The Masque of the Black Tulip Read online

  Miles looked a little frustrated. ‘What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, that’s very nice,’ muttered Henrietta. One little I’m sorry, for six – no, seven, if one counted most of today – days of sheer heart-scraping agony? Ha.

  Miles either didn’t hear her or chose not to.

  ‘I miss you,’ he said earnestly. ‘Life is just…flatter when you’re not around. I miss talking to you. I miss our rides in the park.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Henrietta noncommittally, but her hand fell away from the doorknob.

  ‘It’s not the same when you’re not there.’ Miles paced back and forth. ‘Hell, I even miss Almack’s. Can you credit it? Almack’s!’

  He sounded so confused and indignant that, despite herself, despite all the waiting and disappointed hopes and angry diary entries, Henrietta felt her temper begin to melt away. This was her Miles again, not a distant stranger in her head, and there was something about his disgruntled tone that made her oddly hopeful, in a way no poetic declaration ever could.

  ‘Lady Jersey will be flattered,’ said Henrietta cautiously, but a hint of a smile began to tug at the corners of her lips.

  ‘Lady Jersey can go hang,’ said Miles with a vehemence that would have deeply distressed Lady Jersey had she been there to see it.

  ‘That’s not very charitable of you.’

  ‘Hen,’ Miles groaned, looking as though he was one moment away from banging his head against the door. ‘Will you let me get on with this?’

  Henrietta promptly subsided, a strangle elation taking hold of her, stealing her breath and sending little tingles straight down to the tips of her fingers. She didn’t even notice that Miles’s perambulations had taken him well away from the door, leaving her path clear. Suddenly, storming out no longer seemed quite so imperative.

  ‘All right,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘This rift between us.’ Miles waved his hands about expressively. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Henrietta in a voice she scarcely recognised as her own.

  ‘I can’t do without you,’ Miles pressed on earnestly.

  He couldn’t do without her. This was Miles, Miles saying he couldn’t do without her. She would have pinched herself to see if she were dreaming, asleep in the garden among the lavender and roses, with crickets chirping a lullaby, only if she were to dream such a moment, it would have been in an elegant gown of sky blue satin, with her hair arranged in charming ringlets, and Miles would be on his knees in the summer garden, not pacing like a maniac in her brother’s darkened study. Yet, here she stood in her travel-stained twill, with her hair straggling limply around her face, a spot on her chin, and Miles was saying he couldn’t do without her. It had to be real.

  Henrietta’s heart began to pound out the Hallelujah Chorus with full instrumental accompaniment.

  She was in the midst of a particularly soaring high C, two seconds away from flinging her arms around Miles and bringing the chorus to crescendo with a resounding kiss, when Miles added, as though it summed up everything, ‘You’re almost as important to me as Richard.’

  The orchestra broke off with a discordant screech; the chorus stuttered to a halt mid-hallelujah; and Henrietta’s heart plummeted down from the vicinity of the pearly gates to land, with a loud thump, in the midst of yesterday’s garbage.

  ‘Oh.’ It was an effort to force even that one little syllable through her suddenly swollen throat.

  You’re almost as important to me as Richard.

  He hadn’t really said that, had he? But he had. He must have. She couldn’t possibly have made up anything quite so dreadful. Her week of bracing herself for the ‘You’re a lovely person and someday you’ll find someone who loves you’ speech hadn’t prepared her for this. This was worse than the ‘Someday you’ll find someone who loves you’ speech. This was worse than the ‘I value your friendship’ speech. This was very nearly even worse than no speech at all.

  ‘Hen,’ Miles finished hoarsely, grabbing both her hands in his, ‘I just want things to be the way they were.’

  His larger hands engulfed her small, stiff fingers, sending a tingle of warmth from her palm all the way up her arm. ‘Palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.’ No wonder society compelled the wearing of gloves! The pressure of Miles’s hand, palm to palm, bare skin to bare skin, felt like an illicit intimacy as they stood alone in the darkened room.

