The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  That struck Lucien as a highly legitimate objection.

  “Unless his ghost has returned from an unquiet grave, seeking revenge on those mortals who have disturbed his rest,” offered Miss Fitzhugh blandly. When the others turned to look at her, she held up her hands, palms out. “We have vampires. Why not ghosts?”

  Despite himself, Lucien found himself swallowing a smile. “It is all rather . . . fantastical.”

  Until one remembered that a woman had been killed the night before.

  Mrs. Reid glared impartially at Miss Fitzhugh and Lucien. “The Black Tulip is no laughing matter, young man.” She began pacing rapidly across the marble floor. “I have always believed reports of the Tulip’s death to be highly overstated. You say the man you saw in the mist was masked?”

  “The masked man in the mist,” murmured Turnip Fitzhugh. “Has a bit of a ring to it, what?”

  “The Tulip,” said Mrs. Reid, thumping the floor with the point of her parasol, “was caught in an explosion of his own devising.”

  “Hoist by his own petard, and all that,” said Turnip cheerfully. “Deuced dangerous things, petards.”

  Mrs. Reid raised her voice to be heard over the extraneous commentary. “The Tulip would, if he survived, have been scarred. Hideously scarred.” She allowed that to sink in before adding, “I do not imagine that can have done much to improve his temperament. Yes?”

  That last was to the butler, who had appeared through the green baize door and was hovering on the edge of the group, holding a package in front of him in a rather gingerly fashion. “Thith wath delivered for Mith Thally.”

  The parcel was wrapped in brown paper with a series of holes making an abstract pattern along the top. It appeared to be vibrating.

  “I say,” said Mr. Fitzhugh. “What’s making it go all thingummy?”

  “Don’t touch that!” Lucien said, and threw himself between Miss Fitzhugh and the box, at the same time that Mrs. Reid struck at the box with her parasol, sending it tumbling to the ground. The string holding it shut burst.

  Lucien thrust Miss Fitzhugh behind him and waited for the worst.

  A small, brown object leapt out and streaked across the floor, releasing a strange, musky odor as it went. Mr. Fitzhugh lunged for the animal. Lizzy Reid coughed and held her nose. Agnes Wooliston clutched at her skirts. Parsnip clapped her hands in delight, laughing a joyful, gummy laugh.

  Slowly, Lucien lowered his arms.

  “What,” said Mrs. Reid, in tones of doom, “was that?”

  Miss Fitzhugh’s face was buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

  Lucien bent over her. She was doubled over, her entire body quivering. Lucien regarded her with concern.

  “Miss Fitzhugh?” he said gently.

  It had, after all, been a very trying two days.

  Miss Fitzhugh lifted her head, and Lucien saw that she was shaking with laughter. She lifted one hand unsteadily to her damp eyes, blotting tears of mirth.

  “I believe,” Miss Fitzhugh said unevenly, “that that is a st-st—”

  “A what?” demanded Mrs. Reid.

  “A stoat!” Miss Fitzhugh finally gasped out, and collapsed into another spasm of uncontrollable mirth.

  “Small, weasel-like creature, don’t you know,” said Mr. Fitzhugh sagely. He dealt his sister a resounding whack on the back. “Like to eat rodents and lop the heads off bunnies and all that.”

  The stoat, meanwhile, had taken refuge behind a bust of Charles I, and was regarding them all suspiciously from just above the martyred king’s lace collar.

  Lucien couldn’t help himself. His lips began to twitch. He could feel a laugh fighting to work its way out of the back of his throat.

  Miss Fitzhugh’s voice trembled with laughter. Her eyes met Lucien’s. “I have been told that she’s a very well-behaved stoat.”

  “I know I shouldn’t ask,” said Arabella Fitzhugh, “but why have you been sent a stoat?”

  “Because she doesn’t like poultry?” Agnes Wooliston ventured.

  Miss Fitzhugh sent a reproachful look at her friend. “Do not mention the chickens.”

  “I believe stoats eat chickens,” said Lucien thoughtfully.

  “Really?” Miss Fitzhugh looked at him with interest. “What excellent news. Come here, you charming creature.”

