Another reference to Richard, noted Henrietta suspiciously. Those were dangerous waters, replete with sea serpents — rather like those portrayed on Vaughn's doublet. Hmph, she was supposed to be questioning Lord Vaughn, not the other way around. This incongruent interest in her brother's exploits could be an indication of Vaughn's involvement in Bonaparte's spy network. Or it could be no more than common curiosity. Over the past few weeks since her brother's unmasking, Henrietta had been pestered for information about her brother and his exploits by any number of people whom one could not possibly suspect of being French spies, Turnip Fitzhugh foremost among them.
"Richard was so seldom at home," Henrietta said vaguely, adding, by way of changing the subject, "Have we much farther to go before I meet your dragons?"
Having reached the end of the string of reception rooms, Lord Vaughn led her out of the throng along a sparsely populated corridor, ill lit after the thousands of candles that illuminated the reception rooms. Henrietta held her golden mask more closely to her face. Aside from a Harlequin and a medieval maiden locked in amorous embrace, the hallway was deserted. Henrietta had the feeling that this was the sort of thing her mother had meant when she had cautioned her against secluded alcoves. As Lord Vaughn placed his hand on the latch of a closed door, Henrietta wrestled with a craven desire to turn and flee back to the security provided by lights and companionship.
No. Henrietta made a wry face at herself behind Lord Vaughn's back. She wouldn't get very far in her plan to catch Jane's spy if she bolted back to safety at the first hint of danger! Richard, Henrietta was quite sure, would have gone forward. Richard, on the other hand, was not a medium-sized female in danger of being compromised. It did add a whole new level of complication to this spying business, considered Henrietta, but if Jane could manage, so could she.
It was too late to turn around even if she had wanted to. The handle turned, the door swung inward, and Lord Vaughn ushered her ahead of him through the portal.
"Welcome to my cabinet of treasures."
Henrietta turned in a slow circle. Candles placed on lacquered ledges illuminated a small, octagonal room. Each of the eight sides of the octagon was paneled in rosewood, edged with an intricate design worked in gold. Set at irregular intervals in seven of the eight panels were roundels containing pictures painted on Oriental porcelain, depicting men in little boats, ladies lounging before pagodas, and even the promised dragons. In the eighth panel, delicate vases and curious porcelain figurines posed on a red-veined marble mantelpiece. Little lacquered benches with odd Oriental lions at their feet were scattered at regular intervals along the walls, padded with silken cushions of crimson shot through with gold.
The pattern of the parquet floor drew the eye inward, toward a small table in the center of the room. On it, ranged around a silver carafe, someone had laid out a repast to make a glutton gloat: ripe clusters of grapes piled upon platters, custards whipped to melting smoothness, delicate madeleines, and drifts of dates glinting with sugar. There were peaches and apples carved into fanciful shapes, mountains of chocolate bonbons, and, in their own small silver dish, like garnets loosed from a necklace, a shimmering pile of pomegranate seeds.
Henrietta was quite sure she didn't like the idea of playing Persephone to Lord Vaughn's Hades.
On the other hand, she might have no choice. The door clicked shut behind Lord Vaughn, only, there was no door anymore, simply a rosewood panel edged in gold, identical to all the other rosewood panels. There was no sign of knob or lock or hinges. The small room was doorless, windowless, exitless. There was no way out.
Chapter Eighteen
Lair, Dragon's: the innermost interrogation chamber of the Ministry of Police (also commonly referred to as the Extra-Special Interrogation Chamber); a windowless cell equipped for torture
— from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation
"What do you think?" asked Vaughn. He rested a casual arm against the mantel, but his eyes never left her face.
I think I'm in over my head, thought Henrietta, repressing the very strong urge to bang on the wall in search of an exit. Schooling her face to an expression of bright interest, she said instead, "It's very cunning, my lord. But don't you find the lack of windows somewhat oppressive?"
"Not at all. Sometimes, one needs to get away from the world, don't you think, Lady Henrietta?"
That phrase had a highly ominous ring to it, especially in light of the pile of pomegranate seeds. Henrietta devoutly hoped that when he spoke of getting away from the world, he didn't mean permanently.
