Lauren Willig - Masque of the Black Tulip

"She'd what?"

Did the man have a death wish? Miles concentrated on the possibility he had misheard. The man was drunk; he wasn't speaking clearly.

"Last prayers, y'know," Frobisher elucidated helpfully. "On the shelf."

Miles's fragile hold on his temper snapped.

"Would you care to say that again," Miles clipped, "at dawn?"

Martin Frobisher might have been drunk, but he wasn't stupid. At least, not entirely stupid. He knew enough to be very, very afraid.

Dorrington's skill with an epee was unparalleled, his marksmanship legendary, but the prospect of being skewered or shot faded to insignificance before the far more immediate menace of Miles himself. Miles's hands were flexing in a way that had nothing to do with Queensbury rules. Frobisher backed away, bumped into the shrubbery, and steadied himself with one hand against the wall.

"I say, Dorrington…"

"Yes, Frobisher? What exactly do you have to say?"

"Never meant it like that," he stammered, sliding down the wall to sit heavily in a puddle of his own making. "Damn fine girl. Anyone would want 'er. Tits like — urgh…"

Frobisher's head snapped back with the force of the blow. His eyes bugged out in horror as Miles seized him by the cravat and hauled him upright.

"You will not touch Lady Henrietta Selwick ever again. You will not dance with her. You will not kiss her hand. You will not cuddle, fondle, or otherwise defile any part of her anatomy. Is that clear?"

"Won't touch her," Frobisher dutifully gurgled. Struck by a sudden inspiration, he looked anxiously at Miles. "Won't even talk to her!"

"Even better," said Miles grimly. Opening his hand, he let Frobisher drop — right back into the pile of his own filth. Frobisher sprawled half under the bushes, clasping his throat and panting with relief. "Frobisher!"

"Yes?" a cracked voice emerged from the bushes.

"If I were you, I'd refrain from mentioning any of this to any of your little friends. Speak Lady Henrietta's name with anything but respect, and I'll thrash you within an inch of your miserable life and sell you to the press gangs. If they'll have you," added Miles with a disparaging glance at the crumpled pile of soiled fabric curled up under the bushes. "Good night, Frobisher."

A faint moan followed Miles as he clumped purposefully off down the street.

The triumphal hero was feeling less than pleased with himself. He had, he knew, massively overreacted. Massively. The man had been drunk, he'd been in no condition for a fair fight, and, to be just, he hadn't even meant to be offensive; he just was. All Miles had to do was calmly and coolly deliver a warning, gentleman to gentleman, to alert Frobisher that Henrietta wasn't unprotected and she wasn't fair game. Simple enough. Instead, he had lost his head, flexed his muscles, mouthed threats like some thickheaded numbskull fresh from the countryside. It was sheer dumb luck that no one had been watching.

But there was something about Frobisher, about the thought of him pressing his attentions on Hen, that made Miles want to stomp back and finish what he'd started. How dare he refer to Henrietta in those terms?

Miles scowled. Frobisher's careless words had brought back a memory that Miles had been doing his best to repress for the past month. He'd nearly managed, too. There had been an incident. An incident involving Henrietta and a nightdress. A bloody indecent nightdress. Weren't innocent young virgins supposed to be bundled up in yards of woolly fabric to prevent shocking the sensibilities of any bachelors who might happen by? If they weren't, they should be.

Henrietta had come running down the stairs in a nightdress that gave whole new meaning to the word "diaphanous." To be fair, Miles wouldn't have noticed if Lady Uppington hadn't made a sharp comment and ordered Henrietta upstairs to change, but once he'd started noticing, it had been hard to stop. When in the hell had she grown breasts like that? The candlelight through the thin lawn of her nightdress had left very little to the imagination, and Miles rather doubted even imagination could improve upon…

Miles clamped down on the memory before it could go any further. As far as he was concerned, Henrietta wasn't supposed to have a body. She was a head on legs. Hmm, those had been very nice legs he'd seen outlined through… No. There were rules about lusting after your best friend's sister. Hell, forget rules, more like immutable laws of nature. If he broke them, there would be strange eclipses of the moon, and the sheeted dead would rise and gibber in the streets. It was unnatural, that was what it was. Unnatural and wrong.

