The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  Not, however, in his bedroom.

  “Yes,” said my advisor. “That.” And then, ominously, “You don’t want to rely too heavily on one set of papers.”

  What about the Paston letters? What about all those other scholars who had made their careers out of one good cache of documents?

  “I do have other sources,” I said quickly, pulling my chair up closer to the table. “Corroborative sources. If you’ll look, you’ll see that most of the material relating to the Pink Carnation’s activities in Ireland comes from the collections of the British Library. I found the background on the Black Tulip in the Vaughn Collection. As for the Indian angle—”

  Professor Tompkins held up a hand to stop my babble. “I’m not saying you didn’t do your work—”

  Wasn’t he?

  “—but even allowing for the diversity of sources, the argument itself is . . . one-sided.”

  There was a chip in the Formica tabletop. I traced the familiar contours with one finger. “Do you mean that there isn’t enough about the French secret service? If you’ll look, Chapter Eight is all about the conflicting structures of the French intelligence agencies and their attempt to combat English infiltrators in Paris.”

  I’d found those documents at the archives of the Prefecture of Police, and nearly got my poor boyfriend arrested when he came looking for me and wandered into the wrong corridor by accident.

  “Yes, yes,” said Professor Tompkins. “I read the chapter. You’ve done an admirable job of assembling your material. I hadn’t thought you would be able to find this much.”

  It would have been nicer if he hadn’t sounded quite so depressed about it.

  I scooted my chair closer, trying to read his notes upside down. “Is it too long? I can cut it down.”

  “That’s not it.” Professor Tompkins kicked back in his chair, frowning at me over his glasses. “You’ve certainly done a thorough job. You’ve mustered your sources. Your writing is clear and concise.”

  This sounded like the beginning of the sort of comment I wrote on B papers, getting in a bit of praise before going for the whammy. “But?”

  Professor Tompkins shook his head, his eyes on the scattered pages of my dissertation. “It’s like Bud Bailyn says—”

  Professor Bailyn wasn’t just a monument in the department; he was one of the rocks on which it was built. He taught the requisite Practice of History class, in which his catchphrase was . . .

  “So what?” I filled in for him, feeling like I’d just swallowed a massive ball of lead. “What’s the point? But there is a point. The point is . . .”

  “Yes?” Professor Tompkins waited, giving me a chance to hang myself.

  The lead ball in my throat grew to bowling ball proportions. I really hadn’t been prepared for this.

  “The point is that it happened,” I said desperately. Wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t that what we were meant to do, to reconstruct the past, make it accessible to future generations? “It happened and no one has assembled the pieces to prove it before. I’m—I’m filling a gap in the historiography.”

  Professor Tompkins looked deeply sympathetic, a fact that filled me with more foreboding than anything else. If he saw any merit in the project, he’d be snarky, prodding me on to the conclusions he’d already concluded.

  “That’s all very well,” he said patiently, “if you’re content with a career teaching at a fourth-tier academic institution.”

  Ouch.

  My advisor shuffled the papers together, depositing them in a heap on the table. “But if you want one of the better jobs—I’m afraid you’ll need something more.”

  “I see.”

  I didn’t see. I wasn’t entirely sure what he was telling me. Or, rather, I was, but I just didn’t know how to process it. I felt like I’d been blindsided. He’d okayed this dissertation. He’d known what I was doing. If it wasn’t enough—why hadn’t he told me three years ago, before I’d invested a chunk of my life in researching a topic that was, apparently, a direct route to academic self-immolation?

  “I can work on it.” My throat felt dry. “I can come up with a new angle.” My eyes fell on Megan’s folder, sticking out of my bag. At random, I said, “I just came across some new material, about vampires. The Black Tulip used the vampire myth—”

  “No,” said my advisor. “No.”

  He was a slight man, but his voice could fill a lecture hall without a microphone. In a small office, the effect was even more impressive.

  “Don’t you see?” said Professor Tompkins kindly, and my heart hit the beige carpet, because if he was being kind, then it was really all over. “That’s just the problem.”

  “Vampires?” I said, in a feeble, doomed attempt at humor.

