The Masque of the Black Tulip

by Lauren Willig

  Miles raked his fingers through his hair. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but if that’s what it takes… Listen, Hen’ – Miles lowered his voice – ‘there’s a dangerous French spy on the loose.’

  ‘You know about that?’ exclaimed Henrietta.

  ‘What?’ Miles’s head snapped up.

  ‘The spy.’ Henrietta made sure to keep her voice suitably low. She drew closer to Miles, her wide skirts brushing his breeches. Miles sidestepped like a skittish colt.

  ‘I was going to warn you tonight, when I found you, but circumstances intervened.’ Henrietta rather wished those particular circumstances – the ones to do with Miles kissing her – would materialise again, but since they showed no sign of doing so, she continued. ‘According to my sources, there is an extremely dangerous new spy in London.’

  Miles sat down heavily on one of the small gilded benches placed against the wall. Since when had Henrietta had sources?

  ‘I won’t even ask,’ he muttered.

  Henrietta made a wry face, and joined him on the bench, her skirts frothing over his legs. ‘It’s probably best you don’t.’

  ‘Do you know anything else about this…new development?’

  ‘All I know is that you and I are both under scrutiny, most likely in regard to our connection with Richard.’

  ‘And you still wandered off alone?’

  ‘I needed to warn you,’ Henrietta said in the most sensible tone she could muster. She hurried on before Miles could plunge back into lecture. ‘And I also took the opportunity to do a spot of detecting along the way.’

  ‘Does your mother know about this spot of detection?’ asked Miles darkly.

  ‘That,’ said Henrietta, ‘was unkind. Mama is in Kent with the children, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.’

  ‘No, just when you turn up dead in a ditch somewhere.’

  ‘Why a ditch?’

  Miles made an inarticulate noise of extreme frustration. ‘That’s not important.’

  ‘Then why did you mention it?’

  Miles responded by banging his head into his knees. Hard.

  Henrietta decided it was time to change the subject. ‘How did you know about the spy?’

  ‘Some of us,’ commented Miles in a muffled tone, ‘happen to work for the War Office. Some of us aren’t naive young girls who are courting death and disaster by playing with things that they should not be involved in.’

  ‘Don’t you even want to know what I found out?’ Henrietta wheedled.

  Still doubled over, Miles eyed her warily. ‘I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?’

  ‘Lord Vaughn,’ Henrietta began, ‘has been behaving very oddly.’

  ‘He’s been doing more than behaving oddly,’ Miles said grimly. ‘He stabbed Downey.’

  All the amusement fled from Henrietta’s face. ‘Is Downey all right?’

  Miles let out a deep breath and slumped back against the wall. ‘The surgeon says he’ll make it, but it was close.’ He closed his eyes, reliving the memory of his valet on the floor, covered in blood. ‘Someone tore up my flat today, looking for something. Downey was in the way. If I had been home—’

  ‘He still might have been stabbed. You just can’t know that.’

  ‘If he hadn’t been working for me—’

  ‘He might have been attacked by a footpad, or knifed by a thief. These things happen.’

  ‘They’re far more likely to happen when there are French spies involved,’ muttered Miles. ‘I brought this on him. You don’t understand. I was careless, Hen. If I hadn’t attracted the attention of the spy…’

  ‘But don’t you see?’ Henrietta twisted to look at him, gasping as the boning stabbed her in the ribs. ‘You didn’t. At least, not by any action of your own. You were already being watched simply by virtue of having been friends with Richard all these years. If it’s anyone’s fault,’ she continued, warming to her theme, ‘it’s Richard’s, for being so successful. There. You see?’

  As she had known he would, Miles grimaced at her. ‘That makes no sense, Hen.’

  ‘Neither do you, so we’re even.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Of course,’ Henrietta said softly.

  Looking at him sitting there, slumped on the bench, no jacket or cravat to speak of, waistcoat unbuttoned, shirt rumpled, dishevelled, derelict, and dejected, she had to clamp down on an overwhelming surge of affection. She wanted to smooth back that permanently disordered bit of hair at his brow and kiss away the worried wrinkle just over his nose.

