The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  “Daisies,” said Sally. “She’s holding daisies.”

  There was something poignant and sad about those simple flowers in the woman’s still, white hand. They were meant to be plucked in sun-washed summer meadows and twisted into chains. They didn’t belong here in the chill autumn night any more than the woman, with her inappropriately light dress, belonged here, cold and dead on a marble bench.

  The duke’s voice seemed to come from a long way away. “Those aren’t daisies.”

  There’s rosemary—that’s for remembrance. . . . There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.

  The duke looked at her oddly. Sally hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud.

  “I saw Hamlet last week,” she said inconsequentially. “At the Pudding Lane Theatre.”

  The duke made a little grunting sound deep in his throat, and turned his frown back to the woman in front of him, who did, even disregarding the flowers, look rather like Ophelia, but for the fact that Ophelia had been fair-haired where this woman’s long curls were a stark and startling black. Ophelia had worn just such a gown as this, white and flowing, dusted with something that gave it just a bit of a shimmer, so that when Ophelia whirled across the stage, the folds of her gown swirled and sparkled with her.

  But that had been theater and this was real.

  Sally rubbed her gloved hands against her bare arms, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Who is she?”

  The fabric of her gown, elegant from a distance, was flimsy and cheap, far too thin for the late October chill. There was kohl darkening her lashes and red, red rouge on her lips.

  “I have no idea.” The duke, who had been kneeling by the bench, pushed himself up, standing so abruptly that he almost stumbled.

  What was that in his hand? “Oh?” said Sally.

  Whatever it was, the duke was holding it down by his side, cupped in one palm. “I’ve never seen her before,” he said rapidly. “She’s a stranger to me.”

  There was a saying: what I say three times is true. Did that mean twice was a lie?

  Sally positioned herself between the duke and the woman on the bench. “Either she summoned you here herself or someone meant you to find her. If she was the author of the note . . .”

  If she was the author of the note, then she had met someone she hadn’t expected on the balcony.

  “Are you accusing me?” The duke looked down at Sally with the advantage of height afforded him by her flat slippers. “Go on. Be direct about it. Don’t mince words.”

  “I’m not accusing you.” Not yet. Sally stepped up to the duke, the stones underfoot cold through her thin slippers. The air was sickly sweet with the scent of overblown roses. The wind rose, whipping Sally’s hair around her face. “If you know anything—”

  “Are you hoping I’ll break down and confess?” Beneath the duke’s mockery, Sally could hear the thrum of frustration. “Are you planning to return me to the ballroom in irons? Or will you merely run a stake through my heart?”

  Sally glared at him. “A woman is dead,” she said. Dead, the echo came back to them from the withered gardens. Dead. “This isn’t a joke.”

  “No. It’s not.” The duke’s expression was bleak in the moonlight. For a moment, just for a moment, Sally thought she detected some genuine emotion, until he added provocatively, “If you had any sense, you would run away—before I make you my next meal.”

  The breeze snapped at Sally’s ankles, blowing her dress close to her legs. Her necklace seemed to burn against her throat. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said belligerently. “Do you really think I believe such nonsense?”

  “I don’t know.” The duke’s fingers curled around her chin, forcing her face up towards his. He looked at her with hooded eyes. “I don’t know anything about you. Other than that you have a strange habit of appearing at inopportune moments.”

  Was he implying . . . ? No. That was unthinkable.

  “Well, I know this about you,” Sally said tartly. She poked him in the chest with one finger, hard enough that the duke released his grasp. “Your teeth are no pointier than mine.”

  “Didn’t you hear?” said the duke silkily. “I come from a cursed race.”

  A little frisson of fear crawled along Sally’s spine. She was alone in the dark with a dead woman and a man who might have killed once, might be ready to kill again.

  With his pointy, pointy teeth? Sally got hold of herself. The duke was trying to scare her away; she was sure of it. And it wasn’t going to work. She refused to give him the satisfaction of turning and bolting.