  “In a manner of speaking. Vampires, dukes, spies with cutesy names . . .” Taking off his glasses, Professor Tompkins set them on the table. “I’m afraid it all just reads too much like fiction.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  London, 1806

  “What a cheap trick,” said Miss Fitzhugh indignantly.

  “It’s not a trick. It’s a warning.” Lucien handed her down from the phaeton at Brook Street, keeping a wary eye out for stray bits of manzanilla. He had brushed the seat of the phaeton with a fallen tree branch, making sure none of the leaves remained, but he still felt itchy around the wrists and neck.

  “Warning, hmph.” Miss Fitzhugh had a flinty look in her eye as she stomped towards the house. “It’s an insult—that’s what it is. A few bits of foliage and I’m meant to run screaming into the mist? Really.”

  She hadn’t seen what that foliage could do. Lucien had. What next? Extract of manzanilla in her tea? A death apple left temptingly on a plate?

  Lucien had a sudden image of Miss Fitzhugh doubled over, a fallen apple by her side, her complexion mottled, her mouth opening and closing in silent gasps of pain so violent that it robbed the sufferer of the ability to scream.

  Lucien cut around her, blocking her path. “Poisonous foliage. Poisonous foliage from a man who has killed before.” Gruffly, he said, “I don’t want to see you laid out on a marble slab.”

  “I don’t want to see me laid out on a marble slab either. But I refuse”—her chest expanded with the force of the sentiment—“I refuse to allow this ruffian to run free.”

  She broke off as a door banged open and an authoritative voice snapped, “Young lady! Get yourself inside! At once!”

  A tall, thin woman in the largest purple turban Lucien had ever seen stood in the door.

  As an afterthought, she pointed a finger at Lucien. “You, too.”

  The candles were still lit and the smell of cinnamon was still rich in the air, but the hall, which had seemed fairly large when Lucien was last there, was crowded with a profusion of people.

  “Thank goodness,” said Mrs. Fitzhugh, hurrying forward. She had jam in her hair and a worried expression on her face. Beneath the jam, relief warred with annoyance. “Your brother has been roaming the streets of the city looking for you.”

  “It wasn’t really a roam. It was more of a ramble. Almost an amble.” The large blond man tried to gesticulate, and then remembered he was holding an infant. He gave Parsnip a little bounce. “We knew Aunt Sally would turn up all right and tight, didn’t we, Parsnip, old thing?”

  A slender brunette rushed forward. “They say it’s not safe to be out right now because of the—” She caught sight of Lucien and broke off, flushing.

  “The vampire,” finished a young woman with curly brown hair, favoring Lucien with a frank stare. “But you seem to have brought him with you.”

  At the word “vampire,” the nursery maid went into strong hysterics in the corner and had to be ministered to by the butler.

  “Thank you, Agnes and Lizzy,” said Miss Fitzhugh. Turning to Lucien, she said, “I don’t believe you’ve met M
iss Wooliston and Miss Reid. They, of course, know all about you.”

  Little Parsnip waved her chubby arms from the safety of Turnip’s arm, adding her vocal—if incoherent—voice to the din.

  “I take full responsibility—” Lucien attempted to get a word in edgewise, but his voice was drowned out in the general cacophony, with everyone rattling on about rambling, roaming, and the feeding habits of vampires and other large woodland creatures.

  “Enough!” snapped the woman in the purple turban, her voice cracking off the neatly papered walls like a boomerang. She glowered at Miss Fitzhugh. “Well, missy? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Lucien stepped forward to take the blame. “I—”

  Miss Fitzhugh cut him off. “The Duke of Belliston was kind enough to take me for a drive.” She handed her gloves and bonnet off to the butler. “Thank you, Quimby. That will be all.”

  Lucien was impressed. Her chaperone wasn’t.

  “I thought,” said Arabella Fitzhugh pointedly, “that you were buying laces with Lizzy. At least, that is what you gave Quimby to believe.”

  Miss Fitzhugh looked reproachfully at the girl with curls. Lizzy gave a little shrug. “If you had told me . . .”