  Wise in the ways of Miles, Henrietta did none of those things. Instead, she asked neutrally, ‘How do you know it was Lord Vaughn who stabbed Downey?’

  ‘He didn’t leave a calling card, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Miles said with all the snippiness of a male who has just been bamboozled into revealing emotion.

  Henrietta gave him a ‘don’t be an idiot’ look. ‘It just doesn’t seem the sort of thing Lord Vaughn would do.’

  ‘You don’t think him capable of murder?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. But can’t you more easily picture him slipping someone a thimbleful of poison?’ Henrietta refrained from bringing in her own personal experience in this regard. After all, she had no proof the wine had been poisoned. ‘Stabbing someone is just too…crude. Lord Vaughn likes the subtle, the arcane. If he were going to kill someone, he would set about it more inventively.’

  Miles frowned in thought. ‘Point taken. I don’t know whether he did it personally or sent a lackey, but he seems the most likely instigator, if you would prefer to look at it that way.’

  ‘Why would he want to ransack your flat?’

  Miles took a quick look down either side of the hallway, and dropped his voice to a mere thread of sound. ‘We have reason to believe he might be the agent we’re looking for. One of our agents was recently killed – also stabbed – in a way that suggested a connection to Vaughn.’

  ‘That would explain a great deal,’ Henrietta said slowly, thinking back over his unexpected interest in her once the Purple Gentian’s name was invoked, his odd behaviour in the windowless chamber. Something nagged at her, though. Something didn’t quite add up, and she couldn’t figure out why. She made a wry face at herself; Miles wasn’t going to lend much credence to woman’s intuition. Nor would she if their situations were reversed. Nonetheless, she ventured, ‘But what would he have to gain?’

  Miles shrugged. ‘Money? Power? Settling a personal score? A man could turn traitor for any number of reasons.’

  Henrietta shivered.

  Miles risked a glance in her direction, trying very hard to keep his eyes above her neck, and almost succeeding. ‘Are you cold?’

  Henrietta shook her head, grimacing. ‘No. Just alarmed by human nature.’

  ‘You should be,’ Miles said grimly. ‘They knifed Downey with no more consideration than if he had been a—’

  ‘Rabid dog?’

  ‘I was thinking more a bug, but something like that.’

  Miles looked soberly at Henrietta, cursing himself for being ten times a fool. He should have grabbed her by the arm and hauled her straight back to the dowager the moment he had barrelled into her. There was no excuse for his behaviour – either of his behaviours; this last interlude had been just as self-indulgent and just as dangerous as that damnable kiss. He had been swept up in the relief of having someone to talk to, to confide his guilt over Downey, to trade ideas about the progress of the mission, someone he could trust. But that was no excuse. He knew Henrietta well enough to know exactly how she would react. This was, after all, the girl whose favourite phrase as a toddler had been ‘me too.’

  To have Downey hurt by his carelessness was bad enough; for anything to happen to Henrietta…it was unthinkable. Miles considered dragging out some of the past exploits of the Black Tulip, including his charming habit of carving his calling card into the flesh of his victims, but prolonging the discussion would only m
ake matters worse. The more he said, the more intrigued Henrietta would be, and the more intrigued Henrietta was…

  His voice came out harsher than he had intended. ‘Stay out of this, Hen. This is no parlour game.’

  ‘But, Miles, I’m in it already. Whoever it is, he’s looking for me, too.’

  ‘All the more reason for you to be even more careful. Have you considered joining your mother in Kent for a few weeks?’

  ‘And catch the mumps?’

  Miles stood abruptly. ‘The mumps are the least of my worries.’

  Henrietta stood, too, looking mutinous. ‘The best way to secure all of our safety is to catch the spy.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Miles started off down the corridor. ‘I will.’

  Henrietta trotted along after him. ‘Don’t you mean, we will?’

  ‘You are going back to the duchess. That woman is better protection than a citadel.’

  In front of them, Henrietta could hear the hubbub of voices that betokened the more populated parts of the party. She yanked on Miles’s arm, eager to have her say before they once more joined the throng.