  Henrietta expected Miles to release her hand. He didn’t. Around them, the study was entirely quiet; even the crickets in the garden held their breath, and the leaves refused to rustle in the wind. Miles’s thumb moved softly over the tender skin of her wrist, soothingly, rhythmically. Almost imperceptibly at first, his hand began to exert a steady pressure on hers, compelling her slowly towards him.

  Henrietta’s eyes flew to his face in consternation. Miles didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was levelled directly at her lips.

  If she closed her eyes…if she let herself give in to the pressure of their joined hands…if she leant just the slightest bit closer…

  He could go away and not speak to her again for another seven days.

  The thought sluiced through Henrietta’s confused haze of emotions as effectively as a bucket of cold water. Oh no, she thought, leaning back, away from the pull of Miles’s hand and her own desires. She wasn’t going to play this particular game again. He wanted things to be the way they were? Fine. He had set the rules; he could abide by them.

  ‘No.’

  With just a little more force than necessary, Henrietta yanked her hands out of Miles’s grasp.

  Miles blinked several times, like a man coming out of a trance, staring at his empty hand as though he had never seen it before.

  ‘No?’ he echoed.

  ‘No. It’s no good.’ Miles was still frowning confusedly at his own hand. Henrietta’s hands clenched together. Blast it, couldn’t he even look at her? She added harshly, more harshly than she had intended, ‘We can’t go back. Ever.’

  That got his attention. Miles looked sharply up at her. He didn’t even bother to dash back the usual lock of hair that fell across his eyes. He just stared at her for a long, startled moment.

  ‘Is that what you really want?’

  ‘It’s not a question of want,’ said Henrietta fiercely. ‘It’s just the way it is.’

  Miles straightened, his face closing over into a nonchalant mask. He put his hands in his pockets, leant against the desk, and raised both his eyebrows. ‘I take it that’s that, then.’

  She hadn’t realised how much she had been hoping for a negation, an ‘Actually, this friends thing was a bad idea, and I’m really quite passionately in love with you,’ until she didn’t receive it. How could she have thought Miles was on the verge of succumbing to her dubious charms? She could probably fling off her clothes and dance a minuet around the room, and he would just say, ‘Hmm?’

  Henrietta crossed her arms protectively over her chest and drew in a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ she said tightly, every muscle in her body tensed with the effort of trying not to cry. ‘I suppose it is.’

  Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked deliberately out the door, executing every step with painstaking precision. She did not look back.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Charades: a cunning game of deception waged by an experienced operative

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  ‘Surely, dismemberment is a bit extreme, don’t you think, my dear?’ Mrs Cathcart blinked placidly at Amy across the tea table.

  ‘Ah, but can a French agent shoot you if he’s missing his arm?’ countered Amy. ‘I thought not. Biscuit?’

  The ladies had retired to the Rose Room while the gentlemen partook of their port after dinner. They presented a deceptively charming domestic scene, reflected Henrietta. Amy, her dark curls held back by a bandeau of golden silk, presided over the tea table, pouring steaming amber liquid into dainty rose-painted glas
ses. Beside her sat Miss Grey, dark hair pulled back with the same severe simplicity as her untrimmed grey dress, placing cups beneath Amy’s somewhat erratic spigot with silent efficiency. Across from them, the comfortable form of Mrs Cathcart spread over a small sofa. In her old-fashioned dress, with its thick, flowered fabric and wide side-panels, her cheeks as rumpled as pressed rose petals, she was the epitome of the country matron, ready to dole out herbal remedies, tie up the bruised knees of clumsy grandchildren, and tote soup to the deserving poor of the parish.

  ‘No, thank you, dear,’ said Mrs Cathcart, shaking her white-capped head as Amy offered her a plate of biscuits. From the gentle frown on her face, one would have expected her to be discussing a particularly complicated knitting pattern, or worrying over the fate of a maid who had found herself in the family way. ‘You’re quite right about the difficulty of aiming a weapon without an arm, but wouldn’t it be more Christian simply to shoot the man?’

  Amy put the teapot down with an emphatic clink of china. ‘But then how can we question him?’

  Mrs Cathcart considered. ‘How, indeed?’ she murmured, sipping delicately from her cup. ‘How, indeed.’

