Lauren Willig (36 page)

 

 

The recollection of every thoughtless word, every heedless deed, every shameful, baseless hope made her cringe. How they must have laughed at her, night after night, flinging herself at a married man in the hopes of a title that was already taken.

 

 

Had they met to mock her? Memory presented her with the image of the Chinese chamber, with two glasses ready prepared, two glasses for an intimate tęte-ŕ-tęte. And then she…Mary’s cheeks burned with the memory of it.

 

 

Perhaps they had placed bets on her, the earl and countess, wagering on her virtue as one would on a horse at the Derby. Mary jabbed her sunshade into the ground as she walked, wishing it were a spear. Stabbing was too good for Vaughn. He deserved to be hung, drawn, and quartered like the basest of traitors, with his head stuck up on a spike outside Almack’s as a warning to other would-be rakes and seducers.

 

 

Or perhaps they should simply take her head, Mary thought with disgust, and stick it on a spike as a warning to other credulous maidens not to fall into the arms of the first would-be widower who wandered along.

 

 

Stupid to believe he cared for her. Stupider still to allow herself to care for him.

 

 

And yet, she would have been willing to swear that what he had said today he had meant honestly—at least as honestly as Lord Vaughn understood honesty—every last, unromantic syllable. Would he have told her about his wife? Was that what he was trying to tell her when that hideous little midget of a blond thing interrupted?

 

 

“Miss Alsworthy…”

 

 

Surrounded by the thunder of her thoughts, it took some time for it to register that someone was calling her name. Not aloud, as Vaughn had done, but in an insistent whisper, like the whistling of the wind.

 

 

Thoroughly disoriented, Mary stumbled to a stop, twisting her neck in search of the source of the sound. All around her, she saw nothing but empty booths, bunting askew, whose owners, having sold their wares, had pressed forward with the rest of the crowd to watch the King address his troops.

 

 

The King. Mary’s spine stiffened. In her preoccupation with Vaughn, she had forgotten entirely about the King, his review, and the purpose of their visit.

 

 

“Miss Alsworthy…” Her name came again, from the narrow corridor between two abandoned booths.

 

 

Mary turned slowly towards the sound, wondering what would happen if she put up her sunshade and walked briskly away. After all, what had she to do with the Black Tulip, now that all her obligations to Vaughn had been extinguished? Let Vaughn’s wife bedazzle the Black Tulip with her charms. And if the Black Tulip didn’t like blondes, that was Vaughn’s problem. He was the one who had married one.

 

 

“Miss Alsworthy…” There was a distinct tinge of irritation to the whispered call.

 

 

An irritated French spy was a dangerous French spy. One didn’t need to be the Pink Carnation to know that.

 

 

Cursing Vaughn and his heirs unto the ending of the world, Mary moved slowly towards the two abandoned booths. The ground beneath her feet was churned and muddied, littered with broken biscuits, crumpled bits of paper, and lost hair ribbons as she picked her way carefully into the shadowy tunnel created by the two booths.

 

 

“Yes,
mon seigneur
?” she murmured in tones of proper submission, as she poked her head in between drunken billows of bunting. The sour smell of spilled ale mixed with mud made her stomach churn. It was just one more unpleasant aspect to a thoroughly unpleasant day.

 

 

“I want you to turn around,” rasped the harsh whisper. “Not all the way around,” it added, just in case she might be idiot enough to do a full rotation.

 

 

When the Black Tulip said turn, one turned. Mary obligingly rotated, keeping one hand tightly on the shaft of her sunshade. This time, she resolved, if she had to, she could disarm the Black Tulip with a sharp jab from the steel tip. With the proper show of obedience, he wouldn’t be expecting her to turn against him. A blow to the toe would send him staggering and leave him clear for a hearty whack to the head. It was a maneuver she had been forced to employ once before with a particularly importunate suitor. It had been wonderfully effective.

 

 

Once she had handed the Black Tulip into the custody of His Majesty’s government, she could get on with more important matters. Namely, killing Lord Vaughn.

