The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  Lucien looked down at her wryly. “One tends to be more just to those one doesn’t like. And, to be fair,” he added, “Aunt Winifred has kept Hullingden very well.”

  Sally couldn’t fault the woman’s housekeeping. Each bezel on each chandelier was polished to a sheen, every mirror dazzling in its clarity. Sally could see herself and her duke reflected again and again, into infinity, walking arm in arm, like a pair in a painting.

  Lucien, with his long hair and tightly tailored jacket, had a slightly foreign air that seemed to suit the baroque opulence of the gallery. He would, thought Sally, have made a rather good cavalier, all curly hair and plumed hat, ready to gallop off to defend his king.

  “Where were you all that time?” Sally asked curiously.

  The gallery gave way to a pair of glass doors, leading out onto a carefully sculpted terrace. Fountains stretched in front of them, dry now, the statues carefully covered in burlap sacking. In summer, Sally could see, the view would be brilliant, a visual echo of the room they had just left, with all the water glinting and glittering like glass.

  Lucien helped Sally down a short flight of stairs. “At school, at first. Later, here and there.”

  Gravel crunched beneath their feet as they made their way between expertly trimmed shrubs. There were empty spaces where pots that had been meant to hold orange trees had already been taken inside for winter.

  “Here and there.” Sally widened her eyes. “Oh, my. How terribly descriptive. If we’re going to be betrothed, I’m going to need to know something more than that.”

  It wasn’t just curiosity, she told herself virtuously. As his betrothed, wouldn’t she be expected to know more? When one adopted a role, one shouldn’t do it by halves.

  Besides, she wanted to know where he had really been all those years.

  She half expected him to fob her off with a wry comment, but instead he said, “If you must know, I ran away.”

  “In the dead of night with a packet on your back?”

  “It was midafternoon, actually. And the packet was by my side.” Sally flapped a hand at the duke, and he relented, saying, “Other than that, yes. I stole away from school and stowed away on a ship to the West Indies.”

  “That sounds very daring,” said Sally, thinking that in fact it sounded rather sad. She had slipped away from Miss Climpson’s any number of times, but never farther than the Sydney Gardens. The truth was, she had liked her life too much to want to leave it.

  Lucien’s lips quirked. “More daring than romantic. I was seasick for the first month.”

  It was at moments like these that it was impossible not to like Lucien. So many of the masculine members of the ton tended to take their own dignity far too seriously. At the same time, Sally recognized the self-mocking humor for the dodge it was.

  She refused to be diverted.

  “And after that?”

  The corners of her betrothed’s eyes crinkled. “I made the mistake of partaking of the ship’s provisions and was sick for another two.” He shook his head in reminiscence. “I have the greatest respect for the men of the navy. Mine is not a seafaring nature.”

  Sally had condescended to be taken out in a rowboat once. The experience had not been a success. She could still smell the lake water in her hair.

  “If God had meant us to take to the water, he would have given us fins.” A stray twig had fallen by the side of one of the fountains. Sally scooped it up, breaking off the little twiglets on the side. “Why the West Indies?”

  Lucien’s measured pace didn’t falter. “I was looking for my mother’s family.” He led Sally off to the left, away from the long vista of fountains, beneath an arbor that, in summer, would undoubtedly be rich with roses. “My mother was from Martinique. Her father had come to England with her, but she still had a brother and sister on the island. Or so I believed. My information was somewhat out of date.”

  The words were matter-of-fact, but Sally found herself worrying about the boy he had been, alone in a strange land. In all her life, she had never been without the support of family close by. There was always Turnip to come galumphing to her rescue, or her friends at Miss Climpson’s, there for a bit of light plotting. She couldn’t imagine what it was to be so entirely alone.

  “What did you do then?”

  “I nearly came back here with my tail between my legs. It was a close-run thing.” Lucien’s voice was light, but there was something in his eyes that suggested the situation hadn’t been at all amusing at the time. “Instead, I followed my mother’s sister to Louisiana. She had married a planter in New Orleans. I’ve been there ever since.”

