Masque of the Black Tulip pc-2

by Lauren Willig

  "I'll be along" — the vicar rattled his ice cubes and beamed beatifically — "just as soon as I top up my drink."

  I looked reproachfully at him. "Whatever happened to that crusading spirit?"

  "Go with God, dear child," he said in sepulchral tones, making me laugh as I headed off on the Colin Rescue Expedition.

  Joan looked less than thrilled to see me back so soon; I suppose she had been hoping the vicar would keep me safely by the drinks table.

  She made the best of a bad situation by giving my borrowed cocktail dress a condescending once-over. It was a Wrap dress of the sort that had been popular a couple of years before, with black, green, and white blocks of color overlapping in a vaguely geometrical pattern. I hadn't felt quite so bad borrowing something that had been left behind as clearly out of date; not to mention the main joy of wrap dresses — they aren't quite one-size-fits-all, but it was certainly better than trying to wiggle into one of Serena's old sheath dresses, which clearly came from a scarily skinny phase as well as from an era of higher hems. They would have been too tight, too short, or both. Pammy would certainly have approved, which was more than enough reason for not wearing them.

  "What a charming frock," Joan commented, with a disdainful smirk. "I had one like that, too — two years ago."

  "It's on loan from Serena's closet," I explained innocently. "She has excellent taste, don't you think?"

  It was almost too much fun watching Joan squirm. Taking pity, I said, "You have a lovely home."

  I regretted my charitable impulse almost immediately, as Joan embarked on a long monologue about country pursuits clearly designed to make me feel like an ignorant outsider. What it did accomplish was making me wish I hadn't resolved to be alcoholically abstinent this evening; Thursday night's revelry (or, more accurately, Friday morning's hangover) had been enough to make me swear off overindulgence forever. Half an hour of Joan, however, would have sent Carrie Nation fleeing for the bottle.

  "Do you ride?" Joan asked, in the tone of one who expects — indeed, hopes — the answer will be negative.

  I had ridden, actually, years and years ago, in the grips of the inevitable "I want a pony" phase that attacks eight-year-old girls as inevitably as the chicken pox. One bout of lice had cured me of the riding bug, combined with the realization that I wouldn't be allowed to ride bareheaded through the fields, leaping over things like National Velvet.

  I saw no reason to go into this with Joan. Among other things, I had the sneaking suspicion that any admission of equestrian ability would prompt her to arrange for us all to go riding — I had no intention of falling into that trap, and finding myself falling, quite literally, into a ditch somewhere. I like my collarbone where it is, thank you very much.

  "Usually the bus," I replied cheerfully.

  Joan looked at me uncomprehendingly. "What an unusual name."

  It was my turn to look uncomprehending. Was there a crucial piece of British slang I had missed?

  "That is what they're usually called."

  Next to me, Colin started making little gurgling noises.

  Joan seized the opportunity to pound him on the back. "Quite," sputtered Colin, "all right. Don't" — sputter, choke — "mind me."

  Joan was all solicitude. "We must get you some water," she gushed, employing her patented towing technique. Whatever athletic activities she engaged in, they had developed some very strong arm muscles; she had Colin off to the other side of the room before he could regain his breath.

  I found myself standing entirely alone in a roomful of strangers. "Lovely to see you, too," I muttered under my breath. A girl with long wavy hair who had been standing about a foot away, observing, crossed the distance with a friendly smile. "Hello."

  A human! Addressing me! I could have hugged her. There's nothing more demoralizing than standing alone at a party — unless it's tagging along after someone who palpably doesn't want you there. I'd be damned if I was going to trail along after Joan and Colin to the drinks table. If he wanted to extricate himself, he could bloody well do it himself.

  He didn't seem to be trying all that hard.

  Following my gaze, my new companion said, "Don't mind Joan. She's been out of sorts ever since Colin chucked her."

  "Was it recent?" I tried not to sound too interested.

  "About twenty years ago — Joan was eight at the time, and she's been impossible to live with since." She stuck out a hand. "I'm Sally, Joan's sister."