  She held out her arms to the stoat, which went chirping and chittering its way across the polished floor. Miss Fitzhugh scooped it neatly up, holding it this way and that to admire its little face and sleek fur. The two regarded each other with mutual fascination.

  “I had a monkey once,” announced Lizzy Reid.

  “A monkey isn’t a stoat,” said Miss Fitzhugh, stroking her new pet’s sleek fur. “I rather think we’ll start a fashion, won’t we, Lady Florence? You shall go beautifully with my winter wardrobe.”

  Like Mrs. Fitzhugh, Lucien knew he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “Lady who?”

  Miss Fitzhugh stopped admiring her stoat long enough to hand him a note that had been tied with a ribbon to the stoat’s neck.

  Dear Miss Fitzhugh, ran the text. This is your stoat, Lady Florence Oblong. I do hope you get along. Yours truly, Archibald Fitzwarren. P.S. . . .

  “‘She prefers bunnies but mice will do,’” Lucien read aloud.

  Miss Fitzhugh looked at the butler with wide eyes. “You will see to it, won’t you, Quimby?”

  Quimby looked deeply pained.

  “No, Parsnip,” said Mrs. Fitzhugh firmly, and pulled her daughter’s hand away from the stoat’s dangling tail.

  Lucien looked quizzically at Miss Fitzhugh. “Do your admirers often send you stoats?”

  Miss Fitzhugh chucked Lady Florence under the chin. “Most of them confine themselves to flowers.”

  The reference to flowers had a sobering effect on both of them.

  “Poisonous ones,” said Lucien quietly.

  Mrs. Reid poked Miss Fitzhugh with her parasol. “Stop mooning over that creature and use the wits God gave you. We have a spy to catch. And I,” she added smugly, “have a plan.”

  Why did Lucien feel a deep sense of foreboding?

  “Does this plan involve going to the proper authorities?” he inquired.

  “Young man,” said Mrs. Reid, looking at him repressively, “I am the proper authorities.”

  “I thought she was a novelist,” murmured Lucien, moving closer to Miss Fitzhugh.

  “Mrs. Reid,” explained Miss Fitzhugh, looking up from her stoat, “used to be second-in-command to the Pink Carnation. The Pink Carnation is—”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of the Carnation.” He hadn’t paid much attention, but he had heard of the Pink Carnation. Lucien looked at Mrs. Reid with new interest. He had always assumed that spies would be less . . . purple.

  “The Carnation will need to be notified,” Mrs. Reid said briskly. She turned sharply to Lucien. “You say your mother worked with the Black Tulip in the nineties?”

  “It is a possibility.” He felt honor-bound to add, “There might have been an intermediary.”

  Her mysterious “contact.” Who might or might not have been Sherry.

  Miss Fitzhugh looked at him sympathetically.

  “Either way”—Mrs. Reid brooded beneath her turban—“if the Tulip feels the need to distinguish you with his attentions, there must be something he fears that you might find. Where are your mother’s effects?”

  Lucien was beginning to be accustomed to Mrs. Reid’s abrupt form of communication. “Some are here in London. Most are up north. At Hullingden.”

  The name fell off his tongue like something out of myth. Camelot. Lyonesse. Hullingden.

  It felt nearly as far away and out of reach as the other two.

  “Then,” said Mrs. Reid, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, “we shall have to
go to Hullingden.”

  “My uncle is in residence there now,” Lucien hedged. “I’ve been away for some time.”

  Mrs. Reid smiled a smile that made Lucien think of crocodiles. “Then what could possibly be more natural than that you would bring your betrothed?”

  She turned and looked straight at Miss Fitzhugh.

  “I—” Miss Fitzhugh blinked as the stoat whisked its tail against her chin. “Betrothed?”

  “What Miss Fitzhugh said,” said Lucien. “Are you implying—?”

  Mrs. Reid looked down her nose at them both. “I never imply. It takes far too much time. Yes, yes, this shall work quite nicely. You bring your betrothed; your betrothed brings her chaperone—I will be her chaperone,” she added, for the sake of those who needed everything spelled out, “and you will give me full access to your mother’s papers. Nothing could be simpler.”

  “Aside from the small matter of matrimony,” Lucien felt obliged to point out.

