India Black and the Widow of Windsor (4 page)

That did it. Nothing gets my back up like condescension, especially from the likes of French, whose chestnuts I had pulled from the fire once or twice on our previous escapade.

“En garde,” I cried, with no attempt to roll my “r’s.” I surged forward, waving my foil, aiming at the smug smile I could sense behind French’s mask.

He met my blade easily with his own, flicking mine to one side as though it had been a circling gnat. In the next instant, the button of his foil came to rest against my jacket. I looked down in some dismay, for I really detest being beaten so easily, and especially by French. Perhaps I should have been less impetuous in my assault.

Naturally, like all men, he could not leave well enough alone.

“You see, India. I was correct. You lack control. You allowed your anger to carry you along on an ill-planned and poorly executed attack, which I parried with no difficulty.”

I shoved the blade of his foil from my chest and took up my position again. “Come on then, you pompous git.”

For the next hour, we danced and capered up and down the length of the piste, our blades ringing as they clashed together. French moved with suppleness and grace, now parrying my thrust with a minimum of effort, now executing a perfect
balestra
, jumping forward slightly (which caused me to take a short step backward), then lunging after me with his sword arm thrust forward. I caught the blade of his foil with my own, turning my wrist sharply to push the tip away from my target area, then rotated the wrist back and surged forward in a counter attack, my eyes focused on the seam in French’s fencing jacket. He evaded my thrust, tilting his hips and swiveling his torso, and then came at me again. He feinted once and nearly drew me in, but I detected the hesitation in his blade and drew back before he had time to straighten his arm and touch me in the target area.

While French executed his moves with the elegance of a Russian ballerina, taunting me with his superior technique, touching me at will, I hopped about like a chimpanzee just let out of its cage, attempting to block his advances and launch a counterattack. French kept shouting instructions to me in his impeccable French accent (well, I assumed it was impeccable, dashed if I know, really, since I don’t speak the language). One thing I was sure of, however, was that any number of incomprehensible commandments would not improve my fencing. I was staying in the bout through sheer willpower and cussedness. The muscles in my thighs burned like fire and my lungs felt seared, but I’d be damned if I’d give up until I’d acquainted French with the feel of my foil planted firmly in his chest. I renewed my offensive with vigor. Once the tip of my foil was an inch from the cloth of his jacket, but he deftly raised his blade and deflected my own, then spun effortlessly away. Twice more I came within range of touching him, lowering my head and charging like a mad bull, hoping to catch him off guard with the quickness of my movements, but again he pirouetted out of reach of my blade, shaking his head in disgust.

“Less enthusiasm, please,” he said, “and more finesse.”

I’d had several customers in my time that could have benefitted from those instructions. Alas, enthusiasm was all I had at this point (and it was waning fast). Any finesse I might have possessed had vanished like an oasis in a sandstorm. Well, that left guile. Hadn’t French told me that the premier fencers used various means (within the conventions of the sport, of course) to distract, confuse or startle their opponents? I’d do the same, and to hell with the conventions.

French was waggling the point of his foil at me, looking for an opening. He began to advance slowly.

“Mungo?”

“What?” French checked his progress.

“Your name, is it Mungo?”

French has never disclosed his Christian name to me, and I’ve amused myself often since I’ve known him by guessing just what moniker his parents had bestowed on him.

“Of course not. That’s a ridiculous name.”

“Sholto?”

French put down his sword in disgust. “It is not Mungo. It is not Sholto. Nor is it Ivo. Are you ready to fence now?”

“Agmondesham?”

“Bloody hell. No one is named Agmondesham. At least not in this country.”

“I beg to differ, sir. Agmondesham Vesey, the Irish MP.”

“Irish. Proves my point exactly.”

“Hereward?”

French advanced on me like lightning. I raised my blade to fend him off and retreated. Rapidly. He looked very annoyed. Good.

“Wilberforce?”

“No,” said French. He was almost within range. Just a few steps more and my trap would snap shut.

“Eglantyne?”

“Wherever do you find these na . . . ?”

I slithered to one side, and his point went flying past my left sleeve. I stepped into his oncoming body, my foil outstretched. Got you now, you bastard, I thought, just as he whipped his foil back into position and slid the blade down mine until our sword guards met with a resounding clang. He pushed me back, rather casually, and buried the button of his foil against my breast.

“Damn and blast!” I was cross. Usually, the name game drove French to bouts of inarticulate exasperation. Who knew he could fence under such conditions?

I discarded my mask and collapsed in a heap on the floor. “It’s no good, French. You’ve exhausted me. I’ll never learn this bloody sport, and frankly, I don’t give a tinker’s damn if I do.”

French removed his mask and wiped his sleeve over his brow. “It isn’t just sport, India. It’s a killing art.”

“Well, I shall just have to hope I don’t encounter any pedigreed Germans with dueling scars and a murderous disposition. If I do, I shall run away as fast as a rat up a drainpipe.”

French tucked his legs beneath him and sank down beside me. “It’s the French and Italians you should worry about. They fight with skill; displaying a dueling scar on your cheek would be tantamount to admitting you were a poor fencer. Germans are brutes, charging and slashing like barbarians. Come to think of it, you fight a bit like them.”

“I’m not overly fond of the Krauts. They always smell of stale beer and sausage, and they’re too frugal for my taste. However, I would point out that their ancestors toppled Rome, thereby proving that civilized fighting is an oxymoron. I’ll put my money on the inhuman savage any day.”

A husky cough cut short French’s reply. We turned simultaneously to behold the fellow who had interrupted our conversation.

“I do hope I’m not intruding.” He was as squat and pale as spring’s first mushroom, with a lumpen nose and sharp eyes.

