Masque of the Black Tulip pc-2

by Lauren Willig

  Miles frowned in thought. "Point taken. I don't know whether he did it personally, or sent a lackey, but he seems the most likely instigator, if you would prefer to look at it that way."

  "Why would he want to ransack your flat?"

  Miles took a quick look down either side of the hallway, and dropped his voice to a mere thread of sound. "We have reason to believe he might be the agent we're looking for. One of our agents was recently killed — also stabbed — in a way that suggested a connection to Vaughn."

  "That would explain a great deal," Henrietta said slowly, thinking back over his unexpected interest in her once the Purple Gentian's name was invoked, his odd behavior in the windowless chamber. Something nagged at her, though. Something didn't quite add up, and she couldn't figure out why. She made a wry face at herself; Miles wasn't going to lend much credence to woman's intuition. Nor would she if their situations were reversed. Nonetheless, she ventured, "But what would he have to gain?"

  Miles shrugged. "Money? Power? Settling a personal score? A man could turn traitor for any number of reasons."

  Henrietta shivered.

  Miles risked a glance in her direction, trying very hard to keep his eyes above her neck, and almost succeeding. "Are you cold?"

  Henrietta shook her head, grimacing, "No. Just alarmed by human nature."

  "You should be," Miles said grimly. "They knifed Downey with no more consideration than if he had been a — "

  "Rabid dog?"

  "I was thinking more a bug, but something like that."

  Miles looked soberly at Henrietta, cursing himself for being ten times a fool. He should have grabbed her by the arm and hauled her straight back to the dowager the moment he had barreled into her. There was no excuse for his behavior — either of his behaviors; this last interlude had been just as self-indulgent and just as dangerous as that damnable kiss. He had been swept up in the relief of having someone to talk to, to confide his guilt over Downey, to trade ideas about the progress of the mission, someone he could trust. But that was no excuse. He knew Henrietta well enough to know exactly how she would react. This was, after all, the girl whose favorite phrase as a toddler had been "me too."

  To have Downey hurt by his carelessness was bad enough; for anything to happen to Henrietta… it was unthinkable. Miles considered dragging out some of the past exploits of the Black Tulip, including his charming habit of carving his calling card into the flesh of his victims, but prolonging the discussion would only make matters worse. The more he said, the more intrigued Henrietta would be, and the more intrigued Henrietta was…

  His voice came out harsher than he had intended. "Stay out of this, Hen. This is no parlor game."

  "But, Miles, I'm in it already. Whoever, it is, he's looking for me, too."

  "All the more reason for you to be even more careful. Have you considered joining your mother in Kent for a few weeks?"

  "And catch the mumps?"

  Miles stood abruptly. "The mumps are the least of my worries." Henrietta stood, too, looking mutinous. "The best way to secure all of our safety is to catch the spy."

  "Don't worry." Miles started off down the corridor. "I will." Henrietta trotted along after him. "Don't you mean, we will?" "You are going back to the duchess. That woman is better protection than a citadel."

  In front of them, Henrietta could hear the hubbub of voices that betokened the more populated parts of the party. She yanked on Miles's arm, eager to have her say before they once more joined the throng.

  "Miles, I'm not going to sit idly by while you do all the work." Miles didn't say anything. He just looked stubborn.

  Ha! thought Henrietta, clapping her golden mask to her face and following her glowering escort in the direction of the dowager. Miles didn't know the first thing about stubborn. She would talk him around tomorrow, she decided confidendy. She would ply him with tea and ginger biscuits. (Cook would surely be amenable to whipping up an extra batch.) And if that failed — Henrietta's lips curved into an anticipatory smile — why, then, she would just have to kiss him into compliance. A hardship, but such were the sacrifices one had to undergo for the sake of one's country.

  Henrietta grinned all the way back to the dowager.

  Miles glowered all the way back to the dowager. Miles glowered the length of three rooms. Miles glowered as he deposited Henrietta with the Dowager Duchess, and sternly advised them all to go home. Miles glowered particularly forbiddingly as the Dowager Duchess pinked him with Penelope's spear.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," called out Henrietta, waving her mask at him like a triumphal banner.

