Masque of the Black Tulip pc-2

by Lauren Willig

  "You seem to have acquired an admirer," Miles commented shortly, boosting her into the curricle. He paused to glower at the man in the doorway, who continued to admire his own stickpin, supremely unconcerned. "Hurry," urged Henrietta. As if to back her up, the horses, a new team, pranced restlessly in their harness as the ostler handed off the reins to Miles.

  Miles slapped the horses into motion. "Do you care to explain what's going on?"

  Henrietta flapped an agitated hand at him, twisting to stare over the folding back of the curricle at the rapidly receding inn yard. "Later!"

  Since it took Miles several moments to get the measure of the new team, and Henrietta seemed more inclined to squirm in her seat and cast anguished glances behind them than speak, it was several moments before Miles broached the topic again.

  "Not that I mind being bereft of Turnip's company," said Miles, steering his way expertly around two hens that had decided to cross the road, "but why the sudden desire to leave? Dare I hope it was a passionate desire to be alone with me?" His eyebrows drew together. "Was that man bothering you? If he was, I — "

  "No, nothing like that." Henrietta cast a haunted look back over her shoulder. A black post chaise, clearly a private vehicle, although a well-worn one, tooled along the road behind them, but it was far enough away to ensure them a modicum of privacy. Nonetheless, just to be safe, Henrietta hunched towards Miles and lowered her voice for greater secrecy. "There was something suspicious going on back there."

  Miles grimaced. "Something about a propitious dancing bear?"

  Maybe her voice hadn't needed to be quite that low.

  Henrietta started again. "When I went upstairs, I overhead Lord Vaughn in the private parlor."

  Miles shot up in his seat. "What!"

  Since Henrietta had been speaking quite clearly that time, she correctly assumed that Miles's exclamation had more to do with surprise than lack of comprehension. "He was speaking with a woman with a foreign accent — it was a very light accent, but still noticeable."

  Miles smacked one gloved hand against the side of the curricle. "Fiorila!"

  "Flowers?" said Henrietta, perplexed.

  "Poisonous ones." Miles hauled on the reins, preparing to bring the carriage about. "Why didn't you tell me before we left?"

  "Shhh!" exclaimed Henrietta, glancing anxiously behind them. The other carriage had also checked.

  "I don't think they can hear us." Reluctantly, Miles slapped the reins, signaling the horses to go forwards. "It's probably too late to go back," he said, more to himself than to her. "Vaughn and his companion will have flown the coop by now. Damnation! If I'd known — "

  "That's exactly why I didn't tell you. It just didn't seem like a good idea." Henrietta struggled to rationalize her impulse. "We don't know who he had with him — "

  "Oh, I have a very good idea of that," Miles muttered.

  " — or if he was armed," continued Henrietta pointedly. "If he is the Black Tulip, doesn't it make far more sense to apprehend him in London, with all the might of the War Office at your disposal, rather than out in the middle of nowhere. For all we know, the inn might have been swarming with his men! Or he might not even be the Black Tulip," she added as an afterthought. "Something didn't sound quite right."

  "Ungh" was what Miles thought of that reservation, but he grudgingly admitted the validity of the former. "I'll go see Wickham tomorrow morning."

  "Why not tonight?" asked Henrietta.

  "Because tonight" — Miles raised a pair of sandy eyebrows — "is my wedding night."

  Henrietta discovered a sudden interest in the scenery.

  Wedding night, thought Henrietta, staring unseeingly at Streatham Common. That was what generally followed after a wedding. Usually at night. Hence the term, wedding night, which combined the concepts of both wedding and night.

  Henrietta bit down hard on her lip, making a concerted effort to rein in her wayward mind before she launched into a long and tangled analysis of wedding customs from the Anglo-Saxons to the present, and what exactly the etymology of the word "night" might be.

  The origin of the word "evasion," she thought, glowering at a cow grazing on the Common, would be more to the point.

