The Lure of the Moonflower Read online

  There ought, thought Jane, to have been orders on the man’s chest and a sword by his side. This was a man who could sweep through the halls of St. James, who threw down a winning hand of cards without a second thought, who danced with duchesses and sneezed at dukes.

  “I look like I’m impersonating an aubergine,” said Jack, tugging irritably at the fall of lace at his throat.

  “No,” said Jane, going without thinking to shake out the lace and settle it back in its proper place. “You don’t.”

  She glanced up, and saw that he was looking down. And down. Jane froze for a moment, her hand against Jack’s chest, the embroidery scratchy against her palm. There had been no gloves with her dress, and no fichu.

  Jane could feel a flush rising in her chest. She took a hasty step back, resisting the urge to tug at her bodice. She had worn lower décolletage at the Tuileries, without a hint of embarrassment. And used it, too, to her own advantage.

  “Are we— Shall we go down to supper?”

  Jack made a leg, an elegant, old-fashioned bow that wouldn’t have been out in place in Versailles. Instinctively, Jane sank into the matching curtsy, feeling dimly as though she had been presented with a changeling.

  “Where did you learn that?” she asked, trying desperately to bring this man back to the Jack she had known on the road, the workaday Jack in his battered hat and shapeless jacket. “At your boarding school?”

  Jack glanced at her from hooded eyes. “No. My father.”

  Now was the time to introduce the topic of Colonel Reid. But Jane’s tongue seized on the words. “He must be . . . he must be very charming.”

  “He is.” Jack held out an arm, lace ruffles dripping from his sleeve. His hands looked oddly bare. He ought to have rings: great rubies set in gold, curiously carved cameos, massive signets. “Shall we to dinner . . . darling?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  A different lay brother appeared to escort them to the dining hall.

  They had undoubtedly scared off poor Brother Pedro, thought Jack grimly, shaking back the fall of lace that was tickling the back of his fingers. The lace he could do something about. Jane’s ungloved fingers on his arm, her bosom pushed to proximity just beneath his nose—those were another matter. Jack could feel sweat gathering in the small of his back, beneath the heavy velvet.

  Bloody court clothes. There was no way he was creeping the corridors in these. Anyone could see that silver-gilt embroidery a mile off, not to mention that it weighed more than the bloody donkey.

  If Jane had only waited five minutes, they might have hammered out another plan, thought Jack irritably. She glanced up at him, all innocence in the candlelight, and Jack smiled back with his teeth, the sort of smile a fortune-hunter might give his prey.

  Since that was the role she had assigned him.

  “I feel like a trained monkey,” he muttered. “All I need is a cap with a feather.”

  “That wouldn’t go with the ensemble at all.” They paused as the lay brother rapped at a door. Jane looked up at Jack, and there was something in her eyes that Jack couldn’t quite read. “I think you look . . .”

  She paused, searching for the right word.

  “Yes?” Jack prompted, hating how much it mattered to him.

  The door opened before Jane could complete her thought.

  “Welcome, welcome.” The abbot moved forward with the practiced grace of a politician, ushering them into a small dining parlor. Small, that was, by the standards of the monastery. It would have made four of the hut they had stayed in the night before. “I trust you found the accommodations to your liking?”

  “We are not to dine in the refectory?” Jack drawled, casting an “I told you so” look at Jane.

  Jane blinked dewily at the abbot. “I had so hoped to see the workings of an establishment such as yours, sir. I had heard that the refectory is so very impressive.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow,” said the abbot. “Tonight is one of our great feasts. I had thought you might be more comfortable with your fellow travelers.”

  “In other words,” muttered Jack in Jane’s ear, “contain the heretics.”

  In his absurd clothes, he had been belled as surely as any leper. As Alarico, he might have mingled with the servants, questioned them, perhaps even slipped into the refectory in the guise of a lay brother in a borrowed robe. If the Queen was, indeed, at the monastery, the abbot had very effectively closed off any chance travelers who might not be so chance.

