Lauren Willig - Masque of the Black Tulip

I was saved by the agitated bling of Pammy's landline.

"Uh-oh! Gotta go. Good luck tonight! I want all the juicy details tomorrow, and I mean all! Mwah!"

"There won't be any — grrr." The line had gone dead.

So much for Pammy setting me straight. Oh, the hell with it all! I jammed my phone back into my pocket. I was going back to the nineteenth century, where at least no one printed articles about seducing the pants off idiot men one didn't want to seduce, anyway, even if one owned a bustier, which one didn't.

Maybe I should take Colin up on that offer to raid Serena's wardrobe. She was a little skinner than me, and a little taller, but in a cocktail dress, surely that didn't matter that much, did it? And if it were a little tighter and shorter than it was supposed to be, well…

Urgh! Dammit, I wasn't going to tart myself up, and I wasn't going to seduce anyone, and I wasn't going to go all weak-kneed over high cheekbones and an opportune reference to Charles II. That way madness lay, complete with huge signs warning, "Here be dragons." One dragon in particular. Prone to sudden flares. Probably gobbled up the odd village maiden in his spare time, leaving only the Wellies behind.

Dragging out the collection I had been working with before, I un-looped the string holding the box together, and forced my mind back to more important problems, like long-dead French spies.

If the drinks party from hell wasn't starting until seven-thirty, and it was only two-thirty now, I should still be able to get several hours of work in. It wouldn't, I told myself firmly, take me that long to dress. There was no reason to make any special effort, and there was every reason to stay longer in the library. I still had no inkling as to the identity of the Black Tulip, although for Henrietta's sake, I wouldn't have minded if it turned out to be the Marquise de Montval.

Of course, there was still Vaughn's mysterious behavior to be reckoned with, and Miles's midnight assailant. I had gone over his letter to Richard describing the incident three times, hoping to find something I'd missed, an asterix or a postscript giving some inkling as to the appearance of the figure who had swung at him with the cane, but there was none. Either he hadn't caught much of a glimpse, or he hadn't thought what he saw worth noting.

Unlike that playbill, about which he had gone on for several paragraphs in tones of increasing excitement. Personally, I thought he was refining too much on a bookmark — goodness only knows I'm prone to grabbing up whatever piece of paper is lying nearest at hand — old movie tickets, the phone bill, postcards — and wedging it between the pages. Vaughn's being in France was interesting, but not necessarily damning.

As for the opera singer… like Miles, the reference niggled at my memory. I knew I'd come across something similar before, during my early pre-England days of dissertation research, when I was reading whatever I could get my hands on in Harvard's libraries, from old periodicals preserved on microfilm to whatever contemporary correspondence had made it into scholarly editions. There had been something about an opera singer, I recalled with mounting excitement. Rumors of a connection with Napoleon. Accusations of espionage. And her name had ended with A.

Just like every other opera singer in existence, I reminded myself drily.

Damn. I could practically see the page in my head, scrolling across the grimy screen of the microfilm reader in the basement of Lamont. It had been a gossip column of some sort — and had it been the opera singer who was accused of being a spy, or her husband? Of course, this could all be made quite simple by opening my laptop and using the find feature on my notes, but, no, that would make it all too easy. I was embarked on a personal grudge match with my memory.

Catalani. That was her name. Fine, so it didn't end with an A. It was a vowel, wasn't it? And there were two As in the name, so, really, it was a more than reasonable mistake.

Damn. It would have been so convenient if the opera singer in question had been Mme Fiorila.

Come to think of it, the entire incident had been much later, too, not until… 1807? 1808?

Maybe, I thought wildly, there was a whole spy network out there, composed entirely of opera singers!

Maybe I was being entirely ridiculous.

Definitely the latter.

With a little grimace at my own folly, I retreated to my favorite chair, and unwound the string from the acid-free box that contained Henrietta's diary and correspondence for the year 1803. Hopefully Henrietta's meditations were proving more fruitful than mine.

At least she wasn't wasting her time staring off into the gardens in the hopes of a glimpse of a certain man among the shrubbery! Manuscripts, I reminded myself firmly. I was here for manuscripts, not men.

