Fic: "Gilded Lilies" 1/1 (Veronica/Lamb) R, AU.
Title: "Gilded Lilies"
Author: monimala
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Character/Pairing: Lamb/Veronica
Rating: R
Word Count: 4070
Disclaimer: Dude, seriously? I don't own them. At all.
Summary: A vm_santa gift for everysingleway. This is Lamb/Veronica, with a (deliberately bad) Regency romance twist.
Spoilers/Warnings: Generic season 1 spoilers, sexual situations, severely AU crack!fic. Please feel free to call the Purple Prose Police and turn me in.
The murdered girl was pale, both in skin and in hair. Lamb knew her on sight. In fact, he feared there would be few men unfamiliar with this beautiful corpse and no shortage of suspects. Lady Lillian Kane had been no lady at all.
Her father was speaking to Constable Sacks in low tones. He could hear snatches of conversation, words similar to "discretion," and "utmost importance." Lord Jack, as they called him at the clubs and at Whitehall, had earned the bulk of his fortune in trade…a fact that had not earned him many friends amongst the peerage.
Lords did not work. Perish the bloody thought.
And, no doubt, damn the bloody girl who lay half in the fountain with her head coshed in.
Lamb knelt just a few feet from the body, taking in the crumpled shift and nightrail, the blood droplets. "Lover's spat gone bad, Lass?" he could not help but chuckle, softly.
"My sister was not meeting a lover, Constable."
He straightened, turned, and immediately regretted the action.
If there was one thing more maddening, more boggling, than a beautiful dead girl, it was a beautiful live one.
If few men were unfamiliar with Lilly Kane, then it was safe to say the same of Veronica Di Marzo. Lilly had been fire…licking at and burning all the wealthy dandies in town. Her adopted sister was ice, cold and untouchable. No man could melt Lady Di Marzo. There was talk that the orphan Lord Jack had brought back after the peninsular war and boldly raised alongside his own children was actually the child he'd got off his mistress. And, 'twas true that she resembled Lillian and her brother Duncan in fairness and slight stature. But there, in Lamb's estimation, ended the resemblance.
Veronica Di Marzo was no bastard. She was bane. The bane of his very existence. Still dressed for the Viscount St. Logan's ball, she was in fashion for the season. Not that the likes of him kept record of such things. But she wore green silk and jewels and her bodice cut low enough to put her on the boards at Drury Lane. The way of the ton was that their ladies dressed like whores and their whores dressed like ladies.
He'd seen her driving in the park. At the shops. Even in the card room at Almack's just once, when he'd gone there to speak to Sir Robert Thomas on a small matter of gambling debts. And he had been obsessed by her ever since. By her golden hair and her smoky eyes and the way she tilted her head and laughed at something a companion said.
Dampness fringed her lashes and her lush mouth was scrubbed of paint. Lamb was only a man…and a weak one at that. His instinct was to comfort, to crush her in his arms, and carry her far from the macabre scene. But she's not for you, Donnie Boy, he reminded himself. That one there in the fountain, she's for you. "Then, milady, why wasn't she at the ball with the rest of the family?" he questioned, fists clenched against the sides of his coat.
"Lilly took ill." There was still a trace or two of Spain and Italy in Veronica's voice. Spain and Italy and ice. "I don't think I like your tone," she told him, all fluttering white hands and whiter knuckles. "She took ill. You may ask Letty or Friedrich. They were here all evening."
"And a lord's staff would never lie." The laugh escaped before he could quell it. "Perhaps I should line up the whole house, Lady Veronica, and have them all turn out their pockets? See if the murder weapon falls out?"
A single tear slid down her perfect cheek. Just the one. She cried as she did everything else…beautifully. "She wasn't killed by anyone in our household," she said, the strength in her tone belying the grief in her eyes. "Everyone loved Lillian. Everyone."
He held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity… as if he could somehow telegraph the ribald boasts from the hells, the whispers of Lady Lilly and St. Logan's carriage dalliances from loose-tongued drivers at the Boar's Head. And the bitter chuckle escaped him once more as he moved his boot from the pooling blood. "Yes…yes, I'm sure everyone did."
Veronica blanched. And before she moved towards Lord Jack, she murmured, quietly, "Before you go back to Bow Street, Constable…go to Hell."
**
The night of Lillian's murder was one of the longest of her life. Every light in the Grosvenor Square house was lit, voices echoed through every corridor, and she could still hear Duncan weeping as though his soul had been torn from his body. He'd come home late, from some hell or another, unwilling to tell the constables exactly where he'd lost a few more pounds from his portion. Late. Too late to save her. Veronica could understand that agony, for she herself felt it now.
She stared down at the courtyard from her bedroom window. The constables had yet to leave, were still surveying the scene…"the scene," as if her sister's death was a play in three acts. Sacks, the kind one, stood by her father, one hand supporting him as if to hold him up. The other…she knew he would never offer such a hand.
He was too cold. Too proud. Too…much.
