Miles snatched up the note the courier proffered, as grimed as the man himself, immediately recognizing the hand. Jane had wasted no time on explanations. There were only three words written on the little piece of paper, and Miles exclaimed them aloud without even realizing he had done so.
"The Marquise de Montval?"
Crumpling the note in one large hand, Miles shoved it into a pocket. He pointed a ringer at Vaughn. "I will be back," he warned, and slammed out of the room.
The fine lines around his eyes more pronounced than usual, Vaughn watched him go, directed a footman to take the courier to the kitchens to be fed, and thoughtfully drained the last of his coffee.
Folding his paper, Lord Vaughn flicked a finger in the direction of the silent footman who stood by the sideboard.
"Tell Hutchins to attend me in my dressing room. And see that my carriage is brought around. At once."
"My lord." The footman bowed his white-powdered head and departed.
"I," commented Vaughn to the empty air above the sideboard, cinching the waist of his dressing gown, "have an assignation to keep."
His lips twisted into a sardonic smile.
"With Lady Henrietta."
Chapter Thirty-Four
Assignation: an ambush, generally set in motion by the agents of the enemy. See also under Tete-a-Tete and Rendezvous.
"Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you, Lady Henri-etta?"
"Lydee 'Enree-ayta?" gabbled Henrietta hastily in a foreign accent that might have been Italian or Spanish or just gobbledygook; Henrietta didn't have time to think through her putative nationality, only that wherever it was, it was heavy on the vowels. "'Ooo eees dees Lydee 'Enree-ayta?"
The marquise pursed her lips in a gesture of extreme exasperation, and rolled her eyes briefly heavenward.
"Your disguise is clever," she said in a tone heavy with sarcasm, and entirely free of the purring note that had distinguished her public persona, "I grant you that. But your accent leaves much to be desired."
"I no unnerstan'. Eet eez, 'ow you say? Dee way I speak."
"Enough, Lady Henrietta. Enough. I haven't the time. And neither" — the marquise's black eyes narrowed in a decidedly inimical way — "have you."
"I have plenty of time," said Henrietta, dropping both her bucket and her role, and backing away a bit under that basilisk stare. "But clearly you don't. I'll just be getting along then, shall I? I don't want to keep you if you're busy."
The marquise ignored that. "Were you looking for your little friend?" she asked, watching Henrietta's face like a tailor sizing up a bolt of cloth. "My little friend?" Henrietta didn't have to feign her confusion. The last time she had possessed anything she might have referred to as a little friend, she had been five years old. The little friend in question had been an imaginary dwarf named Tobias, who lived in a tree in the gardens of Uppington Hall.
The marquise's face took on an expression of extreme satisfaction as she glanced towards the window. "He's not here yet, but he will be. Oh, yes, he will be."
Henrietta took in the vast expanse of bosom and long line of leg revealed by a creation that could scarcely be called a dress. The marquise didn't look like a vindictive agent of the French Republic. She looked like a woman awaiting a lover. Henrietta's lover, to be precise.
Henrietta remembered that ride in the park. Miles wouldn't have… No, she reassured herself. He wouldn't have. He had gone to the War Office.
But if the marquise had sent him an invitation… The entire scenario unfolded in Henrietta's head. Miles, guilty at raising expectations he was no longer capable of filling (the word "adultery" came to mind — but, adultery with whom? Did it count as adultery if one was an unwanted wife, and the other the woman of one's choice?), tucking the note into his pocket, resolving to stop by after his morning's meeting, just to explain. The marquise greeting him, all misty draperies, inflated bosom, and expensive perfume.
The barren townhouse was not the center of a spy ring, then, but a setting for seduction. The seduction of her husband.
Henrietta didn't know whether to stick her head into the bucket of ashes or go for the marquise's eyes. The latter struck her as a decidedly more attractive option.
"Do you mean Miles?" Henrietta asked sharply.
"Miles?" the marquise turned in a swirl of filmy fabric, like a rainstorm seeking a heath. "You mean Dorrington?"
Henrietta scowled. "In my experience, those names generally tend to go together."
"Why, you poor little dear." Henrietta would rather a hundred women's scorn than the marquise's pity; it ate like acid at the edges of her self-composure. The marquise laughed delightedly. "I do believe you're jealous."
Henrietta didn't say anything. How could one refute something so palpably true?
Before Henrietta could attempt to construct a dignified answer, the marquise's attention was mercifully arrested by the sound of carriage wheels grating against the uneven cobbles of the quiet street. The marquise drew in a silent breath of exultation that swelled her bosom to new and even more alarming proportions, face alight with a wild triumph.
"We'll have time enough for that later," she said, grabbing Henrietta by the elbow. "But right now, you, my dear, are decidedly de trop."
The wheels slowed to a stop. Somewhere outside the window a horse whinnied, and a pair of booted feet hopped to the ground. Henrietta caught the merest glimpse of a brightly painted curricle before the marquise marched her away from the window, her arms surprisingly strong beneath their translucent draperies. Henrietta would have thought she would have been shoved summarily out the door, but the marquise had other ideas. Wrenching open the door of a large cupboard, as empty as the rest of the cupboards throughout the house, she gave Henrietta a stiff shove.
Caught by surprise, Henrietta clipped her shins on the edge of the wardrobe, and tumbled headlong into the dusty interior, banging an elbow painfully against the floor, and grazing her forehead on the back wall. The marquise scooped up Henrietta's legs and shoved them the rest of the way in, slamming the doors shut. Scrambling on her hands and knees to right herself in the cramped space, Henrietta heard a click like a latch being drawn.
"Not ideal," commented the marquise, from just outside the cupboard, "but it will do for the moment."
Henrietta would have chosen a stronger term than not ideal. Her face was jammed up against the right angle where the side joined the back, and her legs were twisted behind her in a position reminiscent of a mermaid's tail. Henrietta was quite sure of one thing: legs weren't meant to bend in that direction. Sneezing miserably, Henrietta began to painstakingly wiggle her way upright, easing her legs sideways.
The marquise banged on the side of the cupboard with an imperious fist.
"Quiet in there!"
Eyes streaming, Henrietta twisted her head to glower in the general direction of the sound, but she had no breath to retort. She was too busy sneezing.
With abraded palms, broken nails, and snagged hair, Henrietta managed to claw her way roughly upright within the tight confines of the cupboard, legs curled beneath her. The cupboard was perhaps two feet deep and three feet wide, leaving little room to maneuver. By tilting her head sideways, Henrietta could see through a knothole in the warped wood of the cupboard door (quality in furnishing had clearly not been a priority of the original owner). Through her knothole, Henrietta watched the marquise disposing herself elegantly on the couch in the style of the famous portrait of Mme Recamier. The fine folds of her skirt draped gently over the length of her legs, outlining more than they concealed. Her head was tilted to show the fine line of her throat, glossy pale against the one dark curl that twined its way in artful wantonness towards the scoop of her bodice. Henrietta wrenched her eye from the knothole and pressed her aching forehead against the rough wood of the inside of the door.