“Harry.” French rose to his feet. “Don’t worry, you’re not interfering with our lesson. We were finished.” He turned to me and offered me his hand, pulling me to my feet. “May I present Miss India Black? India, this is Harry Parkman. He works for the prime minister.”

“Miss Black,” said Harry, with a secret little smile that I didn’t much like. “I’ve heard of you.”

“Oh, yes? From whom?”

“Why, the prime minister, of course. Lord Beaconsfield himself. He holds you in great esteem.” He gave me the once-over. “And I can certainly see why.”

I don’t mind being scrutinized by men; it’s been my stock-in-trade for many years, so why should I complain now? Besides, I don’t think I flatter myself when I say that even sweaty and disheveled as I was at that moment, I was still a damned handsome woman, capable of turning any man’s head.

“How is the old reprobate?” I asked.

Harry laughed and French scowled.

“I mean that only in the political sense, of course,” I hastened to add. French had a soft spot for Benjamin Disraeli, first Earl of Beaconsfield, the present prime minister of Great Britain and French’s employer. Well, I must admit I was rather fond of the old boy myself. Any Jew (yes, I know, his father had converted to the Church of England, but Dizzy would’ve joined the Ancient Order of Druids if it would have improved his chances of becoming PM) who could climb the greasy pole to the summit of British politics deserved some respect, in my book. I always root for the underdog and the outsider, and Dizzy, with his Jewish ethnicity, his outlandish clothes, his dyed black ringlets and his hooked nose, was the epitome of a social pariah. Not unlike, I might add, a prostitute.

“The prime minister sends his regards, and requests that you and Mr. French consult with him tonight at ten o’clock at his lodgings in the Langham Hotel.” The request sounded oddly formal coming from this little toadstool.

“You can tell him we’ll be there,” said French.

Just like the man, I thought. Never bothers to consult me; just feels free to commit me to any sort of undertaking without so much as a by-your-leave. And I’d have certainly enquired why Dizzy wanted to meet with us. But I suppose French was merely complying with convention by not deigning to ask the messenger any questions. He’d reserve those for Dizzy himself. Still, I had to admit my curiosity was aroused. What could the prime minister want with me? French worked for the man, so if Harry had said Dizzy wanted French to make tracks for Hong Kong, there’d be French on a ship headed east. But if the great man himself was summoning me, then he must have need of my special talents. I’d rather enjoyed myself chasing that damned War Office memo all over Kent and across the English Channel, shooting Cossacks and matching wits with the tsar’s agents. Truth to tell, the excitement of running my own establishment had begun to pall; riding herd on a group of bints was no easy task. I mean, there are only so many times one can tell a girl “no discounts for your favorites,” or put off the local wine merchant until the next ship arrives from India and disgorges a group of sex-starved cavalry officers on Lotus House. I was growing weary of the necessity of providing constant attention to the niggling details of operating a business (and God, there are a lot of them). I needed a new challenge to stimulate my interest, and perhaps the prime minister had something in mind. My spirits rose at the prospect.

At the appointed hour that evening, French and I presented ourselves at the door of Dizzy’s hotel room. Since the death of his wife a few years before, the prime minister had given up his London residence and rented rooms at the Langham Hotel, a discreet and elegant establishment. I thought French might prefer to enter through a side door, so as not to put my womanly charms on display to all the venerable Tory duffers having their after-dinner port in the lobby, but we marched straight through the reception area and up the stairs, while the old coots waggled their eyebrows and looked enviously (but erroneously) at French.

Dizzy himself opened the door to us, grasping French’s hand in a manly grip and bending over mine like the gallant he was. I admit to some shock at his appearance. It had been a few weeks since I had seen him, but he seemed to have aged several years. He’d always had the appearance of an aging Levantine roué, with his tinted, thinning curls and sensuous lips. Now he looked positively ancient, his face heavily creased with lines and white as paper.

“Welcome,” he cried, flinging open the door and ushering us into a large sitting room, where a fire, ferociously hot, burned brightly in the grate. I removed my hat and gloves and took in the room. Not to my taste certainly, but decorated in the style of the day: dark green wallpaper with a scrolled overlay of vines and leaves in a rich cream colour, matching fabric on the chairs, an excess of Queen Anne furniture in mahogany and rosewood, and an assortment of busts, pictures, mosaics and ferns adorning every available space. The drapes were velvet, in the same dark green as the wallpaper, with a heavy gilded valance. Against this somber (and in my view, oppressive) background, Dizzy stood out like a macaw in a mortuary. He wore a silk dressing gown of crimson, soft slippers of scarlet leather tooled with his crest and a scarlet fez with a black silk tassel dangling over his ear. A single black ringlet corkscrewed out of the fez over his forehead. Lord. If the man didn’t have style, at least he had courage.

He petted and cosseted us, pushing us into chairs nearest the fire and summoning a prim youngster to serve us drinks (brandy and soda for French, and a neat whisky for me), all the while prattling on about the events of the day, the state of the Conservative Party, the damned Russians (and here he looked a bit like the fiery old Disraeli, for he hates the Russians as only a former Jew can hate a regime that purges its Jewish population in periodic orgies of violence). When we’d received our drinks and the young man had delivered a cup of warm milk (warm milk!) to the prime minister, his torrent of speech finally subsided and he sank into a chair beside us. For a moment we sat in silence (quite uncharacteristic when Dizzy was in the room), sipping our drinks, with French and I waiting politely for Dizzy to get around to the reason for our visit and him staring gloomily at the fire. Finally, he stirred and spoke.

“You’ll be wondering why I’ve summoned you here.” Politicians are great creatures for the obvious.

Dizzy sighed morosely. Good Gad, I wondered, what could have happened? A revolt in Firozabad? Those demented Afrikaners stirring up the Zulu again? The Suez silted closed?