The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  “Your family heritage—,” began Aunt Winifred stridently.

  “The ball is in two days,” said Uncle Henry wearily. “The cards have gone out already.”

  Lucien looked at him with gratitude.

  “All the same,” Uncle Henry added, looking to Lucien, “we do trust we will see you there.”

  It was more a command than a request.

  In a gentler tone, Uncle Henry added, “It would mean a great deal to us to have you join us.”

  The last thing Lucien wanted was to go out into society. But, with the weight of four pairs of Caldicott eyes upon him, there was little he could do but say, “I will not fail you.”

  “Haven’t you?” said Aunt Winifred. And then, “Come, Clarissa.”

  Clarissa went, pausing only to give Lucien a long, hard look on her way out. “Welcome home,” she said.

  Her welcome did not sound particularly welcoming.

  Uncle Henry squeezed his shoulder in passing. “It’s good to have you back, my boy.”

  “Thank you,” said Lucien, his throat tight with a tangle of emotions. Uncle Henry, of all of them, sounded as though he meant it.

  The only one left was Hal.

  Hal had been eleven when Lucien left. Now he was a young man, with his fine, fair hair cut fashionably short, and his waistcoat generously adorned with jangling fobs. Once upon a time, he had been Lucien’s shadow, tagging along after him to the stable and the Home Woods, filching tarts from the kitchen as a signal of his devotion, always ready to take the junior part in any drama.

  Now he looked at Lucien with hurt, accusing eyes. “I didn’t believe it when they told me,” he said, in a low voice.

  “Believe—”

  “That you had come back.” Hal’s voice broke on the last word. He gave a bitter laugh. It made him sound, thought Lucien, very young. “But, then, I didn’t believe it when you left, either. Just like that. Without a word.”

  If he had left word, they would have found him and made him come back. But Lucien couldn’t say that.

  “I’m sorry?” he ventured.

  “Sorry,” his cousin echoed, with all the scorn of twenty. “And now, I suppose, you expect to waltz right in and have everything just as it was.” His voice went up. “Well, it isn’t. And it can’t be.”

  “No,” agreed Lucien, thinking of Marie-Clarice’s cold, hard eyes, of his mother’s grave, his father’s portrait on the wall, “it can’t be.”

  Hal gave Lucien one last, suspicious look. “Mock all you like,” he said furiously, “but you’ll see. We don’t want you here.”

  And he slammed the heavy door behind him.

  “I don’t want to be here either,” said Lucien. But Hal was already gone.

  No use to explain that he couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not until he brought his parents’ murderer to justice.

  But in the meantime, it seemed that he had a ball to attend.

  Chapter Three

  Lady Clarissa Caldicott’s ball was held in Richmond, at the home of Lord Henry Caldicott and his wife.

  The trip from London had taken even longer than usual, due to the glut of carriages on the road. The circular drive before the house was jammed, and the pale marble stairs were all but invisible due to the procession of ladies and gentlemen making their way up to the great doorway that loomed between two tall flambeaux.

  Sally, Lizzy, and Agnes zigzagged their way up the stairs, trailing behind Sally’s sister-in-law, Arabella, who had been tasked with chaperoning them for the evening, and Sally’s brother, Turnip, who bounded enthusiastically ahead to clear a path for them, like a particularly energetic golden retriever.

  Technically, both Lizzy and Agnes were meant to be under the eye of Lizzy’s stepmother, Mrs. Reid, the former Miss Gwen. But ever since it had come out that Miss Gwen was the author of The Covent of Orsino, she couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed by admirers.

  Miss Gwen did not admire her admirers.

  And when Miss Gwen did not admire, she tended to apply the pointier portion of her parasol to whichever bit of anatomy was nearest. Matrimony and the arrival of an infant daughter had done nothing to blunt the sharp end of Miss Gwen’s tongue or her parasol. Colonel Reid was suspected of having taken it upon himself to supply his wife with an even larger collection of sharp-edged accessories, although, when taxed about this by those with sore extremities, he generally disclaimed responsibility with an innocence entirely at odds with the glint in his eye.

  It was thought safer for everyone concerned if Miss Gwen accompany the girls as infrequently as possible.

