The Lure of the Moonflower

by Lauren Willig

  He paused at the sound of a footfall on the stone. Our backs were to the entrance, so I couldn’t see her, but I knew that cultured, hesitant voice. “Nigel? Who are you—”

  “What in the—” Colin whirled around as his sister hesitated on the threshold, a raspberry pashmina trailing over one shoulder, peering into the murky interior.

  “Insurance.” Dempster reached out and dragged Serena into the room, mashing her back against his chest, the gun against her temple.

  Part of me hoped that Serena would secretly go ninja and truss him with her pashmina. If Mrs. Selwick-Alderly was a spy, why not Serena?

  But she didn’t.

  Serena clawed at the arm holding her, trying desperately to catch her balance as her high heels scraped back against the cracked stone flags of the floor. “Nigel— What . . . ?”

  I could have cheerfully strangled Dempster then and there. The rat fink must have told Serena that he missed her, that he wanted to see her. There was nothing like a sibling’s wedding to make a single woman feel vulnerable. And what more romantic place than the ruins of an old abbey on a moonlit night?

  I stared at Dempster in disgust. “Oh, right. Go ahead. Pick on people who aren’t strong enough to fight back. She weighs, what, half of what you do?”

  Serena’s eyes were beginning to bulge a bit as Dempster’s arm clamped down over her neck. “I need those papers and I need them now.”

  And that was when my phone started ringing.

  Brring-brring! Brring-brring! The sound echoed against the jagged stone walls, metallic and insistent.

  I bit my lip. “Um, I’ll just ignore the call, shall I?”

  “Pick it up.” Dempster held Serena in one arm, pointing the gun at me with the other. “No tricks.”

  Slowly, carefully, I clicked the green button and held the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?” I really hoped it wasn’t my mother.

  It wasn’t. “Eloise!” I only vaguely recognized the Southern-inflected male voice. “It’s Jim. Jim Landry.”

  “Oh, hi, Jim.” I kept one careful eye on Nigel and the gun in his hand. From the corner of my eye I could see Colin starting to inch forward.

  “I know it’s a little late to be calling—”

  “It’s two in the morning.” Inch, inch, freeze, like a game of red light, green light, one, two, three.

  “It’s— Oh, crap. You’re in England, aren’t you? I forgot. Did I wake you up?” Before I could answer, he said, “It’s just that we have an offer! And I wanted you to know straightaway.”

  “An offer?” Serena squirmed weakly against Dempster’s hold. Which might have been a good thing if I hadn’t been worried that any sudden activity might jar his trigger finger.

  “For the book!” My agent’s voice crackled merrily across the transatlantic divide. “Aren’t you excited?”

  “Yes, very excited.” Or I would be excited, if I didn’t have a crazed archivist strangling my future sister-in-law.

  Jim was still talking. “—two-book deal, world English, we retain the foreign rights—”

  I appeared to have missed several important points, like the name of the publisher and the amount of money involved, all of which would be much more relevant if I lived to see the morning. How many bullets did a gun like that hold? I smiled weakly at Dempster as I said to Jim, “That’s great. Great.”

  “—a preempt,” Jim was saying. “I know we could have tried for an auction, but I think, under the circumstances—”

  My circumstances were looking increasingly grim. Serena gave a little gurgle as Dempster jerked the gun in my general direction, indicating that it was time to wrap it up.

  “Uh, Jim? Can I call you back tomorrow? Or maybe Monday? I’m supposed to be getting married tomorrow,” I added apologetically.

  “And I interrupted your beauty sleep!”

  If only. I did my best to curtail the avalanche of apologies and congratulations. “Yes, yes, I’ll absolutely show you pictures—no, we won’t be leaving for our honeymoon until Tuesday. We wanted time to clean up first. What? Oh, Istanbul. Okay, sure, we’ll look for that restaurant.” Dempster was going to shoot me any minute now. “Er, Jim, I really have to go.”

  I would have asked him to call the police for me, but a) he was in the wrong country, and b) I couldn’t think of any way to do it subtly, without Dempster noticing. Because, let’s face it, there was no way to explain that we were being held in the ruins of an old abbey by a crazed archivist without some pretty damning explanations.