But so well shaped, for something so wrong.

Devil take it! Miles picked up his pace, striding furiously in the direction of Belliston Square. He had a house to burgle, and, thanks to that idiot Frobisher, he had already lost another ten minutes of his allotted hour. Fortunately, Vaughn's residence was a scant five blocks from the Middlethorpes'; Miles's long legs covered the distance in minutes.

Just outside Belliston Square, he forced himself to slow and recon-noiter. This was, after all, where the operative had been murdered, and Miles wanted to take a look around outside as well as in. Staggering a bit, a gentleman well in his cups making his way home after one too many social events, Miles swaggered slowly into the square, looking keenly about under the guise of an idly lolling head.

The square was shadowed on one side by the shuttered bulk of Belliston House, a grand mansion in the Palladian style erected early in the previous century. The current duke was an avid sportsman who seldom came to London. There would be a skeleton staff in residence, to maintain the premises and guard its priceless collections, but the odds of anyone in Belliston House taking notice of dubious goings-on in the square (including Miles's) were slim. The other three sides were identical; each boasted a large house in the center flanked by two smaller houses on either side, rather in the manner of a triumphal arch. Vaughn's was one of the former, nestled on the south side of the square.

An immense, triangular pediment supported by three Doric columns dominated the facade, lending the structure a fashionable air of the antique. More importantly, all the lights were out.

There was a party in progress in one of the houses, a musical evening, from the liquid syllables that spilled out the window. In front of another, a footman was teasing a little maid, who giggled and colored under his attentions. Miles stopped and stretched; he leaned against a gate, gazed at the moon, fiddled with his stickpin. No one took the slightest notice. Miles continued on his way, his theory confirmed. The maples planted in the middle of the square meant anyone standing in front of Vaughn's house would be blocked from the view of the houses opposite; as for the other houses, as long as the murderer looked like he belonged in the square, and moved quickly enough, he could be almost sure of escaping detection.

Ducking around the back of the square and into an alley, Miles donned the concealing garments he had brought along for just this occasion. They weren't elaborate, nothing like the complicated costume Richard used to wear for his escapades as the Purple Gentian, but there was only so much Miles could stuff into his pockets. Unfastening his diamond stickpin, Miles yanked off his white cravat, bundled his equally white gloves into it, and stuck the lot beneath a convenient bush. Downey would be none too pleased, but what was a scrap of linen more or less in a good cause? Replacing the white gloves with thin black ones, Miles drew out of his pocket a square of black cloth. Miles eyed it with disfavor. He really wasn't looking forward to this part.

England, he reminded himself. Rule Britannia and God Save the King, and all that.

His jaw fixed in an expression of extreme stoicism, Miles knotted the black cloth bandana-style around his head, hiding his fair hair, and covering a good chunk of his forehead as well. Miles caught a glimpse of himself in a dark window and grimaced. Hell, put an earring in his ear, and he'd look like a bloody pirate. All he needed was a tattoo on his arm and a wisecracking parrot.

There was worse yet to come. Over the bandana, Miles tied a thin, black silk mask, the sort worn by ladies who wished to preserve their reputations and the roues who preyed on them. Now he looked like a pirate with a yen for anonymity. Miles the Bashful Pirate, Scourge of the High Seas. If Hen ever saw him in this get-up, he'd never hear the end of it.

Ah well. Miles shook his head at himself. At least if anyone discovered him, he could claim he had been on his way to a fancy dress party, and had wandered into Vaughn's garden in pursuit of his runaway parrot.

Feeling like a prize dimwit, Miles slipped unnoticed through Vaughn's garden gate. The windows on the first floor were all dark. Inching through the midnight garden, the air heavy with the scents of roses and lavender, Miles could see a faint glint of light from below stairs. Vaughn's valet would, naturally, be waiting up for his master. From the sounds of merriment emerging from the open window, he had company. Good, thought Miles, the more they were entertaining themselves, the less likely they were to hear the dark shadow who slipped soundlessly into the house.