The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Thirty

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."

The Black Tulip regarded her approvingly. "You are a quick study. To answer your question, yes. The sealed casks contain a little something Rathbone concocted for me, an extract of air that magnifies the properties of fire."

"In other words," clarified Mary, watching him closely, "a very big explosion."

"Big enough to consume the entire brood of Hanoverian usurpers," said St. George, with great satisfaction. "It should be more entertaining than doves, don't you think?"

"That's why you talked Lady Euphemia out of putting the birds in the King's statue," said Mary. It wasn't a question.

"I had planned to blow up Parliament, in a tribute to Guy Fawkes, but when this opportunity arose, it seemed too good to pass by. Ever since the Gunpowder Plot, they do have an inconvenient habit of inspecting the cellars before the King gives his speech."

"Very inconsiderate of them," agreed Mary sarcastically. "And then? Once the King and Queen and all their offspring are blown to little bits, what then? Do you declare a republic in the name of France?"

"No." St. George's eyes burned with such intensity that Mary would have taken a step back if Rathbone's fallen body weren't blocking her way. "I reclaim what is mine. My kingdom. My throne."

"Yours?"

"Mine," St. George repeated. "Mine by right of birth."

Knowing that she was taking a calculated risk, Mary said, with deliberate provocation, "I didn't think the King had by-blows."

One large hand pinned her about the neck, pressing hard against her throat. "You insult my birth. Be born to that Hanoverian scum — never. My father was of the true line."

He released her so abruptly that Mary stumbled back, gasping, nearly tumbling over Rathbone's inert form in the process. She wondered, belatedly, whether it might not have made more tactical sense to fall. If she were to dive for St. George's legs, bringing him down with her…

St. George drew himself up to his full height. "My father was a Stuart. King Charles the Third, by grace of God — though the Lord knows, he was shown little enough grace while he lived." His eyes were dark pools, churning with bitter memories. "Even the Pope refused to acknowledge him. It broke him. It humbled him. The rightful King of England and they all scorned him and left him to rot in a pit of drink and debt."

Mary refrained from pointing out that the drink and debt might well have been Prince Charles Edward's own doing.

"Bloody Louis wouldn't help him he when he asked. I remember it well. The look on his face when the word came. He hadn't the money, Louis said. Dear Cousin Louis." St. George's voice dripped scorn. It occurred to Mary with mild surprise that if St. George was telling the truth about his origins, King Louis of France really would have been his cousin, somewhere on his father's side. "But he had plenty of money for jewels for his Austrian whore. Louis wouldn't help us, so I helped Cousin Louis. I helped him right off his throne."

"Is that why you did it?" Mary said softly. "Joined the revolution?"

St. George gave a sharp laugh. "It certainly wasn't liberté, egalité, and fraternité."

His inflection made a mockery of the revolutionary ideals.

His French accent was much better than hers. It would be, Mary thought inconsequentially. If he were the son of the exiled Stuart pretender, he would have spent his childhood kicking about France and Italy. No wonder his Italian had been so fluent.

"Does Bonaparte know all this?" asked Mary carefully.

"Of course," said St. George, baring his teeth in a feral grin. "It works out very nicely for him, don't you agree? A monarch with right of blood on the throne, and he's spared the trouble of ruling England himself."

Put that way, it did seem rather a bargain for Bonaparte. If not necessarily for England.

There was one glaring flaw to St. George's plans. Mary wondered if St. George had spotted it. True Stuart pretender or not, there was no reason men would flock to his standard, just because the immediate royal family had been assassinated. There would be plots and counterplots, factions and cabals, and at least a dozen other claimants to the throne, all pressing their right. In short, civil war.

Wonderful for Bonaparte, not so wonderful for either England or the latest Stuart pretender.

Had St. George realized that, or was he so consumed by the thought of the throne that it never occurred to him that he might be Bonaparte's dupe? From the noble glow on his face, Mary suspected he hadn't. Like all exiles, St. George seemed to believe that at the sight of their rightful king, the people would fling down their arms and follow him, strewing rose petals and singing hosannas. Other monarchs had made that mistake before. Including his father and grandfather.