  There were so many thoughts to evade that Henrietta didn't even know where to begin. Did Miles's mention of the wedding night mean that he intended to go through with the marriage? Or was he bringing up the topic in the hopes that she would broach the ridiculousness of their remaining married? His face had been as inscrutable as it was possible for Miles's face to be. He hadn't looked particularly put out at the notion of consummating their marriage — he hadn't sounded bitter or resigned or angry, or any of the other sentiments one might expect of a reluctant bridegroom — but he hadn't seemed particularly enthused, either. Bleargh.

  Miles reined in slightly to allow a farmer's cart to pass. The carriage behind them reined in, too. Henrietta frowned.

  "Miles?" Henrietta asked uneasily. "Am I imagining things, or has that carriage been behind us for a very long time?"

  Miles shrugged, unconcerned. "It might have been. It wouldn't be surprising if it were. Now, about Vaughn…"

  Henrietta twisted in her seat to stare back at the carriage. "But don't you find it the least bit odd that they rein in every time you do?"

  "What?" Miles twisted sharply in his seat, inadvertently giving a sharp tug on the reins. His horses checked abruptly.

  So did the horses of the carriage behind him.

  "What the devil!" exclaimed Miles, subsiding back into his seat.

  "Exactly." Henrietta drew in a sharp breath between her teeth. "I don't like this."

  "Neither do I," said Miles.

  He shoved the ribbons into her gloved hands.

  "Here, take the reins for a moment. I want to take another look."

  Taken aback, Henrietta grappled with the four sets of ribbons Miles had handed her, trying to figure out which was which, as Miles clambered over the back of the seat. Sensing an inexperienced hand on the reins, the horses lurched alarmingly. Miles paused, balanced on the top of the seat, facing backwards.

  "Just hold them steady, Hen," he directed, leaping nimbly onto the perch usually reserved for a groom. The curricle rocked dangerously.

  "Just hold them steady?!" repeated Henrietta incredulously, struggling to keep the right leader in line. He showed a distressing tendency to try to veer off to the side. It had been a long time since Henrietta had driven anything but Miles's phaeton, and that at the sedate pace mandated by the congestion of the park. She tugged fruitlessly at the rein as the carriage swayed to the right. "Miles! Please try not to overturn us!"

  "Damn."

  "What?" Every muscle in Henrietta's body tensed, but she didn't dare take her attention from the road. "What is it?"

  Miles vaulted back into his seat, taking the reins from her with a practiced hand. "You're not going to like this," he said, urging the team forward and drawing the recalcitrant leader effortlessly back into line.

  "What?" Henrietta demanded.

  "They," Miles said, cracking the whip with ruthless efficiency, just as a crack of another kind entirely sounded behind them, "have a gun."

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Elopement: a desperate attempt at flight, usually pursued by one or more members of Bonaparte's secret police. See also under Parent, Vengeful.

  — from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  Another bullet whizzed past, this time driving a long furrow into the polished exterior of the vehicle.

  "My curricle!" exclaimed Miles indignantly. "I just had it polished!"

  Doubled over at the waist, Henrietta rather thought that was the least of their problems, but she wasn't going to argue about it. She didn't have the breath to argue about it.

  "Right." Miles hunched low over the reins, his face a model of steely determination. "That's it. I'm going to give that bounder the ride of his life."

  "You mean you weren't already?" gasped Henriett
a, clinging to her bonnet with one hand and the seat with the other.

  "That was just a little jog!" Miles cracked the reins, a look of unholy glee transforming his face. "Come on, my beauties! You can do it!"

  As if seized of the same spirit, the four horses broke into a full-out gallop. Henrietta abandoned her bonnet to devote both hands to clutching the seat. The rebellious piece of haberdashery instantly blew back off her head with a force that betokened imminent strangulation.

  "That's the spirit!" Henrietta wasn't sure whether Miles was talking to her or his horses, but she supposed the latter, especially when he jerked his head briefly in her direction and shouted, "You all right, Hen?"

  Henrietta mustered a slightly strangled noise of assent, just as the carriage hit a rut, sending the body of the curricle bounding merrily into the air, and landing with a thump that jarred through Henrietta's entire body.

