Head down, shoulders bowed, Jane crossed the last few yards to her cousin's house. If Lord Vaughn had been using 13, rue Nifoise as a base for nefarious activities, the boardinghouse could be the key to unraveling an entire network of agents.
Her mind rapidly working over this new piece of information, the Pink Carnation slipped in through the servants' entrance of the Hotel de Balcourt. She had dye to rinse out of her hair, orders to issue, a coded report to send to Mr. Wickham, a supper party to attend, and a meeting of the United Irishmen to infiltrate. Unseen, the Pink Carnation ascended the servants' stairs to her own room and, efficiently divesting herself of her servile garb, prepared to don her third disguise of the afternoon — that of elegant young lady.
Chapter Twenty-One
Accident, an: an event causing harm or inconvenience brought about by the agency of malignant French operatives; generally designed to give a spurious appearance of inadvertence
"Henrietta! You're finally here!"
Henrietta's diminutive sister-in-law Amy barreled down the front steps of Selwick Hall like a muslin-clad cannonball, catching up her skirts as she ran towards the hired traveling chaise. Two immense torches lighted the front entrance of Selwick Hall, casting odd glints off Amy's short, dark curls, and the horses' trappings.
The six-hour trip had stretched to eight, thanks to a broken axle barely an hour out of London. Fortunately, the accident had occurred as they lumbered along behind a crowded mail coach on Croydon High Street; they had been moving at barely more than a walk when the wheel began to tilt ominously, and the chaise with it. Henrietta and her maid had exited the conveyance with more speed than grace, taking refuge at the Greyhound, one of the town's chief posting houses, where a new chaise was hired, the luggage all reloaded, and the tired horses refreshed.
Enveloping Henrietta in an enthusiastic hug, Amy all but dragged her down the folding steps of the traveling chaise. Tugging her towards the front door, Amy exclaimed, "How are you? Did you have a frightful trip from London? We were so worried about you! Do you want to freshen up? Just wait until you hear the plans for the weekend!"
Henrietta hugged Arny back, made the requisite number of delighted squealing noises, and submitted to being tugged.
"Where is Richard?" she asked, as a footman bowed them into the front hall. The footman, like everyone else in the house, was a devoted participant in her brother's undercover activities. No one was employed at Selwick Hall who had not been proven entirely trustworthy. A mistake in judgment could prove fatal. It had, after all, been a French operative, posing as a lady's maid, who had caused the demise of one of her brother's closest friends. "Doesn't he love me anymore?"
"Oh, he'll be along," said Amy, helping to divest Henrietta of her bonnet and shawl. "He was supervising the footmen setting up the targets and climbing walls for Saturday. You won't believe all the wonderful things we have planned!"
Targets? Climbing walls? That sounded ominous. Henrietta didn't mind aiming at targets — in fact, there was a certain large, blond target she wouldn't much mind taking a shot at about now — but wall climbing? She couldn't even climb a tree. And those had branches.
Putting alarming thoughts of physical exertion aside, Henrietta broke into Amy's spate of words to edge towards what she really wanted to know. "Who else will be here this weekend?"
Amy abandoned alarming explanations about walls and steel picks. "There's Mrs. Cathcart," she said, naming a cheerful widow of middle years and ample proportions, who had made .her debut with Lady Up-pington in the latter's mythical youth, "and Miss Grey…"
"Miss Who?"
"Grey," said Amy, herding Henrietta into a small drawing room at the front of the house. "She was a governess. And then the Tholmonde-lay twins — I know they haven't a brain between them, but Richard is quite taken with the idea of identical agents."
"Is that all of us?" asked Henrietta, trying not to sound as disappointed as she felt. The Tholmondelays, pronounced, in the mysterious way of English nomenclature, Frumley, were not the men she had in mind.
"Geoff was supposed to join us, but he was unavoidably detained."
Amy rolled her eyes. "Can't you guess by whom? Oh, and then there's Miles, of course."
"Of course," echoed Henrietta, dropping down onto a blue-striped settee. "Is he here yet?"
"Miles?" Amy had to stop and think for a moment. "Not yet. He was supposed to be here hours ago. Richard wanted his help with the ropes course."
Ropes course? Henrietta didn't even want to think about it. Wasn't being a spy supposed to be a mental exercise, involving deep ratiocination? Ratiocination she could do; ropes were another matter entirely.
"Is there any tea?" she asked hopefully.
"No, but I can ring for some," replied Amy. "I'll have Cook send up some biscuits, too. Have you had anything to eat?"
"We had a light meal at the Greyhound while we were waiting for the chaise to be repaired."
"Oh, good," said Amy. "The others should be arriving tomorrow morning, just in time for the seminar on French geography. Did you know that Richard knows more than fifteen escape routes to Calais? After that, I'll be coaching everyone on local dialects. My favorite is the Marseillaise fishwife."
"The Marseillaise fishwife?" Henrietta echoed, looking longingly at the door in the hopes a tea tray would materialize.
"You get to screech a lot for that one," explained Amy enthusiastically, checking momentarily as she added, "Although the smell is dreadful. Oh, Stiles! Tea for Lady Henrietta?"
Henrietta could see why Amy had ended on an interrogative. Richard's butler had clearly already entered into the spirit of the weekend. He was wearing a striped jersey and a black beret, and had slung an odiferous necklace of onions around his neck. He looked far more likely to hit someone over the head with a bottle of Bordeaux in a rough seaside tavern than carry in a tea tray.
"Eeef eet eez posseeblah, madame," he hissed in an impenetrable accent that the Frenchest of Frenchmen wouldn't be able to understand, flung his onions more securely over his shoulder, and stalked out.
Henrietta's incredulous gaze met Amy's and the two burst into laughter. It had seemed to Richard a fine idea to incorporate an out-of-work actor into the League of the Purple Gentian, until he had realized there was one slight hitch. Stiles had a good deal of difficulty divorcing role from reality. This had, occasionally, worked in Richard's favor, but it was very hard to discern who Stiles was going to be from one moment to the next. He had a marked fondness for tragic Shakespearean heroes of the toga-wearing sort. There had been a brief, but lamentable, Macbeth phase, involving haggis on the tea tray and bagpipes at odd hours of the night.
"Even with the onions, it's an improvement on his last incarnation," pointed out Amy cheerfully.
"I don't know," mused Henrietta. "I rather liked the pirate impression. The parrot was darling."