Anne shrugged. "I was bored. Oh, don't laugh. I know it was idiocy. I know that now. At the time…I wanted someone to be enraptured with me, me and only me. Franзois promised complete devotion. We were going to be like gypsies, frolicking in the meadows and living for love alone."

"I can't see you lasting very long in a meadow."

"I didn't. Neither did he."

"As fascinating as it is to roam the halls of memory, we appear to have strayed somewhat from the matter at hand — your gentleman friend. Your current gentleman friend," Vaughn specified. "The one who wants to see me dead."

"He approached me in Rome, where I was…well, rather at loose ends." Vaughn didn't need any translation to explain what that meant. "I wanted very badly to come back to England. He offered me riches beyond counting, anything I wanted, if only I would come back with him and do whatever it was he wanted me to do to get your attention. It seemed almost too fortuitous."

"Things that seem too fortuitous generally are."

"I know that," said Anne defensively. "I did realize that once I'd done what he asked, I was more likely to get a knife in my ribs than riches beyond counting."

"So you decided you were better off with me than him."

"I always intended to use him to get to you," Anne insisted. "That was the plan from the very beginning."

"Hmm," said Vaughn. He had his doubts about that.

"His promises were utterly improbable. Titles, lands, jewels…He kept saying that when he became King — "

"King?" Vaughn said sharply. "We are speaking of the same person, aren't we? Chap who works for the French? Likes to call himself the Black Tulip?"

"Oh yes," said Anne airily, as though it weren't the very person the English secret service had been seeking for well over a decade. Anne had always been brilliant at ignoring anything that didn't concern her personally. "But he isn't really a republican, you know. He only threw in his lot with them out of a personal grudge. That's what he told me."

Vaughn began to wonder if he were still asleep, drifting through a particularly realistic opium dream. But if he were going to dream under the influence of opium, it would be of Mary, preferably without clothing, not of a barren parlor in an unfashionable neighborhood where his unwanted spouse fed him absurd tales.

"That must have been quite a large grudge," he commented, "to countenance the overthrow of a kingdom."

Anne donned her thoughtful look. "He said something about an eye for an eye, that the French King had refused to help his father regain his kingdom, so he had made sure Louis lost his."

Outside, a tree branch creaked, undoubtedly Pinchingdale trying to hear better. Glancing towards the window, Vaughn's eye fell on the portrait miniature, surmounted by its crimson rose, interlaced with roses and thistles. In his golden casing, the bewigged man smiled benevolently over the room, regal as a king.

His father's kingdom. Roses and thistles. The images whirled and settled, falling together into a new, unsettling, and nearly impossible pattern.

With a sudden swift movement, Vaughn seized on the glass of port, upending the contents onto the ground, where the dark liquid seeped into the warped boards of wood that covered the floor.

"Sebastian!" protested Anne. "It's not poisoned, really."

Whether the brew was poisoned or not was immaterial. He had seen what he needed to see.

Empty, he could make out the words engraved below the rose and thistle. Entwined in an elaborate monogram were the initials CR, followed by the word "fiat," the common Latin command for "let it be done."

CR stood for Carolus Rex, the Latin name for Charles the King — or, in this case, a Charles who never was king. Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Jacobite Pretender to the English throne, had tried once to regain his kingdom by the sword and seen his hopes brutally crushed on the battlefields of Scotland. He had died years ago, while Vaughn was still a boy. He had died a ruined man, crushed by the weight of his failed hopes, abandoned by his wife, practically pickled in alcohol. That was the man in the portrait, painted before disappointment and drink had taken their toll, wearing armor in token of his eventual reconquest of the kingdom he believed to be his.

He ought to have recognized the rose and the thistle, the most common of Jacobite symbols. But why would he have? The last Jacobite rebellion had been crushed half a century ago, and all the Pretender's attempts couldn't put an army together again. There had been talk of another invasion in Vaughn's youth — but the French King, already depleted by his efforts in the Americas, had refused to bankroll it.

It couldn't be Charles Edward who waved the Jacobite standard this time. That would be a far more impressive resurrection than Anne's. If he had lived, he would be well over eighty.