Runners were seldom received in the ton's drawing rooms, given seats at their card tables and invitations to their balls. So every time she had seen Lamb prior to tonight, he had been standing. One foot in the doorway, in her world, and the other in his. But still the ladies whispered. She'd even heard a duchess once, in the retiring room, say she'd love a man like Lamb between her thighs. She had asked Lilly what that meant and Lilly had simply laughed. "It's a secret, Veronica. A good one. And some day you'll know it, too."
Lillian had carried the secret to her grave. Nay… to the flagstones outside, where Lamb was once again crouched. His navy long coat stretched across his shoulders, his dark head bare, those steel blue eyes searching the stone for some unseen bit of evidence. As he had searched her face nary an hour before…but for what?
Veronica moved away from the windows, closer to the fire burning in the hearth.
It's a secret, Lilly had laughed. A good one.
Was it a secret Constable Lamb knew? That many men knew? And, if so, which one of them had killed to keep it?
**
The offices on Bow Street were always bustling with runners at their day's business and thieves and the like coming before the magistrate. Lamb's desk was in a cramped corner, with the seven others who made up the core force of the Runners. There was always noise, always someone underfoot, so when all went silent, he knew something was wrong.
He felt her presence before he even glanced up. Her. Of course. Veronica Di Marzo. She was out of place in the dust and din, a cloak thrown over her blue morning dress and her hair pulled back in a simple knot. Out of place and yet perfect in it. He wondered how she would look with all that hair spilling down across her shoulders, with her bodice pulled down, baring her breasts to his eyes and his touch…how she would look aching for his pleasure. She's not for you, Donnie boy; he reminded himself, shifting beneath his desk and adjusting the sudden tightness in his breeches.
"The seamstresses are still dyeing our mourning blacks," she said, abruptly, and he thanked stars and creation that she had misinterpreted his hungry stare. "Though Lilly hated black. She would have loathed seeing us hanging crepe."
"What can I do for you, milady?" It was a courtesy title, 'milady,' given Lord Jack's station and her place in his household, but it flowed easily from his lips. Too easily. "My lady," was something Veronica would never be. Unlike Lillian Kane...who had been every man's lady. From the lowest chimney sweep to the highest of lords.
As if she knew his mind, Veronica fixed him with a cool glare. "I've come to see how you've progressed on my sister's murder."
"'Tis been but a handful of hours. We're Runners, not magicians," he murmured, dryly.
Her pretty lips turned up with scorn as she looked him up and down, as though she were taking his measure and finding it...lacking. "But you're hardly running now, are you, Constable?"
He matched her mocking smile and gave her the same deliberate, measuring appraisal. He lingered on the gentle swell of her bosom -- she would never succeed as an actress or a whore -- until she was shifting, uncomfortably, from foot to delicate foot. But when he spoke, when he uttered the words that made her spin and storm away in disgust, his voice was thick with anything but mockery: "I assure you, Miss Di Marzo, when I take action, there will be no question in your mind."
**
The gambling den stank of ale, cigars, and various bodily fluids that Veronica was quite certain ladies weren't meant to contemplate. Fortunately, tonight she was no lady. Duncan, though a dear, was a weak sort and it had been appallingly easy to slip into his rooms and help herself to some of his things...and easier still to ferret out the name of his favorite den of iniquity. "Is it true they speak ill of Lilly in those places?" she'd asked, wide-eyed, a hand on his arm. "Oh, Duncan, how can you bear to dice in such vile establishments?" Eyes red-rimmed and head still heavy from grief-laden drink, he'd looked at her as a child would look, protesting, "The River Styx is not vile!"
So, lo, here she was, in the River Styx, with enough coin to pay the boatman for her journey back to proper London and a rakishly tied cravat. She made a rather fey young lad. Letty's son Eli had told her as much when he caught her sneaking over the wall of the back garden. "Blimey, Miss V...no gentleman worth 'is eyes'll fancy you anything but a lady." She'd bet him five quid to the contrary, as it was her experience that most gentlemen weren't worth their eyes. Or their other parts, for that matter.
For the moment, her five quid was still hers. No one paid her any mind, too seriously in their cups or their cards to note a greenhorn looking for sport. She had spied St. Logan at a faro table upon entering and now kept to the opposite side so he would not mark her. His fair head glowed like an angel's halo and she remembered how Lilly had so desperately wanted to dance the waltz with him during her first Season. Of course she hadn't the permission to waltz, but Veronica knew all too well that such paltry matters had never worried her rebellious sister. Surely they had waltzed...and more.
"Logan thinks to offer for me," Lilly had whispered to her, huddled in her room just a few weeks ago. "He thinks himself my only suitor. How silly!" Lillian had always been flighty, like some wild bird unable to stay too long on land. "Silly" to her was, doubtless, a matter of honor and importance to a brash young man like St. Logan. Perhaps he had not taken kindly to being so succinctly and casually set down by a woman?
It was at this moment that Lamb found her, prowling through the River Styx himself in search of Lady Lillian's last lover. He knew her instantly, of course. Despite the breeches and coat. There was no disguising her trim figure, her fair face. Not when it haunted his every dream and every nightmare. He made his way to her side in such haste that he nearly went sprawling over his own feet. He steadied himself on Sir Thomas' shoulder, muttering a faint apology and a hint that the fellow across the table held an ace. But all he saw, all he knew, was Veronica Di Marzo. Here in this pit of pestilence.
