The Masque of the Black Tulip

by Lauren Willig

  Beneath his message, in Henrietta’s graceful, looping letters, it said only, ‘Gone out, too. Should be back by noon. H.’ And beneath that, a postscript, in mirror to his own. ‘Splendid.’

  Miles had crushed the note in his hand, making promises to any minor deity he could think of, anyone, anything, just so long as he could get Henrietta back, unharmed.

  She hadn’t been at Uppington House. Penelope hadn’t seen her. Nor had Charlotte. Geoff couldn’t be found to be questioned, so Miles left a note, marked urgent. One last stop at Loring House, where Henrietta hadn’t reappeared – Stwyth didn’t know where she had gone – and her very absence screamed out a reproach, announced the worst. She must have been taken. And Miles knew bloody well where to go to get her back.

  Fuelled by anxiety and rage, cravat askew and jacket begrimed from having spent the day sprinting through the malodorous streets of London, Miles wasted no time in heading straight for the dragon’s lair, Lord Vaughn’s London residence. And if he didn’t have Henrietta…

  But he would. There was no point in admitting other possibilities. He would bloody well give her back, and then Miles would make equally bloody sure he would swing for it. Slowly and painfully, until his face turned as black as that thrice-damned tulip he employed as his insignia.

  ‘What have you done with her?’ Miles demanded, breath rasping in his throat, as the door creaked and swayed behind him.

  Attired in a dressing gown patterned with Oriental dragons, Lord Vaughn sat at his ease at one end of a round table made of satiny cherry wood, circumscribed with an inlay of pale woods in a geometrical pattern. At one elbow stood a fluted coffeepot, and he sipped from a cup of the same beverage as he flipped idly through the pages of the morning’s paper. He was the very image of a gentleman at leisure.

  Waving back the footman, who drew up stiffly to attention as if to ward off the intruder, Vaughn treated Miles’s precipitate entrance with as little attention as though such scenes were a commonplace of his breakfast routine. Or, thought Miles darkly, as though he had been expecting him.

  ‘With whom, my dear fellow?’ Vaughn asked idly, turning over another page of the paper.

  ‘Who?’ Miles demanded incredulously, clamping down on the urge to strangle the bounder with the sash of his own robe. Only the recollection that Vaughn could tell him more alive than asphyxiated held him back. ‘Who?’

  Summoning up coherent phrases was a matter of another order of effort entirely.

  Vaughn looked lazily up from his copy of The Morning Times. ‘As edifying as I find your owl impression, I believe a name might be more to the point.’

  ‘Right.’ Miles flexed his hands, grappling with his temper. ‘If that’s the way you want to play it.’

  ‘It might be helpful if you apprised me of the rules of the game I’m meant to be playing,’ remarked Vaughn mildly. ‘It would be vastly unsporting of you to do otherwise.’

  ‘No more unsporting than you sitting there, pretending you haven’t any idea of what I’m talking about,’ countered Miles heatedly.

  Vaughn raised an eyebrow.

  Miles planted both hands on the table, leant forward, and lowered his voice to a dangerous undertone.

  ‘What have you done with Lady Henrietta?’

  Vaughn presented an excellent facsimile of surprise. His jaded eyes lifted momentarily from his coffee cup in an expression of mild interest. ‘Lady Henrietta? Gone missing then, has she?’

  ‘She hasn’t gone missing. She’s been abducted, and you damn well know it. Where have your henchmen taken her, Vaughn?’

  ‘Henchmen,’ repeated Vaughn flatly. He placed his cup carelessly in its saucer, the very picture of amused urbanity. ‘As much as I admire and – dare I say? – esteem Lady Henrietta, I do draw the line at abduction. So common.’

  Vaughn signalled for a footman to pour him another cup of coffee.

  Miles fumed. He hadn’t expected Vaughn to crack instantly – after all, the man was a deadly spy, and they were adept at this sort of thing – but he had hoped for some sort of reaction, a shifty flicker of the eyes towards a hidden door, a mysterious motion to a footman. He could threaten to search the premises, but he doubted it would avail him anything. Vaughn was too sensible to have hidden Henrietta in his own house. He must have a hidey-hole somewhere, a cottage in the country, or a dodgy flat in one of the seedier parts of town, where he could question his victims at his leisure.