  It was particularly fortunate that she hadn’t accompanied them this evening, as it seemed that all of London’s fops and fribbles were out in force. By the time Sally had fought her way up the stairs, she was hot, rumpled, and generally annoyed.

  “Retiring room?” Sally bellowed to Lizzy. It wasn’t meant to be a bellow, but the din was such that even private conversations required stentorian tones.

  If Sally had wondered why London’s elite hadn’t quibbled at rattling all the way out to Richmond, the answer soon became clear: the ladies’ retiring room was buzzing with the rumor that the Ghoul of Belliston Hall was due to put in an appearance.

  “It’s not a hall—it’s a house,” commented Sally in annoyance to Lizzy, as they made the necessary repairs to their appearances.

  “Just be glad they’re not calling it an abbey.” Lizzy leaned forward, admiring the effect of her emerald-and-filigree earrings. They weren’t at all the thing for a girl in her first Season, but the stepdaughter of the author of The Convent of Orsino was allowed to be just a little bit outrageous. Sally’s own blue-enamel-and-seed-pearl set, a gift from her brother, Turnip, seemed decidedly bland in comparison.

  “In order to be an abbey,” said Agnes, looking at them owlishly in the mirror, “the house would have had to have belonged to a religious institution of that order. Were there monks on the site of Belliston House?”

  Sally rolled her eyes. “Why not just say there’s an ancient druid burial ground and have done?”

  “An ancient druid burial ground?” The girl next to them, repairing a microscopic tear in her flounce, dropped her pins. “Oh, my! That explains so much. Did you hear—”

  And she turned to the woman on her other side to gush out the latest intelligence.

  Sally regarded them both with a jaundiced eye. “Piffle,” she said.

  Lizzy’s lips twitched. “Would you care to share your real feelings?”

  Behind them, two other women were exchanging the latest on dits about the Duke of Belliston. “—a jagged scar across his face!” Delia Cathcart was saying. “They say you’ll know him because his eyes glow red . . . when he’s about to feed.”

  “It’s not at all surprising,” returned Georgiana Thynne, looking superior, “when you think what they say about his mother. . . .”

  What did they say about his mother?

  “They say”—Delia leaned forward, the words coming out in a rush—“that the reason no one has seen him all these years is that the family has kept him confined. In a crypt.” She shivered deliciously.

  “I wager you all of next quarter’s allowance that you don’t have the courage to dance with him,” said Lucy Ponsonby, with a titter.

  “I couldn’t,” Delia said, clasping her plump hands to her bosom. “I just couldn’t.”

  “I don’t know,” said Georgiana Thynne. “For a whole quarter’s allowance? There’s a hat I’ve been wanting that Mama refuses to buy. . . .”

  “Yes,” said Delia, bumping into Sally in her enthusiasm. Sally frowned at her, but she didn’t pay the least bit of attention. “But what if he were to set his mark upon you?”

  “It’s the curse,” said Lucy Ponsonby, pronouncing the word with relish. She preened in the mirror. “The curse of the Caldicot
ts. I don’t care how large his lands are. I wouldn’t have him if he were the last duke in London, and I told that to my mama just this morning. Mama, I said—”

  “What makes her think he’d have her?” Sally whispered to Lizzy. She hadn’t seen buckteeth like that since her beloved pony, Bucky the Bucktooth, had gone off to that good pasture in the sky.

  “Well,” said Lizzy innocently, “with that hideous scar across his face and the hunchback and clubfoot—not to mention the curse—I imagine he can’t be picky.”

  “He’s not hunchbacked,” snapped Sally. “In fact he’s quite—”

  Handsome? He wasn’t handsome in the way society assessed such things: his hair was too long, his eyes too deep, his lips too full, his features too marked. All of him was just too . . . too. He was like the embers on the hearth, burning from within.

  Infuriating? Intriguing?

  “Quite?” Lizzy’s ears perked up.

  “Presentable,” said Sally quellingly. “Quite presentable.”

  Lizzy looked at her knowingly. “As good-looking as all that?”

  “Hmph.” No other sound was adequate to express her feelings. Sally drove a pearl comb into her hair with more force than necessary. “All of this is worse than nonsense—it’s unkind.”

