Your Wicked Ways

  “Where would you like to go, Lina mine?” he asked her, his lips skimming hers, tasting delight with restraint. “If you don’t wish to join the others in the supper alcove, we shall explore the gardens on our own.”

  She blinked up at him, her eyes thickly fringed with lashes tipped with the same golden light as her hair. “How can we sit about and pretend to have genteel conversation in a supper alcove? I and your brother’s wife? It’s absurd!”

  “You are a lady, as well as she,” he said gently. “And even if that weren’t the case, Vauxhall is notorious for being ripe with all sectors of society.”

  “I don’t want to be one doxy among many,” she said flatly.

  “You’re no doxy,” he said, pulling her against him. He devoured her with that kiss, trying with every fiber of his body to tell her how he felt: about her, about the two of them, about their impending marriage.

  She was cradled in his arms, breathing quickly, melting against him, joy in his arms. It wasn’t until some five minutes later, when Tom looked up, breathless, his body on fire—

  To meet the expressionless eyes of his brother. And behind Rees, the bright, inquisitive face of Lady Esme Bonnington, her mouth frozen in a silent “O.”

  For one long second, no one said anything. Then Rees said in an utterly normal voice, as if he’d seen nothing and cared for nothing, “Our supper alcove is to the left of the Pavilion, Tom.” He turned and offered his arm to Lady Bonnington.

  Lina was looking up at him with horror. “Was that who I think it was?” she asked. Her back was turned to the walk and she hadn’t known of Rees’s presence until he spoke.

  “Yes,” Tom said. His arms tightened around her. “Did you truly not wish to go to supper, Lina?”

  She shook her head violently. Her lips were plump from his kiss; she looked young and utterly defenseless.

  “Would you like me to take you home?”

  She hesitated.

  “I’ll take you anywhere you wish to go,” he said, tracing one of her eyebrows with a fingertip. “And my only payment is kisses. Would you like to go to the opera tonight? With me?”

  Her eyes brightened, but then she shook her head. “I couldn’t. What if someone saw us?”

  “And what then?” he asked softly. “May I not accompany a beautiful young woman to the opera? I think I may.”

  “I’d like to go to the Pewter Inn,” she said suddenly. “I’d like to meet Mrs. Fishpole.”

  “Mrs. Fishpole!”

  “Yes.” She smiled up at him. “Meggin is at home, Tom. I find it very hard to forget that she is alone in the nursery, albeit under Rosy’s care.”

  Shame and wonder are infrequent companions, but Tom knew them both. “You’ll be the better part of me, won’t you?” he said, his mouth swooping down on hers again.

  She pushed him away, but not very resolutely. It wasn’t until some minutes later that a rather discomposed looking young lady and her companion hailed a waterman and told him they wanted the Westminster Stairs, for a hackney to the Pewter Inn.

  “Of course, I’m going to find her!” the gentleman said irritably to his companion.

  “Yes, but what if you can’t?” she replied, untangling a long curl from an emerald necklace that she was rather unwisely wearing, given the famed presence of pickpockets at Vauxhall. “Can’t we simply enjoy ourselves, Garret? According to the playbill, there’s a Spectacular Pyrotechnical Display tonight. I do love fireworks. I don’t want to spend the whole evening traipsing around these dark gardens looking for Lady Godwin!”

  “She must be here,” Mayne told his sister. “Just hush, Griselda. Perhaps we can find her in the supper room.”

  “I don’t want to go all the way over there!” Griselda said in some alarm. “My shoes aren’t designed for walking miles and miles, you know. Why don’t we sit in the Chinese pavilion? She’s certain to turn up. Everyone visits the pavilion; you know that. And if she doesn’t, I’m quite certain that some other flame of yours will wander by, and you can amuse yourself.”

  Mayne drew a reckless hand through his elaborately casual locks. At the moment he didn’t give a damn for the effect his valet had achieved after some thirty-five minutes of devout labor. “You don’t understand, Grissie,” he said with frustration. “Helene is different from the rest.”

