The Masque of the Black Tulip (15 page)

Regretfully, Miles dropped Frobisher. He had a message to deliver first. Kicking would have to wait.

"Thanks, Dorrington." Frobisher brushed ineffectually at his waistcoat. Some substances do not respond kindly to brushing. Frobisher scowled at the ruin of his gloves. "Dashed decent of you."

"About Lady Henrietta," Miles began menacingly, eager to say his piece and be done with it.

"Don't know what she was so upset about." Frobisher shook his head at the vagaries of women. "Jus' a little cuddle. Girl's in her third Season, you'd think she'd be thanking me."

"She'd what?"

Did the man have a death wish? Miles concentrated on the possibility he had misheard. The man was drunk; he wasn't speaking clearly.

"Last prayers, y'know," Frobisher elucidated helpfully. "On the shelf."

Miles's fragile hold on his temper snapped.

"Would you care to say that again," Miles clipped, "at dawn?"

* * *

Duel (n.): 1) a desperate struggle in a darkened room; 2) a means of emptying crowded ballrooms

—from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation, with annotations by the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale

Martin Frobisher might have been drunk, but he wasn't stupid. At least, not entirely stupid. He knew enough to be very, very afraid.

Dorrington's skill with an epee was unparalleled, his marksmanship legendary, but the prospect of being skewered or shot faded to insignificance before the far more immediate menace of Miles himself. Miles's hands were flexing in a way that had nothing to do with Queensbury rules. Frobisher backed away, bumped into the shrubbery, and steadied himself with one hand against the wall.

"I say, Dorrington…"

"Yes, Frobisher? What exactly do you have to say?"

"Never meant it like that," he stammered, sliding down the wall to sit heavily in a puddle of his own making. "Damn fine girl. Anyone would want 'er. Tits like—urgh…"

Frobisher's head snapped back with the force of the blow. His eyes bugged out in horror as Miles seized him by the cravat and hauled him upright.

"You will not touch Lady Henrietta Selwick ever again. You will not dance with her. You will not kiss her hand. You will not cuddle, fondle, or otherwise defile any part of her anatomy. Is that clear?"

"Won't touch her," Frobisher dutifully gurgled. Struck by a sudden inspiration, he looked anxiously at Miles. "Won't even talk to her!"

"Even better," said Miles grimly. Opening his hand, he let Frobisher drop—right back into the pile of his own filth. Frobisher sprawled half under the bushes, clasping his throat and panting with relief. "Frobisher!"

"Yes?" a cracked voice emerged from the bushes.

"If I were you, I'd refrain from mentioning any of this to any of your little friends. Speak Lady Henrietta's name with anything but respect, and I'll thrash you within an inch of your miserable life and sell you to the press gangs. If they'll have you," added Miles with a disparaging glance at the crumpled pile of soiled fabric curled up under the bushes. "Good night, Frobisher."

A faint moan followed Miles as he clumped purposefully off down the street.

The triumphal hero was feeling less than pleased with himself. He had, he knew, massively overreacted. Massively. The man had been drunk, he'd been in no condition for a fair fight, and, to be just, he hadn't even meant to be offensive; he just was. All Miles had to do was calmly and coolly deliver a warning, gentleman to gentleman, to alert Frobisher that Henrietta wasn't unprotected and she wasn't fair game. Simple enough. Instead, he had lost his head, flexed his muscles, mouthed threats like some thickheaded numbskull fresh from the countryside. It was sheer dumb luck that no one had been watching.

But there was something about Frobisher, about the thought of him pressing his attentions on Hen, that made Miles want to stomp back and finish what he'd started. How dare he refer to Henrietta in those terms?

Miles scowled. Frobisher's careless words had brought back a memory that Miles had been doing his best to repress for the past month. He'd nearly managed, too. There had been an incident. An incident involving Henrietta and a nightdress. A bloody indecent nightdress. Weren't innocent young virgins supposed to be bundled up in yards of woolly fabric to prevent shocking the sensibilities of any bachelors who might happen by? If they weren't, they should be.

