder to bribe a witness? Maybe. Impossible? Never. In fact, I would not be surprised if Vaile shot himself, knowing that the way in which he died would place me under suspicion.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Her pupils grew, turning her already dark eyes black. “You should go. You should not be a part of this.”

  Instant cold froze his thudding heart. “I will stay until the magistrate arrives.”

  “No. You being here would not be proper.” She glanced toward the morning sky and threw up her hands. “If I still hold any claim to the word proper at all.”

  He took a step closer. “I must stay.” He heard the helpless strain in his voice and cleared his throat. “I sat on the high court of Calcutta. I have experience in such matters. I can advise you.”

  Hope flashed in her eyes but proved a brief and useless spark.

  “There will be speculation enough,” she said. “The vultures are always circling in London. Some of my guests saw us leave together.”

  “Drunken men,” he clarified. “They will not remember.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You would be surprised what these men remember, even when three sheets to the wind.”

  He ground his heel into the gravel. The devil himself could not make him leave. He would find a way to remain by her side without engaging unwanted speculation.

  “Tell the magistrate that your mother asked me to advise you.”

  “Is my mother in London, then?” Lavinia stiffened.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “She has returned every letter since I left Vaile,” she said. “Blood is, apparently, not thicker than respectability’s fine sheen.”

  He hadn’t known of her letters. Still, her accusation did not ring true. But he could not dig deeper without revealing the extent of his involvement with her family’s affairs. Such conversations—and the unwarranted suspicion they would kindle—must wait until she was out of danger.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I did not mean to cause you further pain.”

  “You mistake the depth of my feeling.” She inhaled, sharp and deep. “The footmen will soon be summoned from the gatehouse. This is madness. If you must stay, then stay. Though, if we do not remove to the house now, we will be the morning stable-talk of every gaming rake in London.”

  She headed toward the house, and he followed in silence. She had not forced him to leave, but then again, he had not won the point, either. She had not said she wanted him to stay. Why did that knowledge feel like knives in his chest?

  He weighed her safety against everything he had built: name, position, influence—and the scale did not budge. Yes, she had betrayed him and married another. Yes, at times this night she’d seemed a stranger, but was she a stranger to him now?

  Her l
ips had branded his, waking vitality he had believed lost.

  She was no stranger.

  Frequently, he had dreamed of the times they had spent together, from her hand’s soft, trusting warmth to the power of their secret assignations in her parents’ garden, a power that had left him too frightened to do anything but hold her until their strength to stand had failed.

  She might not want his help. He might not trust her as he once had. But he could not abandon her.

  His time in a prison cell had taught him all he needed to know about abandonment. After the guards had brutally murdered Eustace Worthington, the son of a duke, five of his fellow prisoners had given up and pledged fealty to Kasai, the country-less leader responsible for their abduction. The guard they’d called “the Brute” had forced Max and his cellmate Sullivan to watch as another guard shaved the men’s heads and pierced their ears as a sign of the men’s allegiance to their new master.

  As Max had watched his former friends’ hair drop to the floor in wisps of betrayal, the pledge they’d made when they’d first been captured—stick together or, if the worst should happen, care for their loved ones at home—had pressed against his chest like a rib-crushing boulder. He’d known that weight would forever remain his burden, even as his former countrymen were freed of their chains.

  Traitors, every one.

  Max braced against his blood’s chill. He would not abandon someone he had once loved. He had contacts. If the worst were to happen, he could find a ship to carry them both far beyond the reach of any possible warrant.

  Why? His reason argued. She will only play you false again.

  She did not retrace their earlier route and avoided the walled garden altogether. She made her way past the stables and followed a path through the kitchen garden. They stopped beneath a trellis, where thick ivy bowered what appeared to be a servants’ entrance. As she swung the door wide, wood moaned in creaking protest.

  He grasped her arm, holding her back from the threshold.

  She swiveled. The beguiling scent of rose oil wafted from her skin, just as it had when they’d kissed. A protective fire flared beneath his heart, hot enough to render his questions to white dust.