The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  He had borne their taunting at the time, but he’d had no idea that the whispers had persisted, or that they had morphed and twisted into something quite so intricate. And insane. So he was meant to be an undead creature of the night because his mother came from a cursed race?

  He’d like to see someone tell Tante Berthe she was cursed. She would dose them with wormwood and turn them out to dry.

  Now, that was a satisfying image.

  No, thought Lucien, sobering. There was nothing the least bit occult about the events of twelve years past. It was all quite brutally, sordidly human. Just because the murderer had slipped poison into their tea rather than driving a knife through their flesh didn’t make it any less corporeal. There had been no incantations chanted, no chickens slaughtered. It was murder, plain and simple.

  If there was ever anything simple about murder.

  Even now, after all these years, Lucien still couldn’t fathom who might have wanted to kill his parents—and who might have hated his mother enough to do so in such a way as to make sure that all suspicion fell to her. Had it been malice? Or merely expedience? Foreign and scornful of society, Lucien’s mother made a tidy scapegoat.

  Lucien had been over it again and again, a million times in his nightmares. The means was clear, but motive eluded him. Had the target been his mother? His father? Both? He had been only twelve at the time, his world confined to the schoolroom and the nursery. He knew enough to know that his father had been a senior member of His Majesty’s government, wielding a quite disproportionate influence on foreign affairs. There was no doubt that he had his political rivals. One might even call them enemies. But would any of them have killed?

  In a duel, perhaps. His father’s compatriots were men of their generation, quick to see a slight, quick to draw their swords. But a dawn affair of honor was a far cry from poison in one’s tea.

  There was no honor to poison.

  As for his mother . . . Yes, she had her rivals and detractors. Even in the schoolroom, Lucien had been well aware that his mother wasn’t exactly in the common mode. And it hadn’t taken Aunt Winifred long to make clear that his mother had been nothing that had been desirable in a duchess. But it seemed equally absurd to try to imagine a disappointed candidate for his father’s hand taking the desperate expedient of eliminating her rival, and in such a way that Lucien’s father might, too, sip of the poisoned brew. As he had.

  It was no good. He was drifting in circles, around and around, theorizing with insufficient evidence.

  It was time to seek help.

  Lucien made his way from the dance floor, trying to ignore the exaggerated reactions of his uncle’s guests as he navigated the crowded room. Was that girl really peering at his teeth? Yes. Yes, she was.

  The idiocy of mankind never ceased to impress him, and that was after six months spent at sea, sharing a berth with a deckhand fondly known as Foolish Pete.

  A quick scan of the ballroom assured Lucien that his quarry had already beaten a retreat from the dancing. That didn’t matter; Lucien was reasonably sure he knew where to find him.

  He had spent a month at his uncle’s house the winter he was fourteen, when he was sent down from Eton for fighting. It might have been a decade ago, but the contours of the house were impressed upon his memory. Lucien made his way without faltering out of the ballroom, through an anteroom, around a corridor, and up a short flight of three steps that led to a narrow back hallway. Uncle Henry’s study was at the back of the house, away from the noise and hubbub of the grand rooms that Aunt Winifred used to overawe her acquaintances.

  Aunt Winifred was the daughter of a successful soap seller from Ipswich. A very successful soap seller. Her money had purchased the Richmond house and supported a level of opulence that Lucien’s father had always found more than a little bit ridiculous.

  Lucien stopped at the door of Uncle Henry’s study, overcome with memory. Coming to Richmond with his parents, his father tapping his cane impatiently against the floor of the carriage, his mother in a hat with cherry-colored ribbons. They had forced Lucien into a blue velvet suit with a wide lace collar.

  “We mustn’t disappoint Winifred,” his father had mocked, and his mother told him he was too bad, in a voice full of laughter.

  The memory brought with it a familiar surge of anger and loss. Lucien’s father hadn’t been a young man; he might have been gone by now in the normal course of things. Why had someone felt the need to hasten the process? And in such a way?

