Military and naval uniforms were also in evidence, as were the dress jackets of the merchant navies of at least a dozen seafaring kingdoms around the world.
The women’s dress was less varied in style, if more varied in the individual realization of that style. The Angevin ladies present were all in versions of the high-waisted, low-cut, heavily pleated, long-skirted dress popularized the previous year by Princess Ginjer du Lac, younger daughter of the King of the Scots, when she was presented at the Imperial Court. Even the poorest goodwife or demoiselle on New Borkum had managed to gown herself in a reasonable version of the princess’ dress.
The few native women who were there were all substantial ladies of matronly years (“We’re not going to let any of the young virgins of this tribe go to that Angevin dance. The Great Spirit knows what sort of foreign foolishness goes on there!”). They wore bright, varicolored blouses with heavily beaded skirts.
An arm slipped under Lord Darcy’s arm. “Good evening, Cousin,” a mellifluous voice trilled, “I’ve been looking for you. See how thoughtful I am, even to distant relatives; I brought you a drink.”
Lady Irene Eagleson, her blond hair done up in a fantasy hairdo of twists, turns, and flowing shapes, which strangely complemented the simplicity of her red dress, stood by his side, two glasses carefully balanced in her free hand. “I hope Robertia ouiskie and sparkling Belenzon is satisfactory, my lord,” she said, offering him one of the glasses.
“It might well be,” he said, taking the glass and holding it to the light. “A local brew, is it? I am unfamiliar with the ingredients, but if you chose it, Cousin dear, I’m sure it’s delightful.” He raised the drink to his nose, to see what hints its aroma would offer. It smelled of ouiskie. Lady Irene, Lord Darcy noted, had a scent that murmured of beauty and femininity; no doubt compounded of rare floral essences and unspeakable parts of musk deer, it made his senses ever so slightly reel, and made him think uncousinly thoughts toward this lovely young lady. No, let him be honest; it wasn’t merely the scent. In the bottle, or on another wrist or neck or breast, it would not provoke this reaction. It was Lady Irene; a girl he was meeting only for the second time, despite their fiction of kinship.
I wonder, Lord Darcy thought, whether I’ve suddenly reached that age they write about, when men suddenly lust after young girls. Or, perhaps, I’m truly attracted to her. If the latter, fine. If the former, I had better go take a cold shower and go to bed with an almanac tonight. But how to tell?
Or perhaps he was being ensorcelled. Perhaps this was the result of a clever love-spell. No, Lord Darcy decided. That had happened to him before, in the course of duty, and it felt different—a blind, compelling, unreasoned urge that left a part of the brain standing back and knocking for attention and wondering what was going on and why. This was a more relaxed, more pleasant, and surely more honest feeling than the compulsion of a spell.
I will not worry about it, Lord Darcy thought. Events will follow their course regardless.
“The ouiskie,” Lady Irene was saying, her large blue eyes staring up at him from under their long lashes, “is a local product, from the Duchy of Robertia, to the south. It is very highly regarded by those who are connoisseurs of such things.”
“As is my pipe tobacco,” Lord Darcy noted. “From Robertia, that is.”
“The water is a naturally fizzy water from Belenzon Spring, to the north of here,” Lady Irene told him. “They are supposed to be a pleasing combination. I find the water pleasant mixed with white wine, but I confess that ouiskie is a bit too strong on my tongue.”
He sipped at the drink and found it surprisingly good. “Very pleasant, my lady,” he agreed. “Very smooth and mild. I am surprised—” he searched for a word.
Lady Irene laughed. “Surprised to find something so civilized out here?” she suggested. “Expected to find a raw product, from the distillery to your lips?”
Lord Darcy smiled and nodded. “Something of that sort,” he admitted.
“Well, we can certainly supply that, too,” she said. “But this particular example of the distiller’s art has been maturing in charred oak casks for twelve years.” She smiled. “Almost as long as we’ve been apart, Cousin.”