  I clicked the end-call button, cunningly keeping the phone in my hand. If I could only remember the number of the British equivalent of 911, maybe I could dial it without Dempster seeing.

  “So,” I announced to my future husband, my almost-sister-in-law, and our assailant. “I’ve got a book deal!”

  “Wonderful news, my dear!” The voice came from one of the gaps in the wall. One navy blue court shoe stepped firmly through the aperture, followed by a leg in a slightly rumpled blue trouser, a matching white-braided blue jacket, and, at last, a sleek silver head. “I’m so very proud of you.”

  Dempster jerked around, his gun pointing wide. “You! How did you—”

  Taking advantage of his confusion, Colin yanked Serena by one arm, pulling her free of Dempster’s grasp, while I flung my Casper sheet over his head, smothering him in five yards of off-white cotton blend.

  Dempster flailed wildly, tripping over the edge of the sheet. The gun skidded across the floor. A hand shot out. I stomped on it, wishing I were wearing stilettos instead of sneakers.

  I needn’t have worried. While I was looking about for a weapon, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, without missing a beat, removed her shoe and conked Dempster neatly over the head.

  Dempster dropped like a stone.

  Mrs. Selwick-Alderly fitted her shoe back on her foot. “I’m so sorry, my dears,” she said. “I’d meant to be here sooner, but I’m not as fit as I used to be.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “You’re not Jane,” said the brunette standing on the deck of the Bien-Aimée. She cocked her head, looking Jack up and down with hazel eyes that tilted up at the corners. “And you’re certainly not the Queen of Portugal.”

  “Is Lord Richard Selwick on board?”

  The Bien-Aimée had been a surprise, and so far not a pleasant one. It was a rich man’s pleasure yacht, and the woman on the deck seemed ordered to match in her fashionable traveling dress. Jack had bad feelings about this. Very bad feelings. Hell, he had bad feelings about all of this. He had bad feelings about climbing aboard a strange boat. He had even worse feelings about leaving Jane behind, in Peniche, at the dubious mercy of a man not known for mercy.

  “I need to speak to him.”

  The brunette sighed. “Always Richard.”

  “What about Richard?” A man bounded up on deck, a floppy lock of blond hair descending over one eye.

  “I’ve been instructed to give a message to Lord Richard Selwick,” said Jack, eyeing the other man dubiously. He looked like an overgrown golden retriever, not like the former leader of a sizable spy ring.

  On the other hand, he also didn’t look like a minion of the Gardener, so there was that. The man in front of Jack had that pink-cheeked, beef-fed look that no impostor could hope to ape. And that was a biscuit in one hand, not a gun. Jack smelled . . . ginger?

  “I saw him a moment ago.” The blond man peered up into the rigging as though expecting the mysterious Lord Richard to drop like manna from heaven. “I can’t think where he’s got to.” Belatedly recalling his manners, he held out a hand to Jack, saying affably, “Hullo. I’m Miles Dorrington. This is my wife, Lady Henrietta. And you are . . . ?”

  “Trying to find Lord Richard,” said Jack tersely.

  He devoutly hoped he was on the right ship. He appeared to have stumbled onto a plea
sure cruise for aristocratic lunatics.

  He should have known something was wrong when he was piped on board by a man dressed like the popular misconception of a seventeenth-century buccaneer, complete with frogged frock coat, a parrot on his shoulder, and an entirely gratuitous use of “arrrr” and “avast.”

  If this was Jane’s rescue party, he’d have been better off storming the fortress with the damn donkey.

  Jack tried again. “Is Lord Richard here?”

  “Anything you can tell Richard, you can tell us,” said Lady Henrietta with a confidence that Jack was far from feeling.

  “Tell me what?” said another man, emerging on deck.

  “I don’t know.” Crumbs scattered as Miles waved his biscuit. “He won’t tell us.”

  The newcomer stepped forward, assuming command with an air of easy assurance. And thank goodness for that, thought Jack irritably. Here at last was someone with whom he could speak reasonably. “I am Lord Richard. And you are . . . ?”