  "Oh," I said guiltily.

  "And you," continued Sally, eyes gleaming with mischief, "must be Eloise."

  "How did you know?"

  Sally ticked off the points on her fingers. "Let's see. American, red hair, with Colin."

  "Not exactly with Colin," I pointed out with some asperity. I had always found the gossipy insularity of Jane Austen novels — where everything made the rounds of the neighboring gentry within five minutes — utterly charming, but I was beginning to reconsider. Why did everyone in room — in the entire county of Sussex, for all I knew — assume I was going out with Colin? All right, I was staying at his house, but it was a sad, sad day when one couldn't even have a houseguest of the opposite gender without imputations of improper behavior.

  I really had been living in the Regency too long. Next I'd be going on about needing a chaperone or being compromised. "You are staying with him…"

  "I really am just here for the archives," I said, half-apologetically.

  Maybe I should put up a billboard. Although, really, they were all imagining such lovely prurient things that it seemed almost a shame to disappoint them. Perhaps I should hint at wild orgies. In the library. With manuscripts.

  I decided it was time to change the subject.

  "Have you lived at Donwell Abbey long?"

  "Since I was five." Sally grinned at the surprise on my face. "You mustn't let Joan know I've told. She likes to pretend we're to the manor born."

  "Here since the Conquest, you mean?"

  Remembering that afternoon's discussion with Colin, my cheeks turned an unexpected pink — damn these fair complexions! I light up like Rudolph's nose at the least provocation — but, fortunately for me, Sally must have put the flush down to the wine, since she went on without reference to the damning blush. And why should she? Why would anyone blush about the Conquest? Why in the hell was / blushing about the Conquest?

  There are times when I make no sense even to me.

  "Exactly. My father," Sally added conspiratorially, "is actually a rather successful solicitor."

  "Does that count as being In Trade?" I asked, warming to the Austen-ish theme.

  "Don't let Joan hear you say that! She'll snap your head off. She works so very hard to be horses and hounds." From the tone of Sally's voice, and the trendy nature of her attire (more Warehouse than Jaeger), I gathered it was not an aspiration Joan's little sister shared.

  "Who lived here before?" I asked, glancing around the dark living room, with its age-spotted photographs and claustrophobic cluster of antiques.

  "The Don wells of Don well Abbey. Who else? The portraits came with the house," Sally added.

  So there was the answer to one question. Were the Donwells the sorts of people who would harbor a French spy? In 1803, Selwick Hall would have been at least six or seven hours from London by coach — much faster if one posted down by curricle, but still not the sort of drive one wanted to undertake twice in one day — so the Black Tulip would presumably be staying somewhere in the area, either at an inn or with neighbors. Unless… no, none of Richard and Amy's other houseguests had arrived, which removed the possibility that one of the other spies in training was, in fact, the Black Tulip. Besides, why would a legitimate houseguest bother to deck himself out as the Phantom Monk, when he could just pretend to have taken a wrong turn on the way to the convenience, everyone's favorite age-old excuse. Had there been houseguests at Don well Abbey on the first weekend of June, 1803?

  Unfortunately, while much nicer than her sister, Sally
didn't seem the sort to know. Joan most likely would — or would, at least, know where to look — but… did historical fervor extend that far?

  Probably. If it came down to it. With any luck, a bit more rooting about in Colin's archives would remove the need to resort to Joan.

  I would, I admitted to myself, be very disappointed if Henrietta never discovered the identity of the Black Tulip. It would be a nice little twist to my dissertation — I could add a chapter on "The Dark Mirror: French Counterparts to English Spies" — but mostly, I just wanted to know, because if I didn't it would nag at me, like the question of what happened to the poor little Dauphin, or who killed the Princes in the Tower.

  I decided to give Sally a shot, anyway. "Are there any old stories attached to the house?"

  Sally shook her head. "You would have to ask Joan," she said apologetically.

  "Ask Joan what?"

  I started, spilling some of my wine, as Colin materialized at my elbow.

