Masque of the Black Tulip pc-2

by Lauren Willig

  "Gin," he said decisively, pitching his voice gruff and low, just in case Vaughn was listening. Vaughn seemed quite involved in his own conversation, speaking in a low, authoritative tone, but one never knew. Miles turned his attention back to his quarry, assuming the barmaid would hare herself off to riper regions.

  No such luck. The barmaid waved a hand at the barkeep. "Oy, Jim! A glass of blue ruin for our friend 'ere!"

  "What was 'at, Molly?" Jim cupped a hand over his ear. "I can't 'ear ye!"

  "Blue ruin!" bellowed the barmaid, loud enough to be heard clear across the Thames. "For this 'andsome 'unk of man 'ere."

  So much for being inconspicuous.

  Miles could only be glad that his back was to Vaughn and his companion. Even if they turned to stare, all they would see would be an expanse of brown wool.

  "… utmost discretion," Vaughn was saying behind him.

  "Sooooo" — Molly trailed a hand along Miles's shoulders, her cloying voice in his ear cutting off whatever it was Vaughn was trying to be discreet about — "would ye be fancyin' anythin' else with that drink, sir?"

  "Just the gin," Miles mumbled, trying to keep an ear cocked in Vaughn's direction. What had he just said? Something about…

  Plonk! Miles caught the edge of the bar to keep from tumbling over backwards, right into Vaughn's table, as Molly flung herself down on his lap. "Aw, don't be shy, sir."

  "This is very flattering" — Miles attempted a small shove, but Molly wasn't moving — "but I'm not interested."

  Damn, damn, damn. The voices behind him had dropped a notch, implying conversation of a highly confidential, and thus highly interesting, nature. And he couldn't make out a word of it. If he could just find some way to move a little closer…

  "If ye 'ave a problem, like, we can work on it."

  "I don't have a problem," Miles gritted out. At least, not that sort of problem. "I have a mistress." Well, he didn't at the moment, actually, but he had had up until last week. The details were unimportant.

  Molly removed herself from his lap with an irritated flounce. "Well, 'oity toity, aren't we? Too good for the likes of us…" Her voice receded to a droning buzz in the distance. Miles scarcely noticed. All of his attention was focused on the conversation taking place behind him.

  "And the rest?" Vaughn was demanding in a low voice.

  Miles risked a glance back, on pretext of leaning over to straighten the hem of his cloak. Vaughn's pose was nonchalant, relaxed, but his knuckles were white on the head of his cane.

  "By next week. I assure you, everything will be arranged to your satisfaction."

  Vaughn's grip eased. "See that it is."

  "Would I betray you?"

  "Most likely," Vaughn said grimly.

  The hooded figure laughed. "Milord amuses himself."

  "Milord," countered Vaughn, "has scarcely been less amused. Let's get on with this, shall we? I do assume you brought it with you?"

  "But, of course!" The accented voice rose on a note of wounded dignity. "You think me incompetent, perhaps?"

  "Oh, no." Vaughn's voice was laced with irony. "Not that."

  "Here." If his companion noticed the implied insult, he ignored it. Miles heard the whisper of fabric, the crackle of paper. "I have it for you."

  "Thank you."

  Miles turned just in time to see a folded note change hands, disappearing beneath Vaughn's cloak. He hastily reoriented himself to face the bar, as Vaughn levered himself to a standing position, bracing both hands on the small, round table.

  "I shall arrange with you through the usual channels regarding next week's… installment."

  Miles heard the scrape of wood on wood, as the second man stood in his turn. A swishing noise followed, which might have been a bow, or the abstraction of a handkerchief, or just the sweep of Vaughn's cloak against the edge of the table. "I shall not fail you, milord."

  "I sincerely doubt that," Vaughn murmured, so softly that Miles, practically back to back with him, barely caught the words. "I bid you good night," he said crisply.

  Acting on impulse, Miles swung down from his stool just as Vaughn began to move away, jostling the older man.

  "Sorry, so sorry, me lord," he grunted in a gruff baritone, in tones that he hoped leaned more towards the dockyard than Oxbridge. He started patting Vaughn's chest with clumsy motions, as though checking for broken limbs. "I'm so sorry. Be yer lordship unhurt?"