  “Poppycock,” Griselda said, making her way toward the Chinese pavilion, whose delicate spires made patterns against the London sky. “You may feel that way now, but it will wear off. Contain yourself, please. And do remember that you’re a man on the cusp of marriage. All these extremes of emotion are so tedious.”

  She waved to the attendant, who took one look at Mayne and his sister and escorted them to a prime table where they could both see and be seen.

  “There, you see,” Griselda said with satisfaction once she had arranged her reticule, fan, gloves and shawl just as she liked them, and checked her emeralds in a small mirror. “You can snap up your little countess as she passes, and I do promise not to giggle at her shorn locks. Though I must say, darling, that I begin to wonder at your taste. All this enthusiasm for Helene Godwin? I remember her in school as being just too, too tedious. All braids, restraint and pale skin. And no more interesting on further acquaintance, I assure you, unless you have a passionate interest in music.”

  “You’re quite wrong,” Mayne snapped at her. He was a fool to have brought his sister. He itched to be out strolling the paths. At this rate, he would miss Helene. She was probably walking down a shadowy path, and he could be next to her, enticing her into meeting him at his little house in Golden Square.

  “Here!” Griselda called, waving her reticule and hooting until Mayne longed to shake her. “It’s Cornelius,” she said. “Cornnneeelius!”

  An exquisite sprig of fashion strolled in their direction, peering at them through his quizzing glass. His hair frothed above his forehead as if he’d been struck by curly lighting, but Griselda seemed to find nothing amiss.

  “I thought you dropped that fop based on his poetic failures,” Mayne remarked.

  “Not yet,” she said complacently. “I told him to write me another poem. Then I shall give the poem to you, darling, and we will discover who he stole it from. That is much more fun. What’s to be gained from discarding the acquaintance?”

  But Mayne had suddenly realized there was, indeed, something to be gained from the presence of Cornelius Bamber. “Good to see you, Bamber,” he said rather shortly. “I would be most grateful if you would accompany my sister for a short time while I attempt to find an acquaintance.”

  “My pleasure,” Bamber said languidly. “Who would not grasp at such a chance? She walks in beauty, like the night…”

  “Didn’t Spenser say that?” Mayne asked acidly. “Or wait, wasn’t that Byron?”

  Bamber ignored him, since he was in the midst of an elaborate bow that involved three or four hand flourishes, so Mayne strode off. He was conscious of a surge of desire at the very thought of Helene that felt like electricity going from his toes to his hair. He hadn’t felt this way since he was a mere adolescent. With her clear, thoughtful eyes and her sophisticated, urbane view of men and women, Helene was his twin. A gloriously feminine, beautiful version of himself.

  Behind him, his sister had been joined by Lady Petunia Gemmel. They were squealing at each other in a way that promised Lady Petunia had brought a luscious piece of gossip to the table. That should keep Griselda occupied for an hour at least; the two of them were positively savage when they began running down reputations, particularly if the people being discussed were near and dear acquaintances.

  Helene walks in beauty, like the night, he thought to himself. Perhaps Byron wasn’t such a bad poet after all.

  Thirty

  In Which a Songbird Develops Talons

  The Pewter Inn was bustling with every kind of coach that trundled the streets of London: phaetons, barouches, landaus, and even a chariot. Postboys were shouting and running in all directions. Jus
t as Tom and Lina walked through the gates (over which Pewter Inn was spelled out in flaking silver letters), the mail coach careened in, narrowly missing the left column, which would have brought the whole gate down on their heads.

  “Meggin offered me an apple as I descended from the mail,” Tom told Lina. “She was trying to sell apples to the passengers.”

  Shrieks reverberated around them as the boys began their game of throwing all the passengers’ luggage to the ground, including a crate of chickens that promptly burst open and sent fowl fluttering in all directions.

  “I see what you mean,” Lina said, holding Tom’s arm rather tightly. “She’s very small to find herself amidst all this—”

  She didn’t finish because Tom abruptly dragged her to the right to avoid a landau being backed through the gates by a fine young gentleman who obviously felt that lowly persons should give way before his vehicle, and not vice versa.

  “The kitchen is around the back,” he said, taking Lina to safety under the covered walkway that ran around the yard.