  Fortunately, it was white wine. And no one noticed. At least, I hoped they didn't. My muddled brain was too busy processing Colin's sudden reappearance. One minute I was talking to Sally, the next, there he was, floating in the air above me like the Cheshire Cat. I had to turn and tilt my head to look up at him; he stood next to me, but a little behind, so that if I leaned back, just the slightest bit, my back would fit very comfortably against his side.

  I stood straight enough to satisfy the most exacting headmistress, and took a little step to the side, which had the added benefit of putting me right over the spilled wine patch.

  "I was just asking Sally if there are any old stories about Donwell Abbey," I said brightly.

  "Are you planning to go root about in someone else's archive?" teased Colin. "Should I be jealous?"

  Maybe I had been better off with him slightly behind me. The force of that smile, faced full on, was dazzling. Stop it! I told myself sternly. He was just relieved to have escaped from Joan. That did not count as flirting with me. At least, not in any way that meant anything.

  He was, however, wearing a very pleasing aftershave.

  "He doesn't even have any ghosts," I said to Sally dismissively.

  "Shall we swap?" suggested Sally to Colin.

  "You take Eloise, I get the ghost? No, thanks."

  "The ghost eats less," I pointed out. "And it's quieter."

  "But can it do the washing up?" asked Colin.

  "You'd have to ask it," said Sally solemnly. "Have you taken Eloise down to the cloisters yet?"

  Colin sent Sally a sardonic look. "And leave the party?"

  "Your fault for saying yes," scolded Sally.

  "There are some consolations," countered Colin.

  "Cloisters?" I piped in.

  Colin groaned. "It's like dangling a bone before a dog."

  "I resent that," I said without heat.

  "Would you prefer a carrot in front of a mule?"

  "Even worse." I turned to Sally. "So there are still bits of the old abbey?"

  "Would you like to see?" suggested Sally. She glanced at Colin. "You don't mind?"

  Colin raised an eyebrow, looking like James Bond about to demand his martini shaken, not stirred. No one could look that debonair without working at it. "Why not?"

  Giggling like naughty schoolchildren (at least Sally and I were giggling), we snuck out of the drawing room. Joan was in the midst of a group of people who all seemed to be talking and drinking with evident enjoyment, and didn't see us go. She was smiling in a genuine way that reduced her teeth from Red Riding Hood's wolf to somewhere near normal size, and the thought struck me that when not defending her territory, she probably wasn't half-bad.

  Then Sally, whose tugging abilities were as well developed as her sister's, yanked on my hand, and I popped out of the drawing room into a tortured maze of back hallways. Selwick Hall was a miracle of eighteenth-century symmetry in comparison. Sally's house seemed to have been designed by the Mad Hatter in conjunction with a paranoid mole; everything was narrow and dark and had more turns than necessary. I wandered along after Colin and Sally, who were bickering amiably about a mutual acquaintance, who had some sort of weekly column that was either a load of codswollop (Colin) or an insightful commentary on modern mores (Sally).

  They seemed to be on very easy and amiable terms — which did make sense, living next door to one another. I wondered if Sally was Colin's usual buffer from Joan's less-than-subtle advances. And if the presence of the older sister had prevented anything from happening with the younger.

  Sally really was quite pretty. Although they both possessed the same lanky frame, Sally didn't have the glossy photo-shoot perfection of her older sister; Sally's hair was an indeterminate brown to her sister's determined blond (and just how much of that difference came out of a bottle was open to speculation), long and curly where Joan's was sleek and straight, her brow wider and her features broader. All the same, there was something much more attractive about Sally's frank, open face. She possessed that timeless girl-next-door quality that endears itself to women as well as men.

  Of course, I reminded myself, she was the girl next door. Quite literally. I concentrated on keeping track of where we were, and regretted not having packed breadcrumbs in my purse. By the time it struck me that miniature Certs might fulfill the same function (and be less likely to fail prey to woodland creatures than the comestibles in the story), we had already come to a halt by a side door.

