Lauren Willig - Masque of the Black Tulip

"With whom, my dear fellow?" Vaughn asked idly, turning over another page of the paper.

"Who?" Miles demanded incredulously, clamping down on the urge to strangle the bounder with the sash of his own robe. Only the recollection that Vaughn could tell him more alive than asphyxiated held him back. "Who?"

Summoning up coherent phrases was a matter of another order of effort entirely.

Vaughn looked lazily up from his copy of The Morning Times. "As edifying as I find your owl impression, I believe a name might be more to the point."

"Right." Miles flexed his hands, grappling with his temper. "If that's the way you want to play it."

"It might be helpful if you apprised me of the rules of the game I'm meant to be playing," remarked Vaughn mildly. "It would be vastly unsporting of you to do otherwise."

"No more unsporting than you sitting there, pretending you haven't any idea of what I'm talking about," countered Miles heatedly.

Vaughn raised an eyebrow.

Miles planted both hands on the table, leaned forward, and lowered his voice to a dangerous undertone.

"What have you done with Lady Henrietta?"

Vaughn presented an excellent facsimile of surprise. His jaded eyes lifted momentarily from his coffee cup in an expression of mild interest. "Lady Henrietta? Gone missing then, has she?"

"She hasn't gone missing. She's been abducted, and you damn well know it. Where have your henchmen taken her, Vaughn?"

"Henchmen," repeated Vaughn flatly. He placed his cup carelessly in its saucer, the very picture of amused urbanity. "As much as I admire and — dare I say? — esteem Lady Henrietta, I do draw the line at abduction. So common."

Vaughn signaled for a footman to pour him another cup of coffee.

Miles fumed. He hadn't expected Vaughn to crack instantly — after all, the man was a deadly spy, and they were adept at this sort of thing — but he had hoped for some sort of reaction, a shifty flicker of the eyes towards a hidden door, a mysterious motion to a footman. He could threaten to search the premises, but he doubted it would avail him anything. Vaughn was too sensible to have hidden Henrietta in his own house. He must have a hidey-hole somewhere, a cottage in the country, or a dodgy flat in one of the seedier parts of town, where he could question his victims at his leisure.

Victims. Miles remembered Henrietta's unfortunate contact and wished he hadn't.

He took some slight comfort from Vaughn's presence at the breakfast table. The identity of the Pink Carnation was important enough that Vaughn would want to question her himself. Damn. Miles could have thumped himself over the head with the heavy silver tray on the sideboard if it wouldn't have impeded his ability to rescue Henrietta. Why hadn't he thought of that before? The thing to do was to lie in wait until Vaughn left the house and then follow him to his hidden lair. Damn, damn, damn. Why hadn't he thought of that before he came haring over here?

"Why am I meant to have abducted Lady Henrietta?" Vaughn inquired with deceptive mildness. "Let me see." Vaughn drummed his fingers against the polished wood of the table in a practiced gesture that set Miles's teeth on edge. "Overcome with passion, I spirited her away in my carriage to Gretna Green — no, that won't do, will it, as I'm still here? Come, Mr. Dorrington, this is the stuff of Covent Garden, not civilized people."

"I'll duel you for her." Miles knew that the more valorous course would be to feign embarrassment, apologize, and back out, but worry spurred him on. Who knew how long it would be before Vaughn went to see Henrietta? Or what his minions might be doing to her now? He wanted this settled now.

And he wanted to do bodily violence to Vaughn.

The latter, Miles assured himself, was a purely secondary consideration, but if poking holes in Vaughn could make him reveal Henrietta's whereabouts, Miles wouldn't sneer at the opportunity.

"A duel?" Vaughn sounded more amused than otherwise. "I haven't been challenged to one of those in years."

If looks could wound, Vaughn would already have been spread out on the turf of Hounslow Heath. "Consider this your opportunity to make up for lost time."

"Much as I relish the prospect" — Vaughn cocked an eyebrow at Miles — "I really cannot do so under false pretenses. You see," he said apologetically, "I don't have Lady Henrietta."

