To have Downey hurt by his carelessness was bad enough; for anything to happen to Henrietta… it was unthinkable. Miles considered dragging out some of the past exploits of the Black Tulip, including his charming habit of carving his calling card into the flesh of his victims, but prolonging the discussion would only make matters worse. The more he said, the more intrigued Henrietta would be, and the more intrigued Henrietta was…
His voice came out harsher than he had intended. "Stay out of this, Hen. This is no parlor game."
"But, Miles, I'm in it already. Whoever, it is, he's looking for me, too."
"All the more reason for you to be even more careful. Have you considered joining your mother in Kent for a few weeks?"
"And catch the mumps?"
Miles stood abruptly. "The mumps are the least of my worries." Henrietta stood, too, looking mutinous. "The best way to secure all of our safety is to catch the spy."
"Don't worry." Miles started off down the corridor. "I will." Henrietta trotted along after him. "Don't you mean, we will?" "You are going back to the duchess. That woman is better protection than a citadel."
In front of them, Henrietta could hear the hubbub of voices that betokened the more populated parts of the party. She yanked on Miles's arm, eager to have her say before they once more joined the throng.
"Miles, I'm not going to sit idly by while you do all the work." Miles didn't say anything. He just looked stubborn.
Ha! thought Henrietta, clapping her golden mask to her face and following her glowering escort in the direction of the dowager. Miles didn't know the first thing about stubborn. She would talk him around tomorrow, she decided confidendy. She would ply him with tea and ginger biscuits. (Cook would surely be amenable to whipping up an extra batch.) And if that failed — Henrietta's lips curved into an anticipatory smile — why, then, she would just have to kiss him into compliance. A hardship, but such were the sacrifices one had to undergo for the sake of one's country.
Henrietta grinned all the way back to the dowager.
Miles glowered all the way back to the dowager. Miles glowered the length of three rooms. Miles glowered as he deposited Henrietta with the Dowager Duchess, and sternly advised them all to go home. Miles glowered particularly forbiddingly as the Dowager Duchess pinked him with Penelope's spear.
"I'll see you tomorrow," called out Henrietta, waving her mask at him like a triumphal banner.
Miles grunted in response. Then he resumed glowering.
Appropriating a glass of champagne, he retreated to an unoccupied alcove where he could glower at Henrietta from a safe distance. At least, he thought darkly, rubbing his bruised posterior, she would be free from harm so long as she was with the Dowager Duchess; the woman provided a better deterrent to would-be assassins and abductors than an entire Greek phalanx. Hell, ship her over to France and Napoleon would surrender within the week.
France. Miles stared grimly into the sparkling liquid in the crystal goblet. He had to find enough to conclusively prove Vaughn's guilt. The War Office wouldn't act without proof. They also wouldn't act if it meant damaging their chances of rounding up the rest of Vaughn's contacts first.
The War Office and Miles had slighdy different priorities at the moment.
Across the room, he heard a high, clear, utterly unmistakable laugh, and winced in a way that had nothing to do with French agents.
Maybe if he asked nicely the War Office would send him on assignment to Siberia.
Chapter Twenty
Excursion: an intelligence-gathering mission undertaken in some form of disguise
Excursion, delightfuclass="underline" an intelligence-gathering mission of no little success
See also under Jaunt, pleasant.
"What do you want? "
A woman with a glaringly white fichu draped over her ample bosom glowered from the open doorway of 13, rue Nicoise.
"A room," said the girl standing on the stoop. Her lusterless dark hair was pulled severely back beneath a neat cap, but the rest of her appearance showed signs of neglect; her collar and cuffs drooped limply, and there was a weary look about her gray eyes. "Not for me," she added hastily, as the door began to close. "For my mistress. She heard you had rooms to let."
"Your mistress," repeated the woman in the doorway derisively, her sharp eyes roaming over frayed cuffs and scuffed boots. The starched fabric of her apron rusded against the wood of the door frame. "What's your mistress doing looking for rooms here?"
"She's a… widow," explained the girl earnestly. "A respectable widow."
The woman's eyes narrowed at the telltale pause. "I know her kind, and we don't need none of that sort around here."
The girl twisted her hands in her apron. "But I was told…"
"Told!" the woman snorted. "I know what you was told. But you can just put it right out of your mind. I run a respectable house, I do. Not like her as was here before."
"Here before?" the maidservant echoed in a small voice, her eyes darting longingly past the bulk of the proprietress to the painfully clean foyer beyond.
"Madame Dupree," the woman spat the name out as though it tasted foul. "Take anyone, that one would. The goings-on in this house! Enough to make a respectable woman blush, it was. Gentlemen callers coming and going, cigar stains on the sheets, wine spilled on the carpets."
"Even Englishmen, I heard," the maidservant ventured timidly.
"English, Prussian, all manner of riffraff." The woman's white cap rustled as she shook her head over past depravity. "Didn't matter none to her so long as they payed their rent proper. I had my work cut out for me cleaning it out, I did."
"Where did they all go?" asked the maidservant, wide-eyed.
"No interest of mine." The woman's lips hardened into a determined line. "So you can just tell your mistress she'll have to look for lodging elsewhere."
"But — "
The maidservant staggered back as the door thudded shut. Through an open window came the sound of a mop being vigorously applied.
As she moved out of sight of the house, the girl's dejected slump disappeared, and her pace accelerated to a brisk walk. The black hair dye made her head and eyebrows itch mercilessly, but Jane Wooliston resisted the urge to scratch as she made her way rapidly from the rue Nicoise back to the Hotel de Balcourt, looking to all the world like an anxious servant on an errand for a demanding mistress. She would be able to doff her costume soon enough; she had found out what she wanted to know.
Number Thirteen, rue Nicoise was a boardinghouse. In an unfashionable neighborhood, it currently catered to the poor but respectable, to hard-working clerks and maiden aunts eking out the end of their days on meager savings. The hall had been as painfully whitewashed as the proprietress's linen; any speck of dirt would no doubt be pounced upon and eliminated as soon as it crossed the threshold.
It was not at all the sort of establishment one would expect Lord Vaughn to patronize.
From the woman's tone, Jane surmised that the boardinghouse, until recently, had served a clientele of another sort entirely, dubious characters living on the fringe of the demimonde, a haven for runaways and rendezvous. That, decided Jane, made a good deal more sense. The illusion of assignation could provide an excellent pretense for meetings that had more to do with policy than paramours. No one would think anything of a gentleman haring off to the seedier parts of the city for a bit of illicit amusement.
She would, determined Jane, weaving her way around a dray cart blocking the street, have to discover how long ago the boardinghouse had come under its current management. The former proprietress would be located, and discreetly questioned as to the prior inhabitants of the house. It was a pity Dupree was such a common name, but Jane had no qualms about her ability to locate her. Beneath her serene countenance, a plan began to form. She would send one of her men, in the guise of an anxious brother seeking a sister who had fled from the bosom of her family. Naturally, the concerned brother would be anxious to know not only the whereabouts of his "sister," but any people with whom that ill-fated and fictitious female had come in contact, especially men who might have taken advantage of her youth and innocence. It would make a most affecting tale.