The Masque of the Black Tulip

Chapter Twenty-Five

Who ever knew that Hen could sing like that? A pebble ricocheted off Marcus Aurelius's head, landing with a gurgle in the water below. An affronted goldfish swished his tail reproachfully at Miles and swam off beneath a fallen bit of statuary. The Roman emperor stared superciliously at Miles down his long nose, taunting him to try again.

His aim was off tonight.

Miles gave the gravel at his feet a vicious kick that did more harm to the finish of his boots than it did the ground. Forget aim, it was his judgment that was fatally flawed. Hell, after this past week, Miles rather doubted that he possessed any of that commodity. There was a dangerous French spy on the loose, and what was Miles doing? Nothing useful, that was bloody certain. Quite the contrary, in fact. The history of the past week had been one of blunder after blunder. Were his life a novel, the chapter heading for this latest installment would undoubtedly read, "In which our hero contrives to endanger his valet and alienate his closest friend."

It took Miles a moment to realize he didn't mean Richard.

Miles sank down onto a little marble bench and buried his head in his hands. When had that happened? Of course, Richard was his closest friend, always had been. It was a matter of institutional record, like the method for calling Parliament. Yet, somehow, without Miles even realizing it, Henrietta had wiggled her way in there. Miles forced himself to cast his mind back over the past few years for the source of this decidedly disturbing development. Miles wasn't generally a proponent of retrospection, preferring to let sleeping dogs lie, live in the moment, seize the day, and any other optimistic twaddle that involved turning a blind eye to anything that might involve serious thought, or, even worse, implicate the emotions. However, even a blind man could see that his visits to Uppington House hadn't abated in the slightest despite the fact that his putative best friend had been off in France for the greater part of the past few years, not counting the odd holiday. He could blame it on Cook's superlative ginger biscuits, or humoring Lady Uppington, or any other number of innocuous excuses. But that was all they were, excuses.

When had he started relying on Hen to such a horrifying extent? He had promised Richard, years ago, that he would keep an eye on her (Richard took his protective function as elder brother deuced seriously), but somehow, keeping an eye had turned into hundreds of teas in the morning room, thousands of drives in the park, and more lemonades than Miles cared to count, much of it spilled on his boots in crowded ballrooms. Downey waxed positively vituperative about the effects of lemonade on fine leather. Today… Miles couldn't count the number of times he had automatically turned to exchange a quip or comment with Henrietta, before remembering that they weren't supposed to be speaking.

It was sheer misery.

Over the course of the long, miserable day, he had almost managed to convince himself that it would all blow over. Of course, Henrietta was angry — she had every right to be after he had kissed her at Vaughn's ball — but she would come around sooner or later, and they could go back to the way they were. And he hadn't been about to kiss her last night. Really, he hadn't. That had just been an, er, affectionate handclasp. Henrietta would calm down and life could revert to normal.

It had all seemed like such a good idea. Until she started singing.

Her first trill ripped the protective coating of habit from Miles's eyes. By the second, he was in distinct agony. This wasn't just Richard's little sister, anymore. It wasn't even Miles's companion of a thousand dull society balls. At the front of the room stood a woman with a formidable talent, a woman to be reckoned with. As a longtime connoisseur of the opera and its denizens, Miles knew that there were voices, and there were Voices. Henrietta had a Voice. Her clear tones reverberated through Miles's memory like the lingering savor of her lavender perfume, haunting in its purity.

A Voice wasn't all she had. Miles refused to even allow himself to dwell upon the way her bosom had swelled above the bodice of her dress as she drew in a deep breath before she built to the crescendo on the third reprise of tanto rigor. Miles groaned in memory, finding his breeches as uncomfortably tight now as they had been then. It wasn't the tailoring.

Looking away hadn't done any good, either. When he glanced down, there were her arms, curving gracefully towards the hands clasped at her waist, like the arms of a Raphael Venus rising from the sea, gently rounded and impossibly fair, ending in pale, delicate hands, with long, tapering fingers and smooth pink nails. Miles had never known there could be such agony in a fingernail before.

Forcing his eyes to her face had been an even bigger mistake. Her cheeks were flushed with the effort of singing, that rare wild tint he had only ever seen on Henrietta's cheeks, like rose petals beneath a fine film of snow; her skin was so translucent one could practically see the blood pounding beneath the surface. Her lips were as flushed as her cheeks, her eyes misty with music. With her lips parted in song, her head tilted slightly back, he could see her arising from a tangle of sheets, eyes dreamy, lips red from his kisses.