As much for herself as Vaughn, Henrietta quoted lightly, "'The world is too much with us,' do you mean?"
"You read Wordsworth, Lady Henrietta?"
"Occasionally. A friend of mine recited that particular poem to me not long ago, and the phrase caught." Henrietta conjured Charlotte's familiar image, and found it helped to keep the nerves at bay.
"I prefer Milton, myself," replied Vaughn. Striking an attitude, he recited in resonant tones, " 'Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell.'"
It was a trick of the light, that was all. A trick of light, and tone, and costume. Against the marble bulk of the fireplace, his hands twisted behind him and his head flung back, with the sparse candlelight flicking along his archaic clothes, turning the gold chain about his neck into a living necklace of flame, Lord Vaughn made far too plausible a Satan, chained in agony to his own adamantine rock.
"I've always found that line a bit melodramatic," said Henrietta firmly. "It's pure self-indulgence on Satan's part. There is no reason at all for him to go on wallowing like that. All he had to do was acknowledge his error, beg God's pardon, and he could have returned to Heaven and his old glory. He chose to continue to rebel against God; it wasn't as though anyone pushed him to it."
Vaughn's heavy-lidded gaze fastened intently on her face.
"Would you lift him from the depths, Lady Henrietta?" he asked mockingly. "Would you make an angel of him again?"
Henrietta was quite positive they were no longer discussing Milton, theology, or anything to do with the Prince of Darkness. As to what they were discussing, she had no idea. Could it be that he was repenting of his treason, and wished to confess? Perhaps this was her cue to boldly step forward and promise expiation if he would only cut his ties with France and return to the fold. But she had no power to promise any such thing, and no proof that he was, indeed, a French spy. And his tone repelled overtures as much as it invited them. Henrietta felt as though she were picking her way from stepping stone to stepping stone across a dangerous swamp on a moonless night. Blindfolded.
"I believe," Henrietta stepped delicately out into the swamp, "that each man must make the choice to be lifted by himself. I certainly wouldn't presume to claim redemptive powers for myself!"
"Pity," said Vaughn lazily, stirring from his pose by the mantel. "But I apologize! You must think me a poor host, to offer you no refreshment." Vaughn crossed deliberately to the small table in the middle of the room. "Champagne?"
A denial rose to Henrietta's lips.
In the center of the room, Vaughn waited, one hand on the neck of the bottle. In the candlelight, his eyes gleamed as silver as the detail on his doublet.
"Yes," she said demurely. "Thank you."
If he were trying to drug her, better not to arouse his suspicions by refusing the wine. With a bit of cunning and a great deal of luck, perhaps she could feign drinking. It was not, she admitted to herself, going to be easy. Vaughn's eyes hadn't left her face. How much of a drug did one have to ingest before it began working?
Vaughn poured the liquid into two tall glasses made of amber-tinted Venetian glass. He had poured both portions from the same bottle, and surely he wouldn't poison himself, Henrietta reasoned with herself. But the presence of the large, silver bucket in the middle of the table effectively hid his hands from view as he picked up both glasses. His Renaissance garb included several large rings. Henrietta entertained alarming recollections of Lu
crezia Borgia and Catherine de' Medici, of whispers of poison dispensed by means of a cunningly designed ring. It would be a moment's work to flick open the face of the ring and release its powder into her glass.
Henrietta smiled brightly as she accepted the glass Lord Vaughn offered her across the table.
Vaughn raised his own goblet; Henrietta eyed the bubbles critically as they oscillated and burst. Was it just her imagination, or was the liquid in her glass slightly darker than his?
"To what shall we toast?" asked Vaughn.
"To your masquerade, my lord."
Good heavens, the habit was catching. Now even she was speaking in innuendo. She wasn't sure she liked it. She felt like someone in an old tale, dicing with the Devil, afraid to go on, but even more afraid to stop.
Vaughn lifted his eyebrows at her. "Shall we say, rather, to unmasking? "
Just whom did he intend to unmask? Her own mask sat discarded on one of the little benches at the side of the room, though she didn't delude herself that Vaughn meant anything quite that literal.