  "Quite" — Vaughn forcibly removed Miles's hand from his person — "all right, my good man."

  "Aye, yer lordship. Thank 'ee, yer lordship." Miles bowed and scraped backwards until he felt his backside hit the bar, taking care to keep his head well around the level of Vaughn's waistcoat. He would have tugged his forelock, but that did seem to be overdoing it a bit. Besides, his hands, like Vaughn's, were too clearly those of a gentleman. He had been taking risk enough in his assault on Vaughn's waistcoat.

  But he had achieved exactly what he had sought. Under cover of the hood, Miles permitted himself a small, self-satisfied smirk.

  Just to be safe, Miles remained in his groveling position until the click of Vaughn's cane and the scurrying footsteps of his companion had receded across the floor, until the door had swung open and shut, until the sound of Vaughn's voice giving orders to his chairmen could be heard through the open windows.

  Then, and only then, did Miles permit himself to rise from his crouch.

  It might be wise to give Vaughn and his companion some time to remove themselves from the area (the other man might still be lurking about), so Miles took the glass of gin the affronted barmaid slammed in front of him and, calling for a candle, retreated to the secluded table Vaughn and his companion had just vacated.

  He absentmindedly took a gulp of the gin, wincing at the sharp taste of it on his tongue. Nasty stuff. He could understand how a few daily pints of it could turn someone blind.

  Miles pushed the glass away, just as Molly, his no-longer-so-friendly barmaid, slapped the requested candle down on the table in front of him. It was the merest stub, stuck to the saucer by its own wax, and from the looks of it, it had only a half hour left in it at best.

  Miles didn't care. He didn't intend to be there quite that long.

  With a sense of gleeful anticipation, he drew out from under his cloak the folded note he had abstracted from Vaughn's waistcoat pocket. The man hadn't a clue, Miles thought complacently, examining his prize. The paper had been folded into tiny squares, the better to be passed from hand to hand, and, from the looks of it, never sealed. There was no writing on the exposed folds, no name, no direction.

  Anonymity was, after all, the hallmark of espionage.

  What could it be? Directions, perhaps, mused Miles. Instructions from the Ministry of Police to their trusted spy, conveyed via a recently arrived operative. The other man's accent had sounded as though it might be French.

  Nudging the candle closer, Miles slowly unfolded the page and held it up to the uncertain light. His eye caught the word "burn" heavily underscored.

  Good God, had he stumbled upon a plan to burn Parliament? It would be just like Guy Fawkes, only without King James I.

  Miles moved the note nearer to the candle, so close that the flame lapped dangerously at the edge of the fragile paper. He squinted at the spiky writing, which had been inconsiderately rendered in a pale brown ink.

  "I burn for your touch," read the phrase in its entirety.

  Damn. That didn't sound like a plan to blow up the houses of Parliament.

  Miles returned his attention to the letter. "Every night, I dream of your embrace; I yearn for your voice at the window, and your hands on my — "

  No, definitely not a plot to immolate the members of Parliament. Fiery, yes. Treasonous, no.

  Miles moved on to the next paragraph, which contained more of the same. It could, he rationalized desperately, be merely a ploy in case the missive fell into the wrong hands. Make it look like a love letter and then slip in the pertinent information somewhere i
n the middle.

  With an expression of great determination, Miles read the letter through from start to end. By the last line, he could safely say that there were no troop movements hidden in there. It might be in code… but it would take one perverse mind to come up with a code that detailed, that convincing, that graphic. Some of the descriptions made Cleland's Fanny Hill, a favorite piece of contraband among Miles's set at Eton, look positively restrained, even prim. Delaroche's mind was certainly perverse, but it didn't move in those particular channels.

  The signature was entirely illegible, a long squiggle that might have been anything from Augusta to Xenophon. As for the salutation… well, "Dearest Love" was seldom a proper name. Oh, hell. A look of grim disgust spread across his face as he came to an unfortunate but inescapable conclusion. Miles dropped the paper onto the table, resisting the urge to follow it with his head, preferably banged very hard, several times in a row. Of all the idiot things to do! Since smiting himself was out, Miles reached for the gin instead. He had stolen the wrong bloody note.