  “I don’t believe in curses,” said Sally flatly.

  “What do you believe in?” The words were a challenge.

  The duke’s eyes were on hers, dark beneath their heavy lids. They exerted a magnetic effect. Sally could imagine an innocent falling prey to those eyes, losing herself in those depths, dark as midnight, and just as dangerous.

  Of course, Sally wasn’t that sort of ninny. Fortunately.

  “Malignant human agency,” Sally said succinctly, and had the satisfaction of seeing the duke blink. “That’s what I believe in. It wasn’t a curse that did this to this poor woman. It was a person.” Seizing her advantage, she pounced. “What’s in your hand?”

  The duke drew his hand back, but Sally was too fast for him. After a moment of confused fumbling, Sally emerged triumphant. Dancing away from the duke, she held an object up in one gloved hand, the moonlight winking off a smooth enamel surface.

  “It’s a . . . snuffbox.” She couldn’t quite keep the disappointment out of her voice.

  “Brilliantly spotted,” drawled the duke.

  He made a grab for it, but Sally drew it back. She squinted at the intricately detailed surface. “With a coat of arms on it. Your coat of arms?”

  Agnes would undoubtedly have known. Sally only guessed, but the guess hit home. Extending his hand, the duke said stiffly, “If you would return that to me—”

  Return? She was fairly certain she had seen him scoop it up from beside the woman’s body. “Is it yours?”

  She watched the duke’s face. Unfortunately, he was standing with his back to the light, but she could still see him press his lips together hard, weighing his responses, before saying curtly, “I don’t take snuff. May I have that, please?”

  “Why, if it’s not yours?” Sally flipped the lid open, and saw the duke make a quick, convulsive movement with one hand.

  “Is there—,” he asked, and then stopped himself. His lips pressed tightly together. “I had thought there might be a message. Inside.”

  Sally felt around, just to make sure. “There’s nothing.” Not even a few grains of desiccated snuff. Only the portrait of a woman, painted on the underside of the lid. A woman with long black curls, wearing a light white gown. “Who is she?”

  She half expected the duke to deny any knowledge. He looked at the portrait with lidded eyes. “My mother.”

  Sally’s eyes flew to the duke in surprise. “But—” The woman on the bench couldn’t be any older than Sally. “Then, she isn’t . . . ?”

  “No. May I have that now?” In the tone of one speaking much against his will, the duke added, tersely, “The box belonged to my father. I haven’t seen it since— For a very long time.”

  “Then what was it doing here? Next to—?” She glanced sideways, and broke off, her tongue tangling on the words. For a moment she had nearly forgotten. Recovering herself, Sally said tartly, “Unless your father has returned from the grave.”

  “To suck the blood of his victims?” The duke’s voice vibrated with frustration. “Damn it all. Damn it all to hell.”

  The words struck an unfortunate note. Sally looked from the woman to the duke and back again. In the moonlight, the fang marks
on her neck seemed obscenely red, the same red as the rouge on her lips, far more red than the blood streaking her dress, which had dried to a dark brown, almost black.

  “They’re fake.” Sally’s eyes went to the duke’s face as a horrible surmise began to form. She fought a rising wave of nausea. “The fang marks.”

  “They may be fake,” said the duke, “but whoever she is, she’s most genuinely dead.” He shook his head slightly. “The proper authorities will have to be told. Whoever they might be.”

  “Wait.” Sally grabbed his arm before he could head towards the door. “Don’t you see?”

  The duke paused, frowning down at her. “See what?”

  Sally’s fingers dug into the fabric of his sleeve. “That note—the snuffbox—the fang marks,” she said breathlessly. “Someone wanted you here. Someone means to make it look as though you did this.”

  The duke’s arm stiffened beneath her fingers. His face was shadowed. “Me.”

  “You.” Sally’s blood thrummed in her veins, every sense on alert. “Who else? You’re the only vampire in London.” She looked the duke in the eye, her face serious. “Your father’s snuffbox was insurance.”