  Miles grunted in response. Then he resumed glowering.

  Appropriating a glass of champagne, he retreated to an unoccupied alcove where he could glower at Henrietta from a safe distance. At least, he thought darkly, rubbing his bruised posterior, she would be free from harm so long as she was with the Dowager Duchess; the woman provided a better deterrent to would-be assassins and abductors than an entire Greek phalanx. Hell, ship her over to France and Napoleon would surrender within the week.

  France. Miles stared grimly into the sparkling liquid in the crystal goblet. He had to find enough to conclusively prove Vaughn's guilt. The War Office wouldn't act without proof. They also wouldn't act if it meant damaging their chances of rounding up the rest of Vaughn's contacts first.

  The War Office and Miles had slighdy different priorities at the moment.

  Across the room, he heard a high, clear, utterly unmistakable laugh, and winced in a way that had nothing to do with French agents.

  Maybe if he asked nicely the War Office would send him on assignment to Siberia.

  Chapter Twenty

  Excursion: an intelligence-gathering mission undertaken in some form of disguise

  Excursion, delightful: an intelligence-gathering mission of no little success

  See also under Jaunt, pleasant.

  — from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  "What do you want? "

  A woman with a glaringly white fichu draped over her ample bosom glowered from the open doorway of 13, rue Nicoise.

  "A room," said the girl standing on the stoop. Her lusterless dark hair was pulled severely back beneath a neat cap, but the rest of her appearance showed signs of neglect; her collar and cuffs drooped limply, and there was a weary look about her gray eyes. "Not for me," she added hastily, as the door began to close. "For my mistress. She heard you had rooms to let."

  "Your mistress," repeated the woman in the doorway derisively, her sharp eyes roaming over frayed cuffs and scuffed boots. The starched fabric of her apron rusded against the wood of the door frame. "What's your mistress doing looking for rooms here?"

  "She's a… widow," explained the girl earnestly. "A respectable widow."

  The woman's eyes narrowed at the telltale pause. "I know her kind, and we don't need none of that sort around here."

  The girl twisted her hands in her apron. "But I was told…"

  "Told!" the woman snorted. "I know what you was told. But you can just put it right out of your mind. I run a respectable house, I do. Not like her as was here before."

  "Here before?" the maidservant echoed in a small voice, her eyes darting longingly past the bulk of the proprietress to the painfully clean foyer beyond.

  "Madame Dupree," the woman spat the name out as though it tasted foul. "Take anyone, that one would. The goings-on in this house! Enough to make a respectable woman blush, it was. Gentlemen callers coming and going, cigar stains on the sheets, wine spilled on the carpets."

  "Even Englishmen, I heard," the maidservant ventured timidly.

  "English, Prussian, all manner of riffraff." The woman's white cap rustled as she shook her head over past depravity. "Didn't matter none to her so long as they payed their rent proper. I had my work cut out for me cleaning it out, I did."

  "Where did they all go?" asked the maidservant, wide-eyed.

  "No interest of mine." The woman's lips hardened i
nto a determined line. "So you can just tell your mistress she'll have to look for lodging elsewhere."

  "But — "

  The maidservant staggered back as the door thudded shut. Through an open window came the sound of a mop being vigorously applied.

  As she moved out of sight of the house, the girl's dejected slump disappeared, and her pace accelerated to a brisk walk. The black hair dye made her head and eyebrows itch mercilessly, but Jane Wooliston resisted the urge to scratch as she made her way rapidly from the rue Nicoise back to the Hotel de Balcourt, looking to all the world like an anxious servant on an errand for a demanding mistress. She would be able to doff her costume soon enough; she had found out what she wanted to know.

  Number Thirteen, rue Nicoise was a boardinghouse. In an unfashionable neighborhood, it currently catered to the poor but respectable, to hard-working clerks and maiden aunts eking out the end of their days on meager savings. The hall had been as painfully whitewashed as the proprietress's linen; any speck of dirt would no doubt be pounced upon and eliminated as soon as it crossed the threshold.