But Vaughn knew now who that portrait reminded him of. The resemblance wasn't immediately apparent. One had to mentally remove the old-fashioned white wig, broaden the cheekbones, lower the forehead.

He had always assumed that the Black Tulip was, like Teresa, a confirmed idealogue, a madman with a cause. And so he was. Only the cause wasn't at all what Vaughn had assumed it would be.

"What is his name?" Vaughn demanded harshly. "His real name?"

"J-Jamie. Jamie Stuart. But he prefers to be called Your Highness."

Vaughn grabbed Anne by both shoulders. "Where is he?"

"At — at Lady Euphemia's estate in Richmond. For the play. When he heard the royal family were going to be attending the theatricals tonight…"

Vaughn didn't wait to hear more.

Mary was at Richmond

"Don't you see?" Anne's voice rang with satisfaction. "I've kept you clear of it. I saved you. Sebastian? Sebastian! Where are you going?"

Vaughn took the stairs two at a time. Behind him, he could hear Anne panting as she trotted down the stairs after him, but her breathless commentary didn't make a dent in the hideous scenarios unraveling through his mind. He knew what the Black Tulip was capable of; he had seen it before. But not Mary. It couldn't be allowed to happen to Mary.

"For goodness' sake, Sebastian…," Anne demanded breathlessly behind him.

Vaughn slammed out of the front door as though a dozen demons were at his back. The water stairs, he decided. A boat would be far faster than trying to go overland, and they were hard by the Thames and the dock that served Parliament. As he pounded down the front steps, a figure dropped lightly from a tree, to land on the ground beside him.

"He's in Richmond," Vaughn said tersely, never breaking stride or looking at the man beside him. "With Mary."

Pinchingdale didn't need to be told twice. "A boat will be fastest."

"My thoughts precisely."

A flurry of white muslin caught up to them just short of the water stairs, and tugged on Vaughn's arm. Vaughn shook the restraining hand off.

"Him — tree!" gasped Anne, waving an arm at Pinchingdale.

"I'll perform the introductions later." Since it didn't seem like he would be able to get rid of her, Vaughn boosted her hastily into the boat. Perhaps she could be used to distract the Tulip. If she didn't decide to turn coat again, that was.

Pinchingdale hopped lightly down beside her, eyeing his shipmate in a way that suggested his wife was going to get a full account later on.

Swinging his sword out of his way, Vaughn swung down beside them, slapping two coins into the palm of the waiting boatman.

"Richmond. As fast as you can."

* * *

Mary stood shivering in the wings of Lady Euphemia McPhee's personal theatre. Built to rival Garrick's temple of Shakespeare, the marble edifice was certainly impressive. It was also cold. While Lady Euphemia had blithely installed trapdoors for Hamlet (should she ever want to play Hamlet) and all sorts of complicated machinery for manipulating scenery or dropping Greek gods from the sky, she had neglected to include any fireplaces.

As a princess of Briton, Mary was draped in flowing white samite edged with cloth of gold. That translated to white muslin hung with yellow tassels that looked like they had recently come off someone's drapes, presumably Lady Euphemia's. Her long black hair, falling free to her waist, had been adorned with a filet of purest gold. In other words, painted pasteboard, to go with the equally "golden" armlets that encircled her bare arms just below and above the elbow, detailed with what Lady Euphemia and Aunt Imogen fondly believed to be ancient Druidic runes. What the Druids had to do with St. George, Mary wasn't quite sure. But, then, neither was Lady Euphemia. It was, she had explained airily, poetic license.

Onstage, A Rhyming Historie of Britain had only just begun, and the shuffling of feet was already louder than the voice of the narrator.

From the front row, Mary could hear her mother's voice, with more carrying quality than anything on the stage, announcing, "Such a clever woman, Lady Euphemia! And connected to the royal family, you know…. My daughter is playing a princess. Not my daughter who's a Viscountess, but the other one."

Rubbing the gooseflesh on her arms, Mary wondered how Vaughn was getting on with the Black Tulip. She would have given anything — well, nearly anything — to be out of her ridiculous draperies and in a carriage to Westminster, crouched next to a window with a pistol in her hand. Even the sight of Turnip Fitzhugh being tugged across the stage in a large rowboat failed to divert her.