  This was why he had stayed away so long. In New Orleans, the ghosts were bearable. Here . . .

  Lucien took a deep breath and turned the knob of the study door.

  Uncle Henry was there, his back to Lucien, tucking something away in a hidey-hole next to the fireplace. The house was too modern to have a priest’s hole or secret panels; Aunt Winifred must have ordered one put in, along with the linenfold paneling and portraits of other people’s ancestors.

  “Uncle Henry?”

  “Lucien!” The panel beside the fireplace snapped shut. Turning, Uncle Henry scrubbed his hand on the side of his breeches. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the ballroom, enjoying yourself?”

  “If such affairs are one’s idea of enjoyment,” said Lucien, closing the study door behind him.

  Uncle Henry smiled wryly. “I confess, my boy, they aren’t mine, either. But the ladies set great store by such things.” His tone suggested a charming conspiracy, man to man. He patted the back of a heavily carved pseudo-Tudor chair, piled with lumpy red velvet cushions. “I know I ought to urge you to sally forth and do your pretty with the ladies—but there’s claret enough for two if you feel like sharing my solitude.”

  “Thank you.” Lucien moved cautiously into the room. Just being there made him feel like a delinquent schoolboy again, about to be called to account for being sent down from Eton. “I had hoped I might trouble you for a moment.”

  Poking at the small fire in the grate, Uncle Henry looked a little wary. “There could never be trouble where you are concerned.”

  “That’s more kind than true,” Lucien said, taking the seat Uncle Henry indicated. He had been nothing but trouble as far as Uncle Henry was concerned.

  Poor Uncle Henry. In retrospect, Lucien could see that he had done his best by him. He had tried, so diligently, to give Lucien an education fitting his station. It wasn’t his fault that Lucien hadn’t given a fig for his station. He hadn’t given a fig for anything back then. He had been angry and raw and spoiling for a fight with the world. It didn’t help that his voice kept going back and forth between registers.

  It hadn’t been pleasant being thirteen. Or fourteen or fifteen.

  Uncle Henry handed Lucien a glass. “To better times,” he said diplomatically. “We put it about that you had retired to your estates in Scotland. We thought it better that people believe you were of a retiring disposition than . . .”

  “Than so entirely blind to my responsibilities?”

  Uncle Henry looked slightly embarrassed. “You were very young.” The corners of his mouth crinkled. “What am I saying? You still are very young. Looking at you and Hal . . . I’ve never felt quite so old! I’ll be taking to my chair before you know it, being wheeled out to take the waters.”

  “You never age, sir,” said Lucien politely. It wasn’t entirely a lie. The silver blended neatly with the blond in Uncle Henry’s hair, and an active life kept him fit and vigorous, more fit than Lucien’s father, who had been given to what Uncle Henry had discreetly termed “the dissipations of London life.”

  “All the same,” said Uncle Henry, settling back in the worn cushions of his chair with evident relief, “I shall be glad to hand the reins to a younger man.”

  Lucien winced. “About that. As you may have guessed, I’ve returned to—”

  “To take your rightful place, I should hope. You should, you kno
w,” Uncle Henry added, before Lucien could protest. “It’s past time.”

  “It never felt like mine,” said Lucien honestly. The duke? That was someone else. That was his father. As for Lucien . . . He wasn’t quite sure who or what he was. Part of him had been stuck in place, like a cracked clock, ever since that dreadful night twelve years ago.

  “But it is yours.” Uncle Henry set his glass down on the table with a decided air. “As soon as this nonsense about your sister’s Season is over, I’ll take you up to Hullingden and show you the accounts. I can assure you, you’ll find everything just as it should be.”

  “I never doubted it.” Whatever else one might say of Uncle Henry, he was deeply devoted to the ducal patrimony. Hullingden and its tenants had undoubtedly fared better under his stewardship than they would have under Lucien’s inexpert care.