"Are your mourning weeds still at the seamstress?" he inquired when he was close enough, only barely stifling the urge to grab her arm and promptly haul her very female personage out into the street.
She jumped, perfect hands rising up in a pantomime of a boxer's stance. Where had she learned it? Her useless would-be brother Duncan was known for being an utter cock-up in a fight. But then she recognized him, and knew she'd been marked, and her hands fell, limply to her sides. "C-constable…"
"Shut it, Your Lordship," he hissed, grasping her elbow and steering her towards the narrow corridor that led up to a small slot of rooms for those who lost their heads in ale or needed to squire an accommodating whore up for a toss. "Or do you fancy getting us both thrown out on our arses?"
"I want to know who killed Lilly," she murmured, fiercely, yanking her arm from his grip.
"We'll find 'im. It's our lot. You ought to be home crying and wailing and doing what proper ladies do when someone dies."
"Crying won't bring her back!" Veronica's eyes were wet, like the moon as it dipped into the sea. "Crying doesn't bring anybody back. I...I learned that a long time ago."
"Well, getting yourself killed won't do it either, Lass," he cried, unable to do anything but shake her. "Have you gone completely daft? Do you know what goes on in hells like this? Do you know what they do to lovely young things like you? They won't leave enough of you to float in the fountain."
She cried out softly, as if he'd hurt her somehow, and he knew he should let her go, but he could not. Not now. Not when she was suddenly crumbling against him, hiding her face against his neck as her whole body trembled with whatever agony she had forged into a set of damnable brass balls.
He held her through the storm of her tears, hearing the quiet sounds clearly over the din of drunks and gamblers and thieves. It passed quickly, as most storms did, and then she was simply there…in his arms. Staring up at him as though she was seeing him for the first time. "Oh," she gasped…and he realized that, yes, she was seeing him for the first time. Truly looking at him. Seeing not the Bow Street Runner, the common constable, but the man. Her hand came up, this time not to box but to caress…to learn his face.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "Who the devil are you?"
"They're going to take me for a bloody sod," he groaned against her cheek. "Do you know what that is, Veronica? Do you even know what that means?"
She rendered him undone with but two simple words. "Sh-show me."
And so he did. Onlookers be damned. He pressed her deeper into the shadowy alcove and took her mouth.
At seventeen, Veronica had been kissed before. Of course. By sweaty-palmed boys on the balcony of a ball as a jig played inside. But this…this was no jig. And it was her palms that were suddenly damp. The constable's lips were firm and sure, slanting against hers with a reckless abandon she had never known before. He squeezed her buttocks through her borrowed breeches and she would think it scandalous had it not felt so sinfully good. A wanton moan escaped her throat and he answered it… by pushing her away.
"Enough!" he gasped. "Or would you see us sent to Newgate for sodomy?"
Veronica's cheeks heated. She had forgotten…for a moment, she had forgotten her costume, this place, everything. Even…Lilly. "Oh God. I never…I didn't think…"
As if he could already sense her withdrawal, her regrets, Lamb gently righted her hat… and then guided her back through the hell. "Come," he told her, that arrogant laugh she associated with him returning. "Come, Your Lordship, I'll see you safely home and over your garden wall."
When they hurried past the Viscount St. Logan, Veronica could only marvel that his halo no longer shined quite so bright.
And then they were safely ensconced in a hackney and headed in haste towards the world she knew. Only it really wasn't safe, was it? Because there was just the small space in the tiny carriage between her and Lamb. A space entirely too easy to cross. "Show me," she'd moaned like some kind of Cyprian, like a shameless hussy. And, oh, but she still desired him. She still wanted to be shown, to be taught. "Dio," she swore, softly, her mother tongue slipping, just like Lamb's had, into her mouth.
"Do you miss it?" he asked, and she was so unsettled that it took her a moment to comprehend he meant home and not his kisses.
She shrugged, wrenching her gaze away from his searching blue eyes. "I scarcely remember Florence," she admitted, quietly. "My father…my real father…took us away before the war and we stayed mostly in Madrid. But then I came here. I imagine I feel more Gypsy than anything."
"They'll not let you darken the door of Almack's if you go 'round confiding that," Lamb noted, amusement turning his lips up.
"Why do they let you darken the door, Constable?" The question was impertinent, but she could not help herself.
But her worries were for naught. His answer proved to be twice as impertinent. "Because their ladies want to bed me and their lords want to see why," he drawled.
She blushed scarlet, trying to will her gaze away from his breeches, from the undeniable evidence of his manhood. 'Twas that…that what the duchess had wanted between her thighs? Even as she considered it, a strange heat pooled low in her belly. Veronica knew only the barest hints of what went on in a marriage bed. Lilly had enjoyed keeping her innocent, not embellishing on the frightening mechanics their governess had dictated to them when they turned 13. But if she had derived such base pleasures from his lips alone, then surely bedding Lamb was the most wickedly decadent experience on earth?
