The Masque of the Black Tulip Read online

  On the other hand, he had only settled his quizzing glass upon her after the topic of Richard’s escapades had arisen.

  ‘Lady Henrietta! You honour me with your presence.’

  There had to be something to the old adage about summoning the devil by thinking of him; Henrietta nearly tripped over her hem as the object of her speculations appeared before her.

  She plunged into a curtsy to cover her confusion, her wide skirts collapsing around her, only just managing the combination of unfamiliar hoops and tottery heels. ‘Good evening, Lord Vaughn.’

  ‘For shame, Lady Henrietta,’ Vaughn chided smoothly. ‘At a masquerade one is never oneself.’

  ‘Should I have said Signor Machiavelli, then?’

  In a doublet of rich black satin, Vaughn was dressed as a Renaissance grandee. The sleeves were slashed with silver tissue, and a school of writhing sea serpents wound its way around hem and neck, looking for all the world as though they were searching for a ship to sink. A heavy golden chain of office, like those worn by important officials in Elizabethan portraits, hung around his neck. The pendant was not a seal, but a falcon, with ruby eyes.

  Lord Vaughn laughed, the ruby eyes of the falcon glinting with the movement of his chest. ‘Do you praise my acumen or insult my morals?’

  That came a little too close for comfort. ‘Neither. I was simply guessing based on the time period.’

  ‘And Machiavelli’s was the first name that came to mind?’ Vaughn arched an eyebrow. ‘You have a devious turn of thought, Lady Henrietta.’

  Was he flirting with her, or baiting her?

  ‘Though not nearly so keen an eye as you have,’ Henrietta prevaricated hastily. ‘I’m quite impressed that you recognised me through the mask on so slight an acquaintance.’

  Lord Vaughn made a courtly leg. ‘Can beauty mask itself?’

  ‘A mask,’ replied Henrietta matter-of-factly, lowering hers, ‘often provides the best illusion of beauty where there is none.’

  ‘Only for those who need such subterfuge.’ Lord Vaughn proffered a crooked arm, leaving Henrietta, trapped within a web of manners, no choice but to take it. ‘I believe I promised you mythical beasts.’

  ‘Dragons, in fact,’ agreed Henrietta, rapidly reassessing her situation. Her proximity to Lord Vaughn, while unsought, might yet prove useful. If she could ask him suitably leading questions – suitably subtle leading questions – she might eke out of him enough to determine whether or not he had turned traitor in his years abroad. A careless comment about having been frequently in France, perhaps, or an excessive familiarity with the workings of Bonaparte’s court.

  With Henrietta on his arm, Vaughn moved at a measured pace through his masquerade, bowing to acquaintances as they passed. For the first time, Henrietta blessed the wide skirts she had been tripping-over, jamming into doorframes, and mentally consigning to perdition all evening. The skirts might be a blasted nuisance, but they kept Lord Vaughn a safe distance away, as they walked with their arms raised in courtly fashion over the gap, her fingers resting lightly on his outstretched hand.

  ‘Your home is lovely, my lord,’ Henrietta ventured, by way of starting a conversation. ‘How could you bear to stay away from it for so long?’

  Underneath her fingers, Vaughn’s hand stiffened, but his voice contained nothing more telling than urbane indifference as he answered, ‘The Continent has its own pleasures, Lady Henrietta.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Henrietta said enthusiastically. ‘I was in Paris with my family just before the end of the peace’ – that much, after all, was public knowledge, so it would do no harm to tell him what he already knew – ‘and was amazed by the beauty of the architecture, the excellence of the food, and the quality of the theatre. Despite recent events, it is really a most charming city. Do you find it so, my lord?’

  ‘It has been many years since I have found Paris anything or anything in Paris,’ said Vaughn dismissively, turning to bow to a passing acquaintance.

  Henrietta’s pulse picked up beneath the despised stomacher. ‘You mean,’ she asked, in tones of exaggerated innocence, ‘that you find Paris dull these days?’

  ‘I haven’t been to Paris for some time. War does tend to impede one’s freedom of movement.’ Vaughn’s face was bland, his voice equally so.

  Henrietta didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘How very inconvenient,’ she murmured, just to have something to say.