  “All a misunderstanding,” Miss Fitzhugh said airily. “Oh, goodness, Parsnip, have you grown since this morning? Come give Auntie a kiss. It must be all that raspberry jam, don’t you think?”

  Her beatific smile fooled no one.

  The large blond man, who Lucien presumed had to be Miss Fitzhugh’s brother, Turnip, hoisted Parsnip higher on his shoulder and attempted to muster a grave expression. “Not at all the thing, you know, going off with strange dukes.”

  Miss Fitzhugh assumed her most innocent expression. “You mustn’t believe all those rumors. He’s really not all that strange once you get to know him.”

  Arabella Fitzhugh pressed her eyes briefly closed. “Sally . . .”

  “All right. All right!” A good campaigner knew when she was outmaneuvered. Miss Fitzhugh readjusted the cuffs of her pelisse. “If you must know, there were certain exigencies that necessitated our . . . bending the rules of propriety. We have SPIES.”

  Parsnip gave a little bounce in her father’s arms.

  “Again?” Arabella Fitzhugh looked as though she had the headache.

  “And you didn’t tell me?” demanded Lizzy indignantly.

  “You had your own spies,” said Miss Fitzhugh to Lizzy. Turning to Lucien, she said patiently, “You see, I told you we had experience with this sort of thing. Really, it’s quite fortunate that I wandered into your garden. I can’t imagine what you would have done without me.”

  Lucien felt a reluctant smile tweak the corners of his lips. “I can’t imagine either.”

  Ever since Miss Fitzhugh had traipsed into his life, he felt as though he’d been standing at the center of a whirlwind. What would he have done without her? He’d probably be squatting in a cell in Newgate, Lucien realized grimly. But for Miss Fitzhugh’s prompt intervention the night before, he would, as their mysterious malefactor had planned, have been found hovering over the body of a murdered woman with fang marks on her neck.

  He did not imagine that would have gone well for him.

  All the same, Miss Fitzhugh’s family was right. He had no business dragging her down into his own murky past and even murkier present. His troubles had branched out like the hydra, growing new heads as he attempted to lop off the old.

  Lucien looked around the assemblage. “I feel as though I ought to crave your pardon. These are my—” He couldn’t quite bring himself to say “spies.” “My troubles. I never meant to enmesh Miss Fitzhugh.”

  Turnip Fitzhugh gave his daughter a hearty bounce. “Oh, Sally enmeshes herself. Never known her to stay away from troubles. Or spies. Or iced cakes,” he added darkly.

  “If you wanted those cakes—,” Miss Fitzhugh said hotly.

  “We’ll have Cook make more cakes,” Arabella Fitzhugh intervened. “How do you know there are spies?”

  Turnip Fitzhugh looked at Lucien keenly. “Haven’t been going about leaving messages in puddings again, have they?”

  “Puddings?” Lucien wondered if he had misheard.

  “I’ll explain later,” said Miss Fitzhugh to Lucien. Her expression became serious as she turned back to her family. “It wasn’t anything so benign as pudding, I’m afraid. Do you remember that woman on the balcony last night?”

  Arabella Fitzhugh reached out to touch her daughter’s soft cheek. “It isn’t the sort of thing one easily forgets.”

  “They say she had fang marks on her neck.” That was from the taller girl, Miss Wooliston.

  “She had.” Miss Fitzhugh took a deep breath. “We think that the woman last night was killed in an attempt to prevent the duke from unmasking his mother’s killer, who may or may not be the spy to whom his mother was sending information back in the 1790s. The murdered woman was dressed up in a black wig to look like the duchess. And,” she added triumphantly, “she was adorned with flowers.”

  Lucien wasn’t quite sure how the others in the room had followed that. He was having trouble making sense of it, and he had been there.

  The woman in the purple turban looked sharply at Miss Fitzhugh. “A black wig, you say?”

  “I realize it all sounds a little strange,” Lucien began, feeling a bit as though he were sinking slowly but inexorably into marshy ground.

  The woman in purple wafted that aside. “You did right to summon me,” she said grandly.