  Henrietta was distracted from her mere physical irritation by an ominous rattling noise. Beneath her, the right wheel of the two-wheeled vehicle was shaking in a way that boded no good to the continued stability of the whole. Henrietta's gloved hands went rigid on the side of the curricle as she peered, open mouthed with alarm, at the quivering wheel.

  If she were a villain intent on wreaking doom and destruction — and the pistol shots did rather seem to point in that direction — wasn't tampering with the carriage too obvious a source of mayhem to neglect? They had been in the inn with Turnip for such a very long time. There had been so many carriages and people milling about in the courtyard of the inn that none of the harried grooms or ostlers would have paid the least bit of attention to someone paying undue attention to any one vehicle. And Miles's curricle was so distinctive amongst all the plain black carriages and grimy hired post chaises. Henrietta's knowledge of carriage construction was minimal in the extreme, but how hard could it be to loosen a wheel? It would be the work of a moment to kneel by the side of the carriage and slide back the pin. And at speeds like this…

  The carriage hit another rut, sending Henrietta jouncing into the air, and the wheel shaking in a way that forebode imminent disaster.

  "Miles!" Henrietta clutched Miles's arm. "The wheels!"

  "Hunh?" Miles glanced rapidly over at her.

  "The rattling noise," Henrietta gasped. "Someone must have loosened the wheels!"

  "Oh, that!" Miles beamed at her in a way entirely inappropriate for someone courting violent death. "That's just the noise it makes when it's going fast," he explained happily.

  They whizzed past the astonished toll keeper at Kennington Turnpike so fast that he had no time to do more than shake his fist at them as they barreled through. "I say! Hen!" shouted Miles over the din of the horses' hooves. "Could you check if he's still behind us?"

  Clinging to her place through pure force of will, Henrietta turned an incredulous stare at her husband. Her bonnet whacked her in the face, but Henrietta didn't dare lift a hand to push it back. "If you think I'm letting go and turning around, you're crazy!"

  "Don't worry!" yelled Miles. "I'll lose him as soon as we cross Westminster Bridge!"

  "If we live that long!"

  "What?"

  "Nevermind!"

  "Whaaaat?"

  "I said — oh, never mind," Henrietta muttered. That was the problem with snide comments; they invariably lost all their punch on repetition. Besides, when facing impending death, what did the odd witticism matter?

  Despite her words, Henrietta crammed her head around to look behind. Their adversary must have wasted no more time at the toll than they; he was still behind and gaining, black horses covering the ground in long strides.

  Westminster Bridge had come into sight, a long arch across the span of the river, crowded with evening traffic. There were pedestrians walking along the balustrades in the twilight, farmers leading their wagons back from market, gentlemen on horseback riding out to nefarious pleasures in the suburbs of the city, and mules laden with yesterday's baking.

  Miles and Henrietta barreled into the whole like a cat among pigeons. Henrietta felt the jarring thud beneath them as the carriage sprang from springy turf onto hard stone. Horses shied, bolting for cover. Merchants hurriedly yanked their carts off to the sides of the bridge. Pedestrians flung themselves as far as they could go against the stone railings. Around them, the air was thick with complaints and curses, and behind them, the determined clip of horses plowing straight towards them, thundering along the smooth length of the bridge after them. Henrietta closed her eyes and prayed.

  Never entirely steady on its foundations, the bridge swayed alarmingly. Henrietta opened her eyes and wished she hadn't. Below them churned the dark waters of the Thames, dotted with rapidly moving boats like so many water bugs scurrying to and fro. If Miles lost control of the horses, even for a moment, the balustrades would do nothing to check their precipitate descent into the foaming currents.

  The horses were still running full out, straight down the center of the bridge; whether Miles was driving them, or they were bolting, Henrietta wasn't entirely sure. Head turned to the side, Henrietta counted arches as they whizzed by. They were past the halfway mark, still going strong straight down the middle of the bridge.

  A shout made her jerk her head back to the road. Someone screamed. Henrietta wasn't quite sure, but she thought it might have been she.

