Masque of the Black Tulip pc-2

by Lauren Willig

  "Last December," I muttered. The date of my highly publicized and messy breakup with Grant.

  "That's pathetic!"

  "I love you, too, Pams."

  "Listen, there was an article in this month's Cosmo" — a rustle of papers in the background as Pammy shuffled through her extensive magazine collection — "here it is! 'Ten Easy Ways to Seduce the Pants off Him.'"

  "But I don't want — "

  Pammy kept going full steam ahead. "Wear something sexy tonight. No tweed. Do you have a bustier?"

  "No!" I yelped.

  "Oh, I'd loan you mine, but the Sussex thing is kind of a problem. How about — "

  "Don't even think of it," I said grimly. Pammy occupied the fringes of the fashion world. Combine that with an absolute lack of a) taste, and b) shame, and you had the red leather bustier, the dress made out of multicolored feathers, and the hot pink snakeskin pants. Thursday night she had tried to persuade me into an outfit constructed entirely out of two handkerchiefs.

  I was saved by the agitated bling of Pammy's landline.

  "Uh-oh! Gotta go. Good luck tonight! I want all the juicy details tomorrow, and I mean all! Mwah!"

  "There won't be any — grrr." The line had gone dead.

  So much for Pammy setting me straight. Oh, the hell with it all! I jammed my phone back into my pocket. I was going back to the nineteenth century, where at least no one printed articles about seducing the pants off idiot men one didn't want to seduce, anyway, even if one owned a bustier, which one didn't.

  Maybe I should take Colin up on that offer to raid Serena's wardrobe. She was a little skinner than me, and a little taller, but in a cocktail dress, surely that didn't matter that much, did it? And if it were a little tighter and shorter than it was supposed to be, well…

  Urgh! Dammit, I wasn't going to tart myself up, and I wasn't going to seduce anyone, and I wasn't going to go all weak-kneed over high cheekbones and an opportune reference to Charles II. That way madness lay, complete with huge signs warning, "Here be dragons." One dragon in particular. Prone to sudden flares. Probably gobbled up the odd village maiden in his spare time, leaving only the Wellies behind.

  Dragging out the collection I had been working with before, I un-looped the string holding the box together, and forced my mind back to more important problems, like long-dead French spies.

  If the drinks party from hell wasn't starting until seven-thirty, and it was only two-thirty now, I should still be able to get several hours of work in. It wouldn't, I told myself firmly, take me that long to dress. There was no reason to make any special effort, and there was every reason to stay longer in the library. I still had no inkling as to the identity of the Black Tulip, although for Henrietta's sake, I wouldn't have minded if it turned out to be the Marquise de Montval.

  Of course, there was still Vaughn's mysterious behavior to be reckoned with, and Miles's midnight assailant. I had gone over his letter to Richard describing the incident three times, hoping to find something I'd missed, an asterix or a postscript giving some inkling as to the appearance of the figure who had swung at him with the cane, but there was none. Either he hadn't caught much of a glimpse, or he hadn't thought what he saw worth noting.

  Unlike that playbill, about which he had gone on for several paragraphs in tones of increasing excitement. Personally, I thought he was refining too much on a bookmark — goodness only knows I'm prone to grabbing up whatever piece of paper is lying nearest at hand — old movie tickets, the phone bill, postcards — and wedging it between the pages. Vaughn's being in France was interesting, but not necessarily damning.

  As for the opera singer… like Miles, the reference niggled at my memory. I knew I'd come across something similar before, during my early pre-England days of dissertation research, when I was reading whatever I could get my hands on in Harvard's libraries, from old periodicals preserved on microfilm to whatever contemporary correspondence had made it into scholarly editions. There had been something about an opera singer, I recalled with mounting excitement. Rumors of a connection with Napoleon. Accusations of espionage. And her name had ended with A.

  Just like every other opera singer in existence, I reminded myself drily.

