The Masque of the Black Tulip

by Lauren Willig

‘Maybe later,’ broke in Henrietta, as her brother’s colour went from puce to purple, trying to soften her words with an encouraging smile. Ned beamed back at her. ‘I don’t think this is quite the time.’

  ‘May I impress upon everyone that this is a war, not a parlour game?’ Richard enquired tightly.

  ‘You can try, but whether you’ll succeed is another matter, old chap,’ muttered Miles, eyeing Ned without favour.

  Richard ignored him, clearing his throat with enough force to create a minor gale in Gloucestershire.

  ‘Since we’re all here, we might as well get this over with. An operative—’

  ‘We don’t know—’ began Miles.

  ‘An intruder believed to be an operative,’ Richard corrected himself, with a pointed look at Miles, ‘was sighted on the grounds last night. In disguise,’ he added, before Miles could interrupt again.

  ‘What great luck!’ exclaimed Ned Tholmondelay.

  ‘Great luck?’ echoed Miss Grey frigidly.

  ‘Who would have thought!’ continued Ned eagerly. ‘Our very own spy! And we didn’t even have to go over to France for him. I say, Selwick, this is smashing.’

  His twin nodded thoughtfully. ‘Deuced convenient, that’s what it is. Like a fox running to the dog!’ He paused, much taken by the beauty of his own metaphor.

  ‘By Jove, Fred!’ breathed Ned. ‘You’ve got it! We’ll get up a hunt and run the spy to ground!’

  ‘Blowing a horn, no doubt,’ said the much put-upon Purple Gentian acidly, ‘with dogs in full cry.’

  Ned beamed, delighted at being so well understood. ‘That’s the ticket!’

  ‘We,’ snapped Richard, ‘will do nothing of the kind.’

  ‘The object is not to scare off the spy,’ Henrietta explained helpfully.

  ‘Thank you, Hen,’ bit off Richard. ‘I am sure we are all excessively edified by that statement.’

  ‘He really is cranky tonight, isn’t he?’ hissed Richard’s sister to Richard’s wife.

  ‘Poor dear, he just wants to be off chasing spies,’ Amy whispered back.

  ‘Would you two be quiet for a moment?’ snapped Richard.

  The two women exchanged looks of mutual sympathy and understanding.

  Ned, momentarily taken aback, was rapidly recovering. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I understand. This is another test, ain’t it? And we’ll all go off on our own and see who can get the spy back first. We’ll use that…that sneaking-up-on-people trick you taught us earlier today.’ He turned to his twin. ‘Bet you ten guineas I get to the spy first!’

  ‘This is not a test. This is not a game. This is a damned nuisance.’ Richard took a deep breath, battling for patience.

  ‘Look,’ broke in Miles, coming to the aid of his beleaguered best friend. ‘If the spy finds out about the school, that’s it for all of us. Old Boney will have our names in the next dispatch.’

  Fred thought deeply. ‘But if we catch the spy,’ he said in the portentous tones of one explicating a complicated theorem, ‘he won’t be able to send our names.’

  ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Ned admiringly.

  ‘Urgh,’ said Richard.

  Amy came to his rescue, sliding her arm through her husband’s.

  ‘I know the loss of tonight’s entertainment is a grave disappointment, but we must think of it as merely one more slight to be avenged against that murderous regime,’ she declaimed earnestly.

  Much moved by her words, Ned Tholmondelay burst into a heartfelt round of ‘Rule Britannia’. Miss Grey cut him off just after Britain ruled the waves, but before Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

  ‘I would not,’ she said, in her musty voice, ‘contrive to put myself forward, but it appears to me that enquiries might be made which might minimise the threat posed by this person of inimical tendencies.’

  ‘Hunh?’ said Ned Tholmondelay.

  ‘I believe she means did he ask anyone about that spy chappy,’ explained his more perspicacious brother.

  Ned nodded, impressed. Fred had always been the brain of the family.

  Henrietta stifled a chuckle, and looked automatically at Miles, whose lips were twitching with repressed amusement. Their eyes met in a glint of shared humour before Miles abruptly stiffened and looked away.

