The Masque of the Black Tulip Read online

  Maybe he had been. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing.

  Whatever else I’d imagined, the hideous bleating noise coming from my bag was quite real. The phone was still whining in its Coach cocoon. Scratching my frozen knuckles on the zipper, I wrestled the phone out of the tightly packed bag, squinting at the tiny screen. It glowed an evil neon in the dark cloister.

  PAMMY, proclaimed the screen.

  I was going to kill her. I was really, truly going to kill her.

  I took a deep breath, and repressed the urge to fling the phone to the floor and stomp on it à la Rumplestiltskin. Maybe Pammy was violently ill. Maybe she had been dumped by…oh, what was his name? They never lasted long enough for me to remember. Abduction by the Mafia with twenty-four hours to gather a ransom would also be an acceptable excuse for the interruption. Did they even have a Mafia in England? They’d better, I thought grimly.

  I clicked the view button, and Pammy’s text flashed up on the screen.

  HAS HE MADE A MOVE YET?

  Abduction by the Mafia was too good for some people. Casting a furtive glance over my shoulder, I hunched over the phone, and tersely texted back, NO.

  Instantly, Pammy’s name flashed back up on the screen.

  WHY NOT?

  My fingers flashed over the tiny buttons with a will of their own.

  MAYBE BECAUSE CERTAIN PPL KEEP TEXTING ME!!!

  Let her make of that what she would. I jabbed the SEND button, followed by power, shoving the phone back into my bag. The phone died into darkness with a tinny wail. Too late. Why in the hell hadn’t I thought to turn the phone off in the first place?

  Damn, damn, damn.

  ‘Anyone interesting?’ asked Colin.

  ‘Pammy,’ I replied, striving for rueful amusement and achieving something closer to a grunt, in a ‘you, Tarzan; me, Cheetah’ sort of way.

  Colin detached from the wall. And a good thing, too, given the state of the rest of the structure; I didn’t have much faith in its stability. On the other hand, binding up his wounded brow would give me a chance to hover tenderly over him. We’ll ignore the fact that I failed first aid in high school. Three times.

  Maybe it was a good thing he hadn’t fallen over.

  ‘What has she done now?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ I said distractedly, wondering if there was any way to ever so subtly drift in his direction without my heels sounding like cannon salvos on the pitted stone flags. But that would destroy the entire exercise, wouldn’t it? The point was to figure out if he had any interest in drifting in my direction, not the other way around. ‘You know what Pammy’s like.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said, so forcefully that I couldn’t help but wonder…

  Colin and Pammy?

  Pammy had known Colin’s sister ever since she’d moved to London in tenth grade. Serena and Pammy weren’t awfully close, but there would still have been ample opportunity for a flirtation with Serena’s big brother. No. I just couldn’t see it. Besides, Pammy would have told me. Wouldn’t she? Hmm. I filed that thought away for later.

  ‘Um, Chaucer.’ I yanked my borrowed pashmina back up around my shoulders, futilely attempting to effect a return to where we had been pre-Pammy and the Text Message of Doom. ‘You were saying something about Chaucer?’

  In the feeble light of the torch, I saw him shake his head. ‘It can’t have been important.’

  ‘It sounded intriguing to me,’ I said ruefully.

  ‘Did it?’ The words were softly spoken, but they were enough to make the skin on my arms prickle in a way that had nothing to do with the November chill. Even the shadows gathered and held their breath, waiting to see what sort of action might follow on the velvet promise beneath those two little words.

  ‘Hullo!’

  A cheerful voice echoed through the old cloister, banishing the shadows and sending any romantic tension skittering far, far away.

  What next? My fifth-grade homeroom teacher? The St Patrick’s Day Parade? A Fleetwood Mac revival concert? I doubted that Donwell Abbey had been quite this popular even when it was still in possession of all of its masonry and monks.

  Somewhere, Cupid was snickering. I hoped he sat on one of his own arrows.

  Sally skittered to a stop and rested a hand on the wall to steady herself. If there was anything colouring the atmosphere other than my own wild imaginings, she didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Sorry to keep you! I only just got away. Joan couldn’t find the ice.’ She shook her wild mane of hair in sororal condemnation. ‘Hopeless. Simply hopeless.’