  “The Carnation sent me,” said Jack. Old habits died hard. No names. Only necessary information. Especially when time was wasting. “She’s gone into the fortress of Peniche to retrieve the Queen.”

  “Er . . .” Miles Dorrington spoke indistinctly around his biscuit. “Isn’t Peniche in the hands of the frogs?”

  “Yes,” said Jack tersely. That was rather the point.

  And so, at the moment, was Jane.

  “Jane’s been captured?” Lady Henrietta surged forward like the statue on the prow of a ship.

  “She’s gone in,” Jack corrected shortly. “Voluntarily.”

  “And you let her?” Lady Henrietta’s eyes were as wide as they could go.

  A dry cackle came from the hatch that led to the nether regions of the yacht. “Have you ever seen anyone ‘let’ Jane do anything?”

  A parasol emerged first, a purple parasol, the point hitting the deck with a force that made Miles jump. The newcomer strode forward, blindingly purple skirts swishing around her legs. Jack had never seen that much purple all in one place before. It was like being assaulted by an aubergine.

  “If Jane is there, it’s because she chose to be there,” said the newcomer definitively. Jack wasn’t sure whether to appreciate or resent her support. “Jane does or she doesn’t. I would as soon try to yoke an aardvark.”

  Lady Henrietta cocked her head. “Does one yoke aardvarks?”

  “No,” said Jack shortly, putting an abrupt end to what might otherwise have become a fascinating and largely pointless discourse on natural history.

  The woman in purple subjected Jack to a critical inspection. “You must be Jack. Jane succeeded in part of her mission, at least.” And then: “You don’t look at all as I expected.”

  “Fewer horns?” said Jack tersely. “If we could return to the matter at hand, Jane is currently attempting to extract the whereabouts of the missing Queen of Portugal from the Gardener.”

  That, at least, had some effect. Miles Dorrington stopped crunching his biscuit. Lord Richard Selwick looked grave.

  The woman in purple’s nostrils flared. “He is here?”

  “I hate that man,” muttered Lady Henrietta.

  “That,” said the woman in regal purple, “is hardly an original sentiment.” Turning to Jack, she said, “You allowed Jane to fall into that man’s clutches?”

  “What happened to ‘no one lets Jane do anything Jane doesn’t want to do’?” said Jack testily.

  If there was anything less appealing than defending an unpopular plan, it was defending someone else’s unpopular plan, especially since he was beginning to have serious second thoughts about it.

  Now—now that he was away from Jane—he could think of a dozen objections, a dozen other ploys they might have tried, none of which involved Jane seducing her way into the confidence of Jack’s mortal enemy. This, Jack thought grimly, was how the snake must feel once the fakir stopped playing his tune, when it awoke to find itself suspended on a bit of rope, with no idea how it had gotten up there, and a dim sense that this was a very bad idea indeed.

  Jack glared impartially at each of the others in turn. “Don’t you think I’d have gone in myself if I had the choice? I dislike it as much as you do. But there’s nothing to be gained by standing about beating our breasts. There are plans to be made.” He looked hard at the woman in purple, daring her to challenge him. “If you value Jane’s life.”

  There was silence and then the woman in purple thumped her parasol against the deck. “Well, well,” she said, in a way that made Jack feel like a schoolboy caught out in an infraction. “Well, well.”

  “No,” said Jack, “it’s not well. It’s bloody awful. But it was the best we could do under the circumstances.”

  “What do you need from us?” said Lord Richard.

  Jack decided embracing the man on first acquaintance might be a bit much, so he confined himself to a quick nod of gratitude.

  “Jane has until sunset to bring the Queen to São João Batista fort. If she hasn’t arrived by then, we’re to go after her. Subtly,” said Jack, with a hard look at Miles Dorrington, who had bounced up on the balls of his feet.

  Dorrington subsided.

  “Why so long?” asked Lady Henrietta.

  “Because,” said Jack tightly, “Jane needs time to gain the Gardener’s confidence, drug him, and forge orders in his name.”