Miles contemplated leaping into the fishpond, but it was too shallow to do any good. Besides, he doubted any waters this side of the North Sea would be quite cold enough to dull his ardor, with the image of Hen…

Right. Enough was enough. Miles dusted his hands off against his breeches in a determined fashion. He would do what he should have done in his first place, and order his curricle to be brought round first thing tomorrow morning. He would return to London, meet with Wickham at the War Office, wring every last drop of information he could out of his taciturn superior, and then set himself seriously to the task of tracking down Downey's attacker.

Miles glanced wistfully at the lit windows of the hall, visible over the shoulder-high shrubbery. Inside, the members of the house party were filtering back into the Rose Room for tea and coffee; gaily dressed forms moved past the windowpanes singly and in groups. It was too far away to make out individuals, but all Miles could think about was…

Shooting Frenchmen, he told himself abruptly, levering himself up off the bench. Shooting lots and lots of Frenchmen. "Don't even say it," Miles warned Marcus Aurelius.

"Don't say what?"

Miles started, swerved, and nearly toppled over the bench. It wasn't the Roman emperor come to life. That, Miles could have dealt with. Long-dead historical personages, spies, phantom monks… all of those, Miles could have faced with equanimity.

The figure approaching him along the alley of beech trees might easily have been a statue stepped off her pedestal, Pygmalion's mythical lady come to life. Henrietta crossed the final few yards of the path, her white muslin gown luminous in the moonlight. The thin fabric molded itself against her legs as she walked, increasing the resemblance to the statuary of classical antiquity, but no statue had ever had that sort of effect on Miles.

"Shouldn't you be inside?" asked Miles darkly.

Henrietta checked slightly at his inhospitable tone. "I needed to speak to you. About last night — "

"You were right," Miles interrupted tersely, "we can't go back."

Henrietta squinted at him. The moonlight that illuminated the shimmering tails of the fish in the pond and picked out strange patterns in the shrubbery did nothing to illuminate Miles's expression. All she could make out was his stance, leaning against a hedge, hands in his pockets. But there was something about the tense set of his shoulders that belied the casual pose.

"That's just what I wanted to talk to you about," she announced. "I've changed my mind."

Miles' reaction wasn't quite what Henrietta had hoped. Instead of exclaiming with joy, he crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, so have I."

Henrietta frowned at him through the moonlight. "You can't."

"Why not?"

"Because — oh, for heaven's sake, Miles, I'm trying to apologize to you!"

Miles sidled away. "Don't."

"Don't?"

"Don't apologize and don't come any closer."

As if to lend force to his words, Miles resolutely turned away from her, scooped up a handful of pebbles, and began pitching them into the pond with exaggerated attention to aim.

Henrietta's eyes narrowed in sudden comprehension. She plunked her hands on her hips and glowered at Miles. "If you're trying to drive me away so I don't get in your way while you stalk the spy, I don't appreciate it."

"This is not about the bloody spy," bit out Miles. Plop! A stone landed with unnecessary force in the murky waters.

Henrietta marched militantly up to him, slippers crunching on the graveled ground, and poked him in the shoulder. Hard. "You were hoping the spy would have to pass through here on the way to the house, weren't you?"

"This." Splish. "Is not." Plop. "About." Splash. "The spy."

Miles brushed his hands off against his breeches. Henrietta grabbed him by the arm before he could sweep up another batch of projectiles, forcing him to face her.

"Am I that repugnant to you that you can't stand the sight of me?"

"Repugnant." Miles eyed her incredulously, his jaw hanging slightly open. "Oh, that's rich. Repugnant!"

Henrietta felt the full force of his mockery, and her face contorted with hurt. "You needn't belabor the point," she snapped.

"Do you know what you've been doing to me?" demanded Miles.

"Me? To you! Ha!" exclaimed Henrietta articulately. As repartee, it wasn't her finest hour, but she was too furious to attempt words of more than one syllable.

"Yes, you! Running around in my dreams, singing like that — I can't think. I can't sleep. I can't look my best friend in the eye. It's been sheer hell!"

"Is that my fault?" exclaimed Henrietta. "You're the one who kissed me and then didn't bother to — wait. Your dreams? You've been dreaming about me?"

Miles backed away, looking horrified. "Never mind. Forget I said that."

Henrietta took a dangerous step forward. "Oh, no. There are no 'never minds.' You're not getting off that easily this time."

"Damn," said Miles feelingly. "Fine." He took a step forward. "You want to know the truth? I don't find you repugnant." Another step. "If you must know, I find you the very opposite of repugnant." Another. "It's been all I can do to keep my hands bloody off you the past two days."

One more step and Miles was so close to her that her breath stirred the stiff folds of his cravat. Henrietta cravenly sidled backwards, but the hedge was at her back, pricking her through the thin muslin of her dress, blocking retreat.