  That did about sum it up.

  ‘Has Colin shown you around yet?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Not really.’ Colin strolled casually across the room. ‘Would you do the honours, Sal?’

  ‘Better than you,’ she retorted. ‘I can’t believe you’ve been out here all this time and he’s shown you nothing!’

  Colin assumed a wounded air. ‘If you’re just going to insult me, I’m off for a drink.’

  I contemplated saying, ‘I could do with one of the same,’ and trailing after him back to the bar, but clamped down on the impulse. I hadn’t quite sunk to that level. The operative word being ‘quite.’ I remembered my rather blatant attempt at flirtation and was glad for the darkness that hid my sudden grimace.

  ‘Enjoy!’ I said instead, with a cheerful little wave. ‘Better make it a double.’

  ‘Double the alcohol?’

  ‘For double the insults,’ I explained sweetly.

  ‘A hit!’ crowed Sally. ‘Well done!’

  ‘I’ – Colin turned and wagged a finger at Sally – ‘don’t like you anymore. And as for you—’

  I tried to look as though I weren’t holding my breath.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t worry; I’ll think of something.’ And on that rather enigmatic note, he made his exit.

  As a threat, his statement lacked a certain something. Specificity, for example.

  As flirtation…it fizzed through me like a large gulp of Veuve Clicquot, pure, heady stuff, the grand brut of suggestive remarks. I shouldn’t read too much into it. I knew that. Nonetheless…

  I turned to find Sally regarding me with arms crossed over her chest.

  ‘Just here for the archives?’ she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Compromised: discovered and disgraced; the uncovering of an agents identity, followed by enforced retirement. See also under Ruin

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  Miles rapidly remembered all the very good reasons he had meant to keep far away from Henrietta until old age snuffed out baser desires, or at least the means to accomplish them. But it was too late. In front of him loomed his best friend – his former best friend – arm outstretched like a medieval woodcut of a wrathful God. Richard’s very posture crackled with rage.

  ‘Oh, no,’ breathed Henrietta, hastily yanking her bodice back up into place.

  Amy grabbed Richard by the arm and shoved him behind herself. Given that Richard stood nearly a foot taller than Amy, the action was entirely ineffectual. Over Amy’s dark head, Richard’s face was stiff with fury and disbelief. Miles swallowed hard, rising slowly to his feet.

  ‘I don’t think we should be here just now,’ Amy hedged, trying to herd her husband in the opposite direction.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Richard dangerously, placing both hands on his wife’s shoulders and moving her to the side. ‘I think now is exactly the right time to be here. What in the hell did you think you were doing, Dorrington?’

  Think? Miles didn’t recall terribly much thought being involved.

  ‘What do you think he was thinking?’ chimed in Amy. ‘Really, Richard, can’t we—’

  ‘There had better be a bloody good explanation.’

  ‘How did you know we were out here?’ Henrietta croaked, hoping to distract Richard from Miles before that ‘bloody’ became bloody in fact. The dangerous glint in Richard’s eye gave dea
dly content to the word.

  ‘One of the sentries reported that there was something unusual occurring in the gardens.’ Richard emitted a grim bark of laughter. ‘He didn’t know the half of it.’

  ‘Richard—’ began Miles, moving to stand protectively in front of Henrietta.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ Richard enquired conversationally. ‘Weeks? Months? Years? How long, Dorrington?’

  ‘We didn’t—’ Henrietta interrupted.

  ‘You stay out of this,’ warned her brother.

  ‘How can I stay out of this when it’s me you’re talking about?’

  Her brother ignored her. Eyes never leaving Miles, he began stripping off his coat. ‘We can discuss this at dawn or we can settle this right now.’

  ‘Before we do’ – yanking off his own coat, Miles sank automatically into a defensive crouch, fists at the ready – ‘I have something to say.’

  Richard dropped his coat on the gravelled path. ‘That’s just too bad, because I’ – with one controlled lunge, he levelled an uppercut straight at Miles’s jaw – ‘don’t want to hear it.’