  “I say,” said Turnip Fitzhugh. “You can’t just go marrying a chap off like that. Not without his consent.”

  “But marrying me off is perfectly all right?” demanded Miss Fitzhugh with some aspersion.

  “No one is marrying anyone,” said Arabella Fitzhugh soothingly, and then spoiled it by adding, “Yet.”

  “Is a betrothal entirely necessary?” demanded Miss Fitzhugh shrilly.

  Her sister-in-law regarded her with some sympathy. “It is if you want to dash off without a chaperone.”

  Miss Fitzhugh’s eyes narrowed. “A simple I told you so would have sufficed.” She looked around the room and, finding no support, turned to Lucien. “This—this is absurd! We’ve known each other all of a week! We can’t possibly—”

  Mrs. Reid looked at her reprovingly. “You act as though no one has ever entered into a betrothal of convenience before.”

  For once, Miss Fitzhugh appeared to be beyond words. From her shoulder, her stoat let out a low growl of either sympathy or hunger.

  In the resulting silence, Lucien finally found his voice. “It’s not a bad plan.”

  Miss Fitzhugh stared at him. “Not a bad plan?”

  It wasn’t a bad plan. It was an absolutely insane plan. But it had a certain reckless appeal. And there were unintended benefits.

  “The village outside Hullingden is small.” It wasn’t even a village; it was more of a hamlet. “Any strangers will be easily identifiable. If anyone attempts to follow us, we have a better chance of spotting them than we would in London.”

  “You seem to be forgetting the small matter of our nuptials,” Miss Fitzhugh said testily.

  “Not nuptials, betrothal.” Her relations were right; she couldn’t dash around chasing spies without a chaperone. And Lucien found he very much wanted her company. He had been dreading the idea of returning to Hullingden, of seeing it, and himself, changed. With Miss Fitzhugh, however, whatever his homecoming was, it wouldn’t be dull. “And you can always cry off later. She can cry off, can’t she?”

  “On grounds of vampirism?” suggested the irrepressible Lizzy.

  “That isn’t funny,” snapped Miss Fitzhugh.

  Lucien moved to stand in front of her, creating a small circle of privacy. If one didn’t count the stoat, that was. It was watching from Miss Fitzhugh’s shoulder with every indication of interest.

  Lucien turned his back on the others, looking intently at Miss Fitzhugh. “Do you mind terribly? Being betrothed?”

  Lucien found that her response mattered, very much. His palms felt sweaty beneath the leather of his driving gloves.

  Miss Fitzhugh’s eyes darted to one side, then the other. She pressed her lips tightly together. “I haven’t much choice, have I? It seems to have been decided for me.”

  “You have every choice,” said Lucien firmly. He wouldn’t let her be bullied into anything, no matter how much he might want it. “What’s the standard phrase? You are fully cognizant of the honor I do you, but cannot now find it in your heart, and so forth?”

  “And leave you to face the Black Tulip alone? No.” Miss Fitzhugh threw back her shoulders, seriously discommoding her stoat in the process. “You’re right. It isn’t such a dreadful plan.”

  Lucien let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. “I should go to my aunt and uncle and apprise them of our impending visit.”

  “And of your betrothal,” snapped Mrs. Reid, from behind him.

  Lucien’s eyes met Miss Fitzhugh’s. He cocked a brow. “And of our betrothal.”

  Miss Fitzhugh’s face relaxed into a reluctant smile.

  “In that case,” said Miss Fitzhugh, “I imagine you had better call me Sally.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lucien Charles Edward Henry Caldicott, Duke of Belliston, Marquess of Stanyon, Baron Riversham, and Heredity Lord High Marshall of the West Marsh

  and

  Miss Sarah Fitzhugh.

  A marriage has been arranged between Lucien, 6th Duke of Belliston, and Miss Sarah Fitzhugh, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peregrine Fitzhugh of Parva Magna, Norfolk.

  —The Morning Post

  20 October 1806

  Ghoul of B—H— to wed! A betrothal has been announced between London’s most mysterious peer and eccentric heiress, Miss S—F— (Sister of a certain sporting gentleman whose antics have appeared between these pages before. See December 30, 1803: Has Our Turnip Made a Pudding of Himself? Full details on Page 8.)

