The Black Tulip must have felt the same way, because she could hear the current of amusement in his voice as he murmured, “I think not.”
The pressure on her shoulder shifted but didn’t subside as the Black Tulip settled himself more comfortably behind her, just out of her range of vision. It was infuriating to sense him behind her, to feel the warmth of a human body, to know he was there, but to have no image to put to it. Kneeling behind her, he robbed her of even an impression of height, and the hands heavy on her shoulders prevented any hope of surprising him with a quick turn.
So far, she thought grimly, she wasn’t making a very good showing. With one movement, the Black Tulip had blinded and immobilized her. Of course, she reminded herself, he had been at this a great deal longer than she had. She wouldn’t fall for the same trick again.
Staring straight ahead, Mary waited in tense expectation for the Black Tulip’s next move.
“So,” said the Black Tulip at long last, “you wish to be of service to the cause.”
There was no need to explain what that cause might be.
“Oh yes!” said Mary innocently. “Did Mr. Rathbone tell you? I so hoped he would.”
The fingers on her shoulders tightened, clamped down like a vise on wood, grinding straight to the bone. “Let us not play games, mademoiselle.”
“Games?” She would have bruises to show for this, Mary thought vaguely, resisting the urge to squirm under the bruising grip. There would be no off-the-shoulder gowns for at least a week.
“Why do you wish to join our great enterprise?”
Mary did not need the pressure of his fingers to tell her that she needed to make her response convincing. On the other hand, if he weren’t the Black Tulip at all, if he were a counterspy or a government agent, she risked more than a handful of bruises. The penalties for traitors had a medieval vigor about them.
Mary chose her words cautiously. “I have no love for the current regime.”
“That does not mean you have any great love for us.”
Mary pressed both her eyes shut. “Revenge is often a stronger motive than love, Monsieur.”
“True.” The grip on her shoulders loosened. “True. On whom do you wish to exact revenge, my little Fury?”
“That whole self-satisfied bouquet of flower spies.” Mary’s voice was as hard and cold as Lady Macbeth’s decreeing Duncan’s downfall. “They all laughed when Pinchingdale jilted me. Selwick, Dorrington, the lot of them. I’ll see that they don’t laugh again.”
“The Pink Carnation, too?”
Mary shrugged, her shoulders rippling beneath his hands. “I don’t know who he is, but they’re all related somehow. That’s why I’ve come to you. I want to tear them out, root and branch.”
“And what of Lord Vaughn?”
The Black Tulip leaned so near that Mary could feel the brush of his breath across her cheek, fanning the fine strands of her hair. She could smell the rich leather of the glove that lay so heavily on her shoulder. A faint tang of cologne clung to his person, rich and familiar. She could even make out, ever so faintly, the impression of a ring pressing against her shoulder through the fine leather of the glove.
“What of him?” Mary questioned, wondering if the shank of the ring might, in fact, lead to a large diamond on an elegant-fingered hand, the same she had felt around her own less than half an hour before. Half an hour was more than enough time to draw on a pair of gloves and a mask and follow her as she blundered about the unfamiliar walks.
“Does he…share your aspirations?” His breath teased her ear.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled in the waiting silence. Holding herself very still, feeling as though her spine were made of glass, Mary replied carefully, “Lord Vaughn keeps his own counsel. He allows no one close to him.”
The Black Tulip’s gloved hand traced a path from her shoulder to her neck. For a moment, Mary relaxed into the brush of warm leather against her skin, the movement caressing, even tender. But he didn’t stop there. His hand was moving up, firmer now, pressing against her throat, tilting back her chin, with an insistent pressure that was no less relentless for its measured progress.
Mary stiffened, but it was too late; with two fingers against her jaw, the Black Tulip tipped her head inexorably backwards, setting off the clean line of her throat and the perfection of her profile like a horse trader putting a beast through its paces. He tilted her chin until she thought her neck couldn’t possibly bend any farther, and still the relentless pressure continued, pressing back, back, like a medieval inquisitor winding a rack until muscles and joints all split and cracked.