  With the ease of long practice, Miles ducked the blow and grabbed Richard’s arm before he could swing again. They had sparred a thousand times before, in the well-regulated confines of Gentleman Jackson’s pugilist establishment, but never in earnest. Miles didn’t intend to start now. The two stood locked in a contest of strength, like athletes on a Greek vase, muscles straining against the sleeves of their coats, as Miles strove to restrain his friend.

  ‘Dammit, Richard,’ yelled Miles, voice ragged with strain, ‘will you just listen?’

  ‘There’s nothing,’ Richard panted, twisting his right arm free, ‘to listen to.’

  ‘I want’ – Miles barely dodged a sharp jab to his stomach – ‘to marry her!’

  ‘What?’ gasped Henrietta.

  ‘What?’ roared Richard, stumbling backwards.

  ‘That’s an excellent idea!’ applauded Amy. ‘That way, no one is compromised, no one shoots anyone at dawn, and everyone is happy.’

  The expressions of the other three completely belied the latter part of her statement.

  Ignoring the others, Miles looked searchingly at Henrietta. ‘Hen?’

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ whispered Henrietta.

  ‘I rather think he does,’ commented Amy. ‘It’s quite compromising, you know.’

  ‘Hen?’ repeated Miles urgently.

  Henrietta stared at him in mute misery, her mind leaping from one imponderable to the next. She could refuse, and watch her brother either tear Miles to death on the spot, or shoot a hole into him on the field of honour the following morning. While Miles was undoubtedly the more accomplished sportsman, Henrietta knew, the same way she knew that Miles was proposing because it was the only honourable thing to do in the circumstances, that Miles would never, ever lift a hand against her brother. It wouldn’t be an equal contest, with one party crippled with guilt. She didn’t think that Richard would, once he had time to reflect, really want to hurt Miles, either, but in the mood he was in… Henrietta didn’t trust her brother to aim wide.

  On the one side, death and dishonour. On the other…

  Or she could marry Miles, existing the remainder of her days with the knowledge that she had forced him into a match on the point of her brother’s pistol.

  Miles slowly turned to face his former best friend, and Henrietta knew, from the set of his shoulders and the expression of unusual gravity on his face, that if she waited a moment longer, the fatal words would be uttered and the two men who mattered most in her life would be irrevocably committed to a course from which there would be no going back. Ever.

  ‘Yes,’ Henrietta blurted out. ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’

  Richard turned an alarming shade of puce, rounded on his sister, and barked out, ‘You’re not going to marry that…that…’

  ‘Man?’ provided Amy helpfully.

  Richard glowered at his wife. ‘Seducer,’ he finished angrily.

  ‘Would you rather I married Reggie Fitzhugh?’ asked Henrietta acidly, turning on her brother. Anything rather than look at Miles.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ snapped Richard.

  ‘Why aren’t I allowed to be ridiculous, if you’re being ridiculous?’ demanded Henrietta, in her best annoying-little-sister mode. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Miles slowly retrieving his coat. Would he rather have cleansed his conscience at dawn? ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘She does have a point there, you know,’ commented Amy.

  ‘ARGH!’ Richard roared, driven beyond speech. ‘I am not being—’

  ‘Ridiculous and loud.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Richard clipped. ‘Marry him. Marry him tomorrow, for all I care. But I don’t want to see that’ – he jabbed a finger in the direction of Miles – ‘under my roof ever again.’

  Miles shrugged into his coat and stepped forward. ‘Fine,’ he said quietly, but with an edge of steel beneath his voice that made Henrietta instinctively stiffen. ‘We’ll be married tomorrow. If you’ll excuse me, I have a special license to acquire.’

  With a nod of the head to Amy, and a swift kiss placed somewhere in the vicinity of Henrietta’s hand – she could feel the tingle of it all up her arm – Miles turned and strode off towards the stables.

  Richard didn’t bother to respond. He didn’t say anything to his sister. He didn’t follow Miles. He turned on his heel and stalked furiously in the direction of the house. Only the crunch of boots on gravel, receding in opposite directions, invaded the uncomfortable silence that followed. Henrietta stared after Miles’s retreating back, grappling with the ramifications of what had just passed.

  Tomorrow. Henrietta pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. A special license. Miles hadn’t just said they were to be married tomorrow, had he? He couldn’t have meant it.

