Masque (The Two Monarchies Sequence)

by W. R. Gingell

  I blinked twice, rapidly, and then gave vent to a peal of laughter. “What a very fine pokerface you have, my lord! I had a nasty moment there.”

  “You’re very good practise for me, Lady Farrah.”

  “Oh no!” I rested my chin in the palm of my hand and smiled companionably at him; “As I said to Trophy, once you’ve out-bluffed me, it’s time to drop the formalities. Although in his case, it was pitching me into a cell; but the principle is the same. There is to be no more Lady Farrah, thank you very much: I would much rather be called Isabella.”

  A smile swept across Lord Pecus’ face, creating the indent in his cheek. “I’m honoured. My name is Alexander.”

  “Oh, I know!” I told him airily. “Trophy told me. I was pumping him for information about you: poor boy, he thought I was trying to learn about the case.”

  “The more I learn of you, the more I find myself thankful that Glause and Civet have never been at war,” remarked Lord Pecus. “I can only imagine that you would have taken to the field as a spy, and I’m certain that Glause isn’t equipped for the onslaught.”

  “I will ignore the insult of being referred to as if I were a disease,” I said coldly; “Because I want to know what you found in the washingwater woman’s room, Alexander.”

  I ignored the brief smile that lit his face, acknowledging the use of his name, and narrowed my eyes at him. “If you don’t mean to tell me after all, I shall be most indignant!”

  He grinned. “I think you’ll appreciate this; I certainly did. We found a tiepin belonging to the Earl of Horn.”

  I tilted my head to one side. “Then surely-”

  Lord Pecus continued smoothly without giving me a chance to finish: “Beside the tiepin, lined up neatly so that we wouldn’t miss them, were a fob belonging to Raoul, a fleabitten scarf I can only imagine belonged to the drifter, and a watch chain with your father’s signet on it. Very convenient, I thought.”

  “He’s playing with us,” I said, nodding. “Mocking us: telling us that we haven’t got the right one yet, and that he’s still pulling the strings.”

  “Or he’s throwing suspicion off himself by implicating himself along with everyone else.”

  “Now you’re just being difficult, Alexander. Did you find anything else?”

  “Well, I thought that would be enough,” he said, smiling. “But to answer your question, no: there was no other sign that anyone had been there besides the woman herself.”

  “How vexing!” I said sympathetically, if a little automatically. Something was niggling at the back of my mind, distracting me. Lord Pecus raised an amused brow, aware of my preoccupation and inviting information, but I didn’t enlighten him. There was still a certain, cautious part of me that objected to revealing all; besides which, I was by no means certain what it was that had made me uneasy.

  I continued to muse on the matter as I climbed the stairs to my suite, but Keenan was bouncing on the bed in a state of high excitement when I returned, and all my attention was needed to elicit a coherent tale from him.

  The Earl of Horn, it seemed, had indeed made a run for it as Susan had predicted. He had evidently left before the Countess expected it, for she remained at home and unavailable to visitors.

  It occurred to me, with a faint surprise, that he had done the right thing by her. One didn’t expect a suspected revolutionary to love his family quite so much: it made them seem uncomfortably like oneself. The earl had not been observed visiting his wife or his daughter; and Susan, from what Keenan told me, expected Louisa to be called home to support the countess in the not-so-distant future.

  I wondered if Lord Pecus had known about the earl and simply neglected to tell me, but concluded from Keenan’s somewhat garbled account that Susan’s intelligence was the very latest. No doubt Lord Pecus would know by morning. I would have to practise my expressions of surprise.

  “Was Su able to arrange a meeting?”

  Keenan paused in his bouncing for long enough to say breathlessly: “She says not yet, but it won’t take long. Says you should set a picnic for the end of the week, and she’ll commlink a time.”

  “Very well. Off to bed with you both, now.”

  Keenan bounced one last time, launching himself in the air, and landed on the rug with a flourish.

  “Lady Susan belted me,” he said.

  I looked at him, amused but unsurprised. “Did you deserve it?”

  “Yus. Picked her guard’s pockets.”