  Put that way, it sounded mad. No, it was mad.

  Lady Henrietta exchanged a look with her husband.

  The woman in purple shrugged. “Dull, but serviceable. I could have come up with something far more interesting.”

  Jack was beginning to feel more than a bit beleaguered. “We have reason to believe that the Queen is being held in the fortress of Peniche. Jane felt strongly that the most expedient way to get her out was to—”

  “Seduce the Gardener?” offered Miles Dorrington, taking a healthy bite of his biscuit.

  “Enter the fortress,” said Jack, fixing him with a basilisk stare. Stubbornly refusing to turn to stone on the spot, Dorrington went on placidly munching his biscuit. “Jane was insistent that the Gardener would treat her with all courtesy.”

  Nicolas won’t hurt me.

  Jack only wished he felt as sure.

  “Hmph,” said the woman in purple. “That man is about as courteous as an asp.”

  “I know,” said Jack shortly. “But—”

  “Did I hear voices?” A newcomer wandered up out of the hatch, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. His eyes fell on Jack and he stopped short. “Jack? Jack!”

  The man’s face lit up like a hundred candles, until it was brighter than the sun glinting off the red and silver of his hair.

  Jack froze. “Father?”

  He had to be imagining things. But if he had imagined his father, he would have imagined him as he had seen him last, eleven years ago. This man wore those eleven years in the lines in his face and the silver streaks in his red hair. His athletic form had thickened with age, although he carried the extra flesh well. But mostly the restlessness that Jack remembered was gone. This man seemed settled. Happy.

  Jack didn’t know what to say or do. He wasn’t prepared for this—for whoever this was. Perhaps, he thought wildly, he had fallen asleep in the hot spring and was having one of those dreams where one went from waltzing with an aardvark to rewriting Dr. Johnson’s dictionary, all the while being late for some very important appointment that one would get to if only one were wearing breeches.

  “Father?” he repeated.

  “My boy,” said his father, his voice thick with emotion. The next thing Jack knew, he was being enfolded in a massive embrace that squeezed the breath out of his chest and made him see spots.

  For a moment Jack was four again, five, six, seven, running up to his father, being tossed up in his arms, l
ying in wait at the window so he could be there before Alex and Kat, so he could be first.

  Extricating himself from his father’s embrace, Jack stumbled back a step. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you meant to be—” Jack couldn’t for the life of him remember where his father was meant to be. “In England?”

  “I came to see you, of course.” His father clasped his shoulders, holding him at arm’s length, looking him up and down. “You’ve grown.”

  “It’s been eleven years,” said Jack numbly. “Of course I’ve grown.”

  What in the devil was his father doing on Lord Richard’s yacht? Vaguely, very vaguely, Jack remembered Jane telling him that his father had married her chaperone. Her former chaperone. But surely she would have mentioned a little detail like his father lying in wait for him on Lord Richard’s yacht, wouldn’t she?

  Jack frowned at his father. “Jane didn’t tell me you would be here.”

  “Jane didn’t know,” Jack’s father said hastily. He glanced at the woman in purple, who was smirking fondly at Jack’s father in a way that filled Jack with darkest foreboding. “We wanted to surprise you.”

  Jack looked from his father to the woman in purple. He thought he knew what was coming and he didn’t like it. “We?”

  His father slid his arm through that of the woman in purple. He cleared his throat. “Jack, may I present my wife, your new—”

  “Felicitations.” If his father thought he was going to call this woman mother, he had to be mad. But then, that was his father, wasn’t it? He always saw the world as he wished it to be. It was stupid, at Jack’s age, to feel disappointment. Jack nodded crisply to his new stepmother. “Congratulations, madam. Had I been informed, I would have sent a gift.”

  “That didn’t sound terribly celebratory,” whispered Lady Henrietta to her husband.

  “We didn’t know where to reach you,” said his father apologetically. The woman in purple—Jack’s stepmother—squeezed his father’s hand, a gesture that made Jack see red.

  “You certainly seem to have found me out now.” Which raised an interesting question. How in the hell had his father found him?