"Surely, you have a sister."
"And now a brother, too," Mary said grimly. "Would you take charity on such terms?"
Having spent the better part of a month in Dublin in enforced proximity with Miss Alsworthy's estimable relations, Vaughn would sooner bunk with Methodist missionaries. But he certainly wasn't going to afford her the gratification of saying so.
Vaughn stretched lazily, setting the silver strands in his lace sparkling. "I can only be grateful such a situation has never arisen."
"Not all of us have that luxury."
"This sudden interest in my company…" Vaughn propped a shoulder against the wall, affecting an expression of well-bred surprise. "Are you trying to tell me that you have reconsidered the merits of my little offer?"
"Yes," said Mary shortly, her head bent low over the illuminated manuscript on the table.
"Despite your, er, earlier objections? I wouldn't want to force you to anything you find unworthy of your energies."
"It is I," murmured Mary, "who am unworthy of such solicitude from so great a personage as yourself."
"Brava," said Vaughn gravely. "There are few who condescend so well to condescension."
Without looking up, Mary flicked over page of the manuscript. Sturdy peasants cavorted in a pastoral fantasy on the red, blue, and gold page. "It is not, however, a marketable skill."
"Not on the marriage market, at any event," agreed Vaughn. "Philistines, the lot of them."
Mary lifted her chin, her gaze like a gauntlet. "Are you offering to remedy their lack of discernment?"
With the words quivering in the air between them, Vaughn caught her gaze and held it. He met her stare for stare, challenge for challenge, before saying, slowly and very deliberately, "No."
Mary smiled without humor. "I didn't think so."
Well done! applauded Vaughn. He found himself seized with a most unusual desire to render genuine praise. Since praise might be taken for approbation and approbation for encouragement, he quashed the impulse and turned instead to the assortment of barbaric drinking vessels. Raising the decanter, he poised it above a misshapen silver goblet.
"May I offer you a glass of brandy — in the spirit of our future partnership? Our future business partnership, that is."
Mary closed the Book of Hours with a decided snap. "Hadn't we better come to an agreement before we celebrate it?"
Vaughn lifted his glass in a toast. "A lady as shrewd as she is beautiful." It wasn't intended as a compliment, and she was astute enough to know it. "To business, then. I assume you have no objections if I prefer not to commit the terms to paper?"
"As long as I can trust you to abide by them." Her tone suggested that she couldn't.
It was lovely to see cynicism in one so young. It positively restored his faith in human nature. Vaughn placed his hand over his heart. "You may trust to my honor, dear lady, as you would to your own."
She rose beautifully to the insult, like a trout to the hook. "Do you ever come to the point, my lord?"
"Not when I can avoid it." Vaughn toyed with the stem of his glass, sending the amber liquid swirling within the bowl. The metal, while picturesque, lent the brew a tinny flavor. "I prefer the circuitous route. The scenery is more entertaining."
"Linger too long," Mary said, angling her head pointedly towards the door, "and the scenery may change."
"The gods would weep," replied Vaughn politely.
A branch cracked in the hearth, sending reddish sparks flaring upwards. Mary's eyes strayed from the hearth towards the skull. "I doubt God has anything to do with this."
"You don't believe in divine providence, Miss Alsworthy?"
"Only when He is on the side of the strongest battalion."
A glimmer of Vaughn's pale eyes acknowledged the quotation and the point. "The clash of arms is merely a diversion. The real battles occur in little rooms such as these. That," he added smoothly, "will be your task."
"What sort of little room did you have in mind?" Mary asked warily.
"Not a bedchamber, if that was worrying at your conscience."
Vaughn had to give her credit; she didn't flush or affect maidenly flutters. Having determined to do business, Miss Alsworthy was nothing if not direct. "My conscience," she said levelly, "isn't the problem. My reputation is."
"Not virtue, but the appearance of it," Vaughn agreed with all seriousness, saving the sting for last. He smiled pleasantly as he added, "One wouldn't want to risk being compromised…again."
Mary's fingers clenched almost imperceptibly within the folds of her skirts, but there was no sign of it in the perfectly sculpted lines of her face. "I don't believe you would enjoy the outcome any more than I would."
"Touché," Vaughn acknowledged the point with a fragment of a nod. "Your solution?"
Mary addressed herself to the fire rather than him, her expression remote. "It would be the last word in foolishness to obtain the means to get a husband only to render myself unmarriageable. In order to prevent that occurrence, I must insist on the presence of a chaperone at all times."
"As you are chaperoned now," murmured Vaughn. "Our presence in this room is in itself highly suspect. Alone. A closed door. Tsk, tsk, Miss Alsworthy."
"In my sister's house." Mary shrugged. "None of her guests would dare make a fuss. Letty wouldn't allow it."
"And you?" Vaughn braced both hands against the table, closing the distance between them. "You don't feel the least bit uncomfortable?"
"In a business discussion?" Mary cast back at him.
"Business, my dear Miss Alsworthy, is a very broad term. And this" — Vaughn's voice dropped to a slumberous murmur — "is not a very broad place."
Mary stood straight and still, a perfect marble figurine. He might have believed her entirely unaffected, except for the telltale flutter of the pulse at her throat.
"Are you quite finished, my lord?" she asked coolly.
It took more strength than he would have liked to pull casually away, to shake out his cuffs with every appearance of unconcern. "For the moment. I have no objection to the notion of a chaperone in principle — as you say, it could be deuced inconvenient to us both otherwise — but you may find yourself in some odd situations."
"All the more reason for a chaperone," countered Mary.
"Have you one who is blind, deaf, and dumb?" asked Vaughn sarcastically. "Such a one would be perfect for our purposes."
Mary's eyes lit like stained glass. "I believe I might," she murmured, her mouth quirking with private amusement.
Vaughn knocked back the remains of his brandy with uncharacteristic haste. Tense and guarded, she was magnificent. Alight with mischief, she was…
A tool to be used for a limited set of circumstances, he reminded himself, gulping down the astringent brew. And those circumstances did not include his bed, his settee, his carriage, or any other horizontal surface his undisciplined mind might devise.
Vaughn set his glass down on its tray, locking his hands behind his back as he paced rapidly away from the table. "I leave the procurement of a chaperone to you. At the end of the house party, you will return to London with Lord and Lady Pinchingdale."
"I hadn't heard that they were planning to return to London."
"Hadn't you?" Vaughn shot over his shoulder. A few words from Jane would rapidly put the Pinchingdales' plans to rights. There were benefits to being associated with the Pink Carnation. "I imagine the new viscountess will wish to avail herself of the shops. If you are lucky, you might even share in the largesse."
All animation fled Mary's face, faster than a ship before a gale. Regarding him with a hauteur that Vaughn found immensely reassuring, she demanded, "Once I return to London, what then?"