  “Well, then, you have no reason to complain,” I told him, reflecting that Emmett’s life must have become one of considerable aggravation in the last month or so.

  “I wasn’t complainin’,” said Keenan, releasing himself from the one suspender that was still attached and stripping off his shirt without regard to present company. He was as filthy as ever, but he was not quite skin and bones any longer. “I was just sayin’. Lady Susan’s orright.”

  My eyes met Vadim’s above his head: she was grinning.

  “Says she’s got as good an arm as our mum had,” she explained, when he had left the room.

  “It’s good to know what Keenan respects in a mistress,” I said dryly. “I must try to make an effort to beat him once or twice a week. How are things progressing below stairs?”

  Vadim’s eyes flicked momentarily beyond me, and back to meet my eyes. “Very well, lady.”

  How amusing! She was keeping something back. I looked at her for a long, smiling moment, and decided to let her have her secrets: after all, she must learn how to look after herself at one stage or another. Of course, Vadim had always known how to take care of herself – and Keenan, too! – but I didn’t think she had had to take care of a young man as well. Her footman must be continuing to make an impression. Determined young upstart!

  I wondered if I should intervene a little, but regretfully decided against it: I may be nosy and somewhat prone to insinuate myself into the affairs of others, but I am not entirely a busybody.

  So instead of giving into the temptation of winkling answers out of Vadim I sent her to bed, and enjoyed a cosy evening commlink with Delysia, who was able to bring me up to date with the latest news- the newest of which concerned Lord Topher’s marriage to his beautiful young blonde.

  “It’s a great pity,” said Delysia, inclined to be resentful. “I was sure he favoured you, Belle! There’s no understanding it!”

  “Delysia! Of all the unkind tricks to play on a boy of only twenty or so years! To marry him to an old maid at least seven years his senior, when such a beautiful young creature was around!”

  “Well, I dare say he married her for her money,” she said, with dark foreboding. “No doubt she’ll sink into a decline when he runs through it all, and die a young mother.”

  “What a delightful picture of wedded bliss! I must remember to send them a homecoming gift: when are they due to come back?”

  “Oh, some time this week,” replied Delysia airily. “He’s had his townhouse all new-furnished, you know, just for her.”

  “I’m glad to hear it!” I said frankly, remembering vaguely a description of Lord Topher’s quarters as sailorlike and sparsely furnished. That would never do for such a beautiful young thing as Miss Dewhurst; even if she was merely a Miss. I hoped he had had enough sense to furnish in blue and acorn shades of wood to complement her.

  “What are you sending for a homecoming gift, Delysia?”

  Delysia shrugged elegantly. “A vase, perhaps. Something ugly for their children to break. Oh, Isabella! It’s horribly boring here without you! Harroll is gloomy and tiresome, and I’m in need of stimulating conversation. What is Annabel doing about this business? And is Lord Pecus horrid?”

  “Lord Pecus is quite horrid!” I confirmed, my lips curving. I never tired of Delysia: perhaps because she had the attention span of a squirrel. Isn’t my fur nice and glossy this morning, and the grass is so green- ooh, a nut!

  “He teases me, and takes great delight in putting me at a loss. However, since
he sees fit to purchase the most luxurious and delicious blends of tea, and has the dearest little teapot besides, I find it easy to forgive him. Why is Harroll tiresome, my dear?”

  She tossed her head. “Oh well, I’m sure I’m a bad wife, but Isabella! I do so detest children!”

  “Harroll wants children?”

  “It’s not as if he will have to change the vile little things!” continued Delysia with a martial gleam in her eye, completely disregarding the fact that it was unlikely in the extreme that she would ever be called upon to do so. No, if I knew Delysia, any child in her home would be recurrently attended by a nurse.

  “No, he will sit with them after dinner and bounce them upon his knee, and say ‘What a good boy you are, eh?’ and send them off to bed!”

  “Perhaps you will have a little girl?” I suggested, for once all at sea. Delysia’s reference to more than one child was confusing: she could not be certain that she would have twins.

  “No, it is two nasty little boys,” she said obstinately. “Ugly little things, too, Belle!”