"You want it, too, don't you, milady Di Marzo?" His eyes were heavy with knowing, with promise. "You ache for it. For the adventure, for the filth, for the roll in the gutter with the likes 'o me."
The bitterness in his tone belied the sweetness of his gaze upon her. Veronica flinched, not wanting to think on just how many ladies had approached him for their back alley affairs and assignations before going back to their husbands and betrotheds and the glittering world of the ton.
The hackney lurched, hitting a dip in the cobblestones, and launched her from her seat. He caught her against his lap, his fingers fairly burning into her shoulders. Oh, yes. Oh, God, yes she ached for him. "It wouldn't be filth, Constable," she gasped, lifting her mouth to his. "It wouldn't be filth at all."
As before, the passion was instant. Their lips met and mated fiercely, obliterating any rational thought, any decorum, any propriety. Were she wearing a female's garments, there would be layers of skirts and petticoats between them. In men's garb, she could feel every inch of him as he drew her more firmly into his arms and her legs locked 'round his hips. His maleness rubbed against the secret place that she had never realized wanted and waited for this.
He knocked off her hat, hands digging into her hair and freeing it from the pins and ribbons that had held it at bay. "Veronica," he called her as he nuzzled her cheek, her jaw, and her throat. Her name was a breathless sigh that was anything but the polite, polished tones he used with his betters. Here…here he was rough and guttural and they were equal.
This, this was Lilly's secret.
This was what had killed her.
This need. This abandon. This all-consuming lust.
And she had only been dead a handful of days.
Veronica tore herself from Lamb's embrace, retreating back to the opposite seat of the hack, frantically trying to right her state of dishabille and return all her pins and ribbons to their proper places. "This...this is not right," she gasped, pressing her fingers to her mouth, still tasting the heat of him. Still craving it. "What are we doing? Wh-what are you doing to me?"
A mask dropped over his features. What was once passionate, naked with desire, turned impassive and unyielding. "You turned quickly, my lady Di Marzo," he hissed, fixing his gaze out the window as they neared Kane Manor. "Most wellborn sluts don't cry 'rape' until after the deed is done."
It was as if he had struck her. As if he had taken her head in his hands and pounded it against the edge of the fountain. Veronica was learning a slew of lessons tonight. First life and now...now death. For he had killed her with a simple accusation. "You misunderstand me, Constable," she began, trying to choke the explanation past the sudden knot in her throat.
"What is there to misunderstand?" He waved his hand dismissively. "You've had your dalliance, your taste of adventure. Leave me to my investigation and I'll leave you to your mourning dresses."
She leaned forward, caught his wrist. It was thick and strong beneath her fingers. "Tis the thing, Sir...it's exactly that thing. I am in mourning. My sister is dead. It's not right that I should find such passion now."
He finally turned to look at her again. His eyes were hooded with suspicion, derision and something that made her breath catch. "Passion? Is that what you've found tonight?"
"Aye. And I meant to find a murderer."
He gently loosened her fingers from his grip and then raised his hand to touch her cheek. "Then, Lass…you're a sight smarter than me."
**
Two weeks later, when St. Logan's father, the Earl of Echolls, was taken from the Bow Street magistrate's offices to the dark and dank depths of Newgate, Lilly's ghost was put to rest. And Veronica's spirit reawakened.
She stared down from her window to the courtyard, where a man in a navy coat and red waistcoat stood talking to Lord Jack with one hand on his shoulder.
The water in the fountain was clear, pure, and she could see her future in it.
**
They were married by special license three months after Lady Lillian Kane was laid to rest in the family plot. Tongues of the ton wagged, but the bride wore dove gray and kissed her husband sweetly and demurely despite any whispers of her hot Italian blood and his baser impulses.
"Three months was a'plenty, darling wife," he told her, as their honeymoon carriage rattled on the road to Dublin. "Else I would have taken you straight to Gretna Green."
"And well and truly made me your wellborn slut?"
"You'll not let me forget that, will you?"
"Never," she smiled, without rancor or judgment.
Then she flowed into his arms for the kiss that had claimed her so completely one night in a dark hell. This time…this time it took her to heaven.
"I can't wait," she gasped, opening her mouth for his seeking tongue. "I cannot wait any longer."
"You won't have to, milady," he promised. "Never again."
He took the folds of her wedding gown, tugging the heavy skirts upwards as she straddled his lap. The seats of the traveling coach were blessedly wide, made for the newly wed, and she pushed him back against them eagerly. He tugged down her bodice and freed her beautiful breasts. No longer a simple fantasy, she belonged to him, body and soul, and he lavished the hard peaks of her nipples with damp kisses. She cried out, overcome by the pleasure of it, and fumbled with his trouser buttons, which were fairly straining against his burgeoning rod.
"I love you," Veronica whispered, melting against him.
"And I you."
As he tenderly brought her down atop his throbbing manhood and pushed through the barrier of her virginity, the secrets of her femininity opened to them both like the petals of a flower. Like a lily in bloom.