  Chapter Eight

  Fashion Papers: the private files of the former Assistant to the Minister of Police

  — from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  Midnight shrouded Delaroche's study. Dark lay heavy as dust on desk, cabinet, and chair, on the rough flagstones of the floor, and on the unadorned surface of the walls. The former assistant to the Minister of Police had, himself, departed half an hour before, closing his cabinets and realigning his chair in the cavity of his desk with mathematical precision. All was still in the office of the tenth-most-feared man in France.

  Except for a quiver of movement along the far wall.

  Like a waterbug skimming the surface at the edge of an algae-ridden lake, so subtly that it barely disturbed the enshrouding darkness, a tiny point of metal inched along the central join of the room's one small window. The sliver of metal encountered the hook that latched the window closed, and paused. Another moment and the metal continued to rise, like mercury in a barometer, carrying the hook with it.

  The metal disappeared. The windowpanes, which had not been opened since the early days of the reign of Louis XIII, slid outward with an ease that bespoke hinges newly oiled. The quiet surface of the room rippled as a shadow, darker than the rest, oozed over the win-dowsill and swung neatly into the room. The windowpanes were, once again, eased closed, and latched for security. A length of cloth made its way from the intruder's shoulders over the uncurtained window. This night's work needed light to proceed, and light might call unwanted attention. A similar, smaller piece of thick-woven black cloth covered the small grille in the door.

  Preparations complete, the silent figure drew out a small, shuttered lantern, and gently coaxed the flame into life. There was no fizz, no smoke, no crackle from the wick, just darkness one moment, and a gentle light the next.

  The black-clad figure nodded in approval, and followed the subdued light in the direction of Delaroche's desk.

  The chair, so carefully arranged a mere half hour before, was lifted gently back, and placed, with equal care, a short distance away, leaving just enough space for the dark figure to kneel under the desk, feeling with long, black-gloved fingers along the back wall. A prick of wood, no larger than a splinter, and like Sleeping Beauty falling softly into slumber, a panel of wood slipped back, revealing a cache just large enough to hold one file.

  In one fluid movement, the black-garbed intruder backed out from under the desk, rising seamlessly to place the file on Delaroche's pristine blotter. One gloved hand tilted the little lantern closer, providing a steady stream of light as the other hand flipped quickly but steadily through the contents of the file, committing them to memory.

  With two pages left to go, the lantern trembled, sending wavy lines of light dancing about the walls. The Pink Carnation quickly steadied the lantern, but her eyes, narrowed in concern, never left the closely written page.

  So it had come to this, had it?

  In the file, looking as innocent as only a piece of paper can look, sat a draft of Delaroche's latest instructions to the Black Tulip. And there, in the middle of the page, blazed the name "Lady Henrietta Selweecke."

  The misspelling, the Pink Carnation knew, provided no hope of misdirection; it was merely an indication of Delaroche's contempt for the English, expressed through a willful misuse of the alphabet. The Black Tulip was, directed Delaroche, to allocate particular attention to Lady Henrietta Selweecke and M. Miles Doreengton, associates both of the perfidious Purple Gentian. Either would be in a position to make use of the former Purple Gentian's resources, his League and his contacts, to bedevil the French Republic. Any methods were acceptable. "Any methods" was heavily underscored.

  The Pink Carnation scanned the page, mind working rapidly as her eyes moved across the rat's nest of Delaroche's handwriting, as familiar to her by now as her own.

  If she had been of a different temperament, the Pink Carnation might have slammed the file shut or cursed or clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking. Being as she was, Jane Wooliston's, pale complexion turned a shade paler, her spine a tad straighter, and her lips thinned.

  This wouldn't do at all.

  She had — if her messengers had survived the journey — already apprised both Henrietta and the War Office of the presence of the Black Tulip in London. They would have to be warned immediately of this new development. She would send off a letter in code tonight. There was no need to break off contact with Henrietta; Delaroche suspected Henrietta only through her relationship to Richard, not her unusual volume of correspondence with France.

