In the end, it was those same clothes that had set Henrietta wondering.
Why would someone so obviously all up to the crack wear his hair in an old-fashioned queue? A young pink of the ton, like Turnip, would have his hair cut short, fashionably tousled in a Brutus crop, or whichever other classical figure was the model of the moment. Queues were the province of the old, the unaware, or the resolutely stodgy, distinctly at odds with boots by Hoby, and a cravat tortured into the complicated folds of the Frenchman at the Waterfall. A nice touch, that, thought Henrietta, sifting ash into her bucket from the side of the shovel, watching the fine fall of not-quite-dead embers.
Once Henrietta had recognized the incongruity of the queue, the rest followed. She had only seen that shade of black hair on two people. It wasn't the rare blue-black of Spain, or the coarse brown-black that so often passed for the color among the dusty blondes and muddy brunettes that dotted the British Isles, but true, deep black that shimmered silver when the light struck it.
One was Mary Alsworthy. Her hair was the sort of shining black curtain that poets blunted their pens on, but Henrietta couldn't se,e her cavorting about unpopular inns in breeches, even if they were fashionable breeches. Mary Alsworthy might elope in the dead of night, but she would do it in full rig, velvet cloak, and a yippy lapdog on her knee, just to make it easier for her pursuers to follow and stage a grand scene.
The other was the marquise.
What vanity, Henrietta wondered, had led her to leave her hair down? Perhaps not vanity, but practicality, Henrietta concluded generously, shoveling ash. To cut off her hair would have undoubtedly occasioned notice — although so many were doing that nowadays, in token of those whose heads had been lopped off in the Terror — and the lush mass was too much to bundle beneath a hat without the shift being immediately obvious.
The voice, the hair, the height, the form, it all fit — but nothing else did. Henrietta would have been willing to stake her best pearls that the man in the inn had indeed been the marquise, but to what end? The marquise's motives all ran in the opposite direction. Estates, title, riches, consequence, husband, all had been stripped from her by the Revolution. Henrietta rather doubted she regretted the loss of that last, for all her pious utterances to the contrary, but consequences and riches were quite another matter. Hadn't the dowager said little Theresa Ballinger had an eye for the main chance?
The main chance might have led her to throw in her lot with the new power brokers in Paris, but if so, it hadn't gained her much. Her townhouse was in an area that was respectable, but not grand, sparsely furnished rather than the silvered opulence one would have expected of the marquise. The rugs were worn, the walls were bare, and the furnishings badly in need of being recovered.
None of it added up.
And she knew, with grim certainty, that if she broached the theory to Miles, he would unerringly poke his finger into each of those logical holes, one by one. And then — Henrietta winced in a way that had nothing to do with the bit of ember that was gnawing a hole in the rough fabric of her skirt and finding it tough going — and then Miles's face would curve into a great, big smug grin, and he would hoot, "You're jealous!" He might have the restraint not to hoot, he might manage to force the words out in reasonably non-hooting tones, but the hoot would be there, taunting her. Henrietta's cheeks burned at the very thought. And what proof did she have other than one black queue, seen in passing in a crowded coffee room? Certainly nothing that would convince a court of law. M'lud, the girl is obviously lovestruck. Makes them unreasonable, you know.
Henrietta had no idea why the opposing counsel in her head sounded quite so much like Turnip Fitzhugh, but, then, Turnip was always popping up where one least expected him.
Banishing Turnip, Henrietta rested her shovel against the grate, and stretched her tired arms, where muscles she hadn't realized she possessed were engaged in vociferous protest. A hot bath, that was what she wanted, with lots of lavender-scented bath salts and enough steam to make the room go hazy.
Hands on her hips, Henrietta took one last look around the sparsely furnished room. She might as well have that bath sooner rather than later. So far, her mission had been fruitless in the extreme, unless one counted finding half a dried apple under one of the settees. It showed no sign of being poisoned, or being anything else of interest, other than old, withered, and thoroughly disgusting.
Taking one of Amy's suggestions, Henrietta had garbed herself as a maidservant, borrowing a coarse brown wool dress from one of the baffled underservants at Lor ing House. Henrietta had gabbled a hastily contrived story about a fancy dress party (the maidservant had appeared entirely unconvinced) and slunk sheepishly back up to the upper reaches to don her prize, which, for all its plainness, had the advantage of being far cleaner than Henrietta's own clothes from the day before, and entirely cabbage-free. Henrietta resolved to give all the servants at Loring House a respectable raise in the very near future. They might think her a madwoman, but she would rather they think her a generous madwoman.
Thus attired, Henrietta had slipped out of the house. Amy had been entirely right; with her plain dress on, and a simple white cap over neatly braided hair, no one gave her a second glance. Her entrance through the kitchen of the marquise's townhouse occasioned no comment; the cook was bent over the fire, and a kitchen maid was too busy chopping and telling the cook about that girl what had been done wrong by the groom's second cousin once removed to pay any notice.
Once inside, Henrietta had first gone upstairs, making for the marquise's boudoir. She wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for — a series of signed instructions from Paris would be most helpful — but anything of a suspicious nature would do to get the attention of the War Office, and wipe the hoot out of Miles's voice. The clothing worn by the mysterious gentleman at the inn, wigs, false mustaches, a cache of correspondence in code. Any of those would provide assurance that she wasn't just — Henrietta grimaced at the possibility — acting out of pure, rank, baseless jealousy.
Unfortunately — Henrietta plunged her shovel back into the fireplace — so far, jealousy was looking more and more like the only explanation. She had only moments in the marquise's boudoir before the click of heels heralded the arrival of the marquise's lady's maid, but there was nothing there that wouldn't be found in Henrietta's own. Even the little pots of face paint seemed no more than one would expect to find on the dressing table of a sophisticated lady of the world. Henrietta toyed with the notion of notes slipped into the base of the hares'-foot brushes used to apply cosmetics, but the idea seemed too wild, and certainly nothing to be heeded by the War Office. Besides, they hadn't made a crinkling noise when she squeezed them.