--end--
December 18, 2006
Author: monimala
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Character/Pairing: Lamb/Veronica
Rating: R
Word Count: 4070
Disclaimer: Dude, seriously? I don't own them. At all.
Summary: A vm_santa gift for everysingleway. This is Lamb/Veronica, with a (deliberately bad) Regency romance twist.
Spoilers/Warnings: Generic season 1 spoilers, sexual situations, severely AU crack!fic. Please feel free to call the Purple Prose Police and turn me in.
The murdered girl was pale, both in skin and in hair. Lamb knew her on sight. In fact, he feared there would be few men unfamiliar with this beautiful corpse and no shortage of suspects. Lady Lillian Kane had been no lady at all.
Her father was speaking to Constable Sacks in low tones. He could hear snatches of conversation, words similar to "discretion," and "utmost importance." Lord Jack, as they called him at the clubs and at Whitehall, had earned the bulk of his fortune in trade…a fact that had not earned him many friends amongst the peerage.
Lords did not work. Perish the bloody thought.
And, no doubt, damn the bloody girl who lay half in the fountain with her head coshed in.
Lamb knelt just a few feet from the body, taking in the crumpled shift and nightrail, the blood droplets. "Lover's spat gone bad, Lass?" he could not help but chuckle, softly.
"My sister was not meeting a lover, Constable."
He straightened, turned, and immediately regretted the action.
If there was one thing more maddening, more boggling, than a beautiful dead girl, it was a beautiful live one.
If few men were unfamiliar with Lilly Kane, then it was safe to say the same of Veronica Di Marzo. Lilly had been fire…licking at and burning all the wealthy dandies in town. Her adopted sister was ice, cold and untouchable. No man could melt Lady Di Marzo. There was talk that the orphan Lord Jack had brought back after the peninsular war and boldly raised alongside his own children was actually the child he'd got off his mistress. And, 'twas true that she resembled Lillian and her brother Duncan in fairness and slight stature. But there, in Lamb's estimation, ended the resemblance.
Veronica Di Marzo was no bastard. She was bane. The bane of his very existence. Still dressed for the Viscount St. Logan's ball, she was in fashion for the season. Not that the likes of him kept record of such things. But she wore green silk and jewels and her bodice cut low enough to put her on the boards at Drury Lane. The way of the ton was that their ladies dressed like whores and their whores dressed like ladies.
He'd seen her driving in the park. At the shops. Even in the card room at Almack's just once, when he'd gone there to speak to Sir Robert Thomas on a small matter of gambling debts. And he had been obsessed by her ever since. By her golden hair and her smoky eyes and the way she tilted her head and laughed at something a companion said.
Dampness fringed her lashes and her lush mouth was scrubbed of paint. Lamb was only a man…and a weak one at that. His instinct was to comfort, to crush her in his arms, and carry her far from the macabre scene. But she's not for you, Donnie Boy, he reminded himself. That one there in the fountain, she's for you. "Then, milady, why wasn't she at the ball with the rest of the family?" he questioned, fists clenched against the sides of his coat.
"Lilly took ill." There was still a trace or two of Spain and Italy in Veronica's voice. Spain and Italy and ice. "I don't think I like your tone," she told him, all fluttering white hands and whiter knuckles. "She took ill. You may ask Letty or Friedrich. They were here all evening."
"And a lord's staff would never lie." The laugh escaped before he could quell it. "Perhaps I should line up the whole house, Lady Veronica, and have them all turn out their pockets? See if the murder weapon falls out?"
A single tear slid down her perfect cheek. Just the one. She cried as she did everything else…beautifully. "She wasn't killed by anyone in our household," she said, the strength in her tone belying the grief in her eyes. "Everyone loved Lillian. Everyone."
He held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity… as if he could somehow telegraph the ribald boasts from the hells, the whispers of Lady Lilly and St. Logan's carriage dalliances from loose-tongued drivers at the Boar's Head. And the bitter chuckle escaped him once more as he moved his boot from the pooling blood. "Yes…yes, I'm sure everyone did."
Veronica blanched. And before she moved towards Lord Jack, she murmured, quietly, "Before you go back to Bow Street, Constable…go to Hell."
**
The night of Lillian's murder was one of the longest of her life. Every light in the Grosvenor Square house was lit, voices echoed through every corridor, and she could still hear Duncan weeping as though his soul had been torn from his body. He'd come home late, from some hell or another, unwilling to tell the constables exactly where he'd lost a few more pounds from his portion. Late. Too late to save her. Veronica could understand that agony, for she herself felt it now.
She stared down at the courtyard from her bedroom window. The constables had yet to leave, were still surveying the scene…"the scene," as if her sister's death was a play in three acts. Sacks, the kind one, stood by her father, one hand supporting him as if to hold him up. The other…she knew he would never offer such a hand.
He was too cold. Too proud. Too…much.