“It was remiss of me,” Lord Darcy said, with a matching smile. “Horribly remiss. To have been out of touch for all this time. What was I thinking of?”
“Well,” Lady Irene said, with a charming pout, “not of me, obviously.”
“On the other hand,” Lord Darcy said, as though suddenly realizing, “you never wrote!”
“Oh, I did, I did,” Lady Irene assured him. “I was just too bashful to send the letters. You would have laughed at my schoolgirl crush.”
“Ah,” Lord Darcy said. “Would I?”
“I certainly hope so,” she replied. “But I’m twenty-six now, and hardly a schoolgirl any more.”
Lord Darcy looked down at her, but she had turned her head away. “My lord,” she said, “let us talk over old times, and discuss family matters. How has Aunt Bertha been all these years? Does Cousin Edgar really enjoy walking on all fours and baying at the moon? Important business of that nature. Would you like to step outside onto the lawn with me? I believe it is not too cold as yet.”
“Delighted,” Lord Darcy replied.
Together they strolled out through one of the open windows, her hand lightly on his arm. When they were about ten yards away from the house, and Lord Darcy was wondering what he could say to this strange, and strangely appealing, girl, she turned to him. “We seem to be alone,” she said. “There are a few things I have to report to you about, and this seemed a convenient time. I don’t believe any of them are meaningful to your investigation, but that is for you to say.”
“Report?” Lord Darcy asked. It seemed a strange choice of words.
“My friends call me ‘Muffin.’ Did you know that?” she said lightly, sharing a girlish confidence. “It’s from some opera or other, I believe.”
Lord Darcy stopped in midstride. He was seldom startled, but this young lady had managed to come close. “Muffin?”
“There, now I’ve done it,” Lady Irene said. “I’ve upset you.”
“Surprised, perhaps,” Lord Darcy acknowledged, looking around casually to make sure they could not be overheard. “I wouldn’t say ‘upset’. So you are the local agent of the Most Secret Service?”
“One of them,” she said. “I do hope you’re not the sort of man who thinks I’m too small, too young, or too—er—female, for such a job.”
“Neither too young nor too small,” Lord Darcy assured her. “And I have never thought gender a bar to such service. But, how did you—”
She laughed quietly. “‘How did a nice girl like me’—is that how that starts? I suppose I’m not fit for anything else.”
“My lady?” Lord Darcy frowned. “Not fit?”
“When I was fifteen I was going with my mother to Alexandria,” she said softly, staring off at something in the darkness across the river. “My father was in the diplomatic service there. Our ship didn’t make it. We were captured by Barbary pirates. I spent six months in Mahdia being—trained—by a man named Effez before he sold me to the Sultan of Hafsid. He gave me as a gift to the Osmanli Sultan, who presented me to his eldest son, Mustafa, on his birthday. It was there I learned to sing.”
Lord Darcy raised an eyebrow, but he said nothing.
Lady Irene went on: “For four years I was the favorite of Mustafa, until he tired of me. Which probably saved my life, since his mother had decided that I was dangerous, and was going to have me killed. I managed to smuggle myself on a ship bound for Venice by offering myself to a sailor. He tried keeping me on the ship when we had arrived, but I crawled through the porthole and swam ashore.
“I stayed in Venice for two years, while my family debated what to do with me. Finally they sent for me, and I returned to London. They had decided that I really couldn’t be presented in court, everything considered,—so, after six month
s, they sent me here. In the meantime I had met the head of the Most Secret Service—without knowing who he was, of course—and he interrogated me about conditions in the Osmanli Empire. Then he offered me a job.”
She stopped talking and turned to Lord Darcy, waiting for him to speak.
For a long moment he was silent.
“I didn’t know you could sing,” he said finally.
“Soprano,” she said. “You’ll have a chance to hear me shortly. I’m supposed to sing two numbers as part of the entertainment later.” Then she shrugged a funny shrug and put her hands lightly on his chest. “That’s it?” she asked. “After what I’ve just told you, that’s your only question?”