  It was not at all the sort of establishment one would expect Lord Vaughn to patronize.

  From the woman's tone, Jane surmised that the boardinghouse, until recently, had served a clientele of another sort entirely, dubious characters living on the fringe of the demimonde, a haven for runaways and rendezvous. That, decided Jane, made a good deal more sense. The illusion of assignation could provide an excellent pretense for meetings that had more to do with policy than paramours. No one would think anything of a gentleman haring off to the seedier parts of the city for a bit of illicit amusement.

  She would, determined Jane, weaving her way around a dray cart blocking the street, have to discover how long ago the boardinghouse had come under its current management. The former proprietress would be located, and discreetly questioned as to the prior inhabitants of the house. It was a pity Dupree was such a common name, but Jane had no qualms about her ability to locate her. Beneath her serene countenance, a plan began to form. She would send one of her men, in the guise of an anxious brother seeking a sister who had fled from the bosom of her family. Naturally, the concerned brother would be anxious to know not only the whereabouts of his "sister," but any people with whom that ill-fated and fictitious female had come in contact, especially men who might have taken advantage of her youth and innocence. It would make a most affecting tale.

  Head down, shoulders bowed, Jane crossed the last few yards to her cousin's house. If Lord Vaughn had been using 13, rue Nifoise as a base for nefarious activities, the boardinghouse could be the key to unraveling an entire network of agents.

  Her mind rapidly working over this new piece of information, the Pink Carnation slipped in through the servants' entrance of the Hotel de Balcourt. She had dye to rinse out of her hair, orders to issue, a coded report to send to Mr. Wickham, a supper party to attend, and a meeting of the United Irishmen to infiltrate. Unseen, the Pink Carnation ascended the servants' stairs to her own room and, efficiently divesting herself of her servile garb, prepared to don her third disguise of the afternoon — that of elegant young lady.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Accident, an: an event causing harm or inconvenience brought about by the agency of malignant French operatives; generally designed to give a spurious appearance of inadvertence

  — from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  "Henrietta! You're finally here!"

  Henrietta's diminutive sister-in-law Amy barreled down the front steps of Selwick Hall like a muslin-clad cannonball, catching up her skirts as she ran towards the hired traveling chaise. Two immense torches lighted the front entrance of Selwick Hall, casting odd glints off Amy's short, dark curls, and the horses' trappings.

  The six-hour trip had stretched to eight, thanks to a broken axle barely an hour out of London. Fortunately, the accident had occurred as they lumbered along behind a crowded mail coach on Croydon High Street; they had been moving at barely more than a walk when the wheel began to tilt ominously, and the chaise with it. Henrietta and her maid had exited the conveyance with more speed than grace, taking refuge at the Greyhound, one of the town's chief posting houses, where a new chaise was hired, the luggage all reloaded, and the tired horses refreshed.

  Enveloping Henrietta in an enthusiastic hug, Amy all but dragged her down the folding steps of the traveling chaise. Tugging her towards the front door, Amy exclaimed, "How are you? Did you have a frightful trip from London? We were so worried about you! Do you want to freshen up? Just wait until you hear the plans for the weekend!"

  Henrietta hugged Arny back, made the requisite number of delighted squealing noises, and submitted to being tugged.

  "Where is Richard?" she asked, as a footman bowed them into the front hall. The footman, like everyone else in the house, was a devoted participant in her brother's undercover activities. No one was employed at Selwick Hall who had not been proven entirely trustworthy. A mistake in judgment could prove fatal. It had, after all, been a French operative, posing as a lady's maid, who had caused the demise of one of her brother's closest friends. "Doesn't he love me anymore?"

  "Oh, he'll be along," said Amy, helping to divest Henrietta of her bonnet and shawl. "He was supervising the footmen setting up the targets and climbing walls for Saturday. You won't believe all the wonderful things we have planned!"

  Targets? Climbing walls? That sounded ominous. Henrietta didn't mind aiming at targets — in fact, there was a certain large, blond target she wouldn't much mind taking a shot at about now — but wall climbing? She couldn't even climb a tree. And those had branches.