Runners were seldom received in the ton's drawing rooms, given seats at their card tables and invitations to their balls. So every time she had seen Lamb prior to tonight, he had been standing. One foot in the doorway, in her world, and the other in his. But still the ladies whispered. She'd even heard a duchess once, in the retiring room, say she'd love a man like Lamb between her thighs. She had asked Lilly what that meant and Lilly had simply laughed. "It's a secret, Veronica. A good one. And some day you'll know it, too."
Lillian had carried the secret to her grave. Nay… to the flagstones outside, where Lamb was once again crouched. His navy long coat stretched across his shoulders, his dark head bare, those steel blue eyes searching the stone for some unseen bit of evidence. As he had searched her face nary an hour before…but for what?
Veronica moved away from the windows, closer to the fire burning in the hearth.
It's a secret, Lilly had laughed. A good one.
Was it a secret Constable Lamb knew? That many men knew? And, if so, which one of them had killed to keep it?
**
The offices on Bow Street were always bustling with runners at their day's business and thieves and the like coming before the magistrate. Lamb's desk was in a cramped corner, with the seven others who made up the core force of the Runners. There was always noise, always someone underfoot, so when all went silent, he knew something was wrong.
He felt her presence before he even glanced up. Her. Of course. Veronica Di Marzo. She was out of place in the dust and din, a cloak thrown over her blue morning dress and her hair pulled back in a simple knot. Out of place and yet perfect in it. He wondered how she would look with all that hair spilling down across her shoulders, with her bodice pulled down, baring her breasts to his eyes and his touch…how she would look aching for his pleasure. She's not for you, Donnie boy; he reminded himself, shifting beneath his desk and adjusting the sudden tightness in his breeches.
"The seamstresses are still dyeing our mourning blacks," she said, abruptly, and he thanked stars and creation that she had misinterpreted his hungry stare. "Though Lilly hated black. She would have loathed seeing us hanging crepe."
"What can I do for you, milady?" It was a courtesy title, 'milady,' given Lord Jack's station and her place in his household, but it flowed easily from his lips. Too easily. "My lady," was something Veronica would never be. Unlike Lillian Kane...who had been every man's lady. From the lowest chimney sweep to the highest of lords.
As if she knew his mind, Veronica fixed him with a cool glare. "I've come to see how you've progressed on my sister's murder."
"'Tis been but a handful of hours. We're Runners, not magicians," he murmured, dryly.
Her pretty lips turned up with scorn as she looked him up and down, as though she were taking his measure and finding it...lacking. "But you're hardly running now, are you, Constable?"
He matched her mocking smile and gave her the same deliberate, measuring appraisal. He lingered on the gentle swell of her bosom -- she would never succeed as an actress or a whore -- until she was shifting, uncomfortably, from foot to delicate foot. But when he spoke, when he uttered the words that made her spin and storm away in disgust, his voice was thick with anything but mockery: "I assure you, Miss Di Marzo, when I take action, there will be no question in your mind."
**
The gambling den stank of ale, cigars, and various bodily fluids that Veronica was quite certain ladies weren't meant to contemplate. Fortunately, tonight she was no lady. Duncan, though a dear, was a weak sort and it had been appallingly easy to slip into his rooms and help herself to some of his things...and easier still to ferret out the name of his favorite den of iniquity. "Is it true they speak ill of Lilly in those places?" she'd asked, wide-eyed, a hand on his arm. "Oh, Duncan, how can you bear to dice in such vile establishments?" Eyes red-rimmed and head still heavy from grief-laden drink, he'd looked at her as a child would look, protesting, "The River Styx is not vile!"
So, lo, here she was, in the River Styx, with enough coin to pay the boatman for her journey back to proper London and a rakishly tied cravat. She made a rather fey young lad. Letty's son Eli had told her as much when he caught her sneaking over the wall of the back garden. "Blimey, Miss V...no gentleman worth 'is eyes'll fancy you anything but a lady." She'd bet him five quid to the contrary, as it was her experience that most gentlemen weren't worth their eyes. Or their other parts, for that matter.
For the moment, her five quid was still hers. No one paid her any mind, too seriously in their cups or their cards to note a greenhorn looking for sport. She had spied St. Logan at a faro table upon entering and now kept to the opposite side so he would not mark her. His fair head glowed like an angel's halo and she remembered how Lilly had so desperately wanted to dance the waltz with him during her first Season. Of course she hadn't the permission to waltz, but Veronica knew all too well that such paltry matters had never worried her rebellious sister. Surely they had waltzed...and more.
"Logan thinks to offer for me," Lilly had whispered to her, huddled in her room just a few weeks ago. "He thinks himself my only suitor. How silly!" Lillian had always been flighty, like some wild bird unable to stay too long on land. "Silly" to her was, doubtless, a matter of honor and importance to a brash young man like St. Logan. Perhaps he had not taken kindly to being so succinctly and casually set down by a woman?
It was at this moment that Lamb found her, prowling through the River Styx himself in search of Lady Lillian's last lover. He knew her instantly, of course. Despite the breeches and coat. There was no disguising her trim figure, her fair face. Not when it haunted his every dream and every nightmare. He made his way to her side in such haste that he nearly went sprawling over his own feet. He steadied himself on Sir Thomas' shoulder, muttering a faint apology and a hint that the fellow across the table held an ace. But all he saw, all he knew, was Veronica Di Marzo. Here in this pit of pestilence.
