Лорен Уиллиг - The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Utterly baffled, Mary frowned down at the King's head. Whatever the contraption was, it was clearly not meant to be in there. But what was it?

"That is," said a voice behind her conversationally, "what is commonly known as an infernal machine."

Mary dropped the plaster wig.

It clattered ominously behind her as she whirled to face the newcomer. Eight feet tall, he loomed in front of her, a martial apparition straight out of a stained-glass window. A red Crusader's cross burned against a cloth of gold tunic. Plumes bristled from a silver helmet, a regular cascade of crimson plumes, soaring into the air like the flames of a bonfire. In one gloved hand, a long spear reared halfway to the ceiling, its point towering a head above its bearer.

Mary pressed back hard against the statue, the royal nose jammed uncomfortably against her spine, until the apparition swept off his plumed helmet, reducing his height by a good foot and providing her with a view of a familiar and welcome face.

"Oh, Mr. St. George!" Mary said with a sigh of relief. "Were you looking for me? I hope I haven't missed our cue."

Without the distracting red plumes, St. George dwindled comfortably to his usual dimensions. Dressed as his mythic namesake, he was decked out in a sleeveless tabard over a flowing shirt and a pair of very tight black tights. Like Aunt Imogen, Lady Euphemia appreciated a good leg, and St. George was in possession of two of them, if not quite so good as Vaughn's. The tights ended in a pair of ridiculous turned-up shoes, with the toes curled up into points, another of Lady Euphemia's pseudo-medieval creations.

Mary smiled warmly at St. George, hoping that he wouldn't notice the body on the floor. If she could hustle him back into the wings, away from the fallen man and the mysteriously laden statue…

Her luck seemed to be out. Setting down his helmet, St. George squinted at Rathbone's crumpled form. Bending, he picked up the discarded ham haunch, turning it curiously over. Mary watched uneasily as he hefted it in one hand, as though testing its weight.

"Yours, I believe?" he said pleasantly.

"Only borrowed," Mary said, rapidly considering and discarding various explanations and excuses. "I believe it's meant to be Henry the Eighth's."

Unfortunately, St. George wasn't moved to discuss Henry VIII's gustatory habits. He continued to look at her, so quizzically that Mary felt herself flushing beneath the paint Lady Euphemia had smeared on her face.

With an aborted gesture at Rathbone's body, she said quickly. "I saw someone skulking around backstage. I was so rattled that I struck out without thinking. Silly me." She attempted a laugh, but it came out as hollow as the plaster head of George III.

"Is that Mr. Rathbone?" asked St. George neutrally.

"Yes," admitted Mary, her back still blocking the King's effigy. "I'm afraid your sister is going to be without an escort tonight."

St. George waved that consideration aside. Strolling in a circle around Mary, he nodded at the giant head behind her. "I take it you found Rathbone playing with that?"

"The very thing," Mary agreed, as St. George lifted the lid and peered into the innards. "What was it you called it?"

"An infernal machine," St. George explained helpfully, replacing the King's queue neatly in its place and hiding the mysterious bundles once more from view. "Like the one someone used to try to blow Bonaparte to bits four years ago."

"You mean it's an incendiary device," Mary translated, taking an automatic step away from his Majesty's otherwise benign face.

"I prefer the term infernal machine," said St. George. He didn't move from his own position, his hand resting familiarly on top of the King's head, like a man with a pet mastiff. "It has a far more winning ring to it, don't you think?"

There was something rather odd about the way he was looking at her, not with the boyish admiration he had shown over the past several weeks, but with a fixed intensity that made Mary distinctly nervous.

It occurred to Mary, for the first time, that every time she had seen Mr. Rathbone, it had been in the company of Mr. St. George. It was St. George's sister Rathbone was meant to be courting; a sister Mary had never seen, much less met.

"Certainly a more sinister one." Keeping her face and voice pleasant, Mary took what she hoped was an inconspicuous step in the direction of her trusty ham haunch. "I hadn't realized you knew so much about mechanical devices, Mr. St. George."

"I don't," he said, with his old self-deprecating smile. "That was what Mr. Rathbone was for."