  “I’m sure they will not be ugly, Delysia!”

  She opened her eyes wide at me. “But they already are! Two of the nastiest little urchins I ever laid eyes on! I’m not surprised their parents died, no doubt they wanted a bit of peace and quiet!”

  I repressed a strong desire to giggle. How like Delysia. “Which of Harroll’s relatives have quit this mortal coil?”

  “The only coil I can see at present is my own!” she retorted. “They’re well out of it. And they are not Harroll’s relatives, Belle, they are mine! One should be allowed to disown one’s own relatives, after all!”

  “Certainly one should.” I said soothingly. “But Delysia, only think how charming they will look when the picnic season is upon us. Dressed in white, you know, with their collars freshly starched.”

  “I know exactly how long fresh-starched collars will last with William and Colin,” said Delysia tartly, but a thoughtful gleam had entered her eye. She curled one midnight black curl around a finger. “They will have to wear blue, and that is convenient, I suppose; since it means I won’t have to dye my hair. I’m quite fond of being a brunette.”

  “Now,” I said meditatively, as much in my own interests as to take her mind off the iniquitous William and Colin; “Speaking of the picnic season-”

  “We weren’t, and I won’t!” said Delysia at once. “Whatever you’re trying to do to Lord Pecus, I won’t be pulled into it!”

  “Delysia, you shock me! In fact, you injure me!” I gazed at her for a long, melting moment. “To imagine that I would attempt to do anything to my protector, my dinner partner; in fact, my provider of tea-and-biscuits! They are not merely biscuits, Delysia, they are works of art!”

  She pursed her lips and returned my melting gaze with a shrewd one. “Well, I’ve never known you to risk a good biscuit. What do you want?”

  “The tiniest favour, my dear! Merely that you allow Susan to come to me for a picnic near the end of the week, without forcing a footman upon her. I assure you that I don’t mean the least harm to Lord Pecus.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know how to force Susan to do anything!” returned Delysia, stiffening. “Isabella, she will not mind me!”

  “She doesn’t mind you?” I raised my brows, mildly surprised. That didn’t sound like Susan. “Well, she has been a long time at home alone, thanks to my erratic and highly unreliable brother. She doesn’t like to be dictated to if she thinks she knows better.”

  “We-eell,” Delysia admitted, in a milder tone; “She doesn’t refuse to do as I say, exactly. She merely ducks out of the house before I have a chance to tell her things! And then, Isabella; and then when I go to tell her what she’s doing wrong, somehow I never remember what I was going to say! Mind you,” she added fairmindedly, “I do have to thank her for the tip she gave me on removing that awful wine spot from my favourite white crepe. And the sale at Purcell’s was where I got that simply gorgeous hat, you know.”

  I did know. It sounded very like Susan: Misdirect and Conquer was her watchword. I, of course, had had absolutely nothing to do with teaching her any such thing.

  “I’ve even tried sending her notes!” said Delysia, beginning to smile in spite of herself. “She says she hasn’t received them.”

  I bit my lip: that particular trick I had taught Susan. Footmen by and large are obedient and unwilling to put themselves forward. It is, consequently, the easiest thing in the world to officially not receive a note. One need only direct a footman to place it on the sill of an open window (where it might, unhappily, chance to be blown away) or give instructions for the note to be placed with others on a desk (where it most likely became lost in the other papers). So long as the note has not been passed into one’s hands, one is able to say legally (and really quite truthfully), that one has not ‘received’ the note. Evidently Susan had become a past master at not receiving communications.

  Fortunately for my blushes, Delysia did not probe further. Instead, she fell into a fit of reminiscence regarding the hat she had worn with her riding habit before the advent of that simply wonderful hat from Purcell’s; and before long I was able to bid her goodnight, severing the commlink.

  It buzzed again almost immediately, much to my annoyance. To my further annoyance, the face that clouded and formed in Delysia’s wake was that of Lord Topher; who, even if he were no longer in love with me and making a nuisance of himself, was still a nuisance in and of himself. I wanted to go to bed meditating smugly upon my own cleverness. Instead, I met his sparkling brown eyes, wary at their high good humour, and said a polite good evening.