"Are your mourning weeds still at the seamstress?" he inquired when he was close enough, only barely stifling the urge to grab her arm and promptly haul her very female personage out into the street.
She jumped, perfect hands rising up in a pantomime of a boxer's stance. Where had she learned it? Her useless would-be brother Duncan was known for being an utter cock-up in a fight. But then she recognized him, and knew she'd been marked, and her hands fell, limply to her sides. "C-constable…"
"Shut it, Your Lordship," he hissed, grasping her elbow and steering her towards the narrow corridor that led up to a small slot of rooms for those who lost their heads in ale or needed to squire an accommodating whore up for a toss. "Or do you fancy getting us both thrown out on our arses?"
"I want to know who killed Lilly," she murmured, fiercely, yanking her arm from his grip.
"We'll find 'im. It's our lot. You ought to be home crying and wailing and doing what proper ladies do when someone dies."
"Crying won't bring her back!" Veronica's eyes were wet, like the moon as it dipped into the sea. "Crying doesn't bring anybody back. I...I learned that a long time ago."
"Well, getting yourself killed won't do it either, Lass," he cried, unable to do anything but shake her. "Have you gone completely daft? Do you know what goes on in hells like this? Do you know what they do to lovely young things like you? They won't leave enough of you to float in the fountain."
She cried out softly, as if he'd hurt her somehow, and he knew he should let her go, but he could not. Not now. Not when she was suddenly crumbling against him, hiding her face against his neck as her whole body trembled with whatever agony she had forged into a set of damnable brass balls.
He held her through the storm of her tears, hearing the quiet sounds clearly over the din of drunks and gamblers and thieves. It passed quickly, as most storms did, and then she was simply there…in his arms. Staring up at him as though she was seeing him for the first time. "Oh," she gasped…and he realized that, yes, she was seeing him for the first time. Truly looking at him. Seeing not the Bow Street Runner, the common constable, but the man. Her hand came up, this time not to box but to caress…to learn his face.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "Who the devil are you?"
"They're going to take me for a bloody sod," he groaned against her cheek. "Do you know what that is, Veronica? Do you even know what that means?"
She rendered him undone with but two simple words. "Sh-show me."
And so he did. Onlookers be damned. He pressed her deeper into the shadowy alcove and took her mouth.
At seventeen, Veronica had been kissed before. Of course. By sweaty-palmed boys on the balcony of a ball as a jig played inside. But this…this was no jig. And it was her palms that were suddenly damp. The constable's lips were firm and sure, slanting against hers with a reckless abandon she had never known before. He squeezed her buttocks through her borrowed breeches and she would think it scandalous had it not felt so sinfully good. A wanton moan escaped her throat and he answered it… by pushing her away.
"Enough!" he gasped. "Or would you see us sent to Newgate for sodomy?"
Veronica's cheeks heated. She had forgotten…for a moment, she had forgotten her costume, this place, everything. Even…Lilly. "Oh God. I never…I didn't think…"
As if he could already sense her withdrawal, her regrets, Lamb gently righted her hat… and then guided her back through the hell. "Come," he told her, that arrogant laugh she associated with him returning. "Come, Your Lordship, I'll see you safely home and over your garden wall."
When they hurried past the Viscount St. Logan, Veronica could only marvel that his halo no longer shined quite so bright.
And then they were safely ensconced in a hackney and headed in haste towards the world she knew. Only it really wasn't safe, was it? Because there was just the small space in the tiny carriage between her and Lamb. A space entirely too easy to cross. "Show me," she'd moaned like some kind of Cyprian, like a shameless hussy. And, oh, but she still desired him. She still wanted to be shown, to be taught. "Dio," she swore, softly, her mother tongue slipping, just like Lamb's had, into her mouth.
"Do you miss it?" he asked, and she was so unsettled that it took her a moment to comprehend he meant home and not his kisses.
She shrugged, wrenching her gaze away from his searching blue eyes. "I scarcely remember Florence," she admitted, quietly. "My father…my real father…took us away before the war and we stayed mostly in Madrid. But then I came here. I imagine I feel more Gypsy than anything."
"They'll not let you darken the door of Almack's if you go 'round confiding that," Lamb noted, amusement turning his lips up.
"Why do they let you darken the door, Constable?" The question was impertinent, but she could not help herself.
But her worries were for naught. His answer proved to be twice as impertinent. "Because their ladies want to bed me and their lords want to see why," he drawled.
She blushed scarlet, trying to will her gaze away from his breeches, from the undeniable evidence of his manhood. 'Twas that…that what the duchess had wanted between her thighs? Even as she considered it, a strange heat pooled low in her belly. Veronica knew only the barest hints of what went on in a marriage bed. Lilly had enjoyed keeping her innocent, not embellishing on the frightening mechanics their governess had dictated to them when they turned 13. But if she had derived such base pleasures from his lips alone, then surely bedding Lamb was the most wickedly decadent experience on earth?