He smiled and put his arm around her shoulder. “You’re good, Lady Irene, you’re really good,” he told her. “I thought that the singing part of that story might be true. Was any of the rest of it?”
She looked at him with her mouth open in astonishment for a moment. Then she shrugged again, and smiled a twisted little smile. “A bit of it,” she said, “but very little.”
“It is an interesting fiction,” Lord Darcy said. “I wonder whether the choice of details tells more about you or about the sort of person you usually have to tell it to.”
Lady Irene pulled her hands away from Lord Darcy as though he had just bitten her. “I don’t—” she said angrily, cutting herself off without finishing the thought. Then she shook her head slightly and slipped her arm back through Lord Darcy’s. “Silly me,” she said, “to get angry at someone I like because he caught me lying to him. Your question is interesting, my lord.”
“And the answer?” Lord Darcy asked mildly.
She considered. “I’d say the honors are equal,” she said. “The men to whom I usually must tell the story need to hear something of the sort, and I must confess I get some satisfaction out of telling it. They would think a pampered girl who lived a blameless life in and around a series of Angevin courts could not have the, let us say, toughness of mind to do some of the things required of her. And if they lacked trust in my ability, the mission would suffer. As the ladies in another, perhaps similar, profession might say, the story is good for the trade. I hope that catching me out hasn’t made you think I’m hopelessly incompetent. I assure you it’s not so, and most men enjoy that story. Tell me, how did you know it wasn’t true?”
Lord Darcy smiled. “I didn’t say I didn’t enjoy it,” he said. “I’ll trade you. If you’ll tell me the truth—because now I really am curious—I’ll tell you how I knew.”
“You ask a lot,” she said,” but all right. You start.”
“I knew your story wasn’t true,” Lord Darcy told her, “because bits of the evidential detail were false. And that sort of story is either all true or not at all true.”
“You’re saying that I can’t be a little bit pregnant,” she said, “and I’ll agree. Which bit of my description beggared belief?”
“Well, for one thing, the last recorded instance of Barbary pirates capturing a ship was in 1957; a couple of years before you were born.”
“I thought—” she began.
“Yes, Lord Darcy interrupted, “most people do. Romance dies hard. Also, if you had been captured by pirates, they would have ransomed you, as they had been doing since the time of Julius Caesar. On the theory that your relatives would pay more for you than—ah—anyone with baser motives. They have many beautiful women of their own in North Africa, even if few of them are blond.”
“That’s it?” she asked.
“As I said, one weak point will destroy such a tale,” Lord Darcy told her. “But there is the additional fact that Abd-ul Hamid’s eldest son, whose name, incidentally, is Hasid, was at Oxford with me.”
“Damn!” Lady Irene said with feeling.
“Your turn,” Lord Darcy said. They had continued walking while they spoke, and they now stood on a bluff overlooking the river. Below them was the small pier at which Lord Darcy had arrived at the Residence. Across from them were the tall cliffs on the opposite shore, now cast in shadow like a row of brooding giants.
Lady Irene shrugged. “The truth is stranger, if less romantic,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I would make up something else, except there is cause for you to know the truth, and I would like to tell you. I am part of a Polish plot to infiltrate New England.”
Lord Darcy turned to look fully at this lovely lady in the dim light, peering at her as though to read the truth written in her eyes. “Stranger, indeed,” he said. “If so, why are you telling me?”
“Because I am, indeed, a loyal subject of the Empire, and a faithful agent of His Majesty’s Most Secret Service. It is the Poles I’m lying to. Of course you have to take my word for that, but, as you’ll see, the burden of proof is with me. Luckily, the Poles cannot see the burden I carry.”
“Tell me,” Lord Darcy said.
“What part?” she asked.
“Start at the beginning.”
