The Passion of the Purple Plumeria

by Lauren Willig

  Her voice was like ice. “It’s been done before.”

  “Although I know you don’t believe it, I’m not in the habit of ravishing and walking away.” William could feel the anger churning in his gut, slow to ignite but quick to burn. “There have been three women in my life, and of them I’ve only regrets of the one, Jack’s mother. After that, I swore I’d not take up with anyone lightly.”

  “We’ve hardly taken up—,” Gwen began, but he rode right over her.

  He spoke rapidly, his voice rising with his agitation. “I was faithful to my Maria while she lived and to Lizzy’s mother, too. Eight years we were together, and never once would I have thought of dishonoring her by straying.”

  There had never been any grand passion between them, but it was a comfortable relationship for them both, a marriage in everything but name until Piyali had announced that she was leaving him for a Bengali merchant. He wouldn’t have minded on his own account, but she’d cut all ties with Lizzy and George when she’d gone. Not without tears—there was that much at least—but it would have been uncomfortable with her new people to admit that she’d two children by a feringhi. She was starting new, and a half-British boy of seven and girl of six were no part of her plans.

  It was another reason William had sent Lizzy to England when he had. In a new world, she’d feel the absence of her mother less than she would in the old.

  “As for Jack’s mother . . . I never meant to hurt her, and I did my best to make it right. I’ll bear the guilt of it until the day I die.”

  Gwen made a swift gesture of negation. “You needn’t—”

  William wasn’t done yet. “I’ve five children by three mothers, yes, but I’ve been that careful to make sure there’ll be no others.” Until tonight. He hadn’t thought; he’d just acted. It was entirely contrary to everything he believed. The knowledge of his culpability made him even more vehement. “I’d not leave a child in the world to fend for itself. And I’d certainly not leave a woman alone to fend for my child!”

  Gwen stared at him, as well she might. He felt a bit mad, ranting like that.

  “There’s no need to tell me any of this,” she said, but her voice lacked its usual bite.

  “There is if you think I would—use you”—William’s voice broke with the force of his feeling—“and think nothing more of it.”

  Gwen lifted her chin. “Perhaps I was using you.”

  “No,” he said, and the force of his own reaction surprised him. “No. I’ll not believe that either.”

  “Why not? What do you know of me? I might”—only the slight hesitation gave her away—“I might bed half a dozen men a week.”

  “Only half a dozen?” he said. “Not the full set?”

  “You’re mocking me,” she said flatly, and began walking rapidly.

  William hurried to keep up. “You were talking nonsense,” he protested in his own defense.

  It wasn’t, he realized, the wisest thing to have said.

  Gwen’s lips tightened. “You can’t imagine a dozen men would have me?”

  What was this? William caught up with her just outside the house on Laura Place. “I can’t imagine a dozen men you would have.” He dropped his voice so they wouldn’t be heard by any of the respectable people in their respectable houses. “You’ve better taste than that. Tonight aside.”

  There was something very vulnerable about her, standing there in the moonlight, her fan hanging from her wrist.

  “I don’t know what happened tonight—well, I do, but that’s not what I mean.” Reaching out, William took both her hands in his. They felt strangely stiff in their leather gloves. “This is a damnable time for both of us. I feel like I’ve been dropped hard on my head. I don’t know which end is up or what I’m meant to be doing or how to make things right. But I do know that I’d be the poorer if I’d never met you.”

  Gwen shook her head, as though trying to clear it. “You’re not the only one addled.” Her lips twisted wryly. “I say we blame it on the smoke.”

  “It’s not the smoke.” Whatever else he might not know, he was sure of that. “I don’t know what this is, or what it can be, but whatever it is, I don’t want this to be the end of it. I like you, Gwen Meadows. I don’t want to lose you over a tumble in a back room.”

  “This was what it was. Nothing more.” Her hands tightened briefly around his before drawing away. “We both have our own obligations—and I’m not the marrying kind.”

  He didn’t know what to say; he only knew he didn’t want her to go. “Would you rather I told you my intentions were dishonorable?”