"In fact" — Miles's hands closed around her shoulders as his head plummeted towards her — "you have been driving me absolutely bloody mad!"

With a desperate sideways movement, Henrietta wrenched herself from his grasp, leaving Miles to stumble headlong into the hedge.

"Oh, no," she panted. "I'm not playing that game again."

Miles's eyes were glazed and his breath rasped in his throat. "Game?" he forced out.

"Yes, game!" snapped Henrietta, tears of rage and frustration gathering in her hazel eyes. "The game where you kiss me and then run off and hide from me for a whole blasted week! It's — I just can't — if you're just looking for a bit of fun, you're going to have to find it somewhere else."

Gathering her skirts in her hand, she whirled in the direction of the house, only to be jerked abruptly short as Miles grabbed her by the elbow.

"That's not what I want!" Miles burst out, swinging her around to face him.

"Then what do you want?" demanded Henrietta.

"You, damn it!"

The words hung there in the air between them.

Each stared at the other, Miles's brown eyes locked with Henrietta's hazel, both frozen as still as Lot's wife's peering back into a forbidden land.

Henrietta's heart surged with frenetic joy, before hiccupping to an abrupt stop, and swinging wildly back in the opposite direction. Of all the ambiguous statements! What exactly did he want? And if he wanted her, why on earth had he been hiding from her? An odd sort of wanting that drove the pursuer away from the object of desire!

Henrietta waved her hands in the air in frustration. "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"Uh…" Funny, it had seemed quite clear to him when he uttered it, but when forced to encapsulate the sense of it, Miles couldn't find any appropriate words. Somehow, he didn't think "I want to fling you down among the rosebushes and have my wicked way with you" would necessarily appease Hen's wrath. That was the problem with women; they always insisted on verbalizing everything. "Um…"

Fortunately, Henrietta was still in full rant, so Miles was spared replying. "And why," she demanded, "have you been behaving like such an idiot?"

Miles chose not to dispute the appellation, primarily because he agreed to it. In fact, he knew it was the height of idiocy to linger in the garden when what he ought to do was flee straight back to the safety of London, without passing the house, without collecting his belongings. To remain… the word "idiot" didn't even begin to encompass it.

As much for himself as for her, Miles said forcefully, "You are my best friend's sister."

Henrietta took a very deep breath. Miles struggled nobly to keep his eyes fixed above her bodice. It was a cause doomed to failure from its very inception.

Henrietta's chest heaved to a stop, followed by an expectant silence.

"What?" asked Miles.

"I fail to see what that has to do with anything," repeated Henrietta through gritted teeth. Speaking through gritted teeth involved very little passage of air. Sanity — or some modicum thereof — returned to Miles, along with the capacity for speech.

Miles ran his hands through his hair till it stood up like porcupine quills. "Do you know how many kinds of betrayal that would be? Forget Richard, even. Your parents raised me! And how do I repay them? By seducing their daughter."

Henrietta swallowed painfully. "Is that all I am to you? Someone else's sister? Someone else's daughter?"

Of its own volition, Miles's right hand rose to cup her face, gently tilting it back to face him.

"Don't you know better than that, Hen?"

Slowly, she shook her head. "No." Her voice broke, half-laugh, half-sob. "I don't know anything right now."

"Funny," Miles whispered achingly, his warm breath feathering across her lips. "Neither do I."

With infinite gentleness, his lips brushed hers. His hands slid softly into her hair, stroking her temples, easing away aches she hadn't realized she had. Letting her eyes drift closed, Henrietta leaned into the kiss, abandoning herself to the dreamlike unreality of it all. Henrietta's hands slid up to Miles's shoulders, feeling the warmth of his body through the fine wool of his coat as warmth of an entirely different kind spread through her. Around them, the garden was rich with the scent of early June roses, as lush and heavy as an old tapestry. It seemed as though the wind moved more delicately through the trees, and even the cranky old gentleman frog who lived in the pond gentled his croaking complaint. The whole world slowed and drifted in a measureless minuet.

With a movement as soft as a sigh, Miles's lips slid away from hers. They remained suspended in time, Miles's lips a whisper above hers, her hands on his shoulders, his fingers still threaded in her hair. Miles smoothed his thumbs along her cheekbones, tracing the well-beloved contours of her face.

"I missed you," Henrietta whispered.

Miles pulled her tightly against him, rubbing his face in her hair. "Me too."

"Then why did you hide from me all week?" asked Henrietta into his shoulder.

For the life of him, Miles was having a very hard time remembering; the feel of Henrietta's body pressed against his was having a decidedly numbing effect on his brain, even as it brought other bits of his anatomy into acute relief. He dredged up the reason as if from a lifetime ago.

