The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  As they left London behind, the gloom of the metropolis gave way to the sort of brilliant autumn weather that made summer seem distinctly overrated. The air was crisp and cool, rich with the tang of mulch and fallen apples; the leaves flaunted their showiest orange, crimson, and gold; and the faint, sweet sound of a small brook singing as it tumbled over stones could be heard in the distance.

  Hullingden, they were helpfully informed by the innkeeper at the local hostelry, the Cockeyed Crow, was the name of both the village and the castle. He had offered them directions, down a long and rambling way edged with tall trees that looked as though they had been old when William the Conqueror was young.

  “A castle.” Sally raised her brows, but her chaperone only emitted a distracted sniff, her maid was asleep in the corner of the carriage, and Lady Florence appeared to be engaged in an extensive toilette.

  Sally hadn’t expected a castle.

  The word conjured up images of ruined towers on deserted hillsides, with White Ladies stalking the battlements and maidens sighing from the parapets, the filmy white fabric of their skirts billowing in the moonlight.

  Which, Sally decided critically, was most likely to cause the maiden in question to come down with a bad cold. There was nothing romantic about a case of the sniffles.

  Nor was there anything eerie about the landscape. The gatekeeper ought to have been tall and gaunt with cavernous cheeks and sunken eyes. Instead, he was a distinctly jolly individual who didn’t seem to have missed a meal in some time. The gatehouse was just as stony as one could desire, but there was nothing ruinous about it. There were lace curtains at the windows and the smell of something baking coming from the chimney.

  The smell made Sally’s mouth water. They hadn’t had nuncheon when they stopped for directions at the Cockeyed Crow, and it had been some time since breakfast.

  She was itching to quiz the duke about their destination, but he had ridden ahead, to see to the preparations for their reception, he had said, although Sally suspected it was really to escape Miss Gwen, who all too clearly viewed the prospect of a long journey in a closed carriage as an opportunity to grill the duke on everything he remembered about his mother’s activities twelve years ago.

  Not the duke. Lucien. Sally kept forgetting that, just as she kept forgetting that in the eyes of the world, they were about to be joined in holy matrimony until death did they part.

  Her death, that was.

  There were, apparently, already wagers at White’s on whether she would survive the honeymoon. The news had made Sally’s blood boil, and caused her brother, Turnip, to duck, fling up his hands, and say hastily, “Hold your fire, Sal! Ain’t the thing to shoot the messenger, don’t you know!”

  In the ballrooms of London, the announcement of Sally’s betrothal had been greeted with equal parts envy and pity.

  “Well, I certainly wouldn’t trade places with you,” Lucy Ponsonby had announced.

  “I should hope not,” Sally had retorted. “The Belliston sapphires wouldn’t go with your coloring at all.”

  Sally had no idea whether the Bellistons had rubies, sapphires, or a collection of small bits of gravel, but she did have the satisfaction of seeing Lucy Ponsonby’s eyes turn a gratifying shade of green.

  Harder to deal with had been the tongue-tied sympathy of the good-hearted and small-brained, all of whom seemed to assume she was selling herself to a monster for a title.

  “Have you taken a good look at the duke?” Sally had said acidly to the fifth of these inquiries, and stalked off to the ladies’ retiring room for a good fume at Agnes, which would have been markedly more satisfying if Agnes hadn’t responded with a tentative “You can still cry off, you know. Before you go to Hullingden.”

  Sally had regarded her friend with some aspersion. “I’m hardly about to be flung into an oubliette in my nightdress!”

  “Well, noooo . . . ,” Agnes admitted. “Not in your nightdress.”

  It was nice to know that her friends thought her betrothed would wait until she was properly attired to subject her to strange and arcane tortures.

  The memory still made Sally fume. Had any of them, including her so-called friends, taken the time to examine the duke? Had any of them spoken to him? If it weren’t for those ridiculous rumors, they would all be panting to be the object of his attentions. For heaven’s sake, the man was the image of the romantic ideal, with all that tousled dark hair, and that sensitive mouth that could turn so easily from a grimace to a crooked smile. Sally couldn’t deny that she took a certain satisfaction in the attractive picture they made entering a ballroom together, even if most of their grand entrances were marred by Lucien murmuring something droll, making her snort ratafia up her nose.