  Lucien looked at her in confusion. “But we didn’t summon you.”

  “Well, then, you ought to have,” retorted the woman in purple. “Fortunately, Fate remedied your oversight for you.”

  Miss Fitzhugh stepped in before Lucien’s head could start spinning. “This is Mrs. Reid,” she explained. “The author of The Convent of Orsino.”

  Lucien regarded the purple-garbed woman with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “You—you wrote that book?”

  Mrs. Reid looked down her nose at him. “This is no time for autographs, young man.”

  An autograph? Lucien wanted an apology.

  “If—” Lucien was having trouble finding his voice. “If—”

  Mrs. Reid’s skirts whipped like a lash as she stalked in an arcane pattern around the room. “Hush. I’m thinking.” She rounded on Miss Fitzhugh. “What else?”

  Miss Fitzhugh looked to Lucien for corroboration. “Well, there was a masked man who followed us in the mist and decided to deck the duke’s carriage with a tasteful arrangement of flowers and leaves. Poisonous leaves,” she added, for Lucien’s benefit.

  “I really don’t like the sound of this,” said Arabella Fitzhugh.

  Lucien regarded her with gratitude. It was good to know that there was at least one person in the room who didn’t view stalking spies as an invigorating alternative to hunting foxes.

  “I’ll go to Sir Matthew Egerton in the morning and tell him the whole,” Lucien said rapidly. “In the meantime, if Miss Fitzhugh were to retire to the country for a week . . . ?”

  “Sir Matthew? The man is worse than useless.” The purple feathers adorning the neck of Mrs. Reid’s gown quivered ominously. “Besides, even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to help you against the Black Tulip.”

  The name seemed to echo through the far reaches of the room.

  Turnip Fitzhugh looked hastily over his shoulder; Lizzy Reid’s eyes opened wide with surprise; Agnes Wooliston gasped.

  Parsnip yawned.

  “The who?” inquired Lucien.

  Mrs. Reid’s nostrils flared at this display of ignorance. “The Black Tulip is only the most deadly spy ever unleashed by the French.”

  Turnip Fitzhugh turned to his wife. “I had a spot of bother with one of his agents once.” His brow furrowed in reminiscence. “Seemed like a
n awfully decent sort of woman until she started taking knives out of her hair.”

  “Lovely,” said Lucien. That was all this situation needed. Medusa with cutlery. “Are you sure we’re dealing with this . . .”

  “Black Tulip,” provided Miss Fitzhugh helpfully. She stepped closer to Lucien, a one-woman private guard. She regarded him with a mixture of amusement and admiration. “When you embroil yourself with spies, you don’t do it by halves, do you?”

  Lucien looked at Mrs. Reid. “What makes you think it’s this Tulip character?”

  He couldn’t quite bring himself to say the whole name. It sounded too much like something out of the pages of Mrs. Reid’s novel.

  “The Black Tulip was in operation in the nineties. He had a habit of leaving calling cards behind.”

  “Flowers?” inquired Lucien.

  Mrs. Reid gave him a quelling look. She wasn’t accustomed to being interrupted right in the middle of a dramatic pause. “There were flowers. . . . And there were the flowers the Tulip carved into the flesh of his victims.”

  “Charming,” said Miss Fitzhugh.

  “No,” said Mrs. Reid. “It wasn’t.”

  “Our flowers,” said Lucien hastily, “were quite real.” Quite real and quite deadly. “And our note was written on paper.” Not carved into flesh.

  Although, was that really so different from the fang marks painted on the actress’s neck?

  “He didn’t always carve his sign,” said Mrs. Reid, looking rather put out. “And he always chose black-haired confederates. Female black-haired confederates. They were his Petals of the Tulip.”

  Mrs. Reid uttered the name in thrilling tones.

  Lucien decided not to share his opinion that “petals of the tulip” sounded more like a sultan’s collection of concubines than a dangerous gang of assassins.

  Turnip Fitzhugh raised a hand. “Er . . . ah . . . don’t like to put the fly in the ointment and all that, don’t you know . . . but isn’t the Tulip dead?”