The Masque of the Black Tulip

by Lauren Willig

‘What?’ Henrietta demanded.

  ‘They,’ Miles said, cracking the whip with ruthless efficiency, just as a crack of another kind entirely sounded behind them, ‘have a gun.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Elopement: a desperate attempt at flight, usually pursued by one or more members of Bonaparte’s secret police. See also under Parent, vengeful

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  Another bullet whizzed past, this time driving a long furrow into the polished exterior of the vehicle.

  ‘My curricle!’ exclaimed Miles indignantly. ‘I just had it polished!’

  Doubled over at the waist, Henrietta rather thought that was the least of their problems, but she wasn’t going to argue about it. She didn’t have the breath to argue about it.

  ‘Right.’ Miles hunched low over the reins, his face a model of steely determination. ‘That’s it. I’m going to give that bounder the ride of his life.’

  ‘You mean you weren’t already?’ gasped Henrietta, clinging to her bonnet with one hand and the seat with the other.

  ‘That was just a little jog!’ Miles cracked the reins, a look of unholy glee transforming his face. ‘Come on, my beauties! You can do it!’

  As if seized of the same spirit, the four horses broke into a full-out gallop. Henrietta abandoned her bonnet to devote both hands to clutching the seat. The rebellious piece of haberdashery instantly blew back off her head with a force that betokened imminent strangulation.

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ Henrietta wasn’t sure whether Miles was talking to her or his horses, but she supposed the latter, especially when he jerked his head briefly in her direction and shouted, ‘You all right, Hen?’

  Henrietta mustered a slightly strangled noise of assent, just as the carriage hit a rut, sending the body of the curricle bounding merrily into the air, and landing with a thump that jarred through Henrietta’s entire body.

  Henrietta was distracted from her mere physical irritation by an ominous rattling noise. Beneath her, the right wheel of the two-wheeled vehicle was shaking in a way that boded no good to the continued stability of the whole. Henrietta’s gloved hands went rigid on the side of the curricle as she peered, open-mouthed with alarm, at the quivering wheel.

  If she were a villain intent on wreaking doom and destruction – and the pistol shots did rather seem to point in that direction – wasn’t tampering with the carriage too obvious a source of mayhem to neglect? They had been in the inn with Turnip for such a very long time. There had been so many carriages and people milling about in the courtyard of the inn that none of the harried grooms or ostlers would have paid the least bit of attention to someone paying undue attention to any one vehicle. And Miles’s curricle was so distinctive amongst all the plain black carriages and grimy hired post chaises. Henrietta’s knowledge of carriage construction was minimal in the extreme, but how hard could it be to loosen a wheel? It would be the work of a moment to kneel by the side of the carriage and slide back the pin. And at speeds like this…

  The carriage hit another rut, sending Henrietta jouncing into the air, and the wheel shaking in a way that foretold imminent disaster.

  ‘Miles!’ Henrietta clutched Miles’s arm. ‘The wheels!’

  ‘Hunh?’ Miles glanced rapidly over at her.

  ‘The rattling noise,’ Henrietta gasped. ‘Someone must have loosened the wheels!’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Miles beamed at her in a way entirely inappropriate for someone courting violent death. ‘That’s just the noise it makes when it’s going fast,’ he explained happily.

  They whizzed past the astonished toll keeper at Kennington Turnpike so fast that he had no time to do more than shake his fist at them as they barrelled through. ‘I say! Hen!’ shouted Miles over the din of the horses’ hooves. ‘Could you check if he’s still behind us?’

  Clinging to her place through pure force of will, Henrietta turned an incredulous stare at her husband. Her bonnet whacked her in the face, but Henrietta didn’t dare lift a hand to push it back. ‘If you think I’m letting go and turning around, you’re crazy!’

  ‘Don’t worry!’ yelled Miles. ‘I’ll lose him as soon as we cross Westminster Bridge!’

  ‘If we live that long!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind!’

  ‘Whaaaat?’

  ‘I said – oh, never mind,’ Henrietta muttered. That was the problem with snide comments; they invariably lost all their punch on repetition. Besides, when facing impending death, what did the odd witticism matter?