  There was nothing quite so unpleasant as ratafia up one’s nose.

  As for Lucien, he was very pleasant, indeed. Sometimes a little too pleasant. He was the perfect companion—attentive, courteous, with a dry, sardonic wit. But Sally couldn’t help feeling that there was something else hidden away behind that civilized facade. Not—and here she spared a dark thought for Lucy Ponsonby—an insatiable lust for blood, but something held in reserve, some mystery deep at the heart of him that she itched to unravel. Sometimes he would look at her with those dark, deep-set eyes, and she would sense a flicker of . . . well, something. Something that fizzed through her like forbidden champagne.

  Perhaps here, in his family home, she would find that window into his soul, the key that would unlock his reserve.

  Not, of course, that she was meant to be unlocking anything, Sally hastily reminded herself. This betrothal was a contrivance of convenience. It didn’t matter if the duke’s lips turned up at the corners, or if she could still remember the brush of his gloved hand against her cheek as he had fastened his cloak around her neck. He was, Sally reminded herself bracingly, a good soul in a tight spot, and she was here to help. That was all.

  And to prevent a homicidal spy from marauding across the countryside. It wouldn’t do to forget the homicidal spy.

  “Look,” Sally said quickly, more to distract herself than anything else. “That must be the castle. Do you see? There. Through the trees.”

  Miss Gwen looked at her over her spectacles. “What else did you expect to see? The leaning tower of Pisa?”

  “It doesn’t look terribly castle-like,” said Sally. There weren’t any battlements, at least none that she could see. There was a vast dome in the center, and two symmetrical wings stretching out to either side.

  “Castles are as castles are,” said Miss Gwen austerely.

  Sally looked at her sideways. “That doesn’t mean anything at all.”

  She thought she heard a chuckle from beneath the maid’s white cap, but when she looked, the woman was just as she had been before, slack-jawed in sleep, her large buckteeth protruding over her bottom lip.

  Lucien was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs below a distinctly Palladian portico. Standing by himself at the center of the vast circular drive, his dark coat contrasting with the pale stone of the castle, he looked, thought Sally, particularly alone.

  Not anymore. Leaning through the window, Sally gave an enthusiastic wave, and saw Lucien’s lips lift in response.

  He held out a hand to help her down. “Welcome to Hullingden.” He looked at her sideways. “I would have assembled the servants to greet you, but I thought, under the circumstances—”

  “No,” said Sally quickly, feeling suddenly shy. “That’s quite all right. After all—well—”

  After all, she wasn’t here to stay. Grimacing, she lifted her eyes to the duke’s. “Forgive me. I’ve never been mock-betrothed before. I’m not quite sure how one goes about it.”

  “Neither have I,” agreed her mock-betrothed, lifting her fingers to his lips in greeting. Sally could feel the brush of his lips through the fine leather of her glove. “We’ll just have to
muddle along, won’t we?”

  “Yes. Muddle. Of course.”

  Sally appeared to be doing brilliantly at it. She was muddled already.

  “It was a very long drive,” she said defensively.

  “You’re here now,” said Lucien, looking at her with those fine, dark eyes.

  “Yes, and we have much to discuss.”

  “Would you like to freshen up first?” Lucien relieved her of Lady Florence’s traveling case.

  Sally glanced back over her shoulder at her chaperone.

  “Go on,” said Miss Gwen imperiously. “I shall see to the disposition of our baggage.” To the duke, she added, “You may inform your aunt that I shall not be joining you for dinner. I will require a cold collation to be delivered to my room along with a pot of tea, steeped for precisely five minutes. Not six minutes shall you steep, nor four, but five.”

  “I shall be sure to relay that,” replied Lucien, with remarkable forbearance. “I should hate to think that your tea might be steeped for only three—or,” he added, in a tone of great seriousness, “as much as seven.”