  “What a lot of places you’ve been.” Hearing about Lucien’s adventures made Sally feel very small. Her world had, until recently, been limited to the confines of Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary. She had been meant to go to Paris, but then the hostilities had started again, and she hadn’t. “I imagine few of them could hold a candle to this.”

  They were off the gravel paths now, on a winding circuit that took them through a carefully contrived woodland. There was a pillared temple on a hill, and a pond that glinted with gold in the sunlight. Sally imagined that there must be swans on it in summer. The whole was a meticulously crafted idyll, designed for a Phyllida and whatever that shepherd’s name was to flirt and frolic.

  “No, they couldn’t.” Lucien breathed deeply of the crisp autumn air, scented lightly with woodsmoke. From their vantage point, Sally could see an orchard, the trees still heavy with red fruit, and a series of succession houses, their glass walls hinting at treasures within. Behind them, the elegant facade of the castle shimmered against the deep blue sky like something out of a fairy tale. “When I was away, I’d thought I was exaggerating it in my memory, making it something more than it was.”

  “You must have missed it terribly,” said Sally, keeping her voice neutral.

  Lucien’s step slowed as they wandered up the hill, encountering old landmarks, old memories. “That’s where we played at Robin Hood, my cousin and I. Poor Hal was always Alan-a-Dale, and sometimes the sheriff as well. We used to steal sweetmeats from the kitchen.”

  “And distribute them to the poor?”

  “I’m afraid we weren’t that public-spirited. We had a tree fort. We would retreat there and gloat over our spoils.” Lucien turned, his eyes roaming greedily over the landscape, drinking it in like a man perishing of thirst. “That’s where I shot my first rabbit, right there. And up there, past that third tree to the left, that’s where we had our tree fort.”

  “Mmm.” Sally wasn’t looking at the remains of the tree fort; she was looking at the duke. “If you loved it so much, why did you stay away so long?”

  The light faded from Lucien’s eyes. He shrugged. “Why does any boy go roaming? Wanderlust, I suppose.”

  Sally didn’t believe that for a moment.

  “But you’re back now,” she said. And about time, too.

  “For the moment.” Lucien’s smile was perfectly pleasant, but Sally could practically hear the locks clicking shut as the great iron door of his reserve closed once again between them. “I’m afraid I’ve strayed from our task. You’re not here to admire the view.”

  “Ye-es,” said Sally reluctantly. She’d nearly forgotten that they had a killer to catch. “It all feels rather unreal, doesn’t it?”

  Corpses and killers and spies belonged to the smog of London, not to this rural idyll.

  Lucien seemed to catch her meaning. “Et in Arcadia ego,” he said soberly.

  They hadn’t taught Latin at Miss Climpson’s. “Which means?”

  “It means, ‘Even in Arcadia, there am I.’ Even here, among all this beauty, is death.” Something about Lucien’s expression suggested more than a symbolic significance.

  The words made Sally feel cold beneath her elaborately frogged pelisse. For some reason, she had assume
d his parents had died in London. Not here. “Was this where—”

  “Yes,” said Lucien shortly. He pointed at the white-pillared temple on the hill. “Right there.” And then, just when Sally thought it couldn’t get any worse: “I was the one who found them.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Oh,” said Sally. She pressed a hand to her lips. “Oh. Oh, dear. No wonder— I’m so sorry.”

  In the face of her sympathy, Lucien felt like a fraud.

  For a full ten minutes—twenty even—he had forgotten their purpose. He had looked at the landscape and remembered, not those grim final hours but the happy ones. Eluding his nurse to play hide-and-seek with the squirrels in the Home Woods; reaching a chubby baby hand for the trumpet of one of the statues in the fountain, then tumbling with a splash into the water. Even the folly on the hill had been, for a moment, not the location of his parents’ deaths, but the center of a hundred childhood games.