  The abbot led them to the table, too long for a mere four place settings. “You are only four at table this evening.” He looked pointedly at Jack and Jane. “Most remain home with their families at this season.”

  “We had so hoped to be in Porto with my father for Christmas,” murmured Jane, dabbing at her eyes with a scrap of lace. “Christmas isn’t Christmas without family.”

  Jack glanced sharply at her, feeling a pang of guilt. That last hadn’t been altogether fiction. He had, in his annoyance over purple velvet, neatly managed to shove aside the root of his discomfort.

  It was the being declared dead that I found so distressing. . . . There’s a little stone to me in the churchyard in Lower Wooley’s Town.

  Not my fault, Jack told his conscience, but his conscience wasn’t having it. His conscience didn’t like him terribly much right now. He didn’t like himself terribly much right now.

  And the plum velvet wasn’t helping.

  Jack shook back his ruffles and tried to look sufficiently jaded as the abbot led them to the table, where two men occupied a space designed for at least ten. One was tall and spare, garbed in a deep-burgundy coat that contrasted with his fantastically embroidered silk waistcoat. Next to him, Jack’s plum velvet seemed positively restrained. The man’s hair was white, a particularly luxuriant white, worn long in a way that evoked philosophers of old, or Prospero, alone in his island kingdom with his book and his staff.

  It was, Jack thought, a very deliberate effect. The man’s appearance was as carefully choreographed as a production of the royal opera in Lisbon.

  Seated across from the taller man was a little mouse of a man in shades of rusty black: rusty black coat, rusty black hair, rusty black eyes. Jack half expected him to start gnawing on a crust with a pair of long front teeth.

  He didn’t. But he did regard Jack and Jane with beetled brows that might have benefited from a bit of a brush and a trim.

  “We have only two other travelers with us this evening,” said the abbot, hurrying the introductions along with the air of one determined to see to the niceties under trying circumstances. “Senhor and Senhora Fluellen, may I present to you the Marquis de la Mare”—the taller man rose, bowing gravely—“and Mr. Samson, who has recently come from inspecting a glass manufactory in which he has an interest. Monsieur de la Mare has been with us for a week. Mr. Samson”—a faint expression of pain crossed the abbot’s face—“arrived yesterday. He has been delayed by damage to his conveyance.”

  “And a terrible journey it was, too! Terrible! Terrible!” Mr. Samson’s eyebrows quivered. “The roads—disgraceful! And then to be stranded here—”

  The abbot’s lips tightened. “I assure you, Mr. Samson, my men are fixing the matter as rapidly as possible.” Before the man could launch into continued complaints, the abbot added, “I am afraid I must leave you. If there is anything you require, do not hesitate to ask.”

  One monarch, presumed missing? Jack held out a chair for Jane, doing his best not to twitch with impatience. Shut into this room, with these two, his chances for reconnoitering were slim.

  It would have to wait until after supper. Being heretics, they would presumably be excused from the midnight mass. There was that, at least, thought Jack reluctantly. Had he remained Alarico, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to prowl the grounds while everyone else was at their devotions.

  He took hi
s seat across from Jane as she said to de la Mare, with the most delicate suggestion of alarm, “You are French, sir? I had not been aware that the French had come so far north as this.”

  The marquis smiled benevolently at her. Or, rather, at her décolletage, where her gold locket dangled enticingly in the valley between her breasts. “You have nothing to fear from me, Madame Fluellen. I have been away from France longer than Bonaparte has been in it. I am a student of the world.”

  And, apparently, of female anatomy.

  “I have never before seen an establishment of this size,” said Jane, looking up at de la Mare beneath her lashes. “Even the palace of St. James cannot compare.”

  The marquis poured rich red wine into Jane’s goblet. “It has been said of Alcobaça that its cloisters are cities, its sacristy a church, and its church a basilica.”

  In other words, a perfect place to conceal a missing monarch and her entourage. Jack’s eyes met Jane’s across the table.

  She lifted her goblet, turning the stem about in her fingers. “Do tell me more, Monsieur le Marquis.”