  Amy shifted restlessly in her seat to stare out the window, which reflected back her own impatient face. ‘I don’t understand why Richard won’t let us go after him,’ she expostulated, a wealth of frustration in her voice.

  Familial loyalty stirred Henrietta out of her contemplative silence. ‘We can’t risk the school,’ Henrietta explained for what felt like the thousandth time.

  After her encounter with Miles the night before, Henrietta had gathered her scattered wits together, reminded herself of why she had been flitting about the house in the dark in the first place, and betook herself to her brother to announce the appearance of the Phantom Monk. Wars waited for no such trivialities as broken hearts; while it might feel as though the world had shattered into jagged fragments when she wrenched her hand from Miles’s in the study, outside, the sun blithely rose and set, the planets circled in their fixed course, and somewhere in Sussex a French spy plotted mayhem.

  For a brief moment, Henrietta had basked in the glow of noble self-denial. She could picture herself a veiled figure of mystery, a constant bane to the French, and a source of wonder and speculation at home. ‘A broken heart, you know,’ people would whisper. ‘A heartless rogue – but isn’t it always? But her loss is England’s gain. Why, the way she captured that Black Tulip…’ The daydream bubble popped, and Henrietta grimaced wryly at herself. It was quite impossible to imagine Miles as an evil seducer, any more than it was to cast herself as a tragic heroine. Henrietta had always known she ran more to Portia than Juliet. Besides, she never understood how tragic, veiled figures managed to get anything accomplished with their vision permanently obscured like that. Wouldn’t they be constantly tripping over small tables? But that, Henrietta considered, was precisely why she would never make a tragic heroine. She had been cursed with a logical mind.

  Her sister-in-law, not being cursed with a logical mind, had been delighted at the news of the spy, and had wanted nothing more than to dash off into the gardens, veil in place and pistol in hand.

  Richard had not been delighted.

  Hauling Amy back from the door, Richard had pointed out that to go haring out after the spy would only confirm anything the spy might suspect, if – he added dampeningly – there even was a spy. Running around the grounds at night brandishing a pistol would be guaranteed to convince any clandestine observer that there was something worth investigating at Selwick Hall.

  ‘But,’ Amy had argued, ‘don’t you see? If we shoot whoever it is, there’ll be no one to investigate!’

  Richard’s lips had clamped shut over a sound that might have been a growl if allowed to grow up. ‘We don’t know that he’s alone. There might be others. Are you willing to take that risk?’

  Within moments, despite the lack of cape or mask, Richard had transformed back into the Purple Gentian, ordering extra sentries to be placed about the grounds and in the old Norman tower. Preferring to keep the news from the rest of the party as long as possible, Richard had reluctantly agreed to carry on with most of the following day’s scheduled activities. Shooting at targets, after all, wasn’t so unusual a pastime as to garner undue attention, and a multitude of bizarre behaviour could be excused under guise of a picnic. The ropes course had been abandoned, much to Henrietta’s relief. It was bad enough combating heartache without being suspended several feet off the ground.

  Henrietta pulled her attention back to the present as Amy flourished the teapot in a way that boded ill to the Axminster carpet and Henrietta’s new silk slippers. Henrietta hastily scooted her feet farther beneath her chair, and tucked her muslin skirts out of the way of the dripping spigot.

  ‘It would have been so much simpler my way,’ insisted Amy.

  ‘At least we didn’t have to abandon today’s activities,’ put in Mrs Cathcart peaceably. ‘It was very clever of your husband to post sentries in the tower.’

  ‘Autocratic,’ grumbled Amy.

  ‘Hideously,’ concurred Henrietta automatically, but her heart wasn’t in it. Through the crack in the door, she could hear the faint clip of booted feet against the marble, the sound of male voices raised in boisterous conversation, coming closer, closer…

  Miles.

  Henrietta sat very straight, not sure whether to be glad or sorry that she had chosen a chair facing away from the door. Her maid had dressed her hair in the Grecian style, twisted into a topknot with long curls cascading down, and her exposed neck suddenly felt quite vulnerable. Henrietta squirmed irritably in her chair, causing the cascade of curls to brush across the offending area. It wasn’t as though Miles hadn’t seen her neck before. It wasn’t as though Miles would even be looking at her neck, more likely than not. After last night’s episode in the study, Miles’s behaviour had been characterised by stunning indifference.