  The folly had been fitted out for light entertainments, with table and chairs, and a reflecting pool stocked with goldfish. He had flopped and splashed in that pool as a child; it had been a stream to be forded, or the home of Jonah’s whale, depending on the day and his fancy. When his parents weren’t in London, they liked to take refreshment there, and Lucien could always be sure of finding sweetmeats or cakes.

  There had been sweetmeats that day, scattered across the ground. Crumbs of cake and shards of porcelain, his father’s silver-headed cane tumbled to the ground, his mother’s skirts crumpled around her like a fallen handkerchief. Lucien’s father had been dead already, his lips peeled back in a soundless grimace, his blue eyes open and staring.

  His mother had been alive still, just. He had watched, helpless, as the life had faded from her eyes.

  Somehow Lucien mustered a shrug. “I wouldn’t recommend it as an experience.”

  It had been a summer day; the scents of the flowers and the chirping of the birds had seemed obscene in contrast with the desolation within.

  Et in Arcadia ego.

  Lucien breathed deep of the autumn air, of the scent of mulch and loam, of damp tree trunks and wet leaves. There were no flowers here now, and the birds sang a different tune. The ghosts of the past were just that, ghosts, relics of his memory, as insubstantial as the breeze that ruffled the bright ribbon on Sally’s bonnet.

  Beneath the brim, her blue eyes were bright with concern. She was, Lucien knew, going to ask him about it. But what was there to say? If I had come upon them sooner, my parents might still be alive? The sense of his inadequacy, his failure, haunted him. That he should inherit Hullingden upon his father’s death, along with all his father’s dignities and titles—that seemed more wrong still.

  He hadn’t even been able to avenge their shades by bringing their murderer to justice. What right did he have to sit in his father’s chair and dine at his father’s table?

  He didn’t deserve Hullingden, and he certainly didn’t deserve Miss Fitzhugh’s sympathy.

  But Lucien couldn’t find the words to say that, so, instead, he offered Sally his arm. “Shall we dress for dinner? Aunt Winifred can’t abide tardiness.”

  Sally scowled at him. “Don’t,” she said fiercely. “There’s no need to pretend to be all stoic.” She gestured over her shoulder. “There’s no one else here. It’s just the birds and the squirrels. You can say what you like. Punch the trees if you like. I’ll be the only one to hear it.”

  “I have no desire to assault the foliage,” said Lucien mildly.

  Sally set her hands on her hips. “You know perfectly well what I mean. It was a vile, vile thing that happened to you, and here you are, all—ducal. Did you ever take the time to mourn?”

  Alone, by himself, in his narrow bed in the dormitory at school, shivering with cold and suppressed tears, trying so hard to keep the sound muffled in his pillow, lest the others hear and taunt him. Uncle Henry, ruffling his hair and telling him to buck up, there’s a good boy. Aunt Winifred, saying tartly that a parent’s death was a commonplace thing and one didn’t see her snuffling about her parents’ demises.

  Tante Berthe had slopped him over with sympathy, with embraces and exclamations, and then hurried off to supervise supper.

  “All the time,” said Lucien repressively. “Every day.”

  Only it wasn’t entirely true, was it? Their faces had ossified in his memory, hardening into a set likeness, portraits rather than people. He had clung to the prospect of justice, but lost the fact of them.

  And justice, even justice, would never bring them back.

  A wave of bleakness swept over him, harsh as winter. It was like losing them all over again, that awareness that whatever he did, it was too late now. It had been too late twelve years ago.

  He had been too late.

  Lucien turned abruptly away from the summer house and set off back the way they had come, covering the ground in long strides. “There’s no need to fuss. I’m quite all right.”

  Sally hurried after him, her skirt rustling against the grass. There were no fallen leaves to catch at her hem; one of the army of gardeners must have raked them up, raked them as soon as they had fallen. Nothing could be allowed to mar the perfection of the landscape.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’re not.” Sally caught up with him by an artistically weathered arch. “There’s no need to be stoic for me.”

  “I’m not.” Lucien was being stoic for himself, because if he didn’t, he didn’t know what might come out.