  ‘One must sometimes put up with a spot of personal inconvenience for the sake of world affairs, Lady Henrietta,’ Vaughn replied dryly. ‘Or have your brother’s exploits not yet taught you that lesson?’

  Another reference to Richard, noted Henrietta suspiciously. Those were dangerous waters, replete with sea serpents – rather like those portrayed on Vaughn’s doublet. Hmph, she was supposed to be questioning Lord Vaughn, not the other way around. This incongruent interest in her brother’s exploits could be an indication of Vaughn’s involvement in Bonaparte’s spy network. Or it could be no more than common curiosity. Over the past few weeks since her brother’s unmasking, Henrietta had been pestered for information about her brother and his exploits by any number of people whom one could not possibly suspect of being French spies, Turnip Fitzhugh foremost among them.

  ‘Richard was so seldom at home,’ Henrietta said vaguely, adding, by way of changing the subject, ‘Have we much farther to go before I meet your dragons?’

  Having reached the end of the string of reception rooms, Lord Vaughn led her out of the throng along a sparsely populated corridor, ill lit after the thousands of candles that illuminated the reception rooms. Henrietta held her golden mask more closely to her face. Aside from a Harlequin and a medieval maiden locked in amorous embrace, the hallway was deserted. Henrietta had the feeling that this was the sort of thing her mother had meant when she had cautioned her against secluded alcoves. As Lord Vaughn placed his hand on the latch of a closed door, Henrietta wrestled with a craven desire to turn and flee back to the security provided by lights and companionship.

  No. Henrietta made a wry face at herself behind Lord Vaughn’s back. She wouldn’t get very far in her plan to catch Jane’s spy if she bolted back to safety at the first hint of danger! Richard, Henrietta was quite sure, would have gone forward. Richard, on the other hand, was not a medium-sized female in danger of being compromised. It did add a whole new level of complication to this spying business, considered Henrietta, but if Jane could manage, so could she.

  It was too late to turn around even if she had wanted to. The handle turned, the door swung inward, and Lord Vaughn ushered her ahead of him through the portal.

  ‘Welcome to my cabinet of treasures.’

  Henrietta turned in a slow circle. Candles placed on lacquered ledges illuminated a small octagonal room. Each of the eight sides of the octagon was panelled in rosewood, edged with an intricate design worked in gold. Set at irregular intervals in seven of the eight panels were roundels containing pictures painted on Oriental porcelain, depicting men in little boats, ladies lounging before pagodas, and even the promised dragons. In the eighth panel, delicate vases and curious porcelain figurines posed on a red-veined marble mantelpiece. Little lacquered benches with odd Oriental lions at their feet were scattered at regular intervals along the walls, padded with silken cushions of crimson shot through with gold.

  The pattern of the parquet floor drew the eye inward, toward a small table in the centre of the room. On it, ranged around a silver carafe, someone had laid out a repast to make a glutton gloat: ripe clusters of grapes piled upon platters, custards whipped to melting smoothness, delicate madeleines, and drifts of dates glinting with sugar. There were peaches and apples carved into fanciful shapes, mountains of chocolate bonbons, and, in their own small silver dish, like garnets loosed from a necklace, a shimmering pile of pomegranate seeds.

  Henrietta was quite sure she didn’t like the idea of playing Persephone to Lord Vaughn’s Hades.

  On the other hand, she mig
ht have no choice. The door clicked shut behind Lord Vaughn, only there was no door anymore, simply a rosewood panel edged in gold, identical to all the other rosewood panels. There was no sign of knob or lock or hinges. The small room was doorless, windowless, exitless.

  There was no way out.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lair, dragon’s: the innermost interrogation chamber of the Ministry of Police (also commonly referred to as the Extra-Special Interrogation Chamber); a windowless cell equipped for torture

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Vaughn. He rested a casual arm against the mantel, but his eyes never left her face.

  I think I’m in over my head, thought Henrietta, repressing the very strong urge to bang on the wall in search of an exit. Schooling her face to an expression of bright interest, she said instead, ‘It’s very cunning, my lord. But don’t you find the lack of windows somewhat oppressive?’

  ‘Not at all. Sometimes, one needs to get away from the world, don’t you think, Lady Henrietta?’