  In the normal course of things, Lucien ought to have learned the management of his lands at his father’s side. But his father had always been more interested in politics than land management. He had been content to leave the care of his estates to Uncle Henry, whom his father had once likened, in one of his more caustic moods, to a faithful old dog, trotting loyally back with someone else’s kill.

  Quietly, Uncle Henry said, “When you fled—I felt that I had betrayed your father’s last trust. It has eaten at me all these years. There was only one thing he had asked of me, and I failed him in it.”

  Lucien had never thought before of his uncle’s sentiments. He had only viewed him as an obstacle in his path. “In this instance, failure was forced upon you.”

  “Shall I consider that an apology?” A hint of a smile lightened Uncle Henry’s lips. “Your father never liked to apologize either.”

  For a moment, the two men were silent, occupied with shared memories.

  Then Uncle Henry, flexing his shoulders, pushed himself upright in his chair, and said, “Either way, it will be a relief to return the estates to your hands. Hullingden has been too long without a master.”

  For the first time, Lucien felt a twinge of guilt for what he was about to do. But there was no point in raising false hopes.

  “I didn’t come back for that—or to take my seat in the Lords,” Lucien said, forestalling Uncle Henry’s next comment. “I’ve come to see justice done.”

  Uncle Henry looked pained.

  “You know it as well as I.” Lucien leaned forward, his voice clipped and hard as he said, “Someone has evaded justice for twelve years. I intend to see he doesn’t do so any longer.”

  Uncle Henry rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I don’t want to set a damper on your finer feelings, but isn’t it a bit late in the day to enact a Greek tragedy? Blood doesn’t call to blood except on the stage. And that didn’t go very well for Hamlet, as I recall.”

  Or for anyone else. If Lucien remembered correctly, pretty much everyone ended up dead by the final act.

  “I hardly intend to litter London with bodies,” said Lucien. “All I want is to know why. Why would someone do that to them? And don’t try to tell me it was my mother,” he added fiercely. “She didn’t have it in her to hurt a spider.”

  Uncle Henry looked away, at the fire crackling merrily in the grate. “That isn’t entirely true. She had it in her to do any amount of violence. Oh, yes, she did”—he raised a hand as Lucien opened his mouth to protest—“to anyone who tried to harm you or your father.”

  Lucien was left with his mouth open, caught off guard.

  “Yes,” said Uncle Henry quietly. “I have always wondered too.”

  Lucien recovered his voice. “But, then, why— All those years ago, you were in a position to do something. They would have listened to you.” Lucien’s hands had balled themselves into fists. He forced himself to relax them, to sound less like the schoolboy he had been. “Why didn’t you demand an investigation?”

  Uncle Henry made a helpless gesture. “What was the use? Even if I might suspect—” He caught himself up short. “Society had already judged your mother and found her guilty. And you know how people are when they get an idea in their heads.”

  Lucien leaned forward, peering narrowly at his uncle. “You know something, don’t you? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Uncle Henry frowned at an invisible speck of dust on his sleeve. “Nothing of any substance. I never had any proof. . . .” He lifted his head abruptly. “Are you sure you want to hear it? It’s all over and gone, years ago. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Those sleeping dogs have a sharp bite,” said Lucien caustically.

  What was it that Clarissa had called them? The tainted seed of a cursed race? The legacy of their parents’ murders followed them still.

  “Sharper awake, I would think.” Uncle Henry shook his head. “Speaking of dogs, the old setter bitch at Hullingden just had a new litter. If you would like your pick—”

  The attempt to change the subject was too obvious to be effective. “What do you know about my parents’ deaths?”

  “I wouldn’t say know. Suspect. Not know.” Uncle Henry took a deep swig from his glass of claret and made a face over it. “Not as good as I’d thought. No, no, don’t look like that. I’m just getting to it. Even after all this time, I do not find any of this easy to relate.”

  Lucien shook his head as his uncle tipped the decanter in the direction of his glass. “I do not find it easy to hear,” he said stiffly.