  Their eyes locked; they stood frozen together. Sally could see the duke’s throat work beneath the folds of his cravat.

  “That’s—,” he began, then stopped. His head lifted. He stood like that for a moment, his expression abstracted. “The blood,” he said.

  “What about the blood?” If he was trying to convince her that he was a vampire . . .

  “Years ago. I was on a merchantman that was boarded by a French frigate,” the duke said conversationally. “There was blood, blood everywhere. You could smell it. But here—”

  Sally sniffed experimentally. “All I smell are those roses.”

  Before she could stop him, the duke pulled away, dropping to his knees by the bench. “If she were just killed,” he said rapidly, “there should be blood everywhere. Puddles of it.”

  “There’s blood on her dress.” The sight of it made Sally feel more than a little bit wobbly, not that she would let the duke know that.

  The duke was not so squeamish. He touched a finger to the woman’s hem. “Dried.” He rubbed his fingers together. “Or mostly dried.”

  Sally looked down at the duke’s dark head, keeping her own pale skirts well out of the way of the woman’s. “What are you saying?”

  The duke rose slowly to his feet, brushing off his hands on his breeches. “She wasn’t killed here. Someone brought her here. Someone brought her here and laid her out.”

  In the darkness of the garden, twigs crackled as something scrambled up a tree. Leaves rustled in the wind. Sally glanced over her shoulder, her eyes flicking back and forth, wondering who might be out there, hidden under cover of those trees. Waiting.

  “He—” Sally’s voice sounded strange to her own ears. “He arranged her.”

  It was grotesque. Macabre. Sally cupped her elbows in her gloved hands, hugging herself.

  Whoever it was had laid the woman out on this bench, fanning her skirts out around her, arranging her hair, pressing that pitiful bouquet of flowers into her lifeless hands.

  Sally looked down at her, at that strangely peaceful face, the eyes staring up into nothingness. There was something odd about her hairline; it skewed to one side, and there was an auburn wisp that had escaped beneath the black.

  A wig. The woman was wearing a wig.

  Had she put it on herself or had it been placed on her—after?

  “It’s disgusting,” Sally said huskily. “It’s inhuman.”

  The duke’s expression was remote as he gazed down at the woman. “Yes.”

  Indignation kindled in Sally’s breast; she could feel the warmth of it in her cheeks, in her hands, making her see red, as red as that poor dead girl’s rouged neck.

  Sally turned to the duke. “You can’t be seen here,” she said fiercely, shooing him towards the door. “You can’t be here when she’s found. I’ll raise the alarm. No one needs to know you were here.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Preventing a miscarriage of justice.” Even as she said it, Sally knew she was doing the right thing. Light danced off her bracelets as she waved her hands. “There’s a girl with curly brown hair and green earrings. Lizzy Reid. Find her. Tell her I said to dance with you. People will think you were in the ballroom the whole time.”

  The duke pulled back. “Someone will have seen me leave with you.”

  “Then I’ll say I sent you back inside to fetch my shawl. Or my fan. That’s it,” she said decidedly. “I dropped my fan in the ballroom and dispatched you to bring it to me.”

  “Because it’s so warm on the balcony?” The duke frowned down at her. “There’s no need for all this subterfuge. If we just go to the proper authorities—”

  “They’ll clap you in irons. And whoever did this will win.” The thought made Sally want to spit. “We can’t let that happen. I’ll raise the alarm. You have to go. Now. Before anyone sees you here.”

  The duke stubbornly refused to move. “And leave you here alone?”

  Sally gave him an exasperated look. “No one is going to suspect me of killing her.”

  The duke’s fingers closed lightly over her forearms. He gave her a little shake. “Did it occur to you that someone who killed once might kill again?”

  It hadn’t, actually.

  Sally drew a deep breath, marshaling all her courage. “No one has any cause to kill me,” she said haughtily.