  Damn. I could practically see the page in my head, scrolling across the grimy screen of the microfilm reader in the basement of Lamont. It had been a gossip column of some sort — and had it been the opera singer who was accused of being a spy, or her husband? Of course, this could all be made quite simple by opening my laptop and using the find feature on my notes, but, no, that would make it all too easy. I was embarked on a personal grudge match with my memory.

  Catalani. That was her name. Fine, so it didn't end with an A. It was a vowel, wasn't it? And there were two As in the name, so, really, it was a more than reasonable mistake.

  Damn. It would have been so convenient if the opera singer in question had been Mme Fiorila.

  Come to think of it, the entire incident had been much later, too, not until… 1807? 1808?

  Maybe, I thought wildly, there was a whole spy network out there, composed entirely of opera singers!

  Maybe I was being entirely ridiculous.

  Definitely the latter.

  With a little grimace at my own folly, I retreated to my favorite chair, and unwound the string from the acid-free box that contained Henrietta's diary and correspondence for the year 1803. Hopefully Henrietta's meditations were proving more fruitful than mine.

  At least she wasn't wasting her time staring off into the gardens in the hopes of a glimpse of a certain man among the shrubbery! Manuscripts, I reminded myself firmly. I was here for manuscripts, not men.

  With that salutary kick in the pants, I tore my eyes away from the window, and directed them firmly towards the closely written pages of Henrietta's diary.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bookshop (n.): a den of espionage, intrigue, and sedition

  — from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  "There!" announced Penelope. "You just did it again."

  Browsing among the new stock at Hatchards Bookshop, Henrietta shook herself out of a daydream involving Miles, a white horse, and herself in a charmingly flowing gown. "Did what?"

  She glanced from the novels she was examining, to her friend, who stood glowering over the display like a wicked stepsister come to life out of the pages. Charlotte was two feet away, immersed in a new import from France that promised to be a dashing tale of love and intrigue. Hmm, love. Intrigue. Miles. Henrietta's lips curved in a secret smile.

  "Ha!" Penelope jabbed a finger at her, causing her reticule to swing straight at Henrietta like a medieval mace aimed to maim. "That… smile. You've been smiling like that all morning."

  "Really." Henrietta tried to look like she had no idea what Penelope was talking about. She picked up a book at random and began leafing idly through the pages.

  It hadn't been all morning. She had been perfectly composed through breakfast, and only done one impromptu twirl in the upstairs hallway, which didn't count, because no one had seen.

  Last night, Henrietta had retired early from the Middlethorpes' with a torn flounce — how that flounce had come to be torn was a matter of mystery to the matrons in the ladies' retiring room, who were quite used to seeing young ladies rush in with snagged hems, but seldom ripped sleeves — and an equally ragged temper. There was nothing to do for it but go early to bed and hope the mood went away. If sleep could knit raveled sleeves of care, it could certainly whisk away a bout of ill temper. She would go to bed, Henrietta told herself, and when she woke up, the world would have readjusted itself along comfortable, familiar lines, and all would be happy again.

  There was only one problem with that plan. She couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, there, imprinted on the back of her lids like a garish billboard, stood Miles. Miles grinning, Miles eating biscuits, Miles dancing with Charlotte, Miles spilling lemonade.

  Miles looming close enough to kiss.


  Henrietta experimented with opening her eyes, but that was even worse, because open eyes meant wakefulness, and wakefulness meant thinking, and there were too many things that Henrietta was doing her best not to think about, like Miles driving with the marquise, or, even worse, why on earth it should matter to her that Miles was driving with the marquise. It wasn't, after all, as though his taking the marquise driving presented a personal inconvenience to Henrietta. She had a lesson with Signor Marconi at six o'clock tomorrow that effectively precluded her afternoon drive with Miles, which meant that she couldn't have ridden with him even if she'd wanted to.

  But she still didn't want the marquise there in her place.

  Henrietta groaned and rolled over onto her stomach, inadvertently squishing Bunny in the process. "Sorry, sorry," she whispered urgently, scooting over and yanking Bunny out from underneath her.

  Bunny regarded her reproachfully from under floppy cloth ears. "I'm being an idiot," Henrietta informed Bunny.