"By all means," Henrietta said, with a sudden spurt of irritation at this ridiculous verbal game they played, this dance of half-understood meanings. "Let us drink to Truth. They say it will out, you know."
Vaughn tilted his glass against hers, the crystalline click echoing in the small room like the chimes of the celestial spheres.
"It is your toast, Lady Henrietta, and it would ill become me to deny you. But you will learn, as time goes by, that Truth is a malleable mistress."
Henrietta set her glass down decisively on the table, using the motion as an excuse to tip the glass so that some of the liquid spilled onto the tray of grapes.
"I can't agree," she said bluntly. "Something is either true or false. Men may misuse appearances, but truth remains constant. For example," she continued daringly, "treason is always treason."
Vaughn took an abrupt step away from the table, and Henrietta wondered if she had gone too far. Well, there was nothing she could do about it now. Henrietta took a firmer grip on her wineglass. It wasn't much of a weapon, but broken it might do enough damage to… to do what? Keep Lord Vaughn at bay?
It was all she could do to keep herself from falling back as Lord Vaughn advanced, his face still and watchful, his gaze fixed on her like a hawk plummeting down upon its prey. The ruby eyes of the falcon on his chest glittered hungrily in the candlelight.
"And what of you, Lady Henrietta?" he asked silkily. His fingers grasped her chin and tilted her face mercilessly up towards his. "Would you remain constant?"
The word reverberated in the little room, rebounding off the walls, the china roundels, the silver carafe, all the silent objects frozen into listening silence.
"C-constant?" Henrietta played for time,, while her mind raced anxiously ahead in fifteen different directions. One part of her mind insisted on dwelling unpleasantly on how tight Vaughn's grip was, and how easily his fingers might move from her chin to her throat. Another wondered detachedly whether Vaughn was trying to urge her to turn traitor, and if she was more likely to be strangled if she answered yes, or no, or if the question was rhetorical and she wasn't supposed to be saying anything at all.
Vaughn's fingers tightened around her chin, his gaze speculative. Into the terrible silence crept a noise no louder than the scratching of a rat in the wainscoting. Vaughn's hand dropped from Henrietta's face and he strode abruptly towards the sound. Henrietta drew a deep, ragged breath.
A panel of the wall opened tentatively inwards, detaching itself smoothly from the rest. So that was how it worked, thought Henrietta, taking careful note of the door's location. The outline of the entry way was concealed by the golden grill work, while a cleverly placed jade and coral plaque masked the line left by the top of the door.
"Enter!" Vaughn directed harshly.
Only the manservant's face appeared around the edge of the concealed door, floating halfway up like the disembodied head in a horrid novel. Where disembodied heads in horrid novels generally tended to err on the side of glowering and threatening, this one was a very alarmed, very apologetic disembodied head. Henrietta bit down on a sudden crazy urge to laugh, and discovered that her legs in the tottery heels weren't quite so steady as she'd thought them to be.
"Begging your pardon, your lordship," said the floating head anxiously, "I know you said as how you wasn't to be disturbed, but — "
"What is it, Hutchins?" Vaughn broke in impatiently.
"A message, your lordship. Most urgent, they said it was."
"Lady Henrietta." Vaughn turned to her with a smooth smile, every inch the regret-ridden host, as if that last interlude had never transpired. Henrietta's hand surreptitiously crept up to her chin, as though she might still find the marks of his fingers there. "I regret I must abandon you for a brief moment, but I trust you will find sufficient to amuse you until my return."
Unable to believe her luck, Henrietta smiled giddily and waggled her fingers at him. "Don't worry. The dragons and I will no doubt have plenty to discuss." Such as where they had hidden the door handle.
Vaughn bowed in a courtly way utterly at odds with his previous behavior, and exited, shutting the door deliberately behind him. Skirts bunched in her hands, balanced on the very balls of her feet, Henrietta tiptoed over to the panel through which Vaughn had just departed. She paused for a moment, ear against the wall, listening to the sound of footsteps recede along the corridor, Vaughn's stride swift and assured, the other's a limp and a shuffle, scurrying to keep up.
Good. Vaughn was well and truly gone. For how long he would remain so was another matter entirely.