 

 

Behind her, the Black Tulip approached, with a curious rustle of fabric, like the slithering of a giant serpent. In the narrow space, the sound was magnified, oddly loud in contrast to the din of hoofbeats and clattering drums that drifted from the center of the park. Fabric whispered against fabric as something brushed against the back of her skirts.

 

 

“You summoned me,
mon seigneur
?” she trilled.

 

 

“How well it sounds on your tongue,” the all-too-familiar voice purred in her ear, setting the hairs on her neck on end. “You make an excellent courtier. Although you might do even better as Queen.”

 

 

Odd sentiments for a republican. But the Black Tulip’s politics were none of her concern. At least, they wouldn’t be, once she was done with him.

 

 

“I’ve always thought so,” agreed Mary calmly, keeping her back still and straight. “But no one has offered me a crown as yet.”

 

 

“Only a fool waits for offers,” chided the Black Tulip. “If you want what is yours, you must take it.”

 

 

“And what does
mon seigneur
want of me?” Mary asked sweetly. Out of the sunlight, the air felt surprisingly cold, raising gooseflesh on her arms beneath the thin fabric of her spencer.

 

 

It was the wind that made her shiver, she assured herself, nothing more. They weren’t alone in an abandoned corner of Vauxhall this time. It was broad daylight, with a thousand troops mustered half a mile away. The idea of the Black Tulip attempting anything at all in such a setting was ludicrous.

 

 

“The time has come,” murmured the Black Tulip, “for you to prove your devotion to our cause.”

 

 

“I desire nothing more,” parroted Mary obediently. “Had you anything in mind?”

 

 

“Oh, just a trifling task.” There was a deep purr of satisfaction to the Black Tulip’s voice that made Mary instinctively take a tighter grip on the shaft of her sunshade. “Nothing too taxing.”

 

 

Lord Vaughn had a great deal to answer for. “How might I serve my lord?”

 

 

“There is a troublesome creature who has been plaguing me for some time now,” said the Black Tulip meditatively. “Someone who makes the mistake of attempting to meddle in my affairs.”

 

 

As he spoke, something pressed against the small of her back, something hard and cold, shaped like a circle. A million miles away, she heard the click of a trigger being cocked.

 

 

This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not in the middle of Hyde Park on a sunny autumn day with thousands of people milling around just in front of her, with bands playing and the King riding up and down the rows of his troops, with his fat son, the Duke of York, bobbing along beside him. The babble of a thousand voices pressed against Mary’s ears, shrill and painful, and the sunlight seemed unnaturally bright, as if to highlight everything that she might never see again, the vivid crimson of the Duke’s uniform, the gaudy reds and blues draping the makeshift wooden booths, the yellow thread patterning the hem of her dress. She could smell mud and ale, decaying leaves and unwashed bodies, mundane and unpleasant and yet suddenly so infinitely desirable, all of it.

 

 

Steeling herself to stillness, Mary said carefully, “To meddle with your affairs would be a very unwise thing to do.”

 

 

“Indeed,” agreed the Black Tulip genially, as the barrel of the pistol pressed through the thin fabric of her dress. “Most unwise.”

 

 

With a suddenness that made her giddy, the pressure lifted from her back. Reversing the pistol, the Black Tulip held it out to her, neatly balanced in the palm of a gloved hand. It wasn’t particularly pretty. There was no elegant silver work or tracery, no fanciful curlicues or detail. It was simply what it was, an instrument of death, wood and iron in its most compact form, offered on a black-gloved hand.

 

 

Mary stared senselessly at it, not comprehending what he meant her to do.

 

 

“Well?” urged the Black Tulip. “Aren’t you going to take it?” The gloved hand hefted the pistol in a practiced weighing of death, turning the weapon over with the deftness of long familiarity. “This pistol belonged to another lady before you,” he said conversationally.

 

 

“Did it?” asked Mary, gathering her wits back around her and reaching for the object. If the Black Tulip were fool enough to hand her a weapon, she certainly wasn’t going to refuse it.