  Normally, Sally enjoyed a spot of gossip as much as the next girl, but this wasn’t innocent chitter chatter of the who-danced-with-whom variety. This was the sort of hysterical speculation that drove villagers out in the dead of night armed with garden implements to essay a spot of castle burning.

  She turned to glower at the oblivious women behind them. “Besides, he isn’t like that.”

  Lizzy linked an arm through hers. “What is he like, then?” she asked.

  Mysterious. Terribly mysterious.

  The word rose unbidden to Sally’s mind, along with the memory of a wilderness of a garden, willows weeping above a frost-blasted fountain, and a black-garbed figure in its midst. He had been other things—enigmatic, infuriating, more than a little bit sardonic—but the primary word that came to mind was “mysterious.” He looked as though he had grown out of the fallen leaves and moss-covered stones, like a creature of shadow and moonlight, condemned to lonely durance in his haunted castle.

  All nonsense, of course. Next thing one knew, she’d be mooning over The Convent of Orsino and begging Miss Gwen for her autograph.

  “Human,” said Sally tartly. “And very much alive.”

  Alive and quipping. It still rankled that she had allowed him to seize the last word. No one, but no one, was allowed to best Miss Sally Fitzhugh. Not even reclusive dukes rumored to be vampires.

  Particularly not reclusive dukes rumored to be vampires.

  Sally had spent the rest of the evening meticulously constructing pithy parting lines, none of which were the least bit of use after the fact.

  “I can’t imagine the duke would be here,” said Sally loftily. “It isn’t at all the sort of affair one would expect creatures of the night to frequent.”

  Best time for creatures of the night to travel, indeed!

  “It is after dark,” said Lizzy impishly.

  Returning from behind one of the screens, Agnes looked from one to the other in surprise. “But, of course, the duke would be here. Didn’t you know? Lady Clarissa Caldicott is his sister.”

  “I knew that,” said Sally quickly. And maybe she had, at one point. Debrett’s Peerage had been required reading at Miss Climpson’s, right there next to the Bible. Miss Climpson believed in books that began with “begat.” “I just didn’t think he looked much like a Caldicott.”

  “What does a Caldicott look like?” asked Agnes.

  Sally wafted a hand. “Fair. Bland. Unobjectionable.”

  Hal Caldicott was just her age and a member of her brother’s club; Sally had danced with him from time to time. He was everything that was conventional and predictable: he drove his phaeton too fast, he wore too many capes on his coat, he played for high stakes, he tortured his cravat into elaborate styles, all in the most inoffensive way possible. In short, all the usual rites of passage of a young man of good fortune and limited imagination. Sally found him quite pleasant and entirely uninteresting.

  Belliston, on the other hand . . . There was something dark and brooding about the very name “Belliston.” Something with a hint of passion to it.

  Rather like the duke.

  “Do vampires have sisters?” asked Lizzy with feigned innocence.

  “This one does,” said Agnes earnestly. Pursing her lips, she recited, “Lucien, sixth Duke of Belliston, and Lady Clarissa Caldicott are the sole surviving offspring of the fifth Duke of Belliston, and his wife, the former Hortense de la Pagerie.”

  Sally looked narrowly at Agnes. “Sole surviving—does that mean there were others?”

  Agnes looked a little sheepish. “I don’t think so. It just sounded better that way.”

  “Unless you think he ate them?” suggested Lizzy.

  Agnes’s pale brows drew together. “I don’t think vampires are meant to eat people. They just . . .”

  “Nibble?” provided Lizzy.

  Another two women pushed past them, arm in arm. “—druid curse!” Sally could hear one saying, in strictest confidence, at the top of her lungs.

  “I thought we had ascertained that there are no vampires,” said Sally, in her best imitation of Miss Gwendolyn Meadows. There were times when she really did wish that she owned a sword parasol.

  Lizzy narrowed her brown eyes. “Even so, there must be something wrong with the man. Why stay so secluded all these years? Why hide from society?”

  “Perhaps he simply doesn’t like them,” said Sally. She wasn’t sure why she felt so defensive on the duke’s behalf. It wasn’t as though he had been particularly warm or welcoming to her—unless one considered sarcasm a sign of regard.