“Not even,” the Black Tulip murmured, “a woman of such beauty as yourself?”
Mary’s neck ached at the unnatural angle, and her throat felt tight. She was scared, more scared than she had ever been. With one careless movement, he could snap her neck back like a broken spring—and she sensed that he would do it, too, with no more regret than a small boy’s tearing the wings off a fly.
It was only through a sheer act of will that she managed to keep her voice cool and level. “You flatter me, Monsieur.”
With a deep chuckle, the Black Tulip released his bruising grip, letting her head sag forward.
“Do you know,” he said musingly, as Mary sucked air into her tortured lungs, “you just might do. But that name,” he added, “will not. Your predecessor called me by another name. She called me mon seigneur.”
His voice divided the word into two, not the title of a lord of the church, but the old appellation for a sovereign or a liege lord.
“Mon seigneur,” Mary repeated softly, wondering why it felt like the opening formalities to a pact with the devil. There was something about the archaic ring of it that awakened superstitions she had never known she had.
“It sounds well on your lips.” Gloved fingers fleetingly brushed her lower lip.
Mary steeled herself not to clamp her lips shut. It was maddening being forced to sit still, maddening not being able to see his face, maddening knowing only a pair of hands and a warm, taunting presence in the dark.
Mad. The word clicked into place with uncomfortable clarity. Whoever he was, there could be no doubt that the person behind her was more than a little bit mad. The slide of his fingers across her face seemed to leave a trail of ooze in their wake, something unnatural and unhealthy.
The hand moved to her cheek, tilted her face first to one side, then the other. “I only knew one other who was your equal. But she proved false. Will you?”
“How can one possibly answer that?” retorted Mary, shaken into honesty. “If I make protestations of fidelity, you have no reason to believe me. I wouldn’t.”
“Well said, ma belle.”
She didn’t want to be his beauty. His careless words—was anything the Black Tulip said careless?—about her predecessor danced back before her. He might have only meant her prior counterpart, but Mary knew better. Whoever her predecessor had been, the Black Tulip meant the word literally. Deceased. Dead.
Like Bluebeard’s wives, the Black Tulip’s beauties had an uneasy time of it.
How had Bluebeard’s last wife escaped? Mary rooted about in her memory of half-remembered nursery tales. It was something to do with a tower. Sister Anne, Sister Anne…That was it. Her loyal sister had stood watch in the tower, waiting for their brothers to come charging to the rescue. The beleaguered wife had called out to her sister, again and again, until her rescuers reached the castle, just in the nick of time.
Given that Mary had deliberately evaded her sister, she didn’t think that was going to help her much. There was nothing for it but to try her luck with Bluebeard.
“Does that mean—you will accept me?” She didn’t have to feign the slight tremor in her voice.
He enjoyed her fear, she could tell. Resting both hands again on her shoulders, his voice was rich with satisfaction as he mulled aloud, “I believe a trial is in order. A test of your loyalty.”
“
What would you have me do?” No matter how she bent her eyes, she couldn’t see more than the very tips of his fingers, the black of his gloves blending with the black of her cloak.
The Black Tulip thought for a long moment, his palms pressing against Mary’s shoulders. Mary sat very still, scarcely breathing beneath his weight. A trial—or a sacrifice? She had, after all, spoken of wanting revenge. What better way of testing her loyalty, that putting her to a test of her word.
Mary’s fingernails bit into her palms.
“How may I serve, mon seigneur?” she asked softly, sounding as docile as she knew how.
The Black Tulip’s fingers tapped thoughtfully against her shoulders. “The King proposes to review volunteers in Hyde Park the week after next—the twenty-sixth of October.”
“Meet me in Hyde Park on the day for further instructions. You may,” he added as an afterthought, “bring an escort. In fact, you should. The crowd will be rough.”
“How will I know you?” Mary asked. “Won’t you at least give some identifying characteristic, some sign?”
The Black Tulip laughed low in his throat, ruffling the back of Mary’s hair. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll make myself known.”