  Bunny didn't argue. Bunny never argued. That was usually one of Bunny's great charms as a confidante. Sometimes a girl needed a bit of unconditional agreement.

  "It shouldn't matter to me at all who Miles chooses to take driving," Henrietta said firmly, "Why should I care who he takes driving? It's of no matter to me. Well, it isn't."

  There was a highly sardonic gleam in Bunny's black-glass eyes.

  "Urgh!"

  There was no point in arguing with inanimate objects if they were going to get the better of the argument without even saying anything.

  Henrietta flung off the bedclothes and stomped over to the window, where the full moon silvered the plants in the garden, and glinted off the windows of the neighboring houses. It was a moon for lovers' trysts, for clandestine kisses in gardens, for murmured endearments. Somewhere, under that same moon, Miles was off… with the marquise? Playing cards with Geoff? Alone in his bachelor quarters? Henrietta left off trying to pretend to herself that it didn't matter. It did. She wasn't sure why, but it did.

  Henrietta sank down onto the chaise longue next to the window, and tucked her feet up under the embroidered hem of her nightdress. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rested her chin on her knees and thought back over the past couple of days, when the world had begun to fall out of joint.

  She couldn't blame it on her courses; those had come and gone a week ago, with their attendant stomach pains, spots, and snippiness. That would have been too easy. This was a distemper of the mind rather than the body, and it had begun with the arrival of the marquise. No, Henrietta corrected herself with brutal honesty. Not with the arrival of the marquise. With Miles's lingering to speak to the marquise. Henrietta banged her forehead against her knees. There was really no escaping it, was there? She was jealous. Jealous, jealous, jealous. Miles was supposed to be her escort, her permanent cavalier. Where there was jealousy…

  Henrietta jerked her head up so quickly that she nearly tumbled off the chaise. She couldn't have fallen in love with Miles. The very term, with all of its poetic resonance, conjured up something grand and dramatic. There was nothing whatsoever grand or dramatic in the way Henrietta felt about Miles. It was a very simple concept, really: She just didn't want to share him with anyone. Ever. She wanted to be the person his eyes sought out in a crowded ballroom, the person he nudged when he had a really smashing joke he just had to tell, the first person he saw when he woke up in the morning, and the last person he spoke to when he went to bed at night. She wanted to be the one whose ear he whispered in at the opera, and the one perched next to him in his alarmingly tottery phaeton when he drove in the park at five.

  Love, Henrietta told herself with a decisiveness she was far from feeling, was something of a different caliber entirely.

  Before their first Season, she and Penelope and Charlotte had spent endless hours eating whatever biscuits were left after Miles raided the tray, and discussing Love. Love in capital letters, that would swoop down with shining wings and carry them away to realms of enchantment hitherto undreamed of. Love, of course, would be properly attired in tight tan buckskins, wear an immaculately tied cravat, and have a vaguely rakish air. His arrival would be heralded by violins in the background, an impressive firework display, and the odd clap of thunder, all signaling to her instantly that the love of her life had come to her. And here she was, without a thunderbolt in striking distance, musing over Miles, Miles who had been there nearly all of her life, without any sort of emotional pyrotechnics taking place.

  It was ludicrous. If she did harbor deeper feelings for Miles, wouldn't she have known sooner? Wouldn't she have felt odd constrictions of the heart as he snatched biscuits out from in front of her, and turned cartwheels into the duck pond? All the books were quite clear on that point: When one's true love turned up, one was supposed to know. Immediately.

  Of course, she had been not quite two when Miles first showed up at their door, and her vision of love at the time had a lot to do with warm milk.

  Henrietta turned her head to stare thoughtfully at the moon. By all the classic measures, she couldn't be in love with Miles. But how did one account for the fact that the very thought of him driving with someone else filled her with bitter wormwood and gall ? As for the thought of him marrying someone else… the idea was too harrowing to even contemplate.

  Miles. The name tasted right on her tongue.