  It must have once been, like the narrow back hallways, part of the servants' domain in the Upstairs, Downstairs days. Now, the back entrance was cluttered with muddy boots, old raincoats, and various other odds and ends, including a broken tennis racket and some very dirty garden gloves. Colin glanced out the door at the midnight black sky. It couldn't have been much past eight, but sunset comes early in November; it had been full dark since five.

  "Torch?"

  "On the shelf." Sally pointed to a large gray flashlight banded in maroon, the sort with a bulb the size of a fried egg, and a wide flat handle. This one looked like it might have once been white, but years of dust and grimy handprints had taken their toll.

  "Is it far?" I asked belatedly, gathering my borrowed pashmina around my shoulders. The air from the open door bit through the thin material of Serena's dress, and made me wish I'd thought to put on stockings. I was beginning to wonder what I was getting myself into. I hadn't seen any sign of ruins as we'd driven up to the house earlier that evening, and while my enthusiasm for crumbling structures is extreme, it waned a bit in conjunction with thin fabrics, impractical heels, and the prospect of tripping over things in the dark. And, trust me, if there was something to trip over, I would find it.

  Sally looked to Colin.

  Colin shrugged.

  "Not very," he said, in that uninformative male way that could mean anything from just down the block to somewhere in the Outer Hebrides, reachable only by snowbound mountain passes.

  To do him justice, he might have been about to elaborate, but any further description was cut short by a click of heels, and a voice calling, "Sally?"

  "Maybe if we ignore her?" I suggested.

  "Oh, the innocence of youth," murmured Colin. I whacked him on the arm with a stray corner of pashmina. When had I developed these tendencies towards casual violence? First a glow stick, then a pashmina… Of course, there was a perfectly good explanation, but I didn't like it, so I ignored it.

  Joan's voice was not as easily ignored. And it was getting closer.

  "Sally!"

  "Oh, bother," said Sally, throwing back her shoulders in a resigned way. "I wonder what it is now? You go on without me."

  "Are you sure?"

  Sally flapped her hand in dismissal. "Colin knows the way. I'll be along as soon as I can get away. Coming, Joan!"

  "It's just us, then," said Colin, switching on the torch. A ghostly circle of yellow light appeared on the ground about a yard ahead, highlighting dead blades of grass with eerie precision.

  "And the gh
ost," I pointed out.

  "As a chaperone," Colin replied, shutting the door behind us, "he is not very substantial. Shall we?"

  Did he feel the need for a chaperone? I decided not to enquire further; it might sound too much like flirting, and if he were already lamenting the lack of a chaperone, the last thing I wanted to do was give him the impression I was flinging myself at him.

  To give him his due, he was really being more than decent to an unwanted houseguest. I had twisted his arm for an invitation, and he would have been well within his rights to leave me alone in the library. He hadn't had to make me dinner or join me for a walk or take me along to the party with him. When it came down to it, he was behaving exceptionally well, and I… well, let's just say that I wasn't all that proud of my own performance thus far.

  So I let the chaperonage comment pass, and said simply, "Let's."

  The thin beam of light wavered in front of us, a narrow link to warmth and light and civilization. I thought briefly, longingly, of the drinks table. But how often does one get to follow a ghost to his lair? Wrapping my borrowed pashmina more tightly around me, I stumbled along beside Colin towards the lonely cloister of the Phantom Monk.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Phantom (n.): an agent of unusual stealth and skill; the most deadly kind

  — from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  Ghosts did not have feet. It took Henrietta the space of a moment to realize that what she was seeing was not, in fact, a ghastly apparition from the spirit world, but, instead, a human with skullduggery on the mind. Despite Miles's and Richard's protestations to the contrary, there was not a phantom monk. If there were one, she rather doubted it would jaunt over from Donwell Abbey to visit the neighbors, and it would most definitely not step on twigs.

  If Miles was reprising his famous appearance as the Phantom Monk of Donwell Abbey…

  Henrietta levered herself off her bench and stalked towards the house, her dark blue twill traveling dress blending well with the shadows.