Vaughn poured the liquid into two tall glasses made of amber-tinted Venetian glass. He had poured both portions from the same bottle, and surely he wouldn't poison himself, Henrietta reasoned with herself. But the presence of the large, silver bucket in the middle of the table effectively hid his hands from view as he picked up both glasses. His Renaissance garb included several large rings. Henrietta entertained alarming recollections of Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine de' Medici, of whispers of poison dispensed by means of a cunningly designed ring. It would be a moment's work to flick open the face of the ring and release its powder into her glass.
Henrietta smiled brightly as she accepted the glass Lord Vaughn offered her across the table.
Vaughn raised his own goblet; Henrietta eyed the bubbles critically as they oscillated and burst. Was it just her imagination, or was the liquid in her glass slightly darker than his?
"To what shall we toast?" asked Vaughn.
"To your masquerade, my lord."
Good heavens, the habit was catching. Now even she was speaking in innuendo. She wasn't sure she liked it. She felt like someone in an old tale, dicing with the Devil, afraid to go on, but even more afraid to stop.
Vaughn lifted his eyebrows at her. "Shall we say, rather, to unmasking? "
Just whom did he intend to unmask? Her own mask sat discarded on one of the little benches at the side of the room, though she didn't delude herself that Vaughn meant anything quite that literal.
"By all means," Henrietta said, with a sudden spurt of irritation at this ridiculous verbal game they played, this dance of half-understood meanings. "Let us drink to Truth. They say it will out, you know."
Vaughn tilted his glass against hers, the crystalline click echoing in the small room like the chimes of the celestial spheres.
"It is your toast, Lady Henrietta, and it would ill become me to deny you. But you will learn, as time goes by, that Truth is a malleable mistress."
Henrietta set her glass down decisively on the table, using the motion as an excuse to tip the glass so that some of the liquid spilled onto the tray of grapes.
"I can't agree," she said bluntly. "Something is either true or false. Men may misuse appearances, but truth remains constant. For example," she continued daringly, "treason is always treason."
Vaughn took an abrupt step away from the table, and Henrietta wondered if she had gone too far. Well, there was nothing she could do about it now. Henrietta took a firmer grip on her wineglass. It wasn't much of a weapon, but broken it might do enough damage to… to do what? Keep Lord Vaughn at bay?
It was all she could do to keep herself from falling back as Lord Vaughn advanced, his face still and watchful, his gaze fixed on her like a hawk plummeting down upon its prey. The ruby eyes of the falcon on his chest glittered hungrily in the candlelight.
"And what of you, Lady Henrietta?" he asked silkily. His fingers grasped her chin and tilted her face mercilessly up towards his. "Would you remain constant?"
The word reverberated in the little room, rebounding off the walls, the china roundels, the silver carafe, all the silent objects frozen into listening silence.
"C-constant?" Henrietta played for time,, while her mind raced anxiously ahead in fifteen different directions. One part of her mind insisted on dwelling unpleasantly on how tight Vaughn's grip was, and how easily his fingers might move from her chin to her throat. Another wondered detachedly whether Vaughn was trying to urge her to turn traitor, and if she was more likely to be strangled if she answered yes, or no, or if the question was rhetorical and she wasn't supposed to be saying anything at all.
Vaughn's fingers tightened around her chin, his gaze speculative. Into the terrible silence crept a noise no louder than the scratching of a rat in the wainscoting. Vaughn's hand dropped from Henrietta's face and he strode abruptly towards the sound. Henrietta drew a deep, ragged breath.
A panel of the wall opened tentatively inwards, detaching itself smoothly from the rest. So that was how it worked, thought Henrietta, taking careful note of the door's location. The outline of the entry way was concealed by the golden grill work, while a cleverly placed jade and coral plaque masked the line left by the top of the door.
"Enter!" Vaughn directed harshly.
Only the manservant's face appeared around the edge of the concealed door, floating halfway up like the disembodied head in a horrid novel. Where disembodied heads in horrid novels generally tended to err on the side of glowering and threatening, this one was a very alarmed, very apologetic disembodied head. Henrietta bit down on a sudden crazy urge to laugh, and discovered that her legs in the tottery heels weren't quite so steady as she'd thought them to be.
"Begging your pardon, your lordship," said the floating head anxiously, "I know you said as how you wasn't to be disturbed, but — "
"What is it, Hutchins?" Vaughn broke in impatiently.
"A message, your lordship. Most urgent, they said it was."
"Lady Henrietta." Vaughn turned to her with a smooth smile, every inch the regret-ridden host, as if that last interlude had never transpired. Henrietta's hand surreptitiously crept up to her chin, as though she might still find the marks of his fingers there. "I regret I must abandon you for a brief moment, but I trust you will find sufficient to amuse you until my return."
Unable to believe her luck, Henrietta smiled giddily and waggled her fingers at him. "Don't worry. The dragons and I will no doubt have plenty to discuss." Such as where they had hidden the door handle.
Vaughn bowed in a courtly way utterly at odds with his previous behavior, and exited, shutting the door deliberately behind him. Skirts bunched in her hands, balanced on the very balls of her feet, Henrietta tiptoed over to the panel through which Vaughn had just departed. She paused for a moment, ear against the wall, listening to the sound of footsteps recede along the corridor, Vaughn's stride swift and assured, the other's a limp and a shuffle, scurrying to keep up.
Good. Vaughn was well and truly gone. For how long he would remain so was another matter entirely.
Hazel eyes narrowed in concentration, Henrietta examined the wall panel, with its porcelain pagodas and gilded dragons. Henrietta didn't care how much fire they breathed; she was determined to find the secret catch that opened the door before Vaughn returned.
Reaching up, she ran her fingers along the gilded frame of a painted porcelain scene, and yanked her hand back again in surprise. The china was set into the wall itself, the frame a trompe l'oeil illusion designed to give the impression of substance. The curls and protrusions that appeared so ripe for manipulation were nothing more than brushstrokes in gilt against the wood of the wall, as useless to her as the mask that lay discarded by her side.
Henrietta schooled her breathing, concentrating on drawing air past the ridges of her corset. Calm, she had to stay calm. Taking deep, exaggerated inhalations, she lifted both hands, palm up, and ran them down the length of the wall. If all else failed, at least now that she knew where the proper panel was, she could lie in wait for Vaughn's return. For him to enter, as he must, the panel would have to open, and she could bash him over the head with the heavy silver carafe he had used to cool the champagne.
Henrietta's lips twisted in a slightly hysterical smile. Miles would approve. He was a great advocate of head-bashing.
But it hadn't come to that yet, she reminded herself, squaring her shoulders. At least, not quite yet. The porcelain panels yielded no cracks or protrusions that might hide the mechanism that bolted the door. One boasted a dragon as part of the scene; the dragon was, appropriately enough, bearing off a hapless village maiden to parts unknown. The maiden didn't seem all that unhappy to be borne. Perhaps Chinese dragons were kinder to their prey than their European counterparts? mused Henrietta irrelevantly, pressing hard upon the body of the dragon. Nothing budged. Dragon and maiden remained endlessly journeying, flat against their fragile base, forever in flight.