  That phrase had a highly ominous ring to it, especially in light of the pile of pomegranate seeds. Henrietta devoutly hoped that when he spoke of getting away from the world, he didn’t mean permanently.

  As much for herself as Vaughn, Henrietta quoted lightly, ‘“The world is too much with us,” do you mean?’

  ‘You read Wordsworth, Lady Henrietta?’

  ‘Occasionally. A friend of mine recited that particular poem to me not long ago, and the phrase caught.’ Henrietta conjured Charlotte’s familiar image, and found it helped to keep the nerves at bay.

  ‘I prefer Milton, myself,’ replied Vaughn. Striking an attitude, he recited in resonant tones, ‘“Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell.”’

  It was a trick of the light – that was all. A trick of light, and tone, and costume. Against the marble bulk of the fireplace, his hands twisted behind him and his head flung back, with the sparse candlelight flicking along his archaic clothes, turning the gold chain about his neck into a living necklace of flame, Lord Vaughn made far too plausible a Satan, chained in agony to his own adamantine rock.

  ‘I’ve always found that line a bit melodramatic,’ said Henrietta firmly. ‘It’s pure self-indulgence on Satan’s part. There is no reason at all for him to go on wallowing like that. All he had to do was acknowledge his error, beg God’s pardon, and he could have returned to Heaven and his old glory. He chose to continue to rebel against God; it wasn’t as though anyone pushed him to it.’

  Vaughn’s heavy-lidded gaze fastened intently on her face.

  ‘Would you lift him from the depths, Lady Henrietta?’ he asked mockingly. ‘Would you make an angel of him again?’

  Henrietta was quite positive they were no longer discussing Milton, theology, or anything to do with the Prince of Darkness. As to what they were discussing, she had no idea. Could it be that he was repenting of his treason, and wished to confess? Perhaps this was her cue to boldly step forward and promise expiation if he would only cut his ties with France and return to the fold. But she had no power to promise any such thing, and no proof that he was, indeed, a French spy. And his tone repelled overtures as much as it invited them. Henrietta felt as though she were picking her way from stepping-stone to stepping-stone across a dangerous swamp on a moonless night. Blindfolded.

  ‘I believe’ – Henrietta stepped delicately out into the swamp – ‘that each man must make the choice to be lifted by himself. I certainly wouldn’t presume to claim redemptive powers for myself!’

  ‘Pity,’ said Vaughn lazily, stirring from his pose by the mantel. ‘But I apologise! You must think me a poor host, to offer you no refreshment.’ Vaughn crossed deliberately to the small table in the middle of the room. ‘Champagne?’

  A denial rose to Henrietta’s lips.

  In the centre of the room, Vaughn waited, one hand on the neck of the bottle. In the candlelight, his eyes gleamed as silver as the detail on his doublet.

  ‘Yes,’ she said demurely. ‘Thank you.’

  If he were trying to drug her, better not to arouse his suspicions by refusing the wine. With a bit of cunning and a great deal of luck, perhaps she could feign drinking. It was not, she admitted to herself, going to be easy. Vaughn’s eyes hadn’t left her face. How much of a drug did one have to ingest before it began working?

  Vaughn poured the liquid into two tall glasses made of amber-tinted Venetian glass. He had poured both portions from the same bottle, and surely he wouldn’t poison himself, Henrietta reasoned with herself. But the presence of the large silver bucket in the middle of the table effectively hid his hands from view as he picked up both glasses. His Renaissance garb included several large rings. Henrietta entertained alarming recollections of Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine de’ Medici, of whispers of poison dispensed by means of a cunningly designed ring. It would be a moment’s work to flick open the face of the ring and release its powder into her glass.

  Henrietta smiled brightly as she accepted the glass Lord Vaughn offered her across the table.

  Vaughn raised his own goblet; Henrietta eyed the bubbles critically as they oscillated and burst. Was it just her imagination, or was the liquid in her glass slightly darker than his?

  ‘To what shall we toast?’ asked Vaughn.

  ‘To your masquerade, my lord.’

  Good heavens, the habit was catching. Now even she was speaking in innuendo. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She felt like someone in an old tale, dicing with the Devil, afraid to go on, but even more afraid to stop.