  Sally reached for his hand. He could feel the press of her fingers against his as she said earnestly, “Just because this isn’t a real betrothal doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

  Sally’s head was tilted up towards him, her gloved hand warm on his. The gloves were a primrose yellow, a bright splash of color against his dark coat.

  For a moment, Lucien felt himself responding to the pressure of those slim fingers. But then the impact of her words hit him. Not a real betrothal. Of course, it wasn’t. It was a sham, and at the end of it they would go their separate ways.

  “Save your sympathy.” Lucien realized just how harsh that sounded and forced his lips into an unconvincing smile. “We haven’t time for it. Not with spies lurking in the shrubbery.”

  “I think that’s a gardener.” Sally looked expectantly at Lucien. When he didn’t respond in kind, she bit her lip, looking at him with concern. The hand holding his tightened briefly. “If you change your mind—”

  “I know where to find you,” said Lucien lightly, and raised her hand to his lips in the Continental style. “But for now, I should leave you to your toilette. If anyone is late for dinner, Aunt Winifred unleashes the gargoyles.”

  Sally looked as though she wanted to argue, but she knew when to pick her battles. Instead, she looked archly over her shoulder, saying with mock seriousness, “It isn’t kind to speak of my chaperone that way.”

  And with that, she whisked back through the door that led to the Hall of Mirrors, leaving Lucien behind her, choking on a laugh.

  His betrothed, Lucien had noticed, did like to have the last word.

  His mock betrothed, he reminded himself. Only his mock-betrothed. Repeating that to himself, Lucien retired to the ducal chamber to allow Patrice to dress him for dinner.

  It felt strange to be in the suite of rooms he still thought of as his father’s, and stranger still when Uncle Henry gestured him to the place at the head of the table, in the great state dining room decorated with murals of the daring deeds of Bellistons past.

  Lucien took the chair at the head of the table with studied nonchalance, trying to pretend that he had meant to do so all along. He had never eaten in this room before; as a boy, his meals had been taken in the nursery or, when the mood struck his mother, alfresco in the gardens. He felt like an impostor in his father’s place.

  He wasn’t the only one who seemed to think
so. Aunt Winifred’s air was even frostier than usual, and it wasn’t hard to guess the reason why. In his absence, it was Uncle Henry who occupied the seat at the head of the table.

  Aunt Winifred, Lucien reflected, wouldn’t in the least have minded if he had been swallowed by a sea serpent en route to the West Indies all those years ago.

  As it was, she was regarding Miss Fitzhugh with a distinctly territorial air. “I’m sure this isn’t what you are used to, Miss Fitzhugh,” she said regally.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Sally frankly. She had changed into a dress of pale blue satin covered with silver net; pearls glimmered at her throat and ears. “The dining room at Parva Magna is much better lit. Have you thought of adding a few torchères?”

  Aunt Winifred’s mouth opened in outrage.

  Uncle Henry jumped in. “I’m so sorry Hal couldn’t be here to greet you,” he said for at least the fifth time. Hal’s place sat empty at Clarissa’s right hand, a provincial Siege Perilous. “He was detained in town.”

  “He is in such demand,” said Aunt Winifred pointedly.

  She looked meaningfully at Clarissa.

  Clarissa applied herself to her soup.

  The soup, Lucien had noted, was both tasteless and tepid, despite the regal tureen appointed for its transportation from the kitchens, which were, as Lucien recalled, about a mile away through a maze of corridors that would have daunted the Minotaur.

  Sally gingerly sampled her soup and set her spoon down again. To Lucien, she said, “Have you thought of renovating the kitchens to bring them closer to the dining room?”

  “I—,” began Lucien, but Aunt Winifred cut him off.

  “The arrangements at Hullingden are just as they should be.” Aunt Winifred smiled so fixedly at Sally that Lucien suspected she was having fantasies of running Sally through with her fish knife. “You, of course, would not understand what it is to manage a house such as this.”

  “No,” Sally agreed demurely, directing herself to Lucien. “Parva Magna is much more modern. We haven’t your disadvantages. Oh, dear. Are you quite all right?”