  “China tea, not India.” That having been settled, Miss Gwen pointed her parasol at one of the footmen who had hurried forward. “You! Not so fast. Careful with that!”

  There were a number of oddly shaped parcels that Sally suspected contained something other than Miss Gwen’s wardrobe. Sally also wasn’t sure exactly why they had needed to travel with a large trunk full of nothing but billiard balls—which seemed rather pointless without a billiard table—but since questioning Miss Gwen was an exercise in futility at best and parasol-poking at worst, Sally decided it was wiser not to ask.

  Leaving Miss Gwen to it, Sally took Lucien’s arm and let him lead her up the enormous stone staircase, into a hall that seemed to stretch all the way up to the heavens. Or, at least, to the center of the vast dome several stories above.

  Sally tilted her head back to stare at the nymphs dancing in baroque splendor miles above. Above the nymphs, panels of stained glass created a complex interplay of light and color. The effect ought to have been daunting, but instead it felt welcoming, almost playful.

  “Goodness,” Sally said. The word was entirely inadequate to express her sentiments. “I expected wooden beams and moldering banners.”

  “We have those too.” There was no mistaking the pride in Lucien’s voice. “In the old part of the castle. This is the new wing. My great-grandfather had it put up around the Tudor core of the house.”

  “Is there nothing older than that?” said Sally, doing her best to sound blasé, although it was hard when the light danced with colored flecks from the stained glass far above and the floor was an intricate mosaic of colored marble and semiprecious stones that seemed to dance and shimmer beneath her feet.

  “We do have a rather fine Norman chapel. Other than that, no. The stones of the old castle are shoring up pigsties between here and Leicester.”

  “Fortunate for the pigs,” said Sally, trying not to stare.

  Of course, she knew that to be a duke meant something more than a grand title, but she had never seen it so forcibly expressed as in the hall of Belliston Castle. There were none of the impressive battle murals or Roman statuary that she had seen elsewhere, all designed to remind the viewer of the owner’s ancient lineage. The dukes of Belliston didn’t go in for that sort of obvious display. They didn’t need to.

  It was incredibly impressive and more than a little bit daunting.

  The Fitzhughs were quite an old family, but their accomplishments were limited to getting off a boat from France in the Conqueror’s train, spotting a pleasant plot of land, and staying there. They were, as Turnip liked to point out, awfully good at staying.

  Lucien looked entirely at home in the grand hall. He shouldn’t have. The soaring marble seemed to demand the red heels and elaborately brocaded frock coats of the previous century, and Lucien was dressed in buckskins and top boots. But on him, the casual costume looked just right. The nymphs simpering on their pedestals certainly didn’t seem to mind.

  “I take it you don’t have the same prejudice against pigs that you do against poultry?” said Lucien. Amusement glinted in his dark eyes like sunlight through stained glass.

  Sally gathered her wits about her. “I am positively persecuted by poultry.”

  “Frequently frowned upon by fowl?” offered Lucien.

  Sally swept into the hall, her skirt making a satisfying swish. “Horribly harassed by hens,” she said triumphantly.

  “How immeasurably fowl for you,” murmured her betrothed.

  Sally plucked Lady Florence’s case from Lucien’s grasp. “That was dreadful,” she said sternly.

  “I know,” said Lucien. He smiled at her, with his eyes as well as his lips. “Welcome to Hullingden.”

  It seemed a little silly to say “thank you,” so Sally made a show of regarding her surroundings and said, “It’s not what I’m accustomed to, but I shall contrive to make do.”

  “My humble hall is honored,” said Lucien solemnly, but she could see the amusement in his eyes.

  He looked as though he was about to say something else, but a series of heavy footfalls broke through the sun-dappled silence of the hall, and a harsh voice shrilled, “Lucien! You didn’t tell me Miss Fitzhugh had arrived.”

  The acoustics hadn’t been designed for such brassy tones; the words hung discordantly in the air, like notes played by the wrong sort of instrument.