  “I did as you said, Lady Farrah! You were right, she is beautiful!”

  I wondered if he had been drinking again, or if it was merely the fact that I had become embittered and elderly that made him seem so uncommonly alive. I supposed a bridegroom should be happy the month of his wedding, but found in myself a wish that he could have done so in the company of his wife, and left me to my bed.

  “I’m entirely happy to hear it,” I told him truthfully.

  He gave me a glittering smile, leaning into the commlink, and said confidentially: “I knew you would be. I think we shall be very happy, you know: this makes everything perfect.”

  I couldn’t help smiling a little at his exuberance, and since I was quite soon able to extricate myself from the commlink without hurting his feelings, I was left to think that the evening hadn’t gone so very badly after all.

  I undressed and slipped my nightgown over my head with a thoughtful languor, forbearing to wake Vadim for such a trifle, and settled myself luxuriously into bed just a few moments later. It had been a day of interest, leaving me feeling decidedly cat-with-cream-ish because it seemed as though I finally knew my way forward again. I had been slowed but not stopped by my residence in Pecus Manor: I was once more rising triumphant. Of course, it would be a different matter entirely if the Earl of Horn had nothing helpful to add; but at that moment I felt that I had truly begun again to find Raoul’s killer.

  I woke with the same warm feeling of satisfaction, and breakfasted with great energy upon a Glausian specialty I was beginning to love: thick slices of fried bread topped with bacon and a wonderful kind of sugar-sauce I had never before encountered in Civet. I had been dubious at first, since the idea of sweet with savoury was an unfamiliar one, but I had been won over with the first warm, sweet mouthful, delighting in the subtle hints of cinnamon and nutmeg, and savouring the glazed orange and fresh strawberries that decorated the dish. It was only, in fact, by an extreme exercise of self control that I contained my appetite for the dish. It would be unfortunate if I were to become fat and comfortable under Lord Pecus’ roof. Perhaps that was his intention, who knows? Certainly if I were comfortably plump I would have neither the energy nor the inclination to make a nuisance of myself.

  It was with an air of expectancy that I dressed myself before the children began to stir. I was sure I would hear from
Susan today.

  Nor was I disappointed: shortly after my breakfast tray was taken away, and Vadim had made an appearance to brush and pin my hair, my commlink sprang into life, displaying Susan’s grinning face.

  “You owe me about two gross of trayed chocolates,” she said. “Set your picnic for the day after tomorrow, Belle, and lay out places for three.”

  She was preoccupied and didn’t talk for long, cutting off the link after a few brief instructions on the best place to meet the earl, and how to smuggle him through Lord Pecus’ wards (how she had gained the information was a mystery to me); and I wondered amusedly just what she was up to. I refrained from questioning her since I would hardly have relished enquiries if I were in her place, and took myself out into the garden.

  It was peaceful under the shade, and I wandered through the labyrinthine hedges until I came across a side of Pecus Manor I had not before encountered. There the laundry, flapping to a light breeze in all its unabashed glory, fluttered laces and underwear to the surrounding courtyard while Damson grimly pegged with all the good humour of an elephant with a head cold. Her lips were set in an annoyed line, and there was a snap to her eyes, suggesting that her problems with her gentleman friend had not abated.

  “So this is where you exist after fire-lighting,” I said, gazing around the little courtyard with interest. It was ridiculous, of course, to assume that Damson’s only duties were those regarding the fires and scullery; but I had assumed it.

  Damson’s head snapped around, and she pegged her finger instead of the stocking she was holding.

  “My lady! I didn’t see you there!”

  My eyes danced. “No, you were too busy pinning down the washing.”

  She planted one fist on her hip, regarding me in silence, and then gave an angry laugh. “It’s more than enough, so it is, my lady, when your beau begins to tell you what to do.”

  “Beaux have a tendency to do so,” I told her sympathetically. “It’s part of being in love.”

  “Well, I don’t call it love to tell a person her face isn’t good enough!” Damson said angrily. “I know it’s not my own face, but what does he want with my real face?”