Lauren Willig - Masque of the Black Tulip

He also had a positive talent for sartorial disaster. He was, Miles noted with mingled amusement and disbelief, dressed entirely a la Carnation, with a huge pink flower in his buttonhole, wreaths of carnations embroidered on his silk stockings, and even — Miles winced — dozens of little carnations twining on vines along the sides of his knee breeches. Turnip's recent sojourn on the Continent had clearly done nothing to improve his taste.

Miles groaned. "Someone needs to kidnap his tailor."

"I think it adds a touch of color to the evening, don't you? Our flowery friend will be so flattered."

Miles lowered his voice and made a show of toying with one of the ruffles of his cravat. "Be careful, Hen."

Henrietta's hazel eyes met his brown ones. "I know."

Since he was there in loco fratensis, Miles was about to say something wise and big-brotherly, when he was distracted by a familiar pounding noise.

It wasn't the headache — being a big, strong man, Miles never succumbed to such minor ills as the headache — and it wasn't French artillery, and as far as he knew, there weren't any giant-bearing beanstalks in the vicinity, so it could only be one thing.

The Dowager Duchess of Dovedale.

"I'll just get you that lemonade now, shall I?"

"Coward," said Henrietta.

"Why should two of us suffer?" Miles started to edge backwards as the duchess thumped forward.

"Because" — Henrietta caught hold of his sleeve and tugged — "misery loves company."

Miles looked pointedly at the Dowager Duchess, or, to be more precise, at the bundle of fur draped over the dowager's arms like a particularly mangy muff, and yanked his arm out of Henrietta's grasp. "Not this company."

"That hurts." Henrietta clasped a hand to her heart. "In here."

"You can pour lemonade on the wound," replied Miles unsympathet-ically. "Oh, hell, here she comes. And her little dog, too. Damnation!"

Miles fled.

"Hmph," said the dowager, stumping up to the three girls. "Was that Dorrington I saw fleeing?"

"I sent him to fetch me some lemonade," explained Henrietta on Miles's behalf.

"Don't try to fool me, missy. I know flight when I see it." The Dowager Duchess watched Miles's rapidly retreating back with some complacency. "At my age in life, making young men run away is one of the few pleasures left to me. Had young Ponsonby jump out a second-story window the other day," she added with a cackle.

"He twisted an ankle," Charlotte informed Henrietta softly. Having her grandmother in the vicinity had a considerably dampening effect on both Charlotte's spirits and her voice.

"Of course, it wasn't always that way," the Dowager Duchess continued, as though Charlotte hadn't spoken. She chortled in gleeful reminiscence. "When I was your age, all the young bucks were mad for me. I had no fewer than seventeen duels fought over me in my youth! Seventeen! Not one of them mortal," she added, in a tone of deep regret.

"Aren't you glad to know you weren't the cause of a good man's death?" teased Henrietta.

"Hmph! Any boy fool enough to fight a duel deserves to die in it! We need more duels." The Dowager Duchess raised her voice. "Reduce the number of half-wits clogging the ballrooms."

"What?" Turnip Fitzhugh ambled over. " 'Fraid I didn't catch that."

"My point exactly," snapped the Dowager Duchess. "Speaking of half-wits, where's young Dorrington got to? I like that boy. He's a pleasure to torment, not like some of these young milksops." She glowered at poor Turnip, the nearest available milksop. "What's Dorrington doing, squeezing the lemons?"

"Probably hiding behind a pillar somewhere," suggested Penelope. "He's good at that."

Henrietta shot her best friend an exasperated look.

Charlotte came to the rescue. "There's usually a crush around the refreshment table."

The Dowager Duchess eyed her granddaughter without favor. "All this namby-pamby good nature came straight from your mother's side. Always told Edward he was weakening the bloodline."

Henrietta unobtrusively reached out a gloved hand and squeezed Charlotte's arm. Charlotte's gray eyes met hers in a look of quiet gratitude.

"Aha!" The dowager let out a crow of triumph. "There's Dorrington! Never made it as far as the lemons. But who's that hussy he's talking to?"