  If the man was really a marquis, then Jack was the Prince of Wales.

  “The origins of the monastery stretch back into history. . . .” The so-called marquis prosed on about mystical chalices and wonder-working saints and the endowment of this or that monarch.

  Jack caught only bits of it. Mr. Samson, taking advantage of his own captive audience, was holding forth on the manufacturing of glass, the laziness of the local population, and those terrible thieves of customs inspectors in England, none of which impeded his shoveling course after course of rich food into his surprisingly spare frame.

  Across the table, candlelight glimmered off the silk of Jane’s dress, casting interesting shadows across her face, highlighting the hollows beneath her cheekbones, the deep valley between her breasts. It was almost impossible to recognize in the poised lady across from him the woman with whom he had traveled on the road, her hair in a braid and soot on her cheek. But then there would be the tilt of her chin, the quirk of a brow, and there she was, like a smile glimpsed from behind a veil, all the more tantalizing for being only partly seen.

  Illogically, Jack wished the road had gone on longer, that Alcobaça had been farther away.

  If the Queen was at the monastery, then their association was almost finished. They would have to get the Queen to the coast, to the rendezvous—and then?

  Jack thrust a forkload of food into his mouth, although he couldn’t have said, with any assurance, what he was eating.

  “. . . locked.” Jack forced his attention back to the marquis, who appeared to have abandoned fairy tales about miracle-working monarchs and returned, at long last, to the present. “Water damage, they say.”

  “Water damage?” Jack swallowed a mouthful of rice flavored with spices and mixed with seafood. “To what?”

  “The hall of the novices.” Jane narrowed her eyes at him, but her voice remained dulcet. “Monsieur de la Mare was just telling me about their lovely art collection. I do so hope it hasn’t been hurt by the wet, don’t you? A Titian is a terrible thing to waste.”

  “It is, indeed, a terrible thing to lock away from the world,” agreed de la Mare gravely. “His mastery of the tones of the flesh . . .”

  Jack cleared his throat. Emphatically.

  Monsieur de la Mare raised his eyes from Jane’s throat in a leisurely fashion and gave a very Gallic shrug. “I had hoped to be granted admission, but alas. They have it locked tighter than the lips of a virtuous woman.”

  “It is very odd that you should say so, Monsieur de la Mare.” Jane affected a puzzled expression. “Most of the virtuous women of my acquaintance never cease speaking. Lecture, lecture, lecture, that’s all they do. I have two aunts who are both terribly worthy and neither ever stops to take breath.”

  The marquis lifted a brow to Jack, man-to-man. “Perhaps it is that they have nothing better to do with their lips?”

  Jack didn’t want to think what Jane might be doing with hers. Or, rather, with his.

  “The novices,” he said, pulling his brain back up from his breeches. “What of them?”

  De la Mare waved a dismissive hand. He wore, Jack noticed, three rings, one enameled with the figure of a skull, another incised with strange symbols. The third looked like a signet, but Jack had seen enough trick rings to be able to tell when a neatly hidden hinge masked a secret compartment. “There is, as you can see, no dearth of beds in the monastery. They have been housed elsewhere until the roof may be repaired.”

  “How terribly inconvenient for them,” said Jane.

  “Living in the lap of luxury . . . ,” Mr. Samson interrupted his steady consumption of Christmas supper to sputter through a mouthful of excellently baked cod. “I don’t know how you can stomach it. Hooded robes, wonder-working saints—it’s enough to make a man sick!”

  “And yet, mon ami,” said de la Mare lazily, directing his gaze to the empty platters surrounding Mr. Samson, “you seem to have stomached a great deal.”

  “Wonder-working saints?” Jack interjected quickly, before Samson could retort. “Do they have those hereabouts?”

  Samson snorted. “I had the ill fortune to pass one on the road here. Wonder-working, my knee! The only wonder was how quickly they forced us into the ditch. Took my muleteer a full hour to dig us out again. An hour, sir!”