  Despite her words, Henrietta craned her head around to look behind. Their adversary must have wasted no more time at the toll than they; he was still behind and gaining, black horses covering the ground in long strides.

  Westminster Bridge had come into sight, a long arch across the span of the river, crowded with evening traffic. There were pedestrians walking along the balustrades in the twilight, farmers leading their wagons back from market, gentlemen on horseback riding out to nefarious pleasures in the suburbs of the city, and mules laden with yesterday’s baking.

  Miles and Henrietta barrelled into the whole like a cat among pigeons. Henrietta felt the jarring thud beneath them as the carriage sprang from springy turf onto hard stone. Horses shied, bolting for cover. Merchants hurriedly yanked their carts off to the sides of the bridge. Pedestrians flung themselves as far as they could go against the stone railings. Around them, the air was thick with complaints and curses, and behind them, the determined clip of horses ploughing straight towards them, thundering along the smooth length of the bridge after them. Henrietta closed her eyes and prayed.

  Never entirely steady on its foundations, the bridge swayed alarmingly. Henrietta opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t. Below them churned the dark waters of the Thames, dotted with rapidly moving boats like so many water bugs scurrying to and fro. If Miles lost control of the horses, even for a moment, the balustrades would do nothing to check their precipitate descent into the foaming currents.

  The horses were still running full out, straight down the centre of the bridge; whether Miles was driving them, or they were bolting, Henrietta wasn’t entirely sure. Head turned to the side, Henrietta counted arches as they whizzed by. They were past the halfway mark, still going strong straight down the middle of the bridge.

  A shout made her jerk her head back to the road. Someone screamed. Henrietta wasn’t quite sure, but she thought it might have been she.

  Smack in the centre of a bridge a cart full of cabbages blocked the way. Its owner, wide-eyed with terror, tugged at the mule’s head, futilely entreating him to move. The curricle barrelled inexorably closer. Three yards…two… The wild-eyed farmer dropped the reins and scrambled for cover. The mule didn’t budge.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ breathed Henrietta.

  Next to her, Miles drew in an exultant breath. ‘Just the thing! Hang on, Hen…’

  Henrietta had heard of driving to an inch, but she had never seen it performed quite so literally before. At the last possible moment, Miles swung the horses to the side in a concerted movement that would have been beautiful in its sheer coordination if Henrietta hadn’t been trying quite so hard not to fall out the side of the coach. Moving perfectly in tandem, the horses swept around the side of the cart, passing so neatly through the narrow space that Henrietta could hear the wood of the cart whisper along one side of the curricle and the stone of the balustrade on the other.

  Miles muttered something under his breath that sounded like, ‘My varnish,’ but Henrietta was too busy ushering up fervent thanks to the Almighty to be quite sure.

  And then they were clear again, with an unimpeded path to the edge of the bridge. Miles cracked his whip over his head with an uninhibited shout of triumph.

  ‘Watch this, Hen!’ he shouted, as the curricle careened off the bridge and veered sharply to the left – just as the carriage behind them, going too fast to stop, and without enough skill to employ Miles’s manoeuvre,
slammed right into the farmer’s deserted cart with an explosive crash. Cabbages flew everywhere. A hail of green balls descended upon the passers-by and plopped into the greedy mouth of the Thames.

  Henrietta caught the merest glimpse of their assailant’s carriage, piled high with produce, before Miles flicked the reins again and plunged into a shadowed side street just wide enough to admit the curricle. As it was, the scraped sides brushed against lines of laundry, and the overhangs of the upper stories formed a dark canopy above Henrietta’s head. Miles took them down an intricate web of back streets, while Henrietta concentrated on coaching air back into her lungs. As the landscape began to appear more familiar, the streets broader, the houses wider, Miles let the lathered horses slow to an exhausted shuffle.

  Henrietta forced her gloved hands to unclench from the sides of the seat, finger by finger.