  She gave a short, quick bark of laughter. “Thank you for seeing me home,” she said. “You’re a decent man, William Reid.”

  Then, without giving him warning, she leaned forward and kissed him, full on the lips. For a moment, she was pressed against him, body to body, limb for limb. But only for a moment. When his arms would have closed around her, she twisted away, as lithe as a cat.

  “Good night, Colonel Reid,” she said, and disappeared down an alley, around the back of the house.

  He stood there for a moment in front of the house, frowning into the darkness.

  She might have said good night, but it had sounded like good-bye.

  Gwen’s hand was shaking as she lifted the latch on the French doors that led into the morning room.

  It was what it was; that was all. Pure physical gratification. Whatever he said, she knew that. They both knew that. It was a pity that what one knew with one’s mind didn’t always go hand in hand with what one believed in one’s gut.

  But then, her gut had been wrong before, hadn’t it? With Tim.

  It was a moot point. She wasn’t an impressionable twenty-four anymore. Whatever this was or might be, in a matter of days or weeks, she would be back to France, to do the work she was needed to do. And the Colonel would find someone else to charm with his ready wit.

  It was easier to think of him as the Colonel. The title conjured up impersonal images, a uniform, a parade-ground bellow, not William, red hair rumpled, grin lopsided, his shirt sticking out of his breeches.

  Damn the man. Bad enough that he’d got under her skirts, but did he need to get under her skin as well?

  It was, as she had pointed out to him, a good thing that she was too old to fear any untoward consequences.

  I’d not leave a woman alone to fend for my child.

  The memory made her eyes sting—a very silly sort of weakness. It was probably just the remains of the smoke; that was all, or the grit from someone’s coal fire. There was no point in engaging in sentimental weakness. She had had her little fling, and now it was time to return to the real world, to her duties and obligations.

  There was no reason to feel quite so bereft.

  Gwen lifted the latch, letting herself quietly into the morning room. The house was silent, the only sound the small porcelain clock ticking above the mantel.

  Jane’s voice came out of the darkness. “Did you have an interesting night?”

  Gwen stumbled, nearly knocking over a Chinese vase. “Don’t do that!” she snapped. “What in the blazes are you doing up at this hour?”

  A tinder sparked. A candle glowed gently into flame. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  As Gwen’s eyes adjusted, the blur on the settee resolved itself into Jane, in a pale blue dressing gown, her hair in a long braid that fell down over one shoulder. Her legs were curled up beneath her.

  “You couldn’t sleep?” Gwen made no effort to hide her skepticism.

  Before major missions, when she’d been pacing the halls, she’d seen Jane sleeping the sleep of the annoyingly well organized. The girl could sleep through anything, up to and including amateur musicales.

  “I am . . . concerned about Agnes,” she said, but there was just enough hesitation to make Gwen wonder. “What kept you so long? Was that the Colonel’s voice outside?”

  There were some things Jane just didn’t need to know. “I was attending a
meeting of the Hellfire Club,” Gwen said quickly. “They’ve set up shop here in Bath.”

  “The Hellfire Club?” As she’d hoped, it caught Jane’s attention, distracting her from more personal concerns. “I’d thought they met at Medmenham Abbey.”

  “Not anymore. They’ve found some convenient Roman ruins beneath the opera house.” Gwen seated herself on a chair a safe distance from her charge, trusting to the shadows to hide the signs of ravishment. Ravishment. Who would have thought that would be a concern? “The celebrant calls himself Sir Francis.”

  “Sir Francis Medmenham.” Jane uncurled her legs, swinging her feet to the floor. “There were rumors that he—and his club—were connected with that plot to kidnap the King last year. He was too close a friend of the Prince of Wales for anyone to persist in proving anything.”

  “Friend of the prince or not, he has some rather dubious associates.” Gwen leaned forward in her chair. This was what it was about, she reminded herself. The thrill of the hunt. She was good at this, she and Jane. They made an excellent partnership. “He drugs his followers into ecstasy with opiates he purchases through channels that could only be termed irregular.”