"Because I was afraid I'd do this," he said, nuzzling back her hair, and running his tongue along the rim of her ear. He felt Henrietta shiver in his arms and stilled, giving her a space to protest, to walk away.

Henrietta tilted her chin, leaving her throat bare for Miles's questing lips. "I don't understand," she said softly, "why that was cause for hiding."

"Right now," admitted Miles, "neither can I."

His lips followed the delicate curve of Henrietta's jaw, the rounded chin that looked so demure in repose but could be so stubborn in reality, the elegant line of her throat, pausing to blow gently at the delicate hairs that curled at the base of her neck, where her hair had been swept up and away from her face.

Henrietta didn't gasp; a gasp would have marred the dreamlike quality of the moment, like a leaf floating on a stream in a summer's day, utterly unmoored from responsibility, content to simply drift in the golden heat of the sun. But her fingers curled around Miles's shoulders as she marveled at the amazing sensations to be had from so prosaic an item as a neck. Miles's kisses she had been prepared for — well, as much as one could be prepared for something that made one's head spin like too much claret — there were novels and paintings and whispered discussions in the ladies' retiring room. But no one had ever told her about this. Necks were simply something on which to hang jewelry, to set off with a curl or a flounce; they were not supposed to send quivers of pleasure through one's entire body.

In the spirit of experimentation, Henrietta locked her arms tighter around Miles's neck, stood on her tiptoes, and applied her lips to the underside of his chin — she had been aiming for the spot just at the parting of collar and cravat, but the combination of dizziness and half-closed eyes had a negative impact on her aim. His skin smelled of exotic aftershave, and a fascinating hint of stubble, so fair as to be almost invisible to the eye, grazed her lips.

Miles's reaction was instantaneous, if not quite what Henrietta had hoped for. Recoiling backwards, he blinked several times, shook his head like a wet dog, and held Henrietta away from him.

"Did I do something wrong?" asked Henrietta huskily.

Miles's eyes had a distinctly wild cast, and his hair was even more disarranged than usual. Henrietta gave in to the impulse to smooth a lock back. Miles shied like a nervous horse. "Hell, no — er, I mean, no! That is, oh blast it, Hen — "

Since he didn't seem to have anything particularly incisive to say, Henrietta decided to put an end to the conversation by the simple expedient of kissing him again. Miles's arms closed around her with enough force to knock any remaining air out of her lungs, but breathing really seemed quite a minor consideration under the circumstances. Who needed to breathe, anyhow? Lips were much more interesting, especially when they were Miles's lips, and they were doing such clever things to the sensitive hollow next to her collarbone. Henrietta hadn't realized before that the hollow was a sensitive one, but she was quite sure she would remember in the future. Miles's lips drifted even lower, following a slow path along her collarbone, down to the hollow between her breasts, and Henrietta stopped thinking in full sentences altogether, or even recognizable words.

Miles was dimly aware that his brain had ceased working in concert with his body several moments since, but the worst of it was that he had ceased to care. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew there was a very valid reason that he wasn't supposed to be undressing Henrietta, but whatever insubstantial objection his conscious mind might urge upon him dissipated beside the far-more-compelling reality of Henrietta herself, warm and glowing in his arms, a thousand forbidden dreams made flesh.

And what attractive flesh it was.

Miles made one last effort to restrain his baser desires, one last effort to push Hen away into the little box in his head marked "best friend, sister of." But her hair whispered wantonly against his arm, and her lips were swollen with kisses — his kisses, thought Miles, with a fierce surge of pos-sessiveness. His, his, his. All his, from the long lashes that curved against her cheeks to the hint of a dimple that only appeared when she smiled or frowned very deeply, to the absolutely irresistible expanse of bosom revealed in agonizing detail by her position reclining against his arm.

Even so, Miles might — it wasn't likely, but he might — have set her to her feet, tucked back her hair, and given them both a firm talking to, if, at that very moment, Henrietta hadn't sighed. It was just a little sigh, hardly louder than the brush of silk against skin, but it carried with it, an entire world of amorous innuendo. So might Heloise have sighed in the arms of Abelard or Juliet for her Romeo, begging night to gallop apace and veil their pleasures, Miles was undone.

So was Henrietta's bodice. One gentle pull drew the fabric down to reveal the rosy aureoles, blushing above their fine veil of silk. Miles ran his tongue around first one, then the other, as Henrietta arched in his arms and dug her nails into his back.

He eased the fabric the rest of the way, enjoying the way Henrietta squirmed in his arms as the silk brushed over her nipples. Miles was just lowering his head to replace the fabric with his mouth, when a voice with an edge like cut glass, a voice from very far away, cut through his consciousness.

"What in the hell is going on here?"