  Victims. Miles remembered Henrietta’s unfortunate contact and wished he hadn’t.

  He took some slight comfort from Vaughn’s presence at the breakfast table. The identity of the Pink Carnation was important enough that Vaughn would want to question her himself. Damn. Miles could have thumped himself over the head with the heavy silver tray on the sideboard if it wouldn’t have impeded his ability to rescue Henrietta. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? The thing to do was to lie in wait until Vaughn left the house and then follow him to his hidden lair. Damn, damn, damn. Why hadn’t he thought of that before he came haring over here?

  ‘Why am I meant to have abducted Lady Henrietta?’ Vaughn enquired with deceptive mildness. ‘Let me see.’ Vaughn drummed his fingers against the polished wood of the table in a practiced gesture that set Miles’s teeth on edge. ‘Overcome with passion, I spirited her away in my carriage to Gretna Green – no, that won’t do, will it, as I’m still here? Come, Mr Dorrington, this is the stuff of Covent Garden, not civilised people.’

  ‘I’ll duel you for her.’ Miles knew that the more valorous course would be to feign embarrassment, apologise, and back out, but worry spurred him on. Who knew how long it would be before Vaughn went to see Henrietta? Or what his minions might be doing to her now? He wanted this settled now.

  And he wanted to do bodily violence to Vaughn.

  The latter, Miles assured himself, was a purely secondary consideration, but if poking holes in Vaughn could make him reveal Henrietta’s whereabouts, Miles wouldn’t sneer at the opportunity.

  ‘A duel?’ Vaughn sounded more amused than otherwise. ‘I haven’t been challenged to one of those in years.’

  If looks could wound, Vaughn would already have been spread out on the turf of Hounslow Heath. ‘Consider this your opportunity to make up for lost time.’

  ‘Much as I relish the prospect’ – Vaughn cocked an eyebrow at Miles – ‘I really cannot do so under false pretences. You see,’ he said apologetically, ‘I don’t have Lady Henrietta.’

  Miles was rather surprised that Vaughn persisted in maintaining his charade. He didn’t think it was fear of the field of honour – Vaughn had a reputation as a fierce and practiced swordsman, whatever he might say about a recent dearth of duels – but it was deuced annoying.

  ‘Do you expect me to believe that?’ demanded Miles.

  Vaughn spread his arms in an expansive gesture. ‘Would you care to search the premises?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Miles narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m not falling for that. You wouldn’t have her here; that would be too obvious. A flat somewhere…or a cottage in the country…’ He watched Vaughn closely for a flicker of recognition or fear, but the man’s face betrayed nothing more than well-bred incredulity.

  ‘All the same,’ Vaughn said politely, ‘my house is at your disposal, as are my staff, should you care to question them.’ His tone suggested that he thought Miles would be a fool to do anything of the kind. But that, reasoned Miles, was just what Vaughn would want him to think.

  Miles played his last card. ‘Do the words “Black Tulip” mean anything to you, Vaughn?’

  ‘As a flower’ – Vaughn shook out his paper with a nonchalant gesture – ‘they leave something to be desired. If you hope to win Lady Henrietta back with bouquets, you would do better to buy her roses. Red ones.’

  Before Miles could tell Vaughn exactly what he should do with his roses, in horticultural detail, the quiet of the breakfast parlour was breached by the sound of a large object plummeting to the floor just outside the door.
China crashed; spurs scraped against the parquet floor; a male voice rose in remonstration. Miles whirled towards the door, filled with formless hope. Henrietta might have freed herself from Vaughn’s henchmen and fought her way downstairs. That was his Hen!

  The happy image shattered as the door once again rebounded against the wall. A slender man in brown barrelled through, followed by the huffing form of an agitated servant.

  ‘Sir!’ The latter flung himself upon his employer’s mercy, his wig askew and his stock untied. ‘I tried to stop him. I tried—’

  ‘Mr Dorrington?’ the other man elbowed past, halting abruptly in front of Miles. Any hopes Miles might have had of his being Henrietta in disguise were firmly dashed. It was hard to make out the man’s features, since they were caked in a thick mask of grime, but they weren’t Henrietta’s, and that was all Miles cared about.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miles warily.