  “That’s hardly news,” said Jane practically.

  “No, but this is.” Gwen drew off her gloves, dropping them on the arm of the chair. “He acquired his opium from the same man who stole the jewels of Berar.”

  Jane was all attention. “Did you get the name?”

  “Oh, yes—and more.” In memory, the smoke swirled around her as she crouched beside that tiny aperture, eavesdropping on Sir Francis and his companion. “The man’s name is the Moonflower. And he’s switched sides. He’s gone from being one of theirs to being one of ours. And he’s taken the jewels with him. Jane? Jane!”

  The girl looked as though she’d been taken with some kind of attack, silently staring. “That’s what it is,” she said softly, so softly Gwen had to strain to hear her.

  “That’s what what is?” Gwen waved her hand back and forth in front of Jane’s face. “Jane!”

  Jane looked at Gwen, but her eyes were still somewhere far, far away. “So that’s why the girls ran from the school,” she said. “He must have sent the jewels to Lizzy. Or someone thought he did. They were either taken, or they ran.”

  There was only so much flesh and blood could bear. “What in the blazes are you talking about?”

  This time, Jane looked at her, really looked at her. Her gray eyes gleamed. “I hadn’t known the Moonflower had switched sides. That is the missing piece, the piece that ties it all together. The jewels, Agnes, everything.”

  “Are you certain you’re feeling quite well?” said Gwen sharply. Too much time with the Chevalier appeared to have unhinged her brain.

  “More than well,” said Jane gently. “It all follows quite logically once you know the connection. The Moonflower is the key.”

  “And what,” demanded Gwen icily, “has the Moonflower to do with our girls?”

  “Everything,” said Jane. “You see, the Moonflower is Jack Reid. Colonel Reid’s son.”

  Chapter 17

  Found! Amarantha was found! But in what strange circumstances? There were no guards at her door, no chains to bind her wrists. “We have come to rescue you!” quoth Plumeria. “Make haste!”

  Amarantha stretched her slender body on the silken settee. “But what if,” sayeth she, “I have no wish to leave? Make no mistake—I jest not. I wish to stay here, in the Dark Tower.”

  “Do not do this thing,” proud Plumeria pled. “For if you do, you shall break my heart.”

  —From The Convent of Orsino by A Lady

  “He can’t be,” said Gwen flatly. “The Moonflower? Colonel Reid’s son? Nonsense.”

  Even as she spoke, fragments of half-remembered conversations came back to jab at her. Colonel Reid’s son, who traded in opium with unsavory elements. The brother who had sent his sister packages in school. The man who had come rummaging through Kat Reid’s lodgings.

  “Do you think Colonel Reid knows?” asked Jane.

  “He said they’re estranged,” said Gwen automatically. Would he have kept from her such a thing as this? He had seemed genuinely surprised by his daughter’s disappearance. No man was as good an actor as that, particularly not a man she had seen stripped bare, raving with fever. “How did you know?”

  “As soon as I heard Agnes was missing, I gathered everything I could on Lizzy Reid and her family. One brother is in the East India Company’s diplomatic service and another in the service of a local ruler. Then there was the third brother. He was rather harder to track down, but what did come back was . . . interesting. I did not know,” Jane added in the interest of fairness, “that he had reconsidered his allegiances. Or that he had run off with the Berar hoard.”

  Gwen looked at Jane. The candle flickered in front of Gwen’s eyes, creating a shifting, smoky haze. “You knew Colonel Reid’s son was a spy.”

  All the while she was in Bristol, sponging his fevered body, at the opera, tonight. Jane knew and she had sent Gwen in blind. That it concerned Colonel Reid made it even worse. It felt like a double betrayal that Jane knew something about him that Gwen didn’t.

  Gwen couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it, the idea that Jane would know something so important and yet keep it from her. “You knew this and you didn’t tell me.”

  “We haven’t had much time to talk since Paris,” said Jane calmly.