  Lina looked up and said something, but he couldn’t hear it, due to the fracas (the owner of the chickens had taken in very bad part the fate of his chicken-coop, not to mention his fowl, who were comfortably roosting on the second-story balcony). So Tom shook his head at Lina and just brought her around the path that Meggin had taken, leading to the kitchens.

  But when they walked through the door, Mrs. Fishpole had been replaced by a hatchet-faced individual wearing a dirty white apron. He had a bad-tempered look about him, as if he’d toss a pot of boiling water at the slightest provocation.

  “No gentry coves in the kitchens,” he growled, giving a ferocious stir to a pan of pale gray water, graced with a few bobbing vegetables. “Get around the front then, where your sort belongs.” Without looking at them again, he grabbed a wine glass from the table and sucked a long draught of red down his throat.

  “We’re looking for Mrs. Fishpole,” Tom said politely, removing his hat. “I wonder if you could tell me when she might be on duty again.”

  “Never, and that’ll be too soon,” the man growled, pouring himself another swig of wine. “Now be off with you. She weren’t owed any wages, and if she’s taken off without paying your tick, it’s nothing to me.”

  “We merely wish to find her direction,” Tom explained. “She owes us nothing.”

  But the man turned back to his pot as if he weren’t even going to bother to answer. A potboy dashed in, calling “Mr. Sigglet, Mr. Sigglet! Mr. Harper has arrived for his regular and wants the fish and sausage pie as always, what should I tell him?”

  “Tell him that the harpy’s gone this afternoon, and left me without a fish pie to my name,” Mr. Sigglet snarled. “He’ll eat vegetable soup and be glad with it, or he can take himself off somewhere else. I’ll have another cook by tomorrow.”

  He swung around and waved the wooden spoon so that greasy drops flew, landing on his beard and hair. “You all can make your way out of here,” he said. “That Fishpole has done a bunk on me, left her job without a word of warning, and all to go back to her family. Who would have thought the woman had a family? Family!” It was clear that Sigglet, at least, had no faith in the institution.

  Without another word, Tom drew Lina backwards out of the kitchen; he was a little worried that Sigglet would lose his patience and launch vegetable soup in their direction.

  “Where could she have gone?” Lina asked. “Oh, this is the worst of all situations!”

  “No, it’s not,” Tom replied, hating the look of distress in her eyes. “It means you were right. You were absolutely right, and I was a blunderhead not to consider other options.”

  Lina shook her head. “No, you were right. That inn yard is no place for a little girl. And what sort of a mother could Mrs. Fishpole be, if she up and leaves her position without a word of warning? Meggin needs a reliable family.”

  He cupped her face in her hands. “Hush, you,” he said, grinning down at her. “Mrs. Fishpole quit her position because she’s gone to find Meggin. All she knows of me is that I’m the vicar of St. Mary’s Church in Beverley. Her family lives a few counties over. And that’s where she’s gone; I’ll bet my last shilling on it!”

  She was so beautiful that he had to kiss her. And the kiss was so delicious that they likely would have kept kissing all night, bundled up in their loo cloaks and leaning against the back wall of an inn, except Lina had an idea.

  “She only just left the inn this afternoon, Tom,” she said, rather breathlessly. “Perhaps Mrs. Fishpole hasn’t set out for the North Country yet. Perhaps we could find her in London.”

  For a moment he didn’t catch her meaning. His whole body was aching to make her his. “Will you marry me?” he asked rather thickly.

  “No,” she said. “Let’s go find Mrs. Fishpole!”

  “Not until you agree to marry me,” he said, pulling her back against him.

  “I could never marry a vicar!” The horror in her voice was genuine enough.

  “Can we pretend that I’m not a vicar?” he asked.

  “Ah, but you are.”

  “If I weren’t a vicar, would you marry me?”

  She hesitated.

  “If I were the cook in this lovely establishment?”

  “No!” she giggled and he had to kiss her for the impudence of it.

  “If I were a mere country gentleman, living on an estate—because I do have an estate, Lina. And rather more than one maid, I promise you that.”