  He glanced to Vaughn, still seated in state at the head of the table, but Vaughn looked, for once, quite as baffled as Miles felt.

  ‘Followed you here,’ the man in brown explained, still fighting for air. His garments, on closer inspection, might have once been some colour other than brown, but looked as though they had been washed in mud, allowed to dry, and muddied again. ‘I’ve been looking for you all day.’

  ‘For me,’ said Miles flatly.

  ‘For you or for Lady Henrietta.’ At the mention of Henrietta’s name, the denizens of the room snapped to attention, with the exception of the footman, who had lowered himself to his knees, and was mournfully examining the scratches in the elaborate inlay of the floor, occasionally emitting small whimpering noises at a particularly jagged gash. ‘I’m to give you this.’

  Miles snatched up the note the courier proffered, as grimed as the man himself, immediately recognising the hand. Jane had wasted no time on explanations. There were only three words written on the little piece of paper, and Miles exclaimed them aloud without even realising he had done so.

  ‘The Marquise de Montval?’

  Crumpling the note in one large hand, Miles shoved it into a pocket. He pointed a finger at Vaughn. ‘I will be back,’ he warned, and slammed out of the room.

  The fine lines around his eyes more pronounced than usual, Vaughn watched him go, directed a footman to take the courier to the kitchens to be fed, and thoughtfully drained the last of his coffee.

  Folding his paper, Lord Vaughn flicked a finger in the direction of the silent footman who stood by the sideboard.

  ‘Tell Hutchins to attend me in my dressing room. And see that my carriage is brought around. At once.’

  ‘My lord.’ The footman bowed his white-powdered head and departed.

  ‘I,’ commented Vaughn to the empty air above the sideboard, cinching the waist of his dressing gown, ‘have an assignation to keep.’

  His lips twisted into a sardonic smile.

  ‘With Lady Henrietta.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Assignation: an ambush, generally set in motion by the agents of the enemy. See also under Tête-à-Tête and Rendezvous

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t recognise you, Lady Henrietta?’

  ‘Lydee ’Enree-ayta?’ gabbled Henrietta hastily in a foreign accent that might have been Italian or Spanish or just gobbledy-gook; Henrietta didn’t have time to think through her putative nationality, only that wherever it was, it was heavy on the vowels. ‘’Ooo eees dees Lydee ’Enree-ayta?’

  The marquise pursed her lips in a gesture of extreme exasperation, and rolled her eyes briefly heavenward.

  ‘Your disguise is clever,’ she said in a tone heavy with sarcasm, and entirely free of the purring note that had distinguished her public persona. ‘I grant you that. But your accent leaves much to be desired.’

  ‘I no unnerstan’. Eet eez, ’ow you say? Dee way I speak.’

  ‘Enough, Lady Henrietta. Enough. I haven’t the time. And neither’ – the marquise’s black eyes narrowed in a decidedly inimical way – ‘have you.’

  ‘I have plenty of time,’ said Henrietta, dropping both her bucket and her role, and backing away a bit under that basilisk stare. ‘But clearly you don’t. I’ll just be getting along then, shall I? I don’t want to keep you if you’re busy.’

  The marquise ignored that. ‘Were you looking for your little friend?’ she asked, watching Henrietta’s face like a tailor sizing up a bolt of cloth.

  ‘My little friend?’ Henrietta didn’t have to feign her confusion. The last time she had possessed anything she might have referred to as a little friend, she had been five years old. The little friend in question had been an imaginary dwarf named Tobias, who lived in a tree in the gardens of Uppington Hall.

  The marquise’s face took on an expression of extreme satisfaction as she glanced towards the window. ‘He’s not here yet, but he will be. Oh, yes, he will be.’

  Henrietta took in the vast expanse of bosom and long line of leg revealed by a creation that could scarcely be called a dress. The marquise didn’t look like a vindictive agent of the French Republic. She looked like a woman awaiting a lover. Henrietta’s lover, to be precise.

  Henrietta remembered that ride in the park. Miles wouldn’t have… No, she reassured herself. He wouldn’t have. He had gone to the War Office.