Miles was rather surprised that Vaughn persisted in maintaining his charade. He didn't think it was fear of the field of honor — Vaughn had a reputation as a fierce and practiced swordsman, whatever he might say about a recent dearth of duels — but it was deuced annoying.

"Do you expect me to believe that?" demanded Miles.

Vaughn spread his arms in an expansive gesture. "Would you care to search the premises?"

"Oh, no." Miles narrowed his eyes. "I'm not falling for that. You wouldn't have her here; that would be too obvious. A flat somewhere… or a cottage in the country…" He watched Vaughn closely for a flicker of recognition or fear, but the man's face betrayed nothing more than well-bred incredulity.

"All the same," Vaughn said politely, "my house is at your disposal, as are my staff, should you care to question them." His tone suggested that he thought Miles would be a fool to do anything of the kind. But that, reasoned Miles, was just what Vaughn would want him to think.

Miles played his last card. "Do the words 'Black Tulip' mean anything to you, Vaughn?"

"As a flower" — Vaughn shook out his paper with a nonchalant gesture — "they leave something to be desired. If you hope to win Lady Henrietta back with bouquets, you would do better to buy her roses. Red ones."

Before Miles could tell Vaughn exactly what he should do with his roses, in horticultural detail, the quiet of the breakfast parlor was breached by the sound of a large object plummeting to the floor just outside the door. China crashed; spurs scraped against the parquet floor; a male voice rose in remonstration. Miles whirled towards the door, filled with formless hope. Henrietta might have freed herself from Vaughn's henchmen and fought her way downstairs. That was his Hen!

The happy image shattered as the door once again rebounded against the wall. A slender man in brown barreled through, followed by the huffing form of an agitated servant.

"Sir!" The latter flung himself upon his employer's mercy, his wig askew and his stock untied. "I tried to stop him. I tried — "

"Mr. Dorrington?" the other man elbowed past, halting abruptly in front of Miles. Any hopes Miles might have had of his being Henrietta in disguise were firmly dashed. It was hard to make out the man's features, since they were caked in a thick mask of grime, but they weren't Henrietta's, and that was all Miles cared about.

"Yes," said Miles warily.

He glanced to Vaughn, still seated in state at the head of the table, but Vaughn looked, for once, quite as baffled as Miles felt.

"Followed you here," the man in brown explained, still fighting for air. His garments, on closer inspection, might have once been some color other than brown, but looked as though they had been washed in mud, allowed to dry, and muddied again. "I've been looking for you all day."

"For me," said Miles flatly.

"For you or for Lady Henrietta." At the mention of Henrietta's name, the denizens of the room snapped to attention, with the exception of the footman, who had lowered himself to his knees, and was mournfully examining the scratches in the elaborate inlay of the floor, occasionally emitting small whimpering noises at a particularly jagged gash. "I'm to give you this."

Miles snatched up the note the courier proffered, as grimed as the man himself, immediately recognizing the hand. Jane had wasted no time on explanations. There were only three words written on the little piece of paper, and Miles exclaimed them aloud without even realizing he had done so.

"The Marquise de Montval?"

Crumpling the note in one large hand, Miles shoved it into a pocket. He pointed a ringer at Vaughn. "I will be back," he warned, and slammed out of the room.

The fine lines around his eyes more pronounced than usual, Vaughn watched him go, directed a footman to take the courier to the kitchens to be fed, and thoughtfully drained the last of his coffee.

Folding his paper, Lord Vaughn flicked a finger in the direction of the silent footman who stood by the sideboard.

"Tell Hutchins to attend me in my dressing room. And see that my carriage is brought around. At once."

"My lord." The footman bowed his white-powdered head and departed.

"I," commented Vaughn to the empty air above the sideboard, cinching the waist of his dressing gown, "have an assignation to keep."

His lips twisted into a sardonic smile.

"With Lady Henrietta."

"Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you, Lady Henri-etta?"

"Lydee 'Enree-ayta?" gabbled Henrietta hastily in a foreign accent that might have been Italian or Spanish or just gobbledygook; Henrietta didn't have time to think through her putative nationality, only that wherever it was, it was heavy on the vowels. "'Ooo eees dees Lydee 'Enree-ayta?"