Hen was there. With Vaughn. In Vaughn's house.
Everyone would be masked, the more fantastical the costume the better. The ton, safely disguised behind feathery masks and elaborate wigs, would have seized the opportunity to indulge in a bit of licentious revel. Champagne would flow, sharpening voices and numbing wits. In the midst of them all would be Henrietta, meandering innocently along like a lamb among wolves. How hard would it be to yank her away, out of the throng of partygoers? Vaughn could slip a drug into her drink; he could back her into a dark corner; he could even sweep her up and toss her over his shoulder and anyone who saw would simply assume it was all part of the fun, a bit of playacting to enliven the evening.
And once Vaughn had isolated Henrietta from his guests… Miles's blood ran cold. The man had just stabbed Mües's valet with no more thought than Miles would give to crushing an ant.
"What time was I supposed to be there?" Miles demanded hoarsely.
"Ten o'clock," said Mrs. Migworth briskly, rubbing her hands on her apron. "Is aught wrong, sir?"
"Ten o'clock," Miles repeated. The tall cabinet clock in the corner was missing its glass fronting, but behind the jagged break, the hands still faithfully ticked off the minutes. It was nearly half past eleven.
Miles bolted for the door.
A faint whisper rose from the couch. "If sir would divest himself of bloodstains before leaving…" Downey managed, before his head dropped back onto the pillow.
It was too late. Miles was already halfway down the stairs, doing his damnedest not to think about all the things that might be happening to Henrietta at this very moment, and failing miserably.
Miles was late.
Henrietta peered into the crowd of masked revelers overflowing the spacious reception chambers of Lord Vaughn's London mansion, searching for a familiar blond head. Given the number of powdered wigs, feathered hats, and shuttered medieval helmets in evidence, the task was proving less straightforward than usual. In front of her, a self-satisfied Marc Antony, resplendent in breastplate, tunic, and Roman helmet, strolled arm in arm with a very scantily clad Diana the Huntress, whose arrows lay abandoned in their quill as she simpered up at the Roman general. Definitely not Miles.
Henrietta heaved a sigh. The heaving was a mistake, since the sudden inhalation of air brought her ribs into contact with her tightly laced stomacher with a force that would have made her double over had she had the capacity to double over. Henrietta scowled in the direction of her stomach, and got a curl in her eye for her pains. Nasty, silly costume. Yet, so becoming, which was really the point of the whole exercise.
With only two days in which to plan for Lord Vaughn's masquerade, Henrietta's choice of costume had been limited. She had wanted something that would make her seem alluring, mysterious, irresistible, something that would bring Miles to his knees. "I don't think they have costumes for that," Charlotte had commented. Penelope had suggested that, if that was what she wanted, why not just be direct about it and come as Nell Gwynn, with her bodice open to her waist, and a basketful of oranges holding suggestive messages. Neither comment had been appreciated.
In the end, Henrietta had done some rummaging, and appropriated one of the dresses from her mother's own long-ago debut, a shimmering thing of greenish blue brocade, trimmed with gold lace around the low, square neck. The overdress laced tightly over a white silk stomacher embroidered with tiny sprays of flowers before opening out again over an underskirt embroidered in the same pattern. It had to be lengthened, of course, since Lady Uppington was a good five inches shorter than her daughter, but otherwise the old-fashioned style suited Henrietta perfectly, making the most of her small waist, and hiding a set of hips that were rather too lavishly curved for current fashion. She only hoped Miles appreciated it.
Where was the blasted boy?
Henrietta dropped her golden mask (her arm was beginning to hurt from holding it up) and turned to Charlotte, who was standing beside her. "Would you care to take a turn around the room with me?"
Taking a firmer hold on her crook, Charlotte shook her head miserably, setting the little bows on her cap waving. Charlotte had wanted to dress up as the Lady of the Lake, clad in a gown of flowing white samite, but her grandmother had dismissed the notion with a derisory snort as namby-pamby nonsense. Instead, she had squeezed Charlotte into a short, tightly laced shepherdess costume, complete with striped stockings, ribbon-bedizened crook, and even a stuffed sheep.
"I'd prefer to hide here, if you don't mind," sighed Charlotte, nudging her sheep gloomily. "Maybe Penelope would go with you?"
The two girls turned to look at Penelope.
Penelope had come dressed as Boadicea, draped in a length of blue plaid that had the dual benefit of flattering her complexion and annoying her mother into a rapid departure. Lady Deveraux had last been seen heading towards the balcony, bemoaning the hard lot of a mother cursed with a difficult daughter to a very sympathetic King Lear. The Dowager Duchess had very little use for Penelope's mother, and thought the costume was a brilliant idea; her only objection was that Penelope had neglected to include a war chariot. The dowager had rapidly appropriated Penelope's spear, and was amusing herself and Penelope by poking unwitting fops in sensitive parts of their anatomy.
Henrietta and Charlotte exchanged a resigned glance.
"I don't think Penelope will want to join me. If your grandmother asks, will you tell her I went to the ladies' retiring room to, uh…"
"Fix your flounce?" suggested Charlotte, with the first hint of a smile she had shown all evening. "Give my regards to Mr. Dorrington when you find him."
Henrietta impulsively leaned over to hug her, her wide skirt whap-ping into Charlotte's panniers.
"If I find any amorous shepherds, I'll send them your way."
Charlotte flapped the stuffed sheep at her in farewell.
Henrietta maneuvered past a Henry VIII who looked like he needed very little extra padding for his doublet, and a morose Katherine of Aragon clutching a rosary. Henry made a perfunctory grab for Henrietta's waist as she twisted past him, and Katherine whacked him with her beads. Henrietta kept going.
There, to her left, was Turnip Fitzhugh, dressed as… good heavens, was he a giant carnation? The mind boggled. He was chatting with a woman draped mysteriously in black, who, at first glance, Henrietta thought might be the marquise. She started forward to take a closer look, but two Pierrots surged in front of her, clinging to each other for balance and breathing brandy with every breath. Henrietta yanked her wide skirts out of the path of the swaying men, scanning the crowd for Turnip's pink petals, or the black lace of the woman beside him, but they had disappeared into the masses of people milling through Lord Vaughn's reception rooms like so many drops of water into a pond.
Henrietta had her own reasons for wanting to locate the marquise.
It had occurred to her, as she wiled away the hours before the evening's entertainment, that if a spy was trailing along after her and Miles, it stood to reason that this individual would be someone who had recently begun paying a great deal of attention to them.
Henrietta entertained the fleeting thought that a truly talented spy would be quite careful not to pay marked attention to his prey, but she quickly dismissed the notion as unhelpful. Even if it were true, what use was it? Trying to sift through the number of people who hadn't singled her out recently was the sort of pointless task imposed upon heroines in fairy tales. They at least had fairy godmothers to help them sort through stacks of beans or spin straw into gold.