With that salutary kick in the pants, I tore my eyes away from the window, and directed them firmly towards the closely written pages of Henrietta's diary.

"There!" announced Penelope. "You just did it again."

Browsing among the new stock at Hatchards Bookshop, Henrietta shook herself out of a daydream involving Miles, a white horse, and herself in a charmingly flowing gown. "Did what?"

She glanced from the novels she was examining, to her friend, who stood glowering over the display like a wicked stepsister come to life out of the pages. Charlotte was two feet away, immersed in a new import from France that promised to be a dashing tale of love and intrigue. Hmm, love. Intrigue. Miles. Henrietta's lips curved in a secret smile.

"Ha!" Penelope jabbed a finger at her, causing her reticule to swing straight at Henrietta like a medieval mace aimed to maim. "That… smile. You've been smiling like that all morning."

"Really." Henrietta tried to look like she had no idea what Penelope was talking about. She picked up a book at random and began leafing idly through the pages.

It hadn't been all morning. She had been perfectly composed through breakfast, and only done one impromptu twirl in the upstairs hallway, which didn't count, because no one had seen.

Last night, Henrietta had retired early from the Middlethorpes' with a torn flounce — how that flounce had come to be torn was a matter of mystery to the matrons in the ladies' retiring room, who were quite used to seeing young ladies rush in with snagged hems, but seldom ripped sleeves — and an equally ragged temper. There was nothing to do for it but go early to bed and hope the mood went away. If sleep could knit raveled sleeves of care, it could certainly whisk away a bout of ill temper. She would go to bed, Henrietta told herself, and when she woke up, the world would have readjusted itself along comfortable, familiar lines, and all would be happy again.

There was only one problem with that plan. She couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, there, imprinted on the back of her lids like a garish billboard, stood Miles. Miles grinning, Miles eating biscuits, Miles dancing with Charlotte, Miles spilling lemonade.

Miles looming close enough to kiss.

Henrietta experimented with opening her eyes, but that was even worse, because open eyes meant wakefulness, and wakefulness meant thinking, and there were too many things that Henrietta was doing her best not to think about, like Miles driving with the marquise, or, even worse, why on earth it should matter to her that Miles was driving with the marquise. It wasn't, after all, as though his taking the marquise driving presented a personal inconvenience to Henrietta. She had a lesson with Signor Marconi at six o'clock tomorrow that effectively precluded her afternoon drive with Miles, which meant that she couldn't have ridden with him even if she'd wanted to.

But she still didn't want the marquise there in her place.

Henrietta groaned and rolled over onto her stomach, inadvertently squishing Bunny in the process. "Sorry, sorry," she whispered urgently, scooting over and yanking Bunny out from underneath her.

Bunny regarded her reproachfully from under floppy cloth ears. "I'm being an idiot," Henrietta informed Bunny.

Bunny didn't argue. Bunny never argued. That was usually one of Bunny's great charms as a confidante. Sometimes a girl needed a bit of unconditional agreement.

"It shouldn't matter to me at all who Miles chooses to take driving," Henrietta said firmly, "Why should I care who he takes driving? It's of no matter to me. Well, it isn't."

There was a highly sardonic gleam in Bunny's black-glass eyes.

"Urgh!"

There was no point in arguing with inanimate objects if they were going to get the better of the argument without even saying anything.

Henrietta flung off the bedclothes and stomped over to the window, where the full moon silvered the plants in the garden, and glinted off the windows of the neighboring houses. It was a moon for lovers' trysts, for clandestine kisses in gardens, for murmured endearments. Somewhere, under that same moon, Miles was off… with the marquise? Playing cards with Geoff? Alone in his bachelor quarters? Henrietta left off trying to pretend to herself that it didn't matter. It did. She wasn't sure why, but it did.

Henrietta sank down onto the chaise longue next to the window, and tucked her feet up under the embroidered hem of her nightdress. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rested her chin on her knees and thought back over the past couple of days, when the world had begun to fall out of joint.