  Vaughn lifted his eyebrows at her. ‘Shall we say, rather, to unmasking?’

  Just whom did he intend to unmask? Her own mask sat discarded on one of the little benches at the side of the room, though she didn’t delude herself that Vaughn meant anything quite that literal.

  ‘By all means,’ Henrietta said, with a sudden spurt of irritation at this ridiculous verbal game they played, this dance of half-understood meanings. ‘Let us drink to Truth. They say it will out, you know.’

  Vaughn tilted his glass against hers, the crystalline click echoing in the small room like the chimes of the celestial spheres.

  ‘It is your toast, Lady Henrietta, and it would ill become me to deny you. But you will learn, as time goes by, that Truth is a malleable mistress.’

  Henrietta set her glass down decisively on the table, using the motion as an excuse to tip the glass so that some of the liquid spilt onto the tray of grapes.

  ‘I can’t agree,’ she said bluntly. ‘Something is either true or false. Men may misuse appearances, but Truth remains constant. For example,’ she continued daringly, ‘treason is always treason.’

  Vaughn took an abrupt step away from the table, and Henrietta wondered if she had gone too far. Well, there was nothing she could do about it now. Henrietta took a firmer grip on her wineglass. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but broken it might do enough damage to…to do what? Keep Lord Vaughn at bay?

  It was all she could do to keep herself from falling back as Lord Vaughn advanced, his face still and watchful, his gaze fixed on her like a hawk plummeting down upon its prey. The ruby eyes of the falcon on his chest glittered hungrily in the candlelight.

  ‘And what of you, Lady Henrietta?’ he asked silkily. His fingers grasped her chin and tilted her face mercilessly up towards his. ‘Would you remain constant?’

  The word reverberated in the little room, rebounding off the walls, the china roundels, the silver carafe, all the silent objects frozen into listening silence.

  ‘C-constant?’ Henrietta played for time, while her mind raced anxiously ahead in fifteen different directions. One part of her mind insisted on dwelling unpleasantly on how tight Vaughn’s grip was, and how easily his fingers might move from her chin to her throat. Another wondered detachedly whether Vaughn was trying to urge her to turn traitor, and if she was more likely to be strangled if she answered yes, or no, or if the question was rhetorical and sh
e wasn’t supposed to be saying anything at all.

  Vaughn’s fingers tightened around her chin, his gaze speculative.

  Into the terrible silence crept a noise no louder than the scratching of a rat in the wainscoting. Vaughn’s hand dropped from Henrietta’s face and he strode abruptly towards the sound.

  Henrietta drew a deep, ragged breath.

  A panel of the wall opened tentatively inwards, detaching itself smoothly from the rest. So that was how it worked, thought Henrietta, taking careful note of the door’s location. The outline of the entry way was concealed by the golden grille work, while a cleverly placed jade and coral plaque masked the line left by the top of the door.

  ‘Enter!’ Vaughn directed harshly.

  Only the manservant’s face appeared around the edge of the concealed door, floating halfway up like the disembodied head in a horrid novel. Where disembodied heads in horrid novels generally tended to err on the side of glowering and threatening, this one was a very alarmed, very apologetic disembodied head. Henrietta bit down on a sudden crazy urge to laugh, and discovered that her legs in the tottery heels weren’t quite so steady as she’d thought them to be.

  ‘Begging your pardon, your lordship,’ said the floating head anxiously, ‘I know you said as how you wasn’t to be disturbed, but—’

  ‘What is it, Hutchins?’ Vaughn broke in impatiently.

  ‘A message, your lordship. Most urgent, they said it was.’

  ‘Lady Henrietta.’ Vaughn turned to her with a smooth smile, every inch the regret-ridden host, as if that last interlude had never transpired. Henrietta’s hand surreptitiously crept up to her chin, as though she might still find the marks of his fingers there. ‘I regret I must abandon you for a brief moment, but I trust you will find sufficient to amuse you until my return.’

  Unable to believe her luck, Henrietta smiled giddily and waggled her fingers at him. ‘Don’t worry. The dragons and I will no doubt have plenty to discuss.’ Such as where they had hidden the door handle.