Henrietta had come running down the stairs in a nightdress that gave whole new meaning to the word "diaphanous." To be fair, Miles wouldn't have noticed if Lady Uppington hadn't made a sharp comment and ordered Henrietta upstairs to change, but once he'd started noticing, it had been hard to stop. When in the hell had she grown breasts like that? The candlelight through the thin lawn of her nightdress had left very little to the imagination, and Miles rather doubted even imagination could improve upon…

Miles clamped down on the memory before it could go any further. As far as he was concerned, Henrietta wasn't supposed to have a body. She was a head on legs. Hmm, those had been very nice legs he'd seen outlined through… No. There were rules about lusting after your best friend's sister. Hell, forget rules, more like immutable laws of nature. If he broke them, there would be strange eclipses of the moon, and the sheeted dead would rise and gibber in the streets. It was unnatural, that was what it was. Unnatural and wrong.

But so well shaped, for something so wrong.

Devil take it! Miles picked up his pace, striding furiously in the direction of Belliston Square. He had a house to burgle, and, thanks to that idiot Frobisher, he had already lost another ten minutes of his allotted hour. Fortunately, Vaughn's residence was a scant five blocks from the Middlethorpes'; Miles's long legs covered the distance in minutes.

Just outside Belliston Square, he forced himself to slow and recon-noiter. This was, after all, where the operative had been murdered, and Miles wanted to take a look around outside as well as in. Staggering a bit, a gentleman well in his cups making his way home after one too many social events, Miles swaggered slowly into the square, looking keenly about under the guise of an idly lolling head.

The square was shadowed on one side by the shuttered bulk of Belliston House, a grand mansion in the Palladian style erected early in the previous century. The current duke was an avid sportsman who seldom came to London. There would be a skeleton staff in residence, to maintain the premises and guard its priceless collections, but the odds of anyone in Belliston House taking notice of dubious goings-on in the square (including Miles's) were slim. The other three sides were identical; each boasted a large house in the center flanked by two smaller houses on either side, rather in the manner of a triumphal arch. Vaughn's was one of the former, nestled on the south side of the square.

An immense, triangular pediment supported by three Doric columns dominated the facade, lending the structure a fashionable air of the antique. More importantly, all the lights were out.

There was a party in progress in one of the houses, a musical evening, from the liquid syllables that spilled out the window. In front of another, a footman was teasing a little maid, who giggled and colored under his attentions. Miles stopped and stretched; he leaned against a gate, gazed at the moon, fiddled with his stickpin. No one took the slightest notice. Miles continued on his way, his theory confirmed. The maples planted in the middle of the square meant anyone standing in front of Vaughn's house would be blocked from the view of the houses opposite; as for the other houses, as long as the murderer looked like he belonged in the square, and moved quickly enough, he could be almost sure of escaping detection.

Ducking around the back of the square and into an alley, Miles donned the concealing garments he had brought along for just this occasion. They weren't elaborate, nothing like the complicated costume Richard used to wear for his escapades as the Purple Gentian, but there was only so much Miles could stuff into his pockets. Unfastening his diamond stickpin, Miles yanked off his white cravat, bundled his equally white gloves into it, and stuck the lot beneath a convenient bush. Downey would be none too pleased, but what was a scrap of linen more or less in a good cause? Replacing the white gloves with thin black ones, Miles drew out of his pocket a square of black cloth. Miles eyed it with disfavor. He really wasn't looking forward to this part.

England, he reminded himself. Rule Britannia and God Save the King, and all that.

His jaw fixed in an expression of extreme stoicism, Miles knotted the black cloth bandana-style around his head, hiding his fair hair, and covering a good chunk of his forehead as well. Miles caught a glimpse of himself in a dark window and grimaced. Hell, put an earring in his ear, and he'd look like a bloody pirate. All he needed was a tattoo on his arm and a wisecracking parrot.

There was worse yet to come. Over the bandana, Miles tied a thin, black silk mask, the sort worn by ladies who wished to preserve their reputations and the roues who preyed on them. Now he looked like a pirate with a yen for anonymity. Miles the Bashful Pirate, Scourge of the High Seas. If Hen ever saw him in this get-up, he'd never hear the end of it.

Ah well. Miles shook his head at himself. At least if anyone discovered him, he could claim he had been on his way to a fancy dress party, and had wandered into Vaughn's garden in pursuit of his runaway parrot.