  Maybe it was that he was a challenge, her own private challenge, not to be shared with anyone else.

  Which was, of course, equally ridiculous, given that she was unlikely to see the man ever again, current rumor notwithstanding.

  “We should be getting back,” Sally said. She could see Arabella looking for them, with her perturbed-chaperone face on. Arabella enjoyed chaperoning just about as much as Sally enjoyed being chaperoned; Sally knew she would much rather be home, watching her daughter, Parsnip, attempt new aerial feats with a spoonful of mushy peas. “They’re sure to begin the dancing soon.”

  “Hmm.” Lizzy raised a hand in greeting to Lady Vaughn just to watch Lady Vaughn do her best imitation of a block of ice. That task accomplished, she turned back to Sally. “You can’t avoid me forever, you know. You’ve been remarkably chary with the details of your tête-à-tête.”

  Sally shot a warning glare at Lizzy, but it was too late. Arabella might look as meek as milk, but she had ears like a hawk. If hawks had ears. Sally wasn’t sure, ornithology not having been prominently featured in the curriculum of Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary.

  “Tête-á-tête?” said Arabella, in a deceptively mild voice.

  Lizzy looked from Sally to Arabella and scented danger. “Oh, goodness,” she said, her eyes wide and innocent. “Has my flounce torn? I must go and see to it.”

  Sally wondered if Miss Gwen would consider the loan of her infamous sword parasol. Just for use on Lizzy. She would make sure to clean it thoroughly before she returned it.

  “Did you see Lady Vaughn snub Lizzy?” Sally said quickly. There was nothing like a good diversion.

  Arabella was not to be diverted. “Lady Vaughn snubs everybody. What was that about a tête-à-tête?”

  “Tete a whatsis?” Sally’s brother, Turnip, appeared, balancing five glasses of ratafia, two in each hand and one under his chin, adding an extra dent to his cravat and a trail of sticky liquid down his waistcoat. He apportioned the beverages among the th
ree ladies, and looked in some confusion to the place where Lizzy had been standing. “Where’s your friend?”

  “Departed,” said Sally bitterly. “Decamped. Deserted.”

  “With a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no,” agreed Turnip. He looked at the extraneous glass of ratafia, gave a philosophical shrug, and drained the glass himself. He glanced up to see all three women looking at him. He grinned sheepishly at his wife. “Sounded like a verse, don’tcha know.”

  “Yes,” said Sally sourly. “Ratafia brings poetry into everyone’s lives.”

  “Leave a kiss but in the cup and I’ll not ask for thingummy,” said Turnip, looking soulfully at Arabella.

  Arabella blew her husband a kiss over her fan.

  Sally rolled her eyes, but she took advantage of her chaperone’s momentary distraction to ask, “What do you know about the curse of the Caldicotts?”

  Arabella raised her eyebrows slightly, signaling that she knew exactly what Sally was doing. The tête-à-tête discussion would be resumed at a later time—but not in front of Turnip, and not in the middle of a crowded ballroom. Arabella would never think of taking Sally to task in public, a fact of which Sally took shameless advantage.

  “I shouldn’t have thought you would pay any attention to that sort of flummery,” Arabella said mildly.

  “I’m not,” said Sally indignantly. “I mean, I haven’t. I was just curious.” She squirmed a little under her chaperone’s too acute gaze. “And, yes, I know what they say about curiosity and cats.”

  “Speak of the devil,” said Turnip heartily. He raised a hand and flapped it in the direction of someone behind Sally’s back. “Caldicott. I say! Caldicott!”

  A tingle like lightning ran down Sally’s spine. She turned slowly, frantically trying to get her expression under control. Should she look aloof? Amused? Sweetly angelic? Or—

  Oh. It wasn’t the duke at all, just plain old Hal Caldicott, who was, to be fair, neither plain nor old. But he wasn’t the duke.

  Hal had been making a beeline across the ballroom. At Turnip’s enthusiastic hail, he feinted sideways, as if trying to decide whether there was still time to make a run for it. As Turnip bellowed his name again—this time with a loud “halloo!”—Caldicott bowed to the inevitable and made his way to their side with a marked lack of enthusiasm.