Hazel eyes narrowed in concentration, Henrietta examined the wall panel, with its porcelain pagodas and gilded dragons. Henrietta didn't care how much fire they breathed; she was determined to find the secret catch that opened the door before Vaughn returned.
Reaching up, she ran her fingers along the gilded frame of a painted porcelain scene, and yanked her hand back again in surprise. The china was set into the wall itself, the frame a trompe l'oeil illusion designed to give the impression of substance. The curls and protrusions that appeared so ripe for manipulation were nothing more than brushstrokes in gilt against the wood of the wall, as useless to her as the mask that lay discarded by her side.
Henrietta schooled her breathing, concentrating on drawing air past the ridges of her corset. Calm, she had to stay calm. Taking deep, exaggerated inhalations, she lifted both hands, palm up, and ran them down the length of the wall. If all else failed, at least now that she knew where the proper panel was, she could lie in wait for Vaughn's return. For him to enter, as he must, the panel would have to open, and she could bash him over the head with the heavy silver carafe he had used to cool the champagne.
Henrietta's lips twisted in a slightly hysterical smile. Miles would approve. He was a great advocate of head-bashing.
But it hadn't come to that yet, she reminded herself, squaring her shoulders. At least, not quite yet. The porcelain panels yielded no cracks or protrusions that might hide the mechanism that bolted the door. One boasted a dragon as part of the scene; the dragon was, appropriately enough, bearing off a hapless village maiden to parts unknown. The maiden didn't seem all that unhappy to be borne. Perhaps Chinese dragons were kinder to their prey than their European counterparts? mused Henrietta irrelevantly, pressing hard upon the body of the dragon. Nothing budged. Dragon and maiden remained endlessly journeying, flat against their fragile base, forever in flight.
Forever. Funny how she had never found that word quite so sinister until now. Shivering in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature in the little room, Henrietta dropped to her knees, feeling around the base of the panel with hands that were increasingly unsteady. Finer than a brushstroke, she could see the crack that marked the join of the door, taunting her with its presence.
"Why won't you open?" she hissed.
The door, smug and silent, forbore to answer.
Unfortunat
ely, not everything was as silent. Oh heavens, were those steps she heard in the hallway? Spurred by panic, Henrietta jammed a fingernail desperately at the divide. The nail broke. The door remained stubbornly shut. If she couldn't even wiggle a nail into the space, how could she hope to lever it open with anything more substantial? She settled back on her haunches, staring sightlessly ahead of her. It would have to be the carafe, wouldn't it? There was nothing else she could do, nothing else she could try. She had pushed and prodded every inch of the door, run her hands over every panel, yanked on every protrusion. She was, she admitted to herself hopelessly, well and truly caught.
The two dragons, propping up their velvet bench, sneered at her in gilded smugness, twin Cerberus to her Persephone.
Dragons! Of course! Henrietta rocked back on her heels, a new burst of optimism firing her veins. They were so far below eye level that she had never thought of them, but if one was designing a secret lever, wouldn't one want to make it as unlikely as possible? It was, at least, a chance, and a better one than attempting to bludgeon Vaughn senseless with the carafe.
She poked them in their round, staring eyes. She yanked on their little, pointed ears. She prodded their paws. She tugged on their lolling tongues. And then, just as she was about to consign them to perdition and herself to an undignified tussle with her host, the tongue of the dragon on the right shifted as she pulled. A movement! It had moved, hadn't it? Half-afraid to hope, Henrietta heaved harder. The long tongue curled forward and forward again, until deep in the recesses of the door something clicked.
With a sound like a spring being released, the door slid smoothly forward.
Miles burst into the front hall of Vaughn's mansion, nearly careening into a scowling Black Death. Black Death swirled his tattered draperies out of the way as Miles barreled by, searching for Hen. Dash it all, where was she? Miles fought his way through a dizzying throng of masked revelers. They eddied around him like a medieval painter's dazed nightmare, men with heads like birds, women in huge, feathered masks, all laughing and dancing with frenetic gaiety. Miles twisted past, looking, searching, blotting out the high-pitched voices and blur of shapes, focused entirely on finding Hen.
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