  ‘Miles, I’m not going to sit idly by while you do all the work.’

  Miles didn’t say anything. He just looked stubborn.

  Ha! thought Henrietta, clapping her golden mask to her face and following her glowering escort in the direction of the dowager. Miles didn’t know the first thing about stubborn. She would talk him around tomorrow, she decided confidently. She would ply him with tea and ginger biscuits. (Cook would surely be amenable to whipping up an extra batch.) And if that failed – Henrietta’s lips curved into an anticipatory smile – why, then, she would just have to kiss him into compliance. A hardship, but such were the sacrifices one had to undergo for the sake of one’s country.

  Henrietta grinned all the way back to the dowager.

  Miles glowered all the way back to the dowager. Miles glowered the length of three rooms. Miles glowered as he deposited Henrietta with the Dowager Duchess, and sternly advised them all to go home. Miles glowered particularly forbiddingly as the Dowager Duchess pinked him with Penelope’s spear.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ called out Henrietta, waving her mask at him like a triumphal banner.

  Miles grunted in response. Then he resumed glowering.

  Appropriating a glass of champagne, he retreated to an unoccupied alcove where he could glower at Henrietta from a safe distance. At least, he thought darkly, rubbing his bruised posterior, she would be free from harm so long as she was with the Dowager Duchess; the woman provided a better deterrent to would-be assassins and abductors than an entire Greek phalanx. Hell, ship her over to France and Napoleon would surrender within the week.

  France. Miles stared grimly into the sparkling liquid in the crystal goblet. He had to find enough to conclusively prove Vaughn’s guilt. The War Office wouldn’t act without proof. They also wouldn’t act if it meant damaging their chances of rounding up the rest of Vaughn’s contacts first.

  The War Office and Miles had slightly different priorities at the moment.

  Across the room, he heard a high, clear, utterly unmistakable laugh, and winced in a way that had nothing to do with French agents.

  Maybe if he asked nicely the War Office would send him on assignment to Siberia.

  Chapter Twenty

  Excursion: an intelligence-gathering mission undertaken in some form of disguise

  Excursion, delightful: an intelligence-gathering mission of no little success. See also under Jaunt, pleasant

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  ‘What do you want?’

  A woman with a glaringly white fichu draped over her ample bosom glowered from the open doorway of 13 rue Niçoise.

  ‘A room,’ said the girl standing on the stoop. Her lustreless dark hair was pulled severely back beneath a neat cap, but the rest of her appearance showed signs of neglect; her collar and cuffs drooped limply, and there was a weary look about her grey eyes. ‘Not for me,’ she added hastily, as the door began to close. ‘For my mistress. She heard you had rooms to let.’

  ‘Your mistress,’ repeated the woman in the doorway derisively, her sharp eyes roaming over frayed cuffs and scuffed boots. The starched fabric of her apron rustled against the wood of the doorframe. ‘What’s your mistress doing looking for rooms here?’

  ‘She’s a…widow,’ explained the girl earnestly. ‘A respectable widow.’

  The woman’s eyes narrowed at the telltale pause. ‘I know her kind, and we don’t need none of that sort around here.’

  The girl twisted her hands in her apron. ‘But I was told…’

  ‘Told!’ the woman snorted. ‘I know what you was told. But you can just put it right out of your mind. I run a respectable house, I do. Not like her as was here before.’

  ‘Here before?’ the maidservant echoed in a small voice, her eyes darting longingly past the bulk of the proprietress to the painfully clean foyer beyond.

  ‘Madame Dupree.’ The woman spat the name out as though it tasted foul. ‘Take anyone, that one would. The goings-on in this house! Enough to make a respectable woman blush, it was. Gentlemen callers coming and going, cigar stains on the sheets, wine spilt on the carpets.’

  ‘Even Englishmen, I heard,’ the maidservant ventured timidly.

  ‘English, Prussian, all manner of riffraff.’ The woman’s white cap rustled as she shook her head over past depravity. ‘Didn’t matter none to her so long as they paid their rent proper. I had my work cut out for me cleaning it out, I did.’