  Recovering her powers of speech first, Amy smiled reassuringly at Henrietta. ‘Richard will come around,’ she said confidently. ‘You’ll see.’

  From the house came the ominous sound of a door being slammed. Twice.

  Amy swallowed hard. ‘Eventually?’

  By noon the next day, the Honourable Miles Dorrington and his new bride were well on their way back to London.

  Henrietta glanced surreptitiously down at the ring on her gloved finger. She hadn’t asked where Miles had acquired it, or what manner of skulduggery he might have engaged in to procure a special license on such short notice. In fact, they had had no chance to speak at all. By the time Henrietta had awakened that morning, with the vaguely headachy recollection that something of great moment had occurred and it really might have been better to just stay under the covers until the world realigned itself, the household was already bustling with wedding preparations, and Henrietta found herself swept towards matrimony with very little notion of how she had got there.

  Henrietta had always imagined that she would be attended by Penelope and Charlotte, Charlotte misty-eyed with romance, Penelope grumbling. Instead, Amy helped her to dress, fussing excitedly with flounces and curls, while Mrs Cathcart calmly rearranged everything as soon as Amy had bustled on to the next task. Amy offered her own wedding dress, but since her sister-in-law was a good four inches shorter than she was, and rather differently proportioned, Henrietta declined with thanks, and donned the evening gown she had worn the night before. There was a fitting irony, considered Henrietta, to being wed in the same gown in which she had been compromised.

  Miles had acquired not only a ring and a license, but the bishop of London, who wore his second-best vestments and the irritable expression of a man who has been dragged out of bed at an hour more commonly used for slumber. A makeshift altar had been constructed in the Long Drawing Room, and chairs set out on either side of the room, which Amy had draped with ribbons and flowers with more enthusiasm than grace. In contrast to their gay decorations, the long rows of chairs looked painfully empty. Instead of the friends and f
amily members who should have filled them sat the two Tholmondelays, looking confused but game, and Mrs Cathcart, single-handedly doing her best to throw a mantle of respectability over the whole hurried affair.

  It should have been her father beside her, escorting her down the aisle, not a brother poised for murder rather than matrimony. Her mother should have been at the front of the room, sporting an outrageous hat, beaming proudly, and ordering everyone about. Her parents. Oh, heavens. What would they even think when she told them she was married, and without their presence or consent? Henrietta was quite sure they would have no objections to her marrying Miles, but the manner of her doing so was designed to enrage even the most tolerant of parents. It was something that didn’t bear thinking about.

  Henrietta didn’t have time to dwell on the absent faces. While Miss Grey plucked out the processional with more precision than passion, Henrietta spent most of her walk down the aisle trying to convince her brother not to murder her bridegroom. After several yards of fruitless argument, she finally succeeded in silencing him by pointing out that he was merely lucky that Amy’s brother hadn’t been the duelling sort. Since Richard’s nuptials had been even more irregular than Henrietta’s – performed on a Channel packet by a butler turned pirate – she had him there, and he knew it.

  ‘I’d still rather skewer him,’ muttered Richard.

  ‘Kindly strive to contain your excessive rapture at my nuptials until after the ceremony,’ Henrietta hissed back, winning a glower from the bishop and an anxious look from Miles.

  Was he anxious that she wouldn’t go through with the wedding – or that she would? Henrietta filed that thought away as yet another in the steadily mounting list of things that didn’t bear thinking on.

  After an undignified tussle when the bishop asked, ‘Who giveth this woman to be married to this man’ (resolved only by Amy stamping on Richard’s foot), the rest of the ceremony passed with unseemly haste. Henrietta suspected the bishop had deliberately truncated the ritual, but in her distracted state, she couldn’t be entirely sure. In fact, she couldn’t be sure about anything. The entire ceremony flitted past her with nightmare vagueness, colours blurring, voices melding, everything blending in a horrific carnival of unreality. The pronouncement that Miles was man to her wife took her by surprise, and she received her new husband’s fleeting kiss, which bore absolutely no resemblance to the passionate embraces of the night before, with a certain amount of doubt as to whether what had passed could possibly be binding.