  “Estates have nothing to do with it,” she said and there was a distinct chill in her voice. “I’m not interested in marriage.”

  “Not even to me?”

  He looked down at her in the light of the one whale oil lamp that lit the back of the inn, and Lina’s heart felt as if it turned over. Tom was so inexpressibly dear. And so beautiful too, with his dimples and deep-set eyes, and the masculine strength of him that made her feel—well, he wasn’t at all like her ethereal, spiritual father. It was hard to believe that they were both vicars, to tell the truth.

  “Perhaps if you weren’t a vicar,” she said reluctantly.

  He dropped a kiss on her lips. “I love you.”

  Lina blushed, and she hadn’t blushed in three years. “You’re a fool, to be sure,” she muttered, brushing away his hands. “Now, shall we find Mrs. Fishpole, or not?”

  Without waiting for an answer she marched back through the dingy door into the kitchen. Tom strode after her. He entered the kitchen to find Lina with her hands on her hips and an air of command that he’d never witnessed on her face before. “You’ll tell me Mrs. Fishpole’s direction immediately,” she was saying in a clear voice, “or it will be the worse for you.”

  “Pshaw!” Sigglet said, and spat on the ground for emphasis.

  Lina opened her mouth and sang one high, ear-piercing note.

  “God in heaven!” Sigglet gasped. The glass in his hand shattered. Splatters of red wine joined the grease clinging to his beard and hair.

  “I wish to know Mrs. Fishpole’s direction in London,” Lina said conversationally, “or I shall stroll into your public room and give a free performance. Do I make myself absolutely clear, Mr. Sigglet?”

  He was eyeing her with a kind of malice that made Tom step closer. Sigglet’s eyes shifted to him, and Tom eased back his cloak, the better to give Sigglet an unadorned view of his muscled body.

  “She lives in Whitechapel, on Halcrow Street,” he gabbled. “I don’t know the number, so you can break all the glasses in the house before I can tell you.”

  “No need,” Lina said with a tranquil smile. “We shall find out the house ourselves, thank you very much, Mr. Sigglet.”

  She turned to leave, Tom protectively at her heels. Then she paused at the door. Sigglet had taken to swigging wine straight from the bottle.

  “I did want to tell you,” she said sweetly, “that I fear a little glass may have flown into your soup. Although”—she eyed the gray water with distast
e—“it may add flavor.”

  Sigglet curled his lip. “Complaints! All I ever gets is complaints!”

  Tom pulled Lina out the door.

  Thirty-one

  Lessons in Love…and Rage

  They seemed to have lost the others. Rees wanted Helene to see Roubiliac’s statue of Handel, so they had left Esme and her husband watching Indian jugglers. There was a stiffness in Lord Bonnington’s behavior toward Rees that made Helene quite uncomfortable although Rees, characteristically, didn’t appear to have noticed. To her relief, Tom had whisked Lina off to another area of Vauxhall.

  “I simply can’t get over the fact that your brother shows no disinclination to—” but Helene stopped, realizing that it was hardly polite to point out just why a vicar might not wish to wander Vauxhall with a fallen woman. Under the circumstances.

  But Rees, naturally, waded directly into the subject. “My brother is showing a striking desire to shepherd Lina from place to place. All with the purest of motives, naturally.”

  “It seems odd for a vicar,” Helene commented.

  “Perhaps he’s bent on reforming her. Actually, I’m not sure Tom ever really wanted to be a vicar. My father had him staked out for the church before he could walk, and he did seem suited to the task. But now he seems changed.”

  “Do you think that he might give up the profession?”

  “Hard to tell. The whole piety and charity business comes naturally to him.”

  “He’s a good man,” Helene said with reproof in her voice.

  “Exactly,” Rees replied, unperturbed. “A far better man than I.”

  “You’re a good man too,” she said, slipping her hand under his arm. Then she looked up to find him grinning at her.

  “Is this my shrewish wife speaking? Wife? Wife? Wherefore art thou? A changeling has taken your place!”

  “All right,” she said, with an answering smile. “You’re a horrible person who occasionally has good moments. Most of which take place at the piano.”