Through the fabric of the backdrop came Lady Euphemia's voice, raised insistently, "And then one dark night, there came a poor princess in perilous plight."

"Ah," said St. George. "There's our cue. After you, my dear."

Using the spear as a prod, he sent her reeling in the direction of the backdrop. They were supposed to enter stage left, but with a spear in her back, even a wooden one, Mary wasn't about to be picky. Grasping the folds of the curtain, she scrabbled for the break in the middle.

" — came a poor princess in perilous plight!" Lady Euphemia repeated loudly, as Mary stumbled out onto the stage through the gap in the curtains, blinking in the sudden glare of the footlights.

Lady Euphemia gave her a look that clearly indicated that Mary wasn't going to be offered starring roles in any future productions.

That was the least of Mary's worries.

In front of her, the theatre was a sea of swollen faces, distorted by the glare of the footlights. What would they do if she walked calmly to the center of the stage and announced that there was a madman who thought he was the Pretender to the throne in the back of the stage, and that the King's head was packed full of explosives? Nothing. Well, not nothing. There would be whispering and laughing and no one would do anything at all.

St. George, hidden behind the curtains, would have plenty of time to shove his infernal machine into the audience, light its fuse, and blow as many people as possible into tiny bits. In the audience, Mary could see a slew of familiar faces, yawning, laughing, whispering, sleeping. Innocent. Unsuspecting. Her mother and father were in the first row with Letty, her mother's mouth open as she prattled on into her husband's ear, while her father nodded, not hearing a word of it. He had clearly taken the precaution of donning his earplugs before the performance.

Frowning, Mary tried to catch Letty's eye, indicating with a jerk of her head that she should get their parents out of the theatre. Letty tilted her head and opened her eyes wide, indicating confusion. Mary's lips pressed together in frustration.

She wasn't the only one feeling frustrated. A loud harrumphing noise echoed from the prompter's pit.

Mary hastily struck a tragic pose, one hand outstretched in supplication in the general direction of the audience, eyes lifted to the heavens — or where the heavens would be, if there wasn't a large dome in the way. There was no need to feign desperation.

"Oh, is there no hero, no valiant knight, / Who will charge out and put the dragon to flight?"

Lady Euphemia bobbed her head up and down in time to the lines, beaming in open appreciation of her own poetry.

Pat on his cue, St. George strode onto the stage. Good. On the stage she could see him. On the stage he was away from his infernal machine. Mary's brain churned with fevered schemes, including "accidentally" tripping him as he crossed downstage. If he took a tumble off the platform and just happened to land head first, that should put him out of commission long enough to dismantle his infernal machine and use her brother-in-law's influence to bring the conspirators to justice. St. George and Rathbone would be hanged for treason, and Vaughn would finally be safe. Married, but safe.

There was one slight hitch. St. George didn't cross downstage. Mary could hear the restless shuffling and whispering from the audience rising to new heights. Still in her pose, Mary twisted her neck to peek over her shoulder. St. George stood like a stone effigy of a medieval warrior, looking as shocked and unsettled as Hamlet confronted with his father's ghost. Lady Euphemia emitted a veritable chorus of harrumphs, but to no avail. St. George's eyes were fixed in disbelief on something, or someone, in the audience.

Blinking against the glare of the footlights, Mary followed his gaze. At first, she saw the figure haloed through the red haze of the lights, so that he seemed lit by supernatural fire as he advanced purposefully down the central aisle, the red light catching the hilt of his sword, dancing along the silver lace on his cuffs, scintillating off the great diamond on one hand.

Mary's blood rang in her ears like a fanfare of trumpets as Vaughn strode up to the stage, a sword at his hip and retribution in his gaze. He grinned, a daredevil expression that issued as clear a challenge as the traditional glove.

In one well-practiced motion, Vaughn drew his sword, the steel sliding smoothly out of its scabbard to glitter with deadly luster in the glare of the footlights.

"Good evening, St. George. Or shall we say…en garde?"