The last thing Mary heard, before the world went black, was the Black Tulip’s voice, in a whisper as lingering as a kiss.
“You won’t be able to mistake me.”
Chapter Fifteen
I pray you, do not fall in love with me,
For I am falser than vows made in wine.
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, v
Whoever the Black Tulip was, he wasn’t Vaughn.
It took Mary some time to extract herself from the black cloth the Tulip had taken the precaution of tossing over her head. It was a simple trick, but an effective one. In her panic at her sudden blindness, she had flailed out, expecting worse to come. Nothing did. Instead of a rope around her arms or a knife against her throat, Mary found herself striking at empty air.
By the time she plucked the piece of cloth from her eyes, the Black Tulip was long gone. As a means of frustrating pursuit, it was crude but effective.
She would be prepared for that trick next time, too.
Mary dropped the piece of black cloth beside the bench with unconcealed distaste, scrubbing her palms against her skirt. Straightening slowly, Mary drew her cloak more tightly about her, wishing she could climb into a tub of boiling water and scrub. Her throat stung where the Black Tulip had favored her with his iron caress, and she could still feel the imprint of his hands upon her shoulders.
With her companion gone, the little summerhouse felt echoingly empty, like a stage after the actors had gone. The pillars holding up the roof shone ghostly white against the night sky and the marble bench glowed palely against the leaf-littered surface of the floor. There was no indication that anyone else had ever been there—nothing except for the discarded pile of black cloth, bunched like a noxious toad beside the bench, and a slight disruption in the debris behind the bench, where the Black Tulip must have knelt. He had left behind no footprint or conveniently dropped handkerchief. No telltale buckle or jewel winked at Mary from among the dirt and cracked twigs.
Using the roof of the Orchestra as her guide, Mary tramped single-mindedly through the closely planted shrubbery, heading in the direction of the Grove. She craved bright lights and loud voices, shrill laughter and strong perfume. She wanted people around her, and lights so bright they hurt her eyes. But most of all, she wanted Vaughn. He would smile that twisted smile of his, and the Black Tulip would be reduced to his proper place, a man among men and no less foolish than any of them. There was something so comfortable about the fellowship of Vaughn’s cynicism, which relegated everyone else to their places in the vast human comedy while she and Vaughn sat enthroned as audience, above the madding throng. She wanted the warmth of his hand on her arm; the reassurance of his lean swordsman’s body by her side.
She very much wanted that barrier, or any barrier, between her and the Black Tulip. There was simply something…wrong about him. It wasn’t the casual violence of his hands on her shoulders and throat that chilled her. She had known vicious men before, the sort of men who tried to lure one out onto a balcony and were inclined to get rough when repulsed. An animal, lashing out as an animal did, she could shrug aside. But the Black Tulip’s concentrated control, the methodical nature of his actions…those made her glance back over her shoulder as she forged through the underbrush, wondering just what she had gotten herself into.
Breaking through a gap in the hedges, Mary found herself just where she had meant to be, on the edge of the Grove, with music drifting from the Orchestra and the smell of ham and spiced punch from the supper boxes. The narrow path spat her out near the Pillared Salon, almost exactly opposite the place where she had entered the Grand Walk what felt like a very long time ago.
Near the Orchestra, which stood in the center of the Grove, Mary could make out the broad form of Turnip Fitzhugh, bold in carnation pink, nodding his head appreciatively in time to a spirited rendition of “When Sappho Tuned the Lyre,” but of Lord Vaughn and his silver cane there was no sign. Unless…Mary’s eyes narrowed as she caught a flash of familiar silver just beside the entrance to the Pillared Salon. He and his companion stood in the shadow of the building, apart from the groups of people milling about the orchestra and supper boxes. Whatever it was they were discussing, it must have been absorbing; Vaughn’s head was bent intently towards his companion. It wasn’t Mrs. Fustian—those purple plumes would have been unmistakable—and the woman was too short to be the gangly Miss Fustian. Vaughn was no more than medium height but the blond head of the woman next to him barely reached the bottom of his chin.