  Smack in the center of a bridge a cart full of cabbages blocked the way. Its owner, wide-eyed with terror, tugged futilely at the mule's head, futilely entreating him to move. The curricle barreled inexorably closer. Three yards… two… The wild-eyed farmer dropped the reins and scrambled for cover. The mule didn't budge.

  "Oh, my God," breathed Henrietta.

  Next to her, Miles drew in an exultant breath. "Just the thing! Hang on, Hen…"

  Henrietta had heard of driving to an inch, but she had never seen it performed quite so literally before. At the last possible moment, Miles swung the horses to the side in a concerted movement that would have been beautiful in its sheer coordination if Henrietta hadn't been trying quite so hard not to fall out the side of the coach. Moving perfectly in tandem, the horses swept around the side of the cart, passing so neatly through the narrow space that Henrietta could hear the wood of the cart whisper along one side of the curricle and the stone of the balustrade on the other.

  Miles muttered something under his breath that sounded like, "My varnish," but Henrietta was too busy ushering up fervent thanks to the Almighty to be quite sure.

  And then they were clear again, with an unimpeded path to the edge of the bridge. Miles cracked his whip over his head with an uninhibited shout of triumph.

  "Watch this, Hen!" he shouted, as the curricle careened off the bridge and veered sharply to the left — just as the carriage behind them, going too fast to stop, and without enough skill to employ Miles's maneuver, slammed right into the farmer's deserted cart with an explosive crash. Cabbages flew everywhere. A hail of green balls descended upon the passersby and plopped into the greedy mouth of the Thames.

  Henrietta caught the merest glimpse of their assailant's carriage, piled high with produce, before Miles flicked the reins again and plunged into a shadowed side street just wide enough to admit the curricle. As it was, the scraped sides brushed against lines of laundry, and the overhangs of the upper stories formed a dark canopy above Henrietta's head. Miles took them down an intricate web of back streets, while Henrietta concentrated on coaching air back into her lungs. As the landscape began to appear more familiar, the streets broader, the houses wider, Miles let the lathered horses slow to an exhausted shuffle.

  Henrietta forced her gloved hands to unclench from the sides of the seat, finger by finger.

  "Are we… safe, do you think?" she asked, blinking unsteadily at their surroundings. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, wondering if it was the twilight that rendered Grosvenor Square so murky and insubstantial, or her vision. The gray-fronted mansions swayed as though they were phantoms composed of fog and might disso
lve at any moment, while the trees in the center of the square melded together into an indistinguishable blur of green and brown.

  "He won't have followed us here," Miles said, drawing the horses to a stop in front of a wide-fronted mansion, a command the tired horses were only too glad to obey. Miles couldn't stop a satisfied smirk from creeping across his face as he added, "It will take him a while to climb out from under all that cabbage."

  "That was quite impressive," said Henrietta shakily. "Especially that bit with the cart."

  Miles gave his whip a modest twirl. "There was plenty of room."

  "And I hope never to be in a carriage with you when you drive like that ever again." Miles's whip stopped mid-twirl. "I thought I was going to be ill. Or dead," she added as an afterthought.

  "Didn't you trust my driving?" Miles asked indignantly.

  "Oh. I trust you. It was the man with the gun who worried me. Somehow, I didn't think he would be quite so solicitous of my well-being." Starting to shake, Henrietta raised both her hands to her lips. "Someone just shot at us. Do you realize that someone just shot at us?"

  Making a muffled noise of concern, Miles dragged Henrietta into his arms. Henrietta went without argument, burying her head in Miles's cravat while a series of nightmare images flashed through her head, faster than the scenery they had charged through on their heedless flight. That dark, faceless carriage pounding after them. The long muzzle of a gun, glinting in the last rays of the sunlight. The sound of bullets, sending up puffs of dust in the road behind them, and chipping at the sides of the curricle. Henrietta's unregenerate imagination presented her with the image of Miles jerking back as a bullet thudded into him, stiffening, and tumbling over the side of the curricle into the wayside dust, his brown eyes open in an unseeing stare. Henrietta realized she was shaking, and couldn't make herself stop. If any one of those bullets had been just a little closer…