  “What is an hour?”

  “Time is money,” said Samson testily. “Not that I would expect you to understand, Mr. Dellymeer.”

  De la Mare waved a dismissive hand. “Not being entirely occupied with getting and spending, my mind has room to entertain larger possibilities than, for example, the price of glass.”

  Their sniping was almost a little too well choreographed. A broken carriage might be easily arranged. And such seeming rivalry could conceal a very effective partnership.

  Jack rescued a lace ruffle before it dipped into the green sauce on his cod. He wasn’t reconciled to the plum velvet, but he was willing to admit that Jane’s change of plan might have had its merits.

  Including, but not limited to, the décolletage on that dress.

  “Glass . . . I do miss my looking glass,” mused Jane, effectively ending the argument before it could begin. “Such a favorite. It broke on the road. Do you believe, Marquis, that I shall have seven years’ bad luck?”

  De la Mare sketched a courtly gesture. “The bad luck is the mirror’s, for losing its power to gaze on that fair face.” To Jack, he said, “If I were thirty years younger, mon ami . . .”

  “You would be back at Versailles,” riposted Jack. He raised his glass to the other man. “Presumably.”

  If the man had ever seen Versailles, he was Louis XVI.

  On second thought, make that Louis XIV. Decapitation had never been among Jack’s career goals.

  The marquis raised his own glass in a barely perceptible toast. “We are, I think, both men of the world.” The white brows lifted. “But there is more than one way to make one’s fortune.”

  “There is also,” said Jack, “more than one way to lose it. Do you play at cards, monsieur?”

  “Frequently—but not on the night of our blessed Savior’s birth. Some other time, perhaps.” De la Mare rose from his chair with an ease at odds with the white of his hair. “I hear the bells calling me to mass.”

  “Papists,” sniffed Samson. “I’m to bed.”

  “Bed,” drawled Jack. “What an excellent idea. My dear?”

  If he sounded possessive, well, that was part of the role, he told himself. That was his story and he was sticking to it, no matter how amused Monsieur de la Mare looked.

  “Ah, to be young again,” said de la Mare, smiling benevolently upon Jack and Jane in a way that made Jack want to use his head as a nutcracker. “To be made immortal with a kiss. Until tomorrow, my friends.”


  Bowing, he exited in the direction of the church. Mr. Samson, muttering his own good-nights, went the other way, in the direction of the guest rooms.

  Which proved, thought Jack, keeping an arm looped lightly around Jane’s waist, absolutely nothing.

  Other than the fact that Jane fit very nicely into the curve of his arm.

  “It didn’t work very well for Dr. Faustus,” murmured Jane, stepping away. “But then, they never do learn, do they?”

  Jack blinked at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “The quotation. It was from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. ‘Sweet Helen! Make me immortal with a kiss—’”

  “‘Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!’” Jack finished the quotation for her and wished he hadn’t. He shoved his hands in his pockets, where they wouldn’t be tempted to reach for her. “I knew that. I’m not entirely illiterate.”

  Jane looked quizzically at him. “I never thought you were.”

  He was behaving like an ass. In purple velvet. “Despite my low origins?”

  “Your origins aren’t low. In fact—” Jane broke off, evidently thinking better of whatever it was she was about to say.

  Somehow, that hurt worse than any of the names flung at him by the boys at school. That she would begin to defend him—and decide she couldn’t.

  “I’m illegitimate, princess.” The sooner she remembered that, the better. “And a half-caste.”

  Jane’s eyes were silver in the candlelight. “You are what you choose to be. It’s not the circumstances of your birth that matter; it’s what you make of them.”

  It sounded like a quotation. “That’s not Marlowe.”

  “No.” She turned on her heel and Jack realized that, beneath her cool facade, she was as angry as he was. “It’s a paraphrase of something a wise man told me earlier today.” She looked back at him over her shoulder, every word a challenge. “Unless you didn’t really mean it?”

  She had him tied in a rhetorical knot. “The circumstances aren’t entirely the same,” Jack protested.