  Recommended wedding gifts for the happy pair include garlic, wooden staves, and a large supply of scarves.

  Will the new duchess survive the betrothal with her neck intact?

  —The Speculator

  20 October 1806

  Correspondence following the Beaufeatheringstone Ball on 26 October 1806:

  Miss Lucy Ponsonby to

  Miss Delia Cathcart

  Sally Fitzhugh, a duchess? It just makes me sick to think of it. As if it weren’t bad enough when Mary Alsworthy brought Lord Vaughn up to scratch (although Mama says there was something quite dodgy about that, not that we’ll ever know now).

  Well, that’s some good at least. It was quite insufferable watching Mary put on airs about being a countess—as if we should all scrape and bow!—and now that Miss Fitzhugh has carried off the prize.

  Not that I would have the duke at any price. How any woman of sensibility could even think—but, then, you know what they say about the Fitzhughs. They’re not quite right, are they? It is appalling the way Sally waltzes about with that furry thing draped over her shoulder. And there was no excuse for the way she was giggling—giggling!—behind her fan with the duke at Lady Beaufeatheringstone’s ball last night.

  Really, there’s nothing the least bit amusing about soul-sucking creatures of the night. And one certainly shouldn’t look quite so much as though one were actually enjoying their company. . . .

  The Dowager Duchess of

  Dovedale to Lady Beaufeatheringstone

  Good stuff in that Fitzhugh gel. She reminds me of me.

  As for Belliston, if I were fifty years younger . . .

  I’d still be too old for him.

  Ha!

  Lady Henry Caldicott to Mrs. Ponsonby

  . . . I know I need not tell you my sentiments on hearing of Lucien’s ill-advised betrothal. Such a common creature—all of that brassy blond hair and that unfortunate brother. And that weasel . . . ! Words fail me.

  [Omitted for reasons of space: four pages in which Lady Henry proves that words do not, indeed, fail her when it comes to enumerating the flaws of Miss Sally Fitzhugh.]

  Really, it is most unfortunate, although not in the least unexpected, given Lucien’s father’s disastrous choice of a bride.

  Even so, I suppose I shall have to lend my countenance to the match. Lucien has expressed his desire to bring his bride to Hullingden
. He shows not the slightest consideration for the inconvenience caused by having to remove from London at the height of the Season. But there you are, it is his father all over again. Nothing would do but he would have what he wanted when he wanted it, and never mind the bother to those around him. If he had had any consideration, he would never have married at all, and I would not be forced to the imperative of arranging entertainments for appalling young women with garden pests as pets.

  If that Lucien had never been born . . .

  But no one will be able to say I haven’t done my best by my nephew. I have plans in train for a masquerade ball to be held at Hullingden on All Hallows’ Eve.

  And beyond that, I do not see what I can be expected to do. . . .

  Miss Sally Fitzhugh to Lucien,

  Duke of Belliston (via footman)

  All is in readiness for Hullingden! At least, Miss Gwen says it is, and it’s generally safer not to question her. Although I really have no idea why we need an entire trunk filled with billiard balls.

  When do you depart?

  Lucien, Duke of Belliston to

  Miss Sally Fitzhugh

  I leave tomorrow morning.

  Will you be bringing your weasel?

  Miss Sally Fitzhugh to Lucien,

  Duke of Belliston

  She’s not a weasel. She’s a stoat.

  Lucien, Duke of Belliston to

  Miss Sally Fitzhugh

  A weasel by any other name . . .

  Mrs. Reid (née Miss Gwendolyn Meadows) to Miss Sally Fitzhugh and Lucien, Duke of Belliston

  Kindly stop tiring the footmen. You may flirt all you like once we arrive at Hullingden. In the meantime, I have messages to send. . . .

  Mrs. Reid to An Undisclosed Location

  [This message has been redacted by the request of the Pink Carnation.]

  Chapter Sixteen

  Miss Sally Fitzhugh arrived at the hamlet of Hullingden with her chaperone, her maid, and her pet stoat.

  Of the three, the stoat was the least excited by their arrival. Ensconced in her own mahogany traveling case with ormolu accents, Lady Florence Oblong blinked lazily and then went back to chewing her own tail.