  “Whose fault is that?” Gwen pressed her palms flat against the arms of the chair. All the anger and frustration and confusion of the long night surged to the fore. “If that coxcomb of a Frenchman weren’t always sniffing around . . .”

  Jane seemed to retreat into herself, her face as remote as a statue’s. “I have my reasons for keeping him close.”

  “Yes, I imagine you do!” Gwen’s blood boiled. A dozen things she might say burbled to her lips, jumbling and confusing themselves. Did Jane know her precious Chevalier might be prancing about in a hood, hawking opiates to the Hellfire Club?

  She opened her mouth to say it, but the words wouldn’t come. Because it would be worse, so much worse, if Jane did know and hadn’t bothered to tell her. It hit her like a blow to the belly. That made far more sense than an amorous attachment, however Jane might look at the man. But why not tell her? Why not confide in her? Jane always told her everything.

  But she hadn’t told her about Jack Reid.

  The horrible silence went on and on, a silence so total that it made Gwen’s ears ache.

  Into that dreadful silence, Jane spoke. “I didn’t tell you about Jack Reid because I didn’t want you to say anything to the Colonel.”

  Gwen felt like a gaping chasm was opening beneath her feet, the ground shaking and shifting. “You kept this from me deliberately?”

  Jane shifted on the settee. “It seemed prudent.”

  Prudent? Prudent? Gwen groped at her meaning. “You can’t think— However fond I might be of the Colonel, I would certainly never let that blind me to— That is—” Fond. She hadn’t meant to say fond. She hadn’t meant to admit—

  She broke off, pressing her fingers to her cheeks. No need for Jane to see the color in her face. No need for Jane to know that her friendship with the Colonel had progressed to a rather more intimate level. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything. They had their own obligations; she had told him that. The League came first.

  Sitting up very straight, Gwen said formally, “Whatever the circumstances”—on the floor, on the crate, against the scenery—“you know I would never do anything that might jeopardize our mission.”

  Jane was all that was apologetic and insincere. “I know that, but I couldn’t risk your saying something that might reach the wrong ears.”

  As an apology, it wasn’t much of an apology at all. It was more than a little bit offensive, really. Just because she happened to find the Colonel attractive didn’t mean she had forgotten their purpose. Besides, wasn’t Miss Jane conducting a
little flirtation of her own?

  Guilt made Gwen sharp. “Did you really think I would compromise our mission for a man?”

  “Not for a man, no.” Jane paused. “But you do sometimes speak without thinking. I couldn’t take that risk.”

  The full force of the blow took a few moments to hit her, to sink through flesh and muscle, striking straight to the heart, all the more cutting for being delivered so casually, so matter-of-factly. Not for a man.

  No, just in general.

  Gwen struggled for calm. “Have I ever betrayed your trust? Led you astray?”

  She had never done anything that would put the League in danger. Not without good and sufficient reason, at any rate, and if it had all turned out right in the end, wasn’t that proof enough of her good judgment?

  It took the Pink Carnation just a little too long to reply. “You do get a bit carried away sometimes,” Jane said apologetically.

  “In moments of action, perhaps—but only when it’s necessary.” Gwen shot up from her seat on the chair, her entire body trembling with hurt. “If you took issue with the way I conduct our affairs, you ought to have told me before! Not—” In a voice that she didn’t recognize as hers, she demanded, “Just how much have you been keeping me in the dark?”

  Jane’s silence was answer enough.

  Gwen felt sick. Her stomach churned; her hands were cold and clammy. She could feel the drops of sweat on her forehead. Even the smoke, that ridiculous, drugged smoke, hadn’t made her feel so sick as this. The world seemed to shift and sway around her, as everything she’d thought she knew rearranged itself around her.

  What else hadn’t Jane told her? How many times had she been deliberately left ignorant? She had always assumed that she was indispensible to Jane, that the two of them were hand in hand and glove in glove. They were a partnership. It didn’t matter that Jane bore the title; if Jane was queen, then Gwen was prime minister. Jane planned; Gwen executed. They might not always see entirely eye to eye, but they thrashed everything out together.