  ‘Are we…safe, do you think?’ she asked, blinking unsteadily at their surroundings. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, wondering if it was the twilight that rendered Grosvenor Square so murky and insubstantial, or her vision. The grey-fronted mansions swayed as though they were phantoms composed of fog and might dissolve at any moment, while the trees in the centre of the square melded together into an indistinguishable blur of green and brown.

  ‘He won’t have followed us here,’ Miles said, drawing the horses to a stop in front of a wide-fronted mansion, a command the tired horses were only too glad to obey. Miles couldn’t stop a satisfied smirk from creeping across his face as he added, ‘It will take him a while to climb out from under all that cabbage.’

  ‘That was quite impressive,’ said Henrietta shakily. ‘Especially that bit with the cart.’

  Miles gave his whip a modest twirl. ‘There was plenty of room.’

  ‘And I hope never to be in a carriage with you when you drive like that ever again.’ Miles’s whip stopped mid-twirl. ‘I thought I was going to be ill. Or dead,’ she added as an afterthought.

  ‘Didn’t you trust my driving?’ Miles asked indignantly.

  ‘Oh, I trust you. It was the man with the gun who worried me. Somehow, I didn’t think he would be quite so solicitous of my well-being.’ Starting to shake, Henrietta raised both her hands to her lips. ‘Someone just shot at us. Do you realise that someone just shot at us?’

  Making a muffled noise of concern, Miles dragged Henrietta into his arms. Henrietta went without argument, burying her head in Miles’s cravat while a series of nightmare images flashed through her head, faster than the scenery they had charged through on their heedless flight. That dark, faceless carriage pounding after them. The long muzzle of a gun, glinting in the last rays of the sunlight. The sound of bullets, sending up puffs of dust in the road behind them, and chipping at the sides of the curricle. Henrietta’s unregenerate imagination presented her with the image of Miles jerking back as a bullet thudded into him, stiffening, and tumbling over the side of the curricle into the wayside dust, his brown eyes open in an unseeing stare. Henrietta realised she was shaking, and couldn’t make herself stop. If any one of those bullets had been just a little closer…

  Henrietta gazed at Miles with anguished eyes. ‘You could have died!’ She thought for a moment, and frowned. ‘I could have died.’

  ‘But we didn’t,’ Miles said soothingly. ‘See? We’re both alive. No bullet holes.’ He raised an arm to demonstrate, and saw that there was, in fact, a neat round hole in the folded canopy behind him. Miles hastily leant back against the offending awning, hoping Henrietta hadn’t noticed. That had been closer than he’d thought. Whoever it had been in the carriage behind them – and Miles had a damned good idea – was a devil of a shot.

  ‘Oh, goodness,’ whispered Henrietta, staring at a long furrow along the side of the curricle, right next to Miles’s arm.

  ‘Don’t.’ Miles squished her head into his chest. ‘Don’t think about it. Think about’ – he was seized by sudden inspiration – ‘cabbages!’

  That won him a startled giggle.

  ‘How many French spies do you think are brought down by vegetables?’ he continued, expanding on his theme. ‘We could make a career of it! Next time onions, then carrots, maybe a few lima beans…’

  ‘Don’t forget the turnips.’ Henrietta tipped her head up at him and drew a shaky breath. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Miles, smoothing a strand of hair off her face.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ Henrietta said resolutely, pulling away and sitting up straight. ‘Really, I am. I’m sorry to behave like such a…’

  ‘Girl?’ Miles grinned.

  ‘That,’ said Henrietta sternly, ‘was unnecessary.’

  For a moment, they smiled at each other in complete accord, wrapped in the comfortable familiarity of old patterns. It was unclear how long they might have sat like that had a groom not appeared, asking Miles if he wished his horses to be led away to the stables.

  Henrietta’s smile faded, and she looked up at the house and back at Miles with some confusion. The house was virtually indistinguishable from many of the others in the Square, a vast classical pile with a rusticated foundation, and wide pilasters supporting a triangular pediment. Flambeaux blazed on either side of the door, but the windows above stairs were all dark, the dark of a house long shut up. All the drapes were drawn, and the front door had an unused air. The only sign of habitation came from below stairs, where a faint light gleamed from the sunken windows.