  Putting alarming thoughts of physical exertion aside, Henrietta broke into Amy's spate of words to edge towards what she really wanted to know. "Who else will be here this weekend?"

  Amy abandoned alarming explanations about walls and steel picks. "There's Mrs. Cathcart," she said, naming a cheerful widow of middle years and ample proportions, who had made .her debut with Lady Up-pington in the latter's mythical youth, "and Miss Grey…"

  "Miss Who?"

  "Grey," said Amy, herding Henrietta into a small drawing room at the front of the house. "She was a governess. And then the Tholmonde-lay twins — I know they haven't a brain between them, but Richard is quite taken with the idea of identical agents."

  "Is that all of us?" asked Henrietta, trying not to sound as disappointed as she felt. The Tholmondelays, pronounced, in the mysterious way of English nomenclature, Frumley, were not the men she had in mind.

  "Geoff was supposed to join us, but he was unavoidably detained."

  Amy rolled her eyes. "Can't you guess by whom? Oh, and then there's Miles, of course."

  "Of course," echoed Henrietta, dropping down onto a blue-striped settee. "Is he here yet?"

  "Miles?" Amy had to stop and think for a moment. "Not yet. He was supposed to be here hours ago. Richard wanted his help with the ropes course."

  Ropes course? Henrietta didn't even want to think about it. Wasn't being a spy supposed to be a mental exercise, involving deep ratiocination? Ratiocination she could do; ropes were another matter entirely.

  "Is there any tea?" she asked hopefully.

  "No, but I can ring for some," replied Amy. "I'll have Cook send up some biscuits, too. Have you had anything to eat?"

  "We had a light meal at the Greyhound while we were waiting for the chaise to be repaired."

  "Oh, good," said Amy. "The others should be arriving tomorrow morning, just in time for the seminar on French geography. Did you know that Richard knows more than fifteen escape routes to Calais? After that, I'll be coaching everyone on local dialects. My favorite is the Marseillaise fishwife."

  "The Marseillaise fishwife?" Henrietta echoed, looking longingly at the door in the hopes a tea tray would materialize.

  "You get to screech a lot for that one," explained Amy enthusiastically, checking momentarily as she added, "Although the smell is dreadful. Oh, Stiles! Tea for Lady H
enrietta?"

  Henrietta could see why Amy had ended on an interrogative. Richard's butler had clearly already entered into the spirit of the weekend. He was wearing a striped jersey and a black beret, and had slung an odiferous necklace of onions around his neck. He looked far more likely to hit someone over the head with a bottle of Bordeaux in a rough seaside tavern than carry in a tea tray.

  "Eeef eet eez posseeblah, madame," he hissed in an impenetrable accent that the Frenchest of Frenchmen wouldn't be able to understand, flung his onions more securely over his shoulder, and stalked out.

  Henrietta's incredulous gaze met Amy's and the two burst into laughter. It had seemed to Richard a fine idea to incorporate an out-of-work actor into the League of the Purple Gentian, until he had realized there was one slight hitch. Stiles had a good deal of difficulty divorcing role from reality. This had, occasionally, worked in Richard's favor, but it was very hard to discern who Stiles was going to be from one moment to the next. He had a marked fondness for tragic Shakespearean heroes of the toga-wearing sort. There had been a brief, but lamentable, Macbeth phase, involving haggis on the tea tray and bagpipes at odd hours of the night.

  "Even with the onions, it's an improvement on his last incarnation," pointed out Amy cheerfully.

  "I don't know," mused Henrietta. "I rather liked the pirate impression. The parrot was darling."

  "Oh, no, you missed the last one — he was a highwayman for a full two weeks. He put up wanted posters all over the house, and took to calling himself the Silver Shadow."

  "Why silver?"

  "The dye from his octogenarian phases hadn't grown out yet. We wouldn't have minded so much if he hadn't kept insisting that we stand and deliver."

  "Deliver what?" asked Henrietta practically.