  ‘Where did they all go?’ asked the maidservant, wide-eyed.

  ‘No interest of mine.’ The woman’s lips hardened into a determined line. ‘So you can just tell your mistress she’ll have to look for lodging elsewhere.’

  ‘But—’

  The maidservant staggered back as the door thudded shut. Through an open window came the sound of a mop being vigorously applied.

  As she moved out of sight of the house, the girl’s dejected slump disappeared, and her pace accelerated to a brisk walk. The black hair dye made her head and eyebrows itch mercilessly, but Jane Wooliston resisted the urge to scratch as she made her way rapidly from the rue Niçoise back to the Hotel de Balcourt, looking to all the world like an anxious servant on an errand for a demanding mistress. She would be able to doff her costume soon enough; she had found out what she wanted to know.

  Number 13 rue Niçoise was a boarding-house. In an unfashionable neighbourhood, it currently catered to the poor but respectable, to hardworking clerks and maiden aunts eking out the end of their days on meagre savings. The hall had been as painfully whitewashed as the proprietress’s linen; any speck of dirt would no doubt be pounced upon and eliminated as soon as it crossed the threshold.

  It was not at all the sort of establishment one would expect Lord Vaughn to patronise.

  From the woman’s tone, Jane surmised that the boarding-house, until recently, had served a clientele of another sort entirely, dubious characters living on the fringe of the demimonde, a haven for runaways and rendezvous. That, decided Jane, made a good deal more sense. The illusion of assignation could provide an excellent pretence for meetings that had more to do with policy than paramours. No one would think anything of a gentleman haring off to the seedier parts of the city for a bit of illicit amusement.

  She would, determined Jane, weaving her way around a dray cart blocking the street, have to discover how long ago the boarding-house had come under its current management. The former proprietress would be located, and discreetly questioned as to the prior inhabitants of the house. It was a pity Dupree was such a common name, but Jane had no qualms about her ability to locate her. Beneath her serene countenance, a plan began to form. She would send one of her men, in the guise of an anxious brother seeking a sister who had fled from the bosom of her family. Naturally, the concerned brother would be anxious to know not only the whereabouts of his ‘sister,’ but any people with w
hom that ill-fated and fictitious female had come in contact, especially men who might have taken advantage of her youth and innocence. It would make a most affecting tale.

  Head down, shoulders bowed, Jane crossed the last few yards to her cousin’s house. If Lord Vaughn had been using 13 rue Niçoise as a base for nefarious activities, the boarding-house could be the key to unravelling an entire network of agents.

  Her mind rapidly working over this new piece of information, the Pink Carnation slipped in through the servants’ entrance of the Hotel de Balcourt. She had dye to rinse out of her hair, orders to issue, a coded report to send to Mr Wickham, a supper party to attend, and a meeting of the United Irishmen to infiltrate. Unseen, the Pink Carnation ascended the servants’ stairs to her own room and, efficiently divesting herself of her servile garb, prepared to don her third disguise of the afternoon – that of elegant young lady.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Accident, an: an event causing harm or inconvenience brought about by the agency of malignant French operatives; generally designed to give a spurious appearance of inadvertence

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  ‘Henrietta! You’re finally here!’

  Henrietta’s diminutive sister-in-law Amy barrelled down the front steps of Selwick Hall like a muslin-clad cannonball, catching up her skirts as she ran towards the hired travelling chaise. Two immense torches lit the front entrance of Selwick Hall, casting odd glints off Amy’s short, dark curls, and the horses’ trappings.

  The six-hour trip had stretched to eight, thanks to a broken axle barely an hour out of London. Fortunately, the accident had occurred as they lumbered along behind a crowded mail coach on Croydon High Street; they had been moving at barely more than a walk when the wheel began to tilt ominously, and the chaise with it. Henrietta and her maid had exited the conveyance with more speed than grace, taking refuge at the Greyhound, one of the town’s chief posting houses, where a new chaise was hired, the luggage all reloaded, and the tired horses refreshed.