 

 

The Black Tulip moved it neatly just out of her reach, leaving Mary grasping at empty air. “Her loyalties became…confused. We wouldn’t want that to happen to you, now would we?”

 

 

“Confused?” Her trick with the sunshade made considerably less sense when the object happened to be holding a pistol. There had to be some way of getting the pistol away from him…. “Might I see it?”

 

 

The Black Tulip ignored the request. “She was given a task, but she refused to see if through. She wouldn’t kill the man she was meant to kill. So I killed her,” he concluded matter-of-factly.

 

 

“Did you?” Mary’s throat felt very dry.

 

 

“One can’t have that sort of insubordination in the ranks,” said the Black Tulip regretfully.

 

 

“No, of course not,” Mary agreed, as the pistol wafted negligently in front of her.

 

 

“It’s death on morale. It was a pity, though. She had proved so satisfactory until then.”

 

 

“Mmm,” said Mary, keeping an eye on the trajectory of the traveling firearm.

 

 

“You asked to be allowed to prove yourself, so I give you the opportunity to finish the task your predecessor left undone.”

 

 

“How very magnanimous of you.” If she could only just grab it out of his hand, and then turn it on him.

 

 

“I want you to kill Lord Vaughn.”

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

Alas! the devil’s sooner raised than laid.

 

—Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
The School for Scandal

“Y
ou want me to kill
Lord Vaughn
?”

 

 

Mary forgot that she was supposed to be facing forwards and was only returned to her proper position by the application of the pistol to her side. It was very frustrating having a conversation with someone back to front, especially when that someone was a homicidal French spy with a primed pistol in one hand.

 

 

With the pistol prodding her in the ribs, Mary hastily returned to what the Black Tulip deemed an acceptable position, staring straight ahead, out across the park, her view half-veiled by strands of bunting. The Black Tulip had chosen his hiding place well. From outside their dark cavern, even she in her white dress would be all but invisible.

 

 

“Lord Vaughn?” Mary repeated incredulously, addressing herself to a pigeon flapping overhead. “I thought you wanted me to kill the King!”

 

 

The pigeon expressed its opinion of that misapprehension by promptly relieving itself on the next booth over.

 

 

“My dear Miss Alsworthy, wherever would you get such an absurd idea?” The Black Tulip indulged in a rich chuckle. “Kill the King in the middle of Hyde Park? You would have to be mad.”

 

 

He was calling her mad? That was rich coming from a man who skulked about in dark corners whispering melodramatic statements in peoples’ ears, urging them to shorten the life span of peers of the realm.

 

 

Mary shook her head in confusion. “Please don’t think me disrespectful—or disobedient,” she added hastily. “But I really don’t understand. I can think of many reasons one might like to kill Lord Vaughn. I can think of many reasons why
I
might like to kill Lord Vaughn. But I can think of very few reasons for you to wish to kill Lord Vaughn.”

 

 

“Can’t you?” There was a challenge in the Black Tulip’s tone that made little drops of sweat break out along Mary’s arms.

 

 

Well, there was that little matter of his doing errands for the Pink Carnation and attempting to plant her in the Black Tulip’s service, but aside from that…

 

 

“You poor fool,” said the Black Tulip, not unkindly. “Didn’t you think I knew what you were about?”

 

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

 

“When Vaughn appeared with a black-haired woman, I knew exactly what he intended. It wasn’t exactly subtle. A petal to replace those I had lost. Your master made a fatal miscalculation. I have no more need for petals. Not anymore.” There was a note of finality to the Black Tulip’s voice that sent a chill down Mary’s spine.

 

 

“Haven’t you thought it might be the other way around?” Mary pressed every ounce of persuasion she had ever possessed into service. “That I might be using him to get to you?”

 

 

“Then prove it to me,” said the Black Tulip pleasantly. “Prove to me that he means nothing to you. Kill Vaughn.”

 

 

“I have no objection to killing Vaughn on principle,” Mary lied. “I just don’t really see the point. It seems like a waste of good bullets.”

 

 

“Come now, Miss Alsworthy. We both know exactly what Lord Vaughn is.”