Feeling like a prize dimwit, Miles slipped unnoticed through Vaughn's garden gate. The windows on the first floor were all dark. Inching through the midnight garden, the air heavy with the scents of roses and lavender, Miles could see a faint glint of light from below stairs. Vaughn's valet would, naturally, be waiting up for his master. From the sounds of merriment emerging from the open window, he had company. Good, thought Miles, the more they were entertaining themselves, the less likely they were to hear the dark shadow who slipped soundlessly into the house.

Ouch! He had whacked right into an ornamental bench that some diabolical mastermind had placed right up against the wall. Miles swallowed a bellow of pain, cursing silently, which wasn't nearly as satisfying as cursing noisily.

Rubbing his shin, the black shadow limped along, examining his options. Up three shallow steps stood a balcony, with French doors that gave onto the garden. The steps, of course, were right in the center of the garden, in plain view of anyone in the house. The ornamental shrubs that marked out the patterns of the parterre would provide no concealment; they came to Miles's knee at best.

Easily enough remedied, thought Miles with a roguish grin. Placing one black-gloved hand on the corner of the stone balustrade, he vaulted over the railing, landing in a supple crouch on the balcony. Standing, Miles flexed his arms smugly.

Back against the wall, he edged his way to the French doors, and with one cautious, gloved hand, tried the handle. It turned smoothly. Once inside, Miles didn't let himself stop to gloat; he had worked out a plan of action last night, and intended to stick to it. He had already wasted enough time giving that revolting reprobate Frobisher the what-for.

Miles jerked his mind back to the matter at hand before it could stray into dangerous territory.

Vaughn's study would be the obvious place to search—which was precisely why he wasn't going to do so. If Vaughn was the ruthless spy he supposed him, he would have anticipated the possibility of midnight callers, and hidden his papers accordingly, planting false information in the more obvious spots, such as locked desk drawers and hollow globes.

Besides, Vaughn had only recently returned from his travels; he would have gotten in the habit of keeping his most sensitive papers close by him, ready to be packed up and moved along at a moment's notice. And when a gentleman wanted something kept close at hand, he kept it in his bedroom. The same principle applied for both documents of a sensitive nature and mistresses.

Even Delaroche, that half-mad fanatic, kept his more sensitive documents under his pillow—or had done, until Richard cleared out the lot. Vaughn's house was a connoisseur's dream and a spy's nightmare, filled with tottering vases and unexpected statues. Miles nearly fell back into one of the former as he rounded a corner to encounter a fourteen-feet-high Hercules guarding the front stairs. A very dispirited4ooking lion crouched underneath Hercules' foot, and the club in Hercules' hand seemed to be pointed directly at Miles.

"Hello, old chap," murmured Miles as he placed one foot warily on the first step, balancing on the balls of his feet to keep his heels from clicking tellingly against the marble. Rugs. That was what this house needed, decided Miles crossly. Lots and lots of rugs. It would make creeping about much easier.

Hercules continued to watch him as he climbed, the stairs circling around the statue. "Keep an eye out for the staff for me, would you?" Miles asked. He had always felt something of a rapport with Hercules ever since that incident with the determined countess. And he shared the man's dislike for snakes, an antipathy obviously not echoed by Vaughn. They figured prominently in his decorating scheme. Sconces encircled by writhing reptiles reposed at regular intervals along the walls.

Crossing his fingers for luck, Miles selected a room at random, slipping soundlessly inside, shutting the door again behind him. With the heavy drapes closed, the room was in complete darkness. Rather than blundering about, Miles decided to risk striking a match. In the momentary flare, he saw flowered wallpaper, a dainty writing desk, and an embroidered fire screen.

Not the earl's bedchamber—but the countess's?

Miles made it to the window just before the match burned down onto his fingers, nudging the drapes aside just enough to allow in sufficient moonlight to see by. Everything was a little blurry, but it was safer than another match, and what he saw confirmed his guess. The room was dainty, and feminine, and nothing in it dated to later than a decade ago. Dried-up bottles containing cosmetics and perfume still sat on the dressing table, and an old-fashioned sacque was draped along the end of the bed, as though its owner were expected to return and don it at any moment.