  Shaken, Henrietta redirected her attention to Miss Grey, who was inexorably listing places at which Richard might have made enquiries – local inns where a stranger might have been noted, neighbouring houses that might be hosting house parties, coaching inns for reports of travellers, and on and on and on. Listening to her litany was like fighting an avalanche of treacle; everyone’s eyes glazed. Henrietta could only imagine what lessons with her must have been like, and felt relieved for Miss Grey’s recently liberated charges.

  ‘I have made enquiries wherever enquiries could be made,’ snapped Richard, breaking off the relentless assault of words. ‘There have been no strangers at the nearest inns and no unfamiliar equipages sighted in the vicinity.’

  ‘That’s the problem with phantoms,’ commented Miles to no one in particular.

  ‘There is not,’ replied Richard repressively, ‘a Phantom Monk.’

  ‘That’s not what he said when I was five,’ whispered Henrietta to Amy.

  ‘Have you asked—’ began Mrs Cathcart.

  ‘Yes!’ ground out Richard.

  ‘I was going to ask,’ said Mrs Cathcart calmly, ‘whether you had asked for more tea to be brought to us. If we do have a French spy peering through the windowpanes, the tea tray will lend a convincing air of normalcy.’

  Poised for argument, Richard just gaped at her. Amy squeezed her hand. ‘Mrs Cathcart, you are an angel.’

  ‘A rather earthbound one,’ chuckled Mrs Cathcart comfortably. ‘What are we to do to pass the time?’

  ‘I,’ put in Miles hopefully, ‘could go out and check on the sentries.’

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ said Richard darkly. ‘You’re staying right here with the rest of us.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Right here,’ repeated Richard repressively.

  ‘I have an idea,’ broke in Henrietta, trying not to refine too much on Miles’s eagerness to leave. ‘What about charades? That way we could give the appearance of a normal party’ – she stressed the word ‘normal’ for the benefit of her agitated brother – ‘while practicing our impersonations.’

  ‘Capital idea!’ exclaimed Fred Tholmondelay, looking at Henrietta with newfound respect.

  ‘And a French spy won’t find this the least bit suspicious?’ countered Miles, glowering at Fred.

  ‘Not unless he’s in the room with us to hear the characters called out,’ protested Henrietta. ‘Surely all he’d see through the window would be a roomful of people playing charades.’

  ‘What if…’ Ned drew a deep breath, gazing around the assemblage in stunned horror. ‘What if the spy is in This Very Room?’

  ‘Trust me,’ broke in Richard dryly. ‘I explored that eventuality.’

  The words cast a pall over the assemblage. Confusion warred with indignation on Ned’s freckled face.

  ‘And well you should,’ put in Mrs Cathcart peaceably. ‘You really can’t be too careful in such matters, can you, my dear?’

  ‘We have to appear normal,’ stressed Richard. ‘Normal. That means no practicing French dialect, no impromptu attempts at wall-climbing, and absolutely no midnight hunts.’ Richard looked very sharply at Fred Tholmondelay as he said that, failing to realise he was wasting his admonitory looks on the wrong brother.

  ‘One of you young ladies must be musical,’ put in Mrs Cathcart with a comfortable smile. ‘I am sure we could all do with a song to soothe our agitated spirits.’

  ‘Perfect!’ exclaimed Amy. ‘Henrietta can sing. What could be more’ – she smiled at her husband, who was glancing anxiously out the window at the dark grounds – ‘normal?’

  ‘I’m not really in voice,’ Henrietta hedged.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ chided Amy, who wasn’t in
the least bit musical. ‘Your voice sounds just fine to me.’

  With her usual energy, Amy chivvied everyone from the Rose Room to the music room, herding Miles back to the group when he showed a tendency to veer off towards the gardens.

  ‘But I was just going to—’

  ‘No,’ said Richard.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ muttered Miles with no very good grace.

  Henrietta sang an experimental scale, her voice skipping lightly over the notes.

  Miles turned to Richard, who was gazing moodily out the window. ‘Are you sure—’ he began.

  ‘Sit!’ snapped Richard.

  ‘Friend, dog, two different concepts,’ muttered Miles.

  But he sat. He chose, noticed Henrietta, the chair farthest away from the pianoforte. Henrietta’s eyes narrowed as she shuffled through a pile of sheet music. For goodness’ sake, it wasn’t as though she had contracted leprosy since last night! Was he afraid she would fling herself at him in a fit of lovelorn excess?