"I — see."

She didn't like what she saw at all.

"You do see, don't you?" He was still smiling, his teeth very white in the dim corridor. "You see altogether too much, Miss Alsworthy. And at very inconvenient moments."

"I can un-see it, if you like," said Mary brightly, edging towards the ham haunch. "It's dreadfully dim back here, you know. It makes it terribly hard to see anything at all. I'm very good at not seeing what doesn't need to be seen."

Reversing his grip on his spear, St. George brought it down it so that the bar stood as a barrier between Mary and exit, effectively cutting her off. The pennant on the end, emblazoned with a St. George cross, fluttered in a parody of patriotism.

"I'm afraid it's too late for that, Miss Alsworthy," he said, with genuine regret. "Pity. I would as soon destroy a work of art."

Reaching across the bar, he grazed two knuckles across her cheek in a fleeting caress.

It was all Mary could do not to flinch from his touch, but long experience had taught her to hold her ground.

"Then why do so?" she suggested, in her throatiest voice.

Undulating forwards, she would have insinuated herself up against him, but the banded shaft of the spear stood between them, catching her hard in the stomach. Suppressing her involuntary gasp, she ran a finger teasingly along the embroidered line of the red cross on his tabard. "Let there be no more games between us, no more pretense. I know who you are. And you know who I am."

Letting her eyes go limpid, she slid her the flat of her palm up his chest in a deliberately provocative caress. It didn't have much effect on her captor, but if there was a pistol hidden on his person, it was exceptionally well disguised. "Isn't it time you admitted me to your counsels…mon seigneur?"

"No," he said simply, but he made no move to back away. Mary took that as a good sign.

Mary pressed closer, flirting as though her life depended on it. Which it did. It was not an uplifting thought. The only glimmer of hope she could find in the situation was that if the Black Tulip was backstage with her, he couldn't be stalking Vaughn. Which meant that Vaughn was safe. At least, for the moment.

Mary redoubled her efforts, shrugging her shoulders together to make her tunic dip in the middle. If that didn't soften him, she didn't know what would. She lowered her voice, made it soft and caressing, "Think of all the trouble you could have saved, mon seigneur, if only you had confided in me. Had you told me your plans, I would never have incapacitated your agent."

With a casual movement, St. George took her hand and removed it from his chest, with as much emotion as if he were plucking off a burr. Holding it high in the air, his hand closed around hers in a bruising grip.

"Yes," he said. "You would have."

Mary let her lashes dip down to veil her eyes — a necessary gesture to keep him from seeing the fear that filled them. "You still doubt me, mon seigneur?"

St. George's lips twisted in a cynical expression that sat oddly on his genial features. "Oh, there's no doubt, Miss Alsworthy. I know exactly who you serve."

"Myself mostly." Mary tilted her head coquettishly, sending her long, straight hair swishing against his arm, releasing a faint scent of exotic French perfume, calculated to enslave the senses. "But you, if you'll let me."

"No, Miss Alsworthy, there's no more arguing it. You failed your test. You failed your test yesterday, when you refused to pull the trigger."

"A momentary hesitation," Mary protested. "I haven't much experience of guns."

"You serve him," countered St. George, unimpressed. He added, with a chilling combination of scorn and pity, "You serve him because you've fallen in love with him. Others have made that mistake before you. With the same result."

Mary opened her mouth to argue, but something in his face blunted her words. There would be no more arguing. The Black Tulip had made up his mind.

Mary swallowed hard and straightened her spine, dropping her coquetry like an outgrown mask. The battle would have to be won on other grounds.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked conversationally.

"Not yet," replied the Black Tulip, with equal sangfroid. "Lady Euphemia would notice if you weren't onstage to play your part. I want nothing disrupting my plan."

He had spoken of his plans before, in Hyde Park. Mary glanced thoughtfully at the large plaster head of the King, fitted with its incendiary device, before looking back up at the Black Tulip, her sapphire eyes keen with comprehension.

"You intend to kill the King tonight, don't you? The incendiary device — pardon me, the infernal machine — is to be aimed at him."