  Could it really be called indifference, Henrietta wondered, when there was no interaction to which one could contrive to be indifferent? They had moved across from each other all day, like the planets on an astronomer’s orrery, always circling, never meeting. As they shot at targets dressed as Delaroche, Fouché, and Bonaparte, she had caught glimpses of his blond head in the distance, but he had taken care to keep several people between them. They had been separated by the length of the table at dinner, a large candelabra preventing even the most minimal of eye contact. Henrietta suspected Miles of having moved the candelabra, but had no proof.

  If he was avoiding her, what of it? Hadn’t she practically ordered him to do so? She had no right to cry after what was lost, she told herself fiercely, taking a vast gulp of tepid tea. She was the one who had set the terms and now she had to abide by them.

  Why couldn’t Miles have argued with her when she told him they couldn’t go back? If he really cared about her in any way at all, wouldn’t he have gone after her? Protested? Done something?

  The door swung open, and one polished Hessian boot advanced across the threshold. Henrietta hastily yanked her gaze back to the tea tray, feigning great interest in the plate of biscuits. If Miles didn’t want anything to do with her, she wouldn’t want anything to do with him, either. So there. Muffled by the carpet, the boots strode towards her – Henrietta chomped off a regrettably large bite of biscuit – past her, and stopped by Amy’s chair. A hand boasting a gold signet ring on the pinkie descended upon the back of Amy’s chair. Mouth full of glutinous goo, Henrietta’s head jerked up. It was her brother.

  Not Miles.

  Henrietta resolutely swallowed her mouthful of biscuit.

  Amy tilted her head up at Richard. ‘Are the sentries all in place?’ she hissed in a stage whisper.

  Richard nodded. ‘If they aren’t, someone will answer for it,’ he said grimly, just as the door swung open again.

  Henrietta hastily angled her body towards Mrs Cathcart, started to reach for the biscuit, and thought better of it. She wasn�
�t making that mistake twice. As to other mistakes she had made…

  Miles sauntered into the room, talking very loudly with the two Tholmondelay twins about something entirely incomprehensible that seemed to involve a great deal of sporting cant. The trio made straight for the fireplace, not so much as glancing in Henrietta’s direction.

  Placing her teacup on her saucer with a definitive clunk, Henrietta twisted in her seat to face her brother.

  ‘What are we doing tonight?’ she asked her brother loudly.

  ‘Playing sitting duck for a French spy,’ replied Richard sourly.

  Richard was clearly not in the best of moods. Henrietta could tell it was killing him to have to pretend to play host to a party of house-guests when all he wanted to do was tug on a pair of black breeches and dash out into the night, rapier at the ready.

  ‘Yes, what are we doing tonight?’ demanded Ned Tholmondelay, ambling over to the cosy grouping of chairs. ‘Dorrington over there was telling me the outdoor exercises ain’t on. Some mistake, I’m sure.’

  ‘Deuced silly notion!’ agreed Fred Tholmondelay, strolling over to join his twin.

  ‘Dorrington was right,’ affirmed Richard.

  ‘You needn’t sound like that’s such an unusual state of affairs,’ commented Miles, deserting his casual pose against the fireplace to join them. He positioned himself next to Richard, nodding awkwardly in the general direction of the ladies. Henrietta caught herself trying to catch his eye and made herself stop.

  ‘What’s wrong with Miles?’ whispered Amy. ‘He’s been behaving oddly all day.’

  Henrietta shrugged weakly.

  Fortunately, Amy had no chance to enquire further.

  ‘You’re funning, aren’t you, Selwick? Bit of a joke, eh?’ urged Fred.

  ‘Richard never jokes about spies,’ chimed in Amy.

  ‘That’s the devil of a shame!’ Ned looked crestfallen. ‘There’s a splendid one about a French agent and a Prussian general who go into a tavern, and—’