  All the light faded from Lucien’s eyes. It was as though a cloud had come over the sun. Very politely, very correctly, he said, “Aunt Winifred, I believe you know my betrothed, Miss Fitzhugh?”

  At Miss Climpson’s deportment classes, the girls had been taught a range of curtsies, from the obeisance due to royalty to a bob so slight as to be a snub.

  Sally dipped her knees in the very slightest of curtsies, her back very straight. “Lady Henry,” she said.

  Lady Florence poked her head out of her box and regarded her hostess critically. Sally didn’t blame her. That shade of mauve was exceedingly unbecoming to a mature complexion.

  Lady Henry ignored Sally. She fixed a basilisk stare on Lady Florence and declared in tones of extreme outrage, “You don’t mean that creature to stay in the house!” Then she turned to the butler and ordered, “Dabney, take that weasel to the stables.”

  Sally deftly shifted the carrying case to her other hand. “Lady Florence won’t be the least bit of trouble, I promise you.” In illustration, she scratched Lady Florence’s head with one gloved finger. She couldn’t resist adding, “This will be her home, after all.”

  The butler, Dabney, cleared his throat. “If I may say, Miss, that is a very fine stoat.”

  The sentiment earned him a hard look from Lady Henry and Sally’s wholehearted appreciation. Sally sensed an ally in the butler, and not just because he had the good taste to admire her stoat.

  “Yes, she is, isn’t she?” Sally relinquished Lady Florence’s case to the butler, who accepted it with gratifying reverence. “Will you see her safely stowed in my room? I wouldn’t think of entrusting her to anyone else.” She turned to her betrothed. “Now. I am simply aching to see your castle.”

  Lady Henry stepped forward, her heels cracking against the marble floor. “You will find, Miss Fitzhugh,” she said, with an entirely unconvincing smile, “that we have your room prepared for you. I am sure you will wish to rest—and wash—before seeing the castle.”

  Sally did rather want both of those things, or, at least, the washing bit, but if Lady Henry had told her the sky was blue, she would have strongly inveighed for its being rather a fine shade of pink. “Not at all,” she said airily. “After being cooped in that carriage for two days, I couldn’t endure the thought of a moment more spent within four walls, even such fine walls as these.”

  Lady Henry’s eyes hardened, but her f
ixed smile never wavered. “I am afraid I cannot spare myself to show you the grounds at present. When one gets up a party at such short notice, there are a myriad of details to be seen to—but you wouldn’t know about that.” Having relegated Sally to the ranks of those without great estates to be seen to, she added, in the air of one making a great concession, “Perhaps tomorrow, if the weather is fine . . .”

  “I wouldn’t think of putting you out,” said Sally. She batted her eyelashes at her betrothed. “I’m sure Lucien wouldn’t mind showing me his grounds, would you, dearest? I wouldn’t think of seeing Hullingden for the first time with anyone else.”

  Lady Henry gave her a look that promised reprisals. “Dinner is served at five,” she said frostily. “We do not keep town hours at Hullingden.”

  And with that, she swept out, undoubtedly to strew Sally’s bed with tacks.

  “‘We do not keep town hours at Hullingden,’” Sally mimicked. “Goodness, is she always so warm and friendly?”

  Lucien appeared resigned to her frankness. “Just to me. And my . . .”

  “Associates?” suggested Sally. It was a much less charged term than any others that came to mind. It felt appropriately impersonal. Not that she was feeling particularly impersonal at the moment. All of her fighting instincts had been aroused on Lucien’s behalf. “Did your aunt ask your permission before she appointed herself chatelaine of Hullingden, or did she simply move in?”

  “The latter.” Offering her his arm, Lucien led her to the side of the hall, through one of the many arches below the great dome. “Do you really want to see the grounds?”

  “Why not?” Her blood was boiling and a walk in the crisp autumn air would be refreshing. Not to mention that she could speak more frankly once out from under the duke’s roof. “She treats your house as though it were her own.”

  The archway led into a long gallery studded with statuary, glittering with mirrors. “I was away for a very long time.”

  “You’re making excuses for her,” protested Sally.