Lauren Willig - Masque of the Black Tulip

"Yes, I do," he said, so forcefully that I couldn't help but wonder…

Colin and Pammy?

Pammy had known Colin's sister ever since she'd moved to London in tenth grade. Serena and Pammy weren't awfully close, but there would still have been ample opportunity for a flirtation with Serena's big brother. No. I just couldn't see it. Besides, Pammy would have told me. Wouldn't she? Hmm. I filed that thought away for later.

"Um, Chaucer." I yanked my borrowed pashmina back up around my shoulders, futilely attempting to effect a return to where we had been pre — Pammy and the Text Message of Doom. "You were saying something about Chaucer ?"

In the feeble light of the torch, I saw him shake his head. "It can't have been important."

"It sounded intriguing to me," I said ruefully.

"Did it?" The words were softly spoken, but they were enough to make the skin on my arms prickle in a way that had nothing to do with the November chill. Even the shadows gathered and held their breath, waiting to see what sort of action might follow on the velvet promise beneath those two little words.

"Hullo!"

A cheerful voice echoed through the old cloister, banishing the shadows and sending any romantic tension skittering far, far away.

What next? My fifth-grade homeroom teacher? The St. Patrick's Day Parade? A Fleetwood Mac revival concert? I doubted that Donwell Abbey had been quite this popular even when it was still in possession of all of its masonry and monks.

Somewhere, Cupid was snickering. I hoped he sat on one of his own arrows.

Sally skittered to a stop and rested a hand on the wall to steady herself. If there was anything coloring the atmosphere other than my own wild imaginings, she didn't seem to notice.

"Sorry to keep you! I only just got away. Joan couldn't find the ice." She shook her wild mane of hair in sororal condemnation. "Hopeless. Simply hopeless."

That did about sum it up.

"Has Colin shown you around yet?" Sally asked.

"Not really." Colin strolled casually across the room. "Would you do the honors, Sal?"

"Better than you," she retorted. "I can't believe you've been out here all this time and he's shown you nothing!"

Colin assumed a wounded air. "If you're just going to insult me, I'm off for a drink."

I contemplated saying, "I could do with one of the same," and trailing after him back to the bar, but clamped down on the impulse. I hadn't quite sunk to that level. The operative word being "quite." I remembered my rather blatant attempt at flirtation and was glad for the darkness that hid my sudden grimace.

"Enjoy!" I said instead, with a cheerful little wave. "Better make it a double."

"Double the alcohol?"

"For double the insults," I explained sweetly.

"A hit!" crowed Sally. "Well done!"

"I" — Colin turned and wagged a finger at Sally — "don't like you anymore. And as for you — "

I tried to look as though I weren't holding my breath.

"Yes?"

"Don't worry; I'll think of something." And on that rather enigmatic note, he made his exit.

As a threat, his statement lacked a certain something. Specificity, for example.

As flirtation… it fizzed through me like a large gulp of Veuve Cliquot, pure, heady stuff, the grand brut of suggestive remarks. I shouldn't read too much into it. I knew that. Nonetheless…

I turned to find Sally regarding me with arms crossed over her chest.

"Just here for the archives?" she said.

Miles rapidly remembered all the very good reasons he had meant to keep far away from Henrietta until old age snuffed out baser desires, or at least the means to accomplish them. But it was too late. In front of him loomed his best friend — his former best friend — arm outstretched like a medieval woodcut of a wrathful God. Richard's very posture crackled with rage.

"Oh, no," breathed Henrietta, hastily yanking her bodice back up into place.

Amy grabbed Richard by the arm and shoved him behind herself. Given that Richard stood nearly a foot taller than Amy, the action was entirely ineffectual. Over Amy's dark head, Richard's face was stiff with fury and disbelief. Miles swallowed hard, rising slowly to his feet.

"I don't think we should be here just now," Amy hedged, trying to herd her husband in the opposite direction.

"Oh, no," said Richard dangerously, placing both hands on his wife's shoulders and moving her to the side. "I think now is exactly the right time to be here. What in the hell did you think you were doing, Dorrington?"