  Henrietta chuckled in the darkness. Of course it did! She had been uttering it in various tones of assertion, annoyance, and affection for the past eighteen years. Eighteen years. Henrietta let her chin sink back to her knees and thought about eighteen years of Miles. She thought about the way his cravat never stayed tied and his hair never stayed brushed, and the way his smiles always seemed too big for his face.

  Millions of memories of Miles crowded one after the other in glorious chronological disorder. Miles letting her take the reins of his curricle and drive his beloved bays, breathing down her neck all the while — hmph, she had been nowhere near that tree. Miles popping out of her wardrobe as the Phantom Monk of Donwell Abbey, but ruining the effect by yanking the sheet off his head the minute she screamed. The scream had been one of indignation, rather than fear (she wasn't simpleminded; she'd seen the black shoes poking out under the edge of the habit), but it seemed a shame to inform Miles of that when he was so busy apologizing. There was the summer she was thirteen and had climbed too far up the old oak in the back of Uppington Hall. It had seemed a good idea at the time, a floating faerie tower in which to read and daydream, but less of a good idea once she was up there, perched precariously on a tree limb, book tucked into her sash, and the ground a long ways away. Henrietta was not a tree-climbing sort of girl. Richard had gone for a ladder, but Miles, grumbling all the way, had scaled the tree trunk and helped her down, branch by shaky branch.

  There could be worse things than falling in love with one's oldest friend.

  A slow smile began to spread across Henrietta's face. It lingered there while she slept, returned when she wokej and crept back at intervals throughout the morning.

  Penelope yanked down the book Henrietta was holding in front of her face. "Do stop trying to hide. Why all the smiling?"

  "It's Miles."

  "What has the big oaf done now?"

  "Miles isn't an oaf," Henrietta replied tolerantly. They had been through this before.

  "No, he's a big oaf."

  An unexpected chuckle rose from behind Charlotte's book. "Have you ever heard of a little oaf?"

  Henrietta decided to intervene before they wandered irreversibly off on that fascinating tangent. "I have," she said, running her finger along the spine of the book, "developed a bit of a tendre for Miles."

  "You've developed a what?" yelped Penelope.

  "I think she said tendre" filled in Charlotte helpfully.

  "Don't be ridiculous," argued Penelope. "It's Miles."

  Henrietta assumed the sort of beatific expression more commonly associated with wings, halos, and Renaissance altar p
aintings. "Miles," she agreed.

  Penelope stared at her closest friend in horrified disbelief. In desperation, Penelope flung out a hand to Charlotte. "You say something to her!"

  Lowering her book, Charlotte shook her head, a small smile flitting about her lips. "I can't say I'm surprised. I had wondered…"

  "Wondered what?" inquired Henrietta eagerly.

  Charlotte lowered her voice confidingly. "Has it never struck you as odd that the minute you walk into a ballroom, the first person you gravitate towards is Miles?"

  "She likes the lemonade?" suggested Penelope.

  "I don't think it's the lemonade." Charlotte turned back to Henrietta. "It's always been you and Miles. It just took a long time for you to notice."

  "How do you know that?" countered Penelope crossly. "This isn't one of your silly romantic novels. Just because Miles is always loafing about doesn't mean that he's… that they're… you know!"

  Henrietta ignored her. "When you say it's always been me and Miles, do you mean it's always been me following along after Miles, or something else?"

  Charlotte considered. "He does seek you out," she said after a pause that lasted several agonizing years. Henrietta felt her spine relax. Then Charlotte had to spoil it by adding, "I don't think there's anything romantic about it, though. At least, not yet."

  "Blast." It was nothing Henrietta hadn't considered herself, but it still wasn't pleasant hearing it. "How do I get him to stop thinking of me as a little sister?"

  "Never speak to him again?"

  "Pen! I'm serious about this!"

  Charlotte grimaced in comprehension. "The Marquise de Montval."

  "The very one," said Henrietta.

  "Oh, no," breathed Charlotte.

  "I know," grimaced Henrietta. "It's hopeless, isn't it?"