  “But you would have it, nonetheless?” Uncle Henry looked at him with something like resignation. “You are so very much like your father. Not in looks—there’s no denying that you favor your mother’s people—but in temperament. He could never abandon a point either.”

  Lucien smiled crookedly. “Perhaps it was because he was never wrong.”

  “That,” said Uncle Henry, “is just what your father would have said.” His own smile faded. “But he was wrong. Fatally wrong. If I had seen it sooner, I would have warned him—but what good would it have done? He would never have listened.” He set the decanter aside and leaned forward, his glass cradled between his hands. “How much do you know of the situation in Martinique the year—the year your parents died?”

  The question was such a non sequitur that Lucien choked on his own claret.

  “Nothing,” Lucien said guardedly. “My mother had maintained no ties to that part of the world.”

  Except for the manzanilla tree in the greenhouse. The death apple, they called it, and with good cause. It had been the fruit of the tree that had killed her.

  “Or so she would have had us believe.”

  “What are you implying?” Lucien asked sharply.

  He wasn’t in the mood for any far-fetched theories about Creole conjuring and voodoo magic gone wrong. His mother had been a child of the Enlightenment, a devotee of science, a disciple of reason. She would have laughed such ideas to scorn.

  Uncle Henry’s nails beat a soft tattoo against the side of his glass. “You were just a boy, but even you must have been aware of the tumult of the times. There was bloody revolution across the channel, governments rising and falling. . . . Do you remember your grandfather—your mother’s father?”

  “A little.” Granpere had been quite old already by the time Lucien had been born, or at least he had seemed so to Lucien. But though he was white-haired and wizened, he had the energy of a much younger man. “And?”

  “Your grandfather had radical notions. He meant well, bless him,” said Uncle Henry quickly. “There wasn’t an ounce of harm in him. But he dealt in natural philosophy, not in the daily affairs of men. I’m sure his plants never beheaded their fellows,” he added, in a misguided attempt at humor. He looked up at Lucien. “You know, he divided his plantation among his slaves. It didn’t make him a popular fellow among the planters of Martinique, I imagine.”

  “No, I imagine not,” said Lucien. “How does all of this touch on my
parents?”

  Uncle Henry sighed. “Your mother . . . inherited her father’s views. She was a very outspoken advocate of the early phases of the revolution in France.”

  “So were many,” said Lucien guardedly. “Including Mr. Charles James Fox.”

  “I’m not saying it was out of the ordinary.” Uncle Henry looked into the flames of the fire. “After all, who could say then how matters would play out? No one could have imagined it. Although by the time of which we speak . . . well, that is as it was.”

  “Forgive me, sir,” said Lucien, doing his best to be polite, “but I find your reasoning oblique.”

  Uncle Henry lifted his glass, letting the firelight play off the deep red liquid. “Let me be plain, then. In the spring of 1794, the revolutionaries abolished slavery. The monarchists in Martinique appealed to us for help. They were afraid of invasion, insurrection. . . . Naturally, we came to their aid.” He looked up at Lucien. “Your mother’s sympathies were, in this instance, with the other side.”

  This wasn’t much of a surprise. “My mother was a great believer in the Rights of Man.”

  The firelight cast long shadows across Uncle Henry’s face. Long lines formed on either side of his mouth.

  “It was your father who had oversight for the planning of the expedition. It was all meant to be quite secret: the number of ships, our tactics, the timing of our attack—all of it information for which the French were quite eager.”

  The implication was clear. Lucien stared incredulously at Uncle Henry. “My father was a Tory, sir.”

  “Your father could deny your mother nothing,” snapped Uncle Henry. He slumped back in his chair, saying heavily, “I am not saying that your father was involved in this matter. Good God, Lucien, do you think I would care to believe ill of my own brother? But your father tended to turn a blind eye where your mother was concerned. He loved her past reason.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Lucien asked tightly.

  “If you must have it . . . Your mother was passing information to the French,” Uncle Henry said baldly. “Information she received from your father.”