“Miss Alsworthy!” Mary recoiled as a hand lightly descended on her shoulder.
But this hand bore a white glove, not a black, and the arm it was attached to quickly retreated at Mary’s alarmed reaction.
“I do beg your pardon,” said Mr. St. George, biting his lip in contrition. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Mr. St. George!” said Mary brightly, doing her best to get her breathing back under control. “I hadn’t realized you were at Vauxhall this evening.”
St. George shrugged his shoulders self-deprecatingly. “I’ve been told it’s one of the sights one simply must see before leaving London. So here I am.”
“Leaving?” echoed Mary, her eye on the blonde beside Vaughn. “I do hope that doesn’t mean that you will be leaving us.”
“I am glad to hear you say that,” said St. George earnestly. “But I do have responsibilities in Warwickshire that will demand my presence presently. I mean, presently demand my presence. Presently.”
“Hmmm,” said Mary, thinking absently that what he lacked was presence of mind. Who was that woman next to Vaughn? It was hard to make out anything of her features, due to the mask that covered her face from her eyebrows to the bridge of her nose, but even a hooded black cloak couldn’t disguise a figure as prettily curved as that of the pink-cheeked shepherdess in the large Hayman painting behind her. “Will you pardon me? I must ask Lord Vaughn if he has seen my sister.”
“We have that in common, then,” said St. George pleasantly, strolling along with her towards the Pillared Salon. “I seem to have misplaced mine as well. Oh yes,” he added, in response to the question Mary might have asked had she been paying him any attention at all. “She came with that Rathbone fellow.”
Belatedly recalling her duty, Mary made a noncommittal noise in reply.
“The very thing.” St. George grinned wryly down at her, taking inattention for distaste. “I feel much the same way. I would be delighted if she would only return to the governesses. The turtles, even,” he added with a gusty sigh.
For once, even amphibians had ceased to be diverting. As Mary watched, the woman pressed something into Vaughn’s palm. It disappeared just as quickly into Vaughn’s waistcoat pocket, so quickly that Mary had only a glimpse of something pale
against the figured fabric of Vaughn’s waistcoat before it was gone.
Vaughn looked blandly up as Mary and her companion approached, as though it were nothing out of the ordinary to be receiving notes from masked women.
Perhaps for Vaughn, it wasn’t.
Mary’s lips pressed together in a tight line. As for the woman…Mary glanced sharply to the side, but the woman was gone, as rapidly and quietly as the note into Vaughn’s pocket.
If that didn’t signify skullduggery, Mary didn’t know what did. She narrowed her eyes at Vaughn in implicit question, but if Vaughn noticed, he chose not to comment.
Instead, he raised his cane in languid greeting. “Ah, St. George, Miss Alsworthy. Have you had a pleasant coze?”
Mary fancied she could see the outline of the note, pressing against the closely cut fabric of his jacket.
With none of her usual finesse, she broke in, “My lord, I believe I had the pleasure of meeting a friend of yours this evening. After I was so unfortunately and accidentally separated from my sister.”
“Indeed?” Vaughn raised a casual eyebrow. “My sympathies, then. Friends are a tedious lot. Enemies, on the other hand—”
Shrugging, Vaughn abandoned the topic as though bored with it. Reaching into his pocket he extracted, not the treacherous little piece of paper, but a silver snuffbox, as intricately pierced and chased as a medieval saint’s reliquary.
“And I suppose you are an expert on the topic,” said Mary crossly, as Vaughn wordlessly offered the box to a bemused St. George. Next to Vaughn, St. George seemed as tame and domestic as a plate of blancmange.
Snapping shut the lid of his snuffbox, Vaughn clicked his tongue in exaggerated deprecation. “Far be it from a dilettante such as my humble self to claim virtuosity in anything. I am but an eager amateur and unworthy of any such accolades.” As his eyes met Mary’s, his voice unaccountably dropped, took on a different cast. “Entirely unworthy.”