  The fleeting hint of a smile lightened the grim set of the duke’s lips. “Are you so sure of that?”

  Before Sally could retort, the sound of voices arrested her attention. Down the balcony, the doors to the ballroom were opening. She could see only a woman’s skirt, the outline of a man’s form behind her.

  “Quickly!” Sally gave the duke a little push, and then realized that she was pushing the wrong way, straight towards the couple by the door. At any moment, they would step out . . . and see the duke looming over the body of a murdered woman. She hastily reversed course, shooing him in the opposite direction. “Not that way. You’ll have to go over the balcony. Well? What are you waiting for?”

  “A moment to draw breath?”

  “Draw breath later,” Sally said tartly. She thought for a moment and added, “And call on me. Tomorrow. Number Twenty-two Upper Brook Street.”

  The couple were stepping through the door, their light conversation in stark contrast to the dark tableau on the balcony.

  Sally flapped her hands at the duke, but he hung back, his head tilted slightly to one side, his eyes searching her face. “Why are you championing me?”

  She scarcely knew herself. Sally gave a little shrug. “Call it a sense of fair play. Now go.”

  To her surprise, the duke grasped her hand and raised it to his lips.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Before Sally could gather her wits to reply, he gave her fingers one last squeeze, then let go. Bracing a hand on the balustrade, he swung himself over the balcony. His dark clothes blended with the shadows. The only sign of his passage was a slight crunch as he landed on the gravel path below. And then . . . nothing.

  Sally peered anxiously over the balustrade, but she couldn’t make out any sign of the duke. He had disappeared into the shadows, leaving her alone with the murdered woman.

  The rush of energy that had fueled her faded along with the duke, leaving her feeling very cold and more than a little bit uncertain. The events of the evening rolled through her mind: the crowded warmth of the dance floor, Lizzy and Agnes in the center of a group of laughing beaux, the duke standing alone by the edge of the ballroom. This might, Sally thought uneasily, be rather more of an adventure than she had bargained for.

  How long had it been since she had left the ballroom? It f
elt like hours, but she knew that in reality it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, fifteen at most.

  She could still feel the press of the duke’s lips against her hand.

  She had been so sure, a moment ago, that she was doing the right thing, but now, with the woman’s pale eyes staring sightlessly up at her, she couldn’t repress a slight shiver of unease.

  Had she just let a killer go free?

  No. Sally frowned into the darkness. She was quite sure of her own instincts, and all of them told her that the duke was innocent.

  Which meant that they had a killer to catch.

  On the other end of the balcony, Hal Caldicott held the door open for Georgiana Thynne. At any moment, they would step across the threshold and spot Sally’s pale dress. Sally stiffened her spine. Tomorrow, the duke would have some explaining to do. But now, Sally had a body to discover.

  Dropping to her knees beside the bench, Sally filled her lungs and let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

  Chapter Eight

  Cambridge, 2004

  “Eeek!”

  I let out a squeak, dropping my bag on my foot as a hideously misshapen figure loomed up from behind the mailboxes.

  The bulb had burned out again, turning the dirty beige walls to a sinister orange. Mine was the last door on the hall, tucked into a little cul-de-sac behind the mailboxes, out of reach of the feeble light from the window on the stairwell.

  The hunchback lurched towards me.

  “That’s not quite the greeting I was expecting,” said the Oxford-inflected tones of my boyfriend.

  I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. Yes, that was my boyfriend, propped against the doorframe. The strange blob behind him resolved itself into a Barbour jacket draped over the handle of a wheelie suitcase.

  Not a hump.

  “You’re early,” I said weakly. “I mean, yay! You’re here.”

  I flung my arms around his neck, burying my nose in the shoulder of his sweater, breathing in the familiar scents of Colin, falling leaves and shaving soap and crinkly old paper lining the bottoms of dresser drawers. The sweater was scratchy against my cheek, but I didn’t mind. It smelled like Selwick Hall.