Think ? Miles didn't recall terribly much thought being involved.

"What do you think he was thinking?" chimed in Amy. "Really, Richard, can't we — "

"There had better be a bloody good explanation."

"How did you know we were out here?" Henrietta croaked, hoping to distract Richard from Miles before that bloody became bloody in fact. The dangerous glint in Richard's eye gave deadly content to the word.

"One of the sentries reported that there was something unusual occurring in the gardens." Richard emitted a grim bark of laughter. "He didn't know the half of it."

"Richard — " began Miles, moving to stand protectively in front of Henrietta.

"How long has this been going on?" Richard enquired conversationally. "Weeks? Months? Years? How long, Dorrington?"

"We didn't — " Henrietta interrupted.

"You stay out of this," warned her brother.

"How can I stay out of this when it's me you're talking about?"

Her brother ignored her. Eyes never leaving Miles, he began stripping off his coat. "We can discuss this at dawn or we can settle this right now."

"Before we do" — yanking off his own coat, Miles sunk automatically into a defensive crouch, fists at the ready — "I have something to say."

Richard dropped his coat on the graveled path. "That's just too bad, because I" — with one controlled lunge, he leveled an uppercut straight at Miles's jaw — "don't want to hear it."

With the ease of long practice, Miles ducked the blow and grabbed Richard's arm before he could swing again. They had sparred a thousand times before, in the well-regulated confines of Gentleman Jackson's pugilist establishment, but never in earnest. Miles didn't intend to start now. The two stood locked in a contest of strength, like athletes on a Greek vase, muscles straining against the sleeves of their coats, as Miles strove to restrain his friend.

"Dammit, Richard," yelled Miles, voice ragged with strain, "will you just listen?"

"There's nothing," Richard panted, twisting his right arm free, "to listen to."

"I want" — Miles barely dodged a sharp jab to his stomach — "to marry her!"

"What?" gasped Henrietta.

"What?" roared Richard, stumbling backwards.

"That's an excellent idea!" applauded Amy. "That way, no one is compromised, no one shoots anyone at dawn, and everyone is happy."

The expressions of the other three completely belied the latter part of her statement.

Ignoring the others, Miles looked searchingly at Henrietta. "Hen?"

"You don't have to do this," whispered Henrietta.

"I rather think he does," commented Amy. "It's quite compromising, you know."

"Hen?" repeated Miles urgently.

Henrietta stared at him in mute misery, her mind leaping from one imponderable to the next. She could refuse, and watch her brother either tear Miles to death on the spot, or shoot a hole into him on field of honor the following morning. While Miles was undoubtedly the more accomplished sportsman, Henrietta knew, the same way she knew that Miles was proposing because it was the only honorable thing to do in the circumstances, that Miles would never, ever lift a hand against her brother. It wouldn't be an equal contest, with one party crippled with guilt. She didn't think that Richard would, once he had time to reflect, really want to hurt Miles, either, but in the mood he was in… Henrietta didn't trust her brother to aim wide.

On the one side, death and dishonor. On the other…

Or she could marry Miles, subsisting the remainder of her days with the knowledge that she had forced him into a match on the point of her brother's pistol.

Miles slowly turned to face his former best friend, and Henrietta knew, from the set of his shoulders and the expression of unusual gravity on his face, that if she waited a moment longer, the fatal words would be uttered and the two men who mattered most in her life would be irrevocably committed to a course from which there would be no going back. Ever.

"Yes," Henrietta blurted out. "Yes, I'll marry you."

Richard turned an alarming shade of puce, rounded on his sister, and barked out, "You're not going to marry that… that…"

"Man?" provided Amy helpfully.

Richard glowered at his wife. "Seducer," he finished angrily. "Would you rather I married Reggie Fitzhugh?" asked Henrietta acidly, turning on her brother. Anything rather than look at Miles. "Don't be ridiculous!" snapped Richard.

"Why aren't I allowed to be ridiculous, if you're being ridiculous?" demanded Henrietta, in her best annoying little sister mode. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Miles slowly retrieving his coat. Would he rather have cleansed his conscience at dawn? "That's not fair."