If I were the Black Tulip, where would I look for the Pink Carnation?
I successfully skirted around a small table, and noticed with some relief that I had made it back to the front hall. From there I should be able to find my way back to the library… I hoped. My lack of sense of direction is legendary among anyone who has ever tried to travel anywhere with me. With any luck I wouldn't wind up in the attics or cellar by accident.
If I knew that the Pink Carnation had been a guest at Richard and Amy's wedding, the first place I would go would be the guest list. And since the guests, with the exception of Amy's countrified relatives from Shropshire, all hailed from the first stair of London society, I would want to insert myself into that milieu.
Of course, I reminded myself, the Black Tulip didn't need to be a member of the ton. There were hundreds of people who floated about on the fringes of society, who could be reasonably assumed to have the same access — ladies' maids, valets, dancing masters, courtesans, bootmakers. Many a man's relationship with his tailor was more intimate than that with his wife; heaven only knew what he might reveal over the fitting of a new coat.
It was just so much less glamorous to think of the dreaded Black Tulip posing as a servant. Black Tulips weren't supposed to do things like bleach linen. They lurked in the corners of darkened hallways, swirling brandy snifters and twirling their mustaches. Or something like that.
Eeek! I staggered backwards as something moved in front of me, a misty form, shrouded in… oh. It was my own reflection in a darkened window. Ooops. A natural mistake, I assured myself.
If I didn't curb my imagination, I was going to be as ridiculous as that dim-witted heroine in Northanger Abbey, the one who pounced on a laundry list thinking it was going to be an account of ghostly goings-on. Colin would find me the following morning, hunched on the library floor in a gibbering ball of terror, moaning about clanking chains and eyes that burned out of the darkness where no eyes ought to be. Whatever had I been thinking to read all those ghost stories in my youth?
Taking my nerves firmly in hand, I continued onwards to the library with a firm gait and a defiant gaze. All the same, despite my resolution to not think about ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, I couldn't help but wonder…
What had Colin meant by that comment about apparitions by my bed ?
Chapter Five
Almack's Assembly Rooms: a cunning ambush laid for unwitting English agents by a determined band of French operatives
At precisely five minutes to eleven, Miles sauntered through the hallowed portals of Almack's Assembly Rooms.
Ordinarily, Almack's was not high on the list of Miles's favorite places to pass an evening. Given a choice between Almack's and a French dungeon, Miles would usually choose the dungeon. As Miles had complained to his valet earlier that evening, the company in the dungeon would be more congenial, the entertainment more entertaining, and, devil take it, the food was probably better, too.
"I'm sure it is, sir," said Downey, who was busily trying to tie Miles's cravat into something resembling a current fashion. "And if sir would refrain from speaking for just a moment…"
"The deuce of it is," Miles expostulated, chin crushing the fold Downey had just ever so carefully arranged, "I gave my word. What's a man to do?"
"If sir does not permit me to tie his cravat," pointed out Downey acerbically, yanking away the ruined cravat with enough force to make Miles's eyes water, "sir will be sufficiently tardy that he will not be allowed into the assembly rooms."
Miles considered his valet thoughtfully. Hmm. The portals of Almack's closed at precisely eleven o'clock, by order of the Patronesses, and woe betide the unfortunate man who rushed up to the doors a moment too late. Wouldn't that be a shame if he wasn't able to get inside and was instead forced by cruel necessity to go to his club and drink a few bottles of excellent claret?
Miles shook his head, ruining a third square of starched linen in the process. "It's an excellent idea, Downey," he said, "But it just won't wash. I promised."
There was the rub. He had promised Richard, and a promise was a promise. A promise to one's best friend was a vow on the order of a blood-signed pact with Mephistopheles. You just didn't violate that sort of thing.
"You will keep an eye on Hen for me while I'm away, won't you?" Richard had asked as he clasped his best friend's hand in farewell, preparatory to leaving for Sussex and married bliss. "Scare away the young bucks, and all that?"
"Never fear!" Miles had promised blithely, giving his friend a reassuring whack on the back. "I'll keep her closer than a cloister."
The reference to nunneries had struck precisely the right note; Richard had gone away reassured.
After all, how hard could keeping an eye on one twenty-year-old girl at the odd evening event be? Hen was a sensible sort of girl, not one to dash out on balconies with fortune hunters or moon over the first rake to look her way. All Miles had to do was bring her a glass of lemonade every so often, bend a leg in the occasional country dance, and loom threateningly over any importunate fop who got too close: Hell, he enjoyed the looming bit, and the dancing wasn't all that onerous, either. Hen hadn't trodden on his toes — on the dance floor, at any rate — since she was fifteen. How much trouble could it be?
Ha. Miles would have laughed bitterly at his own naivete if it wouldn't have attracted too much attention. And attention was the last thing he wanted to attract. Miles resisted the urge to linger cravenly in the doorway.
There were all those… mothers out there. Mothers of the very deadliest kind. Matchmaking mothers. All of them determined to snare a viscount for their offspring.
It was enough to send a man running to Delaroche, begging to be put in a nice, safe cell.
Now, if he could just find Hen before someone spotted him…
"Mr. Dorrington!"
Damn, too late.
The sound came from a portly woman sporting a headdress with enough feathers to clothe a reasonably plump ostrich. "Mr. Dorrington!"
Miles feigned deafness.
"Mr. Dorrington!" the woman tugged at his sleeve.
"Mr. Who?" inquired Miles blandly. "Oh, Dorrington! I believe I saw him go into the card room. It's over that way," he added helpfully.
The woman's eyes narrowed for a moment, and then she laughed, whacking Miles so hard on the arm with her fan that Miles could have sworn he heard something crack. Probably his arm.
"La! You are droll, Mr. Dorrington! You don't remember me — "
If he had ever encountered her before, Miles had no doubt he would have remembered it. He would have had the bruises to remind him.
" — but I was a dear friend of your dear mama."
"How nice for you." Miles dodged another swipe of the fan.
"So of course the minute I saw you" — the fan swooped again, homing with unerring accuracy straight at Miles's nose — "I said to my darling daughter, Lucy — where did that girl go again? Oh, there you are — I said to her, Lucy" — Miles sneezed violently — "Lucy, we must simply go speak to dear, dear Annabelle's only boy."
"And now you have. Oh, look! There's an unmarried marquis looking for a bride!" Miles pointed in the opposite direction, and made a run for it.
Hen was going to owe him for this one. As soon as he found her.
Miles ducked behind a pillar, trying to simultaneously avoid that crazy woman with her bruising fan, and locate Henrietta. She wasn't on the dance floor; she wasn't at the refreshment table; and she wasn't in the card room. Miles couldn't see into the card room from his vantage point behind the pillar, but he didn't need to.