  It wasn’t Uppington House, and it certainly was not Miles’s bachelor lodgings in Jermyn Street.

  Yet the groom knew Miles, had greeted him by name.

  Henrietta’s tired mind absolutely refused to grapple with this latest puzzle. She allowed herself to be helped down from the curricle, looking to Miles in bewilderment. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Loring House,’ announced Miles, tossing a coin to the groom, and offering Henrietta his arm.

  ‘Loring House?’ echoed Henrietta.

  ‘You know, the ancestral home? Well, not that ancestral. There used to be a house on the Strand, but we lost that one in the Civil War.’

  ‘But…’ Henrietta fumbled for words, fearing that being jounced around in the carriage had done permanent damage to her mental capacities, because she was having a great deal of trouble making sense of the situation. She stopped just before the front steps. ‘Aren’t we going to your lodgings?’

  ‘I thought about it’ – Miles stuck his hands in his pockets – ‘but I couldn’t take you there.’

  Henrietta’s heart sank.

  ‘You couldn’t?’ she said neutrally, wondering if it might not have been better just to have been shot back at Streatham Common and have done with it. At least then, Miles could have borne her broken body in his manly arms. Hmph. Henrietta abandoned the image. Knowing her, she would probably have contrived only to be wounded, and would have been cranky and in pain, and there would have been nothing the least bit romantic about it.

  Miles squared his shoulders, which, given the breadth of his shoulders, was an impressive sight to behold, and one to which Henrietta, even in her state of confusion, could not be completely immune.

  ‘They’re not bad as bachelor lodgings go, and Downey keeps things tip-top, but – you would be out of place. They’re not what you’re used to.’

  ‘But—’ began Henrietta, and then checked herself, biting down on the impulse to protest that wherever he was would be a home to her. If he was looking for excuses, reasons to be rid of her, it would be far more graceful just to accede and let him take her home. But why hadn’t he taken her to Uppington House?

  Some of the strain evident in Miles’s face eased as he grinned unwillingly at her. ‘Hear me out before you argue with me, all right?’

  Henrietta’s heart clenched at the affectionate tone, and she nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak.

  ‘I couldn’t take you to Jermyn Street, because Turnip would be right. It would be havey-cavey. It would smack of…’ Miles waved a hand helplessly in the
air.

  ‘Elopement?’ supplied Henrietta numbly.

  ‘Exactly. Hiding out in hired rooms…it would just be all wrong. You deserve a real home, not shoddy hired rooms.’

  ‘But why here?’ she asked. Was he planning to put her up in Loring House for the night before conveying her back to her family for the inevitable conflagration? She supposed she could always go to Europe for a bit until the resulting scandal died down… The nunnery was beginning to look very attractive again.

  ‘Well’ – Miles stuck his hands in his pockets and leant back against the railing in his favourite pose, looking painfully boyish – ‘I couldn’t very well take you back to Uppington House, and it might have taken a while to find a suitable townhouse to let. And my parents are never here to use this old pile, so…welcome home.’

  ‘Home?’

  Miles began to look a little worried. ‘The furnishings are probably a bit out-of-date, but the house itself isn’t that bad. It will need some cleaning up, but at least there’s plenty of room, and—’

  ‘You mean you don’t want an annulment?’ Henrietta blurted out.

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Miles, staring at her with evident confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Henrietta, feeling about two inches tall and wishing there were a convenient toadstool she could crawl under. ‘Never mind, then.’

  ‘Hen.’ Miles put a hand beneath her chin and tipped her face up towards his, looking earnestly down at her. Henrietta didn’t even want to think what she must look like, her face streaked with dust and grime from the road, her hair a snarled mess. ‘I have a proposition to put to you.’

  ‘Yes?’ she said hesitantly, wishing she didn’t look quite so much like Medusa after a particularly violent rampage.

  ‘A sort of favour,’ Miles continued. ‘Not just for me, but for both of us.’

  Henrietta waited in silence, nerves stretched to the breaking point. She wasn’t even going to venture to guess. Bad things happened when she did that. Like annulments and toadstools and cabbages.