Miles wheeled off in the direction of the refreshments, taking care to put considerable distance between himself and the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale. And the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale's little yippy dog. Miles and that dog had an unhappy history — unhappy for Miles, at any rate.

Miles was just casting a backwards glance over his shoulder to make sure that the canine from hell hadn't scented him (it could move bloody fast when it wanted to, and it generally wanted to when Miles was in range), when there was a throaty "Oh!" and something warm and wet trickled down the side of his leg. Miles turned, expecting another pastel-clad debutante.

Instead, he found himself facing a sultry vision in black. Her dark hair was pulled simply back at the crown, and allowed to fall in long, loose curls that teased the edge of a bodice as low as anything being worn in Paris. The stark hairstyle illuminated the fine bones of her face, the sort of bones that in ladies more advanced in age are generally referred to as elegant, high of cheek and pointed of chin. But there was nothing aged about the woman in front of Miles. Her skin was orchid pale against the jetty loops of her hair, but it was the pallor of a carefully protected complexion, not illness or age, and her lips, so red they might have been rouged, arched in invitation.

Against the pink and white prettiness of the young girls in their first season, she was as exotic as a tulip in a field of primroses, a stark study in light and shadow against a wall of watercolors.

"I'm so sorry," the same husky voice said, as Miles did an involuntary hop at the touch of the liquid, his shoes squelching in the sticky puddle of orgeat beneath his feet.

"Quite all right." Miles could feel the orgeat seeping between his toes. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"But your breeches — "

"It doesn't signify," said Miles, adding gallantly. "May I fetch you another glass?"

The woman smiled, a slow smile that began at the corners of her lips and worked its way up through her cheekbones, but never quite to her eyes. "I'm not entirely displeased to be relieved of the stuff. I prefer my refreshments to be… stronger."

The glance she cast Miles's shoulders suggested that she was referring to more than just beverages.

"You've found yourself in the wrong place, then," replied Miles frankly. Almack's, after all, was known for its weak beverages and even more lackluster company. Unless one was passionately fond of Lady Jersey, and Miles didn't think this woman fell into the Lady Jersey idolizing faction.

Lashes as dark as her hair swooped down to veil bottomless eyes. "Every now and again, one finds exceptions to any general rule."

"That depends," Miles drawled, "on just how far one is willing to bend the rules."

"Until they break." The last consonant hung delicately in the air.

Miles favored her with his most rakish glance. "Like a maiden's heart?"

She drew a long-nailed finger delicately along the fringe of her fan. "Or a man's resolve."

On the other side of the room, Henrietta snatched the Dowager Duchess's lorgnette, and peered through the crowd. There, quite definitely, was Miles — his blond head was unmistakable. No one else's hair could attain quite that degree of disarray in an airless ballroom. And he was also unmistakably in conversation.

With a woman.

Henrietta held the lorgnette away from her eye, inspected to make sure it was in proper working order, and then tried again. The woman was still there.

Henrietta was justifiably perplexed. Over the many times Miles had been dragooned into escorting her, a comfortable pattern had emerged. Miles would show up as late as decently possible; they would bicker a bit; Miles would fetch her lemonade, and some for Penelope and Charlotte, too, if he was in an accommodating mood; and then he would hare off to the card room with the other harassed brothers and husbands. He would pop out from time to time to make sure all was well, and fetch more lemonade, and dance whichever dance might be left empty on Henrietta's dance card, but otherwise, he kept carefully within the male sanctum of the card room.

He most decidedly did not speak to debutantes.

Of course, the woman in black — Henrietta squinted through the lorgnette, wishing she had an opera glass instead — didn't much look like a debutante. For one thing, debutantes didn't wear black. And their necklines, for the most part, tended to be somewhat more modest than that sported by Miles's companion. Good heavens, did that dress even have a bodice?

Henrietta fought down an unreasonable surge of pure dislike. Of course, she didn't dislike the woman. How could she dislike her? She hadn't even met her yet.

But she looked dislikable.

"Who is she?" Henrietta asked.

Pen gave a very unladylike snort. "A husband-hunter, no doubt."