  But if the marquise had sent him an invitation… The entire scenario unfolded in Henrietta’s head. Miles, guilty at raising expectations he was no longer capable of filling (the word ‘adultery’ came to mind – but adultery with whom? Did it count as adultery if one was an unwanted wife, and the other the woman of one’s choice?), tucking the note into his pocket, resolving to stop by after his morning’s meeting, just to explain. The marquise greeting him, all misty draperies, inflated bosom, and expensive perfume.

  The barren townhouse was not the centre of a spy ring, then, but a setting for seduction. The seduction of her husband.

  Henrietta didn’t know whether to stick her head into the bucket of ashes or go for the marquise’s eyes. The latter struck her as a decidedly more attractive option.

  ‘Do you mean Miles?’ Henrietta asked sharply.

  ‘Miles?’ the marquise turned in a swirl of filmy fabric, like a rainstorm seeking a heath. ‘You mean Dorrington?’

  Henrietta scowled. ‘In my experience, those names generally tend to go together.’

  ‘Why, you poor little dear.’ Henrietta would rather a hundred women’s scorn than the marquise’s pity; it ate like acid at the edges of her self-composure. The marquise laughed delightedly. ‘I do believe you’re jealous.’

  Henrietta didn’t say anything. How could one refute something so palpably true?

  Before Henrietta could attempt to construct a dignified answer, the marquise’s attention was mercifully arrested by the sound of carriage wheels grating against the uneven cobbles of the quiet street. The marquise drew in a silent breath of exultation that swelled her bosom to new and even more alarming proportions, face alight with a wild triumph.

  ‘We’ll have time enough for that later,’ she said, grabbing Henrietta by the elbow. ‘But right now, you, my dear, are decidedly de trop.’

  The wheels slowed to a stop. Somewhere outside the window a horse whinnied, and a pair of booted feet hopped to the ground. Henrietta caught the merest glimpse of a brightly painted curricle before the marquise marched her away from the window, her arms surprisingly strong beneath their translucent draperies. Henrietta would have thought she would have been shoved summarily out the door, but the marquise had other ideas. Wrenching open the door of a large cupboard, as empty as the rest of the cupboards throughout the house, she gave Henrietta a stiff shove.

  Caught by surprise, Henrietta clipped her shins on the edge of the wardrobe, and tumbled headlong into the dusty interior, banging an elbow painfully against the floor, and grazing her forehead on the back wall. The marquise scooped up Henrietta’s legs and shoved them the rest of the wa
y in, slamming the doors shut. Scrambling on her hands and knees to right herself in the cramped space, Henrietta heard a click like a latch being drawn.

  ‘Not ideal,’ commented the marquise, from just outside the cupboard, ‘but it will do for the moment.’

  Henrietta would have chosen a stronger term than ‘not ideal.’ Her face was jammed up against the right angle where the side joined the back, and her legs were twisted behind her in a position reminiscent of a mermaid’s tail. Henrietta was quite sure of one thing: Legs weren’t meant to bend in that direction. Sneezing miserably, Henrietta began to painstakingly wiggle her way upright, easing her legs sideways.

  The marquise banged on the side of the cupboard with an imperious fist.

  ‘Quiet in there!’

  Eyes streaming, Henrietta twisted her head to glower in the general direction of the sound, but she had no breath to retort. She was too busy sneezing.

  With abraded palms, broken nails, and snagged hair, Henrietta managed to claw her way roughly upright within the tight confines of the cupboard, legs curled beneath her. The cupboard was perhaps two feet deep and three feet wide, leaving little room to manoeuvre. By tilting her head sideways, Henrietta could see through a knothole in the warped wood of the cupboard door (quality in furnishing had clearly not been a priority of the original owner). Through her knothole, Henrietta watched the marquise disposing herself elegantly on the couch in the style of the famous portrait of Mme. Récamier. The fine folds of her skirt draped gently over the length of her legs, outlining more than they concealed. Her head was tilted to show the fine line of her throat, glossy pale against the one dark curl that twined its way in artful wantonness towards the scoop of her bodice. Henrietta wrenched her eye from the knothole and pressed her aching forehead against the rough wood of the inside of the door.