  Of course, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time in as many minutes, she was the one who had sent him away. But she hadn’t meant this. Blast it all, he could at least be civil. Was that too much to ask?

  Miss Grey cleared her throat with ominous import.

  Flushing, Henrietta grabbed a roll of music half at random and thrust it at Miss Grey. ‘It’s Caro Mio Ben,’ she informed her.

  ‘I am familiar with the piece,’ replied Miss Grey emotionlessly, propping the paper against its bracket, and adjusting a pair of pince-nez on the tip of her nose.

  ‘Right,’ said Henrietta, taking her pose by the piano. ‘Let’s get started, then, shall we?’

  It was not the most receptive of audiences. Richard was gazing moodily out the window, as though expecting a spy to run by, wiggling his ears and thumbing his nose at him, at any moment. Amy had her ‘I’m pretending to listen, but really I’m thinking of ways to thwart the French’ face on. Mrs Cathcart, of course, was looking warm and supportive, because that was the sort of thing Mrs Cathcart did; Henrietta knew it was no reflection of her own abilities. The Tholmondelay twins were gazing at her from twin settees with the expectant look of puppies who know they are behaving very, very well at the moment, but might bounce up and start chasing their tails at the least provocation. And then there was Miles. Henrietta tried not to look at Miles.

  Miss Grey primly asked if she was ready. Nodding in assent, Henrietta closed her eyes, schooled her breathing as Signor Antonio had taught her, and let the opening bars of the music drift through her. Despite her protests about not being in voice, when she opened her mouth, her E flat was crisp and sure, rolling easily into D, C, and B flat. The aria was one of the first she had learnt, and the familiar notes and phrases unrolled easily through her throat.

  But the words…why had she never noticed the words before? ‘Thou all my bliss,’ she sang, ‘believe but this: When thou art far, my heart is lorn.’ She had sung that same phrase a dozen, a hundred times, focusing all her attention on notes and diction, timing and dynamics, blithely oblivious to the plaintive recital of heartache. She had sung them, but never understood them.

  Lorn. That was one way to describe the ache of Miles’s absence, the utter dejection that had seized her every time they had passed each other in awkward silence. Would it be easier if he were far in more than spirit, if she packed her bags and fled back to London tomorrow? But that wouldn’t be any use. London was haunted by a thousand memories of Miles. Miles in the park, teaching her to drive. Miles at Almack’s, propping up pillars. Miles sprawled out on the sofa in the morning room, scattering biscuit crumbs all over the carpet. Even her bedroom provided no sanctuary, with Bunny propped reproachfully on her pillows like Banquo’s ghost.

  Determinedly turning her attention back to the music, Henrietta built up slowly through ‘thy lover true ever doth sigh.’ She didn’t much feel like sighing. She would far rather throw things. Preferably at Miles. She released her ire into the music, singing out the first reprise of ‘do but forgo such cruel scorn’ rather more forcefully than the score required. The music dwelt on scorn, lingering over the word, trilling it, offering it up again and again, flinging it back at Henrietta.

  Despite herself, Henrietta’s eyes flew past the sprawled forms of the Tholmondelays, over Mrs Cathcart’s lace cap, to Miles’s chair at the back of the room.

  He wasn’t indifferent anymore.

  Henrietta’s heart rose in her throat, lending force to her voice as her eyes locked with Miles’s. He sat bolt upright, no longer sprawled at leisure, his hands locked in a stranglehold on the arms of the chair, pressing the gilded wood so tightly that it was a wonder it didn’t splinter in his hands. She read shock and consternation in his face…and something more.

  Henrietta’s third reprise of ‘cruel scorn’ had a depth of feeling that made Mrs Cathcart blink rapidly, and even Richard, gazing with furrowed brow out the window, paused in his search for Frenchmen to absently reflect that his sister’s new voice teacher clearly knew what he was about.

  The music gentled, sliding like a caress back into ‘thou all my bliss, believe but this.’ Henrietta couldn’t take her eyes away from Miles. No one else mattered. No one else was there. She sang only for him, the liquid Italian phrases a plea, a promise, a present.

  The thunder of clapping that followed snapped the invisible thread that bound them together. Blinking a few times, Henrietta glanced around the room. Both the Tholmondelays were on their feet, and even Richard had glanced away from the window to gaze at her with the sort of startled admiration bestowed by elder siblings when whacked in the face with a show of extreme excellence.