"You want it, too, don't you, milady Di Marzo?" His eyes were heavy with knowing, with promise. "You ache for it. For the adventure, for the filth, for the roll in the gutter with the likes 'o me."
The bitterness in his tone belied the sweetness of his gaze upon her. Veronica flinched, not wanting to think on just how many ladies had approached him for their back alley affairs and assignations before going back to their husbands and betrotheds and the glittering world of the ton.
The hackney lurched, hitting a dip in the cobblestones, and launched her from her seat. He caught her against his lap, his fingers fairly burning into her shoulders. Oh, yes. Oh, God, yes she ached for him. "It wouldn't be filth, Constable," she gasped, lifting her mouth to his. "It wouldn't be filth at all."
As before, the passion was instant. Their lips met and mated fiercely, obliterating any rational thought, any decorum, any propriety. Were she wearing a female's garments, there would be layers of skirts and petticoats between them. In men's garb, she could feel every inch of him as he drew her more firmly into his arms and her legs locked 'round his hips. His maleness rubbed against the secret place that she had never realized wanted and waited for this.
He knocked off her hat, hands digging into her hair and freeing it from the pins and ribbons that had held it at bay. "Veronica," he called her as he nuzzled her cheek, her jaw, and her throat. Her name was a breathless sigh that was anything but the polite, polished tones he used with his betters. Here…here he was rough and guttural and they were equal.
This, this was Lilly's secret.
This was what had killed her.
This need. This abandon. This all-consuming lust.
And she had only been dead a handful of days.
Veronica tore herself from Lamb's embrace, retreating back to the opposite seat of the hack, frantically trying to right her state of dishabille and return all her pins and ribbons to their proper places. "This...this is not right," she gasped, pressing her fingers to her mouth, still tasting the heat of him. Still craving it. "What are we doing? Wh-what are you doing to me?"
A mask dropped over his features. What was once passionate, naked with desire, turned impassive and unyielding. "You turned quickly, my lady Di Marzo," he hissed, fixing his gaze out the window as they neared Kane Manor. "Most wellborn sluts don't cry 'rape' until after the deed is done."
It was as if he had struck her. As if he had taken her head in his hands and pounded it against the edge of the fountain. Veronica was learning a slew of lessons tonight. First life and now...now death. For he had killed her with a simple accusation. "You misunderstand me, Constable," she began, trying to choke the explanation past the sudden knot in her throat.
"What is there to misunderstand?" He waved his hand dismissively. "You've had your dalliance, your taste of adventure. Leave me to my investigation and I'll leave you to your mourning dresses."
She leaned forward, caught his wrist. It was thick and strong beneath her fingers. "Tis the thing, Sir...it's exactly that thing. I am in mourning. My sister is dead. It's not right that I should find such passion now."
He finally turned to look at her again. His eyes were hooded with suspicion, derision and something that made her breath catch. "Passion? Is that what you've found tonight?"
"Aye. And I meant to find a murderer."
He gently loosened her fingers from his grip and then raised his hand to touch her cheek. "Then, Lass…you're a sight smarter than me."
**
Two weeks later, when St. Logan's father, the Earl of Echolls, was taken from the Bow Street magistrate's offices to the dark and dank depths of Newgate, Lilly's ghost was put to rest. And Veronica's spirit reawakened.
She stared down from her window to the courtyard, where a man in a navy coat and red waistcoat stood talking to Lord Jack with one hand on his shoulder.
The water in the fountain was clear, pure, and she could see her future in it.
**
They were married by special license three months after Lady Lillian Kane was laid to rest in the family plot. Tongues of the ton wagged, but the bride wore dove gray and kissed her husband sweetly and demurely despite any whispers of her hot Italian blood and his baser impulses.
"Three months was a'plenty, darling wife," he told her, as their honeymoon carriage rattled on the road to Dublin. "Else I would have taken you straight to Gretna Green."
"And well and truly made me your wellborn slut?"
"You'll not let me forget that, will you?"
"Never," she smiled, without rancor or judgment.
Then she flowed into his arms for the kiss that had claimed her so completely one night in a dark hell. This time…this time it took her to heaven.
"I can't wait," she gasped, opening her mouth for his seeking tongue. "I cannot wait any longer."
"You won't have to, milady," he promised. "Never again."
He took the folds of her wedding gown, tugging the heavy skirts upwards as she straddled his lap. The seats of the traveling coach were blessedly wide, made for the newly wed, and she pushed him back against them eagerly. He tugged down her bodice and freed her beautiful breasts. No longer a simple fantasy, she belonged to him, body and soul, and he lavished the hard peaks of her nipples with damp kisses. She cried out, overcome by the pleasure of it, and fumbled with his trouser buttons, which were fairly straining against his burgeoning rod.
"I love you," Veronica whispered, melting against him.
"And I you."
As he tenderly brought her down atop his throbbing manhood and pushed through the barrier of her virginity, the secrets of her femininity opened to them both like the petals of a flower. Like a lily in bloom.
--end--
December 18, 2006