  Wasn't that, thought Jane primly, returning the file to its hiding place, just like Delaroche to suspect the right person for all the wrong reasons?

  It would have to be stopped. She would not have Henrietta falling into danger. Jane chose not to dwell on that ominous phrase "any methods," or the even darker stories she had gleaned of the Black Tulip's former activities. That wouldn't be of the slightest use to Henrietta or Mr. Dorrington. Jane moved her mind, instead, into more useful channels.

  Jane could, of course, create some sort of diversion in France, moving suspicion away from Henrietta and Mr. Dorrington, and necessitating the recall of the Black Tulip to the Continent. But Jane had larger plans brewing, of which immediate action was not a part. It did not in the least serve her purposes for the fanatical former assistant to the Minister of Police to learn that the Pink Carnation remained in France.

  Her attention had recently been drawn to the possibility of an Irish rising being organized out of Paris; Delaroche's files confirmed that a meeting was planned between Bonaparte's Minister of War, General

  Berthier, and Addis Emmet, a representative of the United Irish. The meeting needed to be infiltrated, and French use of Ireland prevented. Then there was the matter of the generals. Disaffected generals, currently in Bonaparte's pocket, but beginning to find Bonaparte overbearing and subservience suffocating. All they needed was a gentle hand urging them in the right direction. Jane had only just begun the series of gentle nudges that might topple them into treason. Having De-laroche's attention directed across the Channel had been an unexpected boon, and one she was not yet prepared to relinquish.

  False intelligence could be planted, and brought to Delaroche's attention, intelligence directing the Black Tulip's attention to… whom? A suitably vague description, Jane decided. Something that could apply to half a dozen pinks of the ton, but would most decidedly not apply to either Henrietta or Mr. Dorrington. Ever since Sir Percy Blakeney's successful masquerade as a fashion-mad fop, the French had been decidedly twitchy about those who professed to immerse themselves in fashion. A few mentions about the cut of waistcoats this season, slipped into "reports" designed to be intercepted, should sufficiently agitate the French intelligence community. Jane had two double agents on her payroll for just this sort of assignment. They came dear, but they were worth every penny.

  As a precautionary
measure, it was worth pursuing, but it wasn't enough. No agent of the Black Tulip's caliber would allow himself to be put off by such a tepid report. He might set about garnering extra information, but, at best, his attention would be diluted, not diverted.

  Jane frowned as she perfectly realigned Delaroche's desk chair.

  Removal to the country would be equally futile, in fact, perhaps more dangerous than not. So many accidents could happen in the country. A horse could shy; a shot could go awry; the wrong sort of mushroom could be added to a sauce. No. Henrietta would be safer in town, where the rules of society dictated the presence of a chaperone.

  Having neatly assessed and dismissed most of the viable options in her head, Jane Wooliston settled on the only acceptable plan. They would simply have to find the Black Tulip.

  It would take Delaroche some time to replace an agent of that skill. Until he managed to do so, Henrietta and Mr. Dorrington would be free from molestation, and Jane could proceed with her master plan. It would all serve very well.

  There was nothing for it but to remove the Black Tulip.

  Word would be sent to Henrietta and the War Office, labeled for the highest of alerts. Her own men in Paris would be sent to ferret out any scrap of information they could find relating to the identity of the Black Tulip. Fouche's files would have to be looked into.

  There was no reason, resolved Jane, that they shouldn't have the Black Tulip enjoying His Majesty's hospitality within the next fortnight. It was all a matter of applying oneself logically to the problem.

  A furrow appeared between Jane's pale brows. It could all be quite simple — if only the Black Tulip didn't make his move first.

  Jane squelched worry as neatly as she had rifled through Delaroche's files. Her courier could be in London by the day after next. Within the next thirty-six hours, Henrietta would be warned, and, Jane hoped, modify her behavior accordingly. There were only the next thirty-six hours to be got through, and, surely, a spy so newly arrived in London would wish to survey the field before resorting to darker methods.