“Five years ago,” she said, “I fell in love. His name was Guiliam, and he was a Doubter. I was moving in a circle of Doubters, and was more or less one of them, spiritually if not philosophically. It seemed so exciting to have a cause, so right, so important. And when my parents and the other adults I knew told me what a fool I was being, why, it merely tested the armor of my righteousness. What could anyone over forty know about truth, or justice?”
“I remember the Doubters,” Lord Darcy said. “A scruffy group that went around destroying what it did not understand. Was that only five years ago? It seems an age. But then fashion changes rapidly among the young, even in doubt.”
“We doubted everything,” she said, “the rightness of Imperialism, and divisions of society, and the social mores, and the sexual mores. Especially, I suppose, the sexual mores. And you’re right; what we doubted we attacked. Usually physically. Guiliam was one of the leaders of the movement. He was very convincing. He wanted to strike at society, and I helped him. We broke into some Government offices to burn papers and destroy things. It was very satisfying, the feeling of destroying things for a good cause. Then I found out that Guiliam was stealing some of the papers I thought he was burning. He told me it was to give them to the newspapers. He was lying. He was, as it turned out, a Serka agent.”
“Um,” Lord Darcy said.
“I didn’t know that at the time, of course. By the time I figured it out, he told me that I was in too deep to pull out. He said that he might be a spy, but I was a traitor. I had helped him steal secret papers.”
“Many an older and more experienced person than you has been caught in such a trap,” Lord Darcy said. “What did you do?”
“I cried for three days, and then I went to see Sir Kevin DeWitt and confessed everything. I might have been a fool, but I was no traitor.”
“The Marshal of England?”
“It might have been an odd choice. I know he has to do with the courts and things, but doesn’t investigate anything or arrest anybody. But he was the highest-ranking official whom I knew personally. He was an old friend of my father’s.”
“Yes?” Lord Darcy said.
“He listened to me carefully, and then suggested that I go see Lord Peter Whiss. Which advice I took.”
“And what did Lord Peter say?”
“Well, he didn’t arrest me. He said there was no law against being a dupe, and that I had behaved very courageously in coming to see him.”
“So you had,” Lord Darcy agreed.
She nodded. “I believe that was the single most courageous act I have done in my life. Since then, I have done things that would seem to require more bravery, but I was better trained and knew what I was getting into. When I went to see Lord Peter, I was frightened out of my mind. I thought they were going to take me to the Tower and cut off my head.”
“And instead?”
“Lord Peter asked me if I’d pretend to go along with Guiliam; act as though I were too frightened to do otherwise. He wanted me to find out who Guiliam was working
with, and what sort of information he was seeking. He said I didn’t have to, and that there would be no punishment if I refused. I was frightened, but I thought that I should do this. You know?”
“I know,” Lord Darcy assured her.
“And that’s how it began,” she told him. “I found that I have an affinity for this sort of work. I have an absolutely retentive memory, and I think fast. And I consider that what I am doing is more important than anything else I could be doing, so how can I stop?”
“How, indeed?” Lord Darcy said. He was familiar with the lure of the work, as he felt it himself. The challenge of pitting yourself, your intellect, against a player on the other side, the gratification of success, the danger in failure. It could be like a drug.
“Do you believe that story?” she asked.
“It has the ring of verisimilitude,” Lord Darcy said. “Which, I suppose, should make me suspect it. But somehow I think it’s at least substantially true.”
She nodded. “It is the truth. And now, having worked my way up in the hierarchy, I am over here at the behest of the Serka, to pry Angevin secrets out of the Imperial Governor. They believe I’ve turned mercenary, and am doing this for the large sums vf money they pay me. I also help them smuggle guns to the native tribes. In between time I do little errands for the Most Secret Service.” She put her hand to her forehead in mock exhaustion. “Oh! The social whirl. I hardly have time to go to my dressmaker’s.”
Lord Darcy decided that he liked this girl. “How many of them are there?” he asked. “Did the Serka agents have anything to do with Prince Ixequatle’s murder?”
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