  ‘Good God, Hen,’ he said sincerely. ‘I had no idea you could sing like that.’

  ‘Capital performance!’ applauded Fred Tholmondelay.

  ‘Smashing!’ seconded Ned. ‘Never knew that Italian whatnot could be quite so, er—’

  ‘Smashing!’ supplied his brother for him. Ned beamed in thanks.

  Henrietta barely noticed her triumph. Miles was gone. His seat in the back of the room was empty. It sat slightly at an angle on the parquet floor, as though pushed back in haste. Behind it, the thin, gilded doors stood ajar, still quivering with the force of recent passage.

  ‘Would you sing us another air, my dear?’ asked Mrs Cathcart with an encouraging smile. ‘It is so seldom that one is treated to a performance of such virtuosity.’

  ‘I had no idea you could sing like that,’ repeated Richard bemusedly.

  Amy, who was, if not quite tone-deaf, then less than musically inclined, contented herself with beaming in wholehearted delight at her sister-in-law’s success.

  Indeed, the only one who wasn’t beaming wholeheartedly (aside from Miss Grey, for whom beaming would have been an entirely alien action, unsettling facial muscles too long in disuse) was Henrietta. Ordinarily, Henrietta would have basked in their compliments for days, clasping them to her like a bouquet of red roses.

  Right now, Henrietta had something else on her mind.

  That had not been indifference. She might not be as wise in the ways of the world as Penelope – or at least as wise as Penelope believed Penelope to be – but she knew enough to recognise misery when she saw it. After the past week, she should know.

  That did not mean, Henrietta cautioned herself, that Miles necessarily felt anything of a tender nature for her. He might merely regret their rift for the sake of her friendship. Henrietta took a deep breath. And if that was what he wanted, well, friendship was better than nothing; the past day had proved that, if nothing else.

  But there had been that something in his eyes…

  ‘Another song?’ prompted Amy, delighted at the success of her plan for distracting the restless agents-in-training.

  Henrietta shook her head, coming to a rapid decision. What was it that Hamlet had said? Something about action sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, which Henrietta took to mean that if she was going to sort things out with Miles, she
ought to do it right away, before she managed to think herself out of it.

  ‘No,’ she said to Amy. ‘No. I need… I’ll just…’

  Amy, thinking Henrietta was referring to a need of another kind entirely, nodded understandingly, and turned quickly to Miss Grey, imploring her to play something else.

  The Tholmondelay twins shifted restlessly, exchanging martyred glances. Listening to the lovely Lady Henrietta sing was one thing, being subjected to the tuneless strummings of Miss Grey quite another.

  ‘I say, Selwick, what about a more lively form of entertainment?’ called out Fred.

  Through the window, Henrietta could see a familiar pair of shoulders striding down the garden path, disappearing deep into the carefully contrived wilderness. She knew that walk, she knew that trick of flinging back the head, she knew every least gesture as well as she knew the image in her own glass. Henrietta paused for a moment by the window, watching Miles’s dark coat blend with the hedges until there was nothing to be seen. But there was no need to squint into the dark shrubbery; she knew exactly where he was going. Whenever Miles was in disgrace (quite frequently, given his adventurous habits) or needed a place to think deeply (rather less frequently), he always went straight to the same place, the Roman ruin tucked away at the westernmost corner of the gardens. He liked to pitch rocks at the bust of Marcus Aurelius – especially when his classical studies were going poorly. Henrietta bit her lip on a smile at the memory.

  How could she have contemplated remaining at odds with Miles? It just couldn’t be done.

  Unnoticed, Henrietta eased quietly out of the room. She just needed to talk to Miles, and put everything back to rights. When she found him…

  ‘Charades, anyone?’ demanded Fred Tholmondelay.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Indiscretion: a fatal miscalculation in judgment by an agent of the War Office; the inevitable prologue to discovery, disgrace, and death

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  Who ever knew that Hen could sing like that?

  A pebble ricocheted off Marcus Aurelius’s head, landing with a gurgle in the water below. An affronted goldfish swished his tail reproachfully at Miles and swam off beneath a fallen bit of statuary. The Roman emperor stared superciliously at Miles down his long nose, taunting him to try again.