The Deception of the Emerald Ring (9 page)

By noon the following day, no fewer than twenty-eight versions of what was popularly being called the Pinchingdale Peccadillo were making the rounds of the ton.

By the time Geoffrey trudged down the hall of the War Office, the number had escalated to fifty-two, complete with several minor variants. There was even a rollicking ballad that was being sung in the coffeehouses to the tune of "Greensleeves." Not to be outdone, the printers of broadsheets, loath to miss out on a lucrative bit of libel, had rushed into action, publishing some of the more lurid versions of the tale, complete with crudely tinted illustrations. As he made his way from Doctors Commons to Crown Street, Geoff had spied no fewer than five cartoons. One, subtitled "How to Chuse," featured a leering Geoff with an Alsworthy in either arm, each in a considerable state of dishabille. Geoff knew it was meant to be him because the author had considerately labeled it, just in case there might be any mistakes as to the intended identity. Another would-be wit had put out a tinted woodcut, with the heading "All's Worthy in the Dark," that left little of what might be considered "worthy" to the imagination.

Geoff's only consolation, if consolation it could be called, was that the pictures in the cartoons looked nothing like any of them. He had been able to slip entirely unnoticed through the gossiping throngs in which his name was being bandied about with unabated gusto.

"You," pronounced Wickham, without looking up from the letter he was signing, "are late."

Geoff refrained from reminding Wickham that his relationship with the War Office was conducted on an entirely voluntary basis. Back in the old days, before Richard had decamped for the pastoral pleasures of life in Sussex with his bride, the League of the Purple Gentian had operated autonomously from their base in Paris. Geoff plotted and planned; Richard undertook the more dashing sorts of escapades, the ones that called for black cloaks and mocking laughter; and Miles served as their contact with the powers that be back home, to ensure that they trod on no official toes. The War Office occasionally nudged them in one direction or another, but, on the whole, the League merrily went its own way, freeing prisoners from the Temple Prison, filching secret documents, and generally doing everything in their power to harry the assistant to the minister of police into a precipitate decline. They had their own web of contacts, their own personnel, and, most important, they were all the way across the Channel, too far for Wickham to snap his fingers and expect them to come running.

It wasn't that Geoff didn't respect William Wickham. He did. The man was doing the best he could in a damnable situation, trying to rope flighty émigrés into line, encourage sedition in France, and discourage the same within England. Geoff didn't envy him the job. He just wished Wickham would leave him to his.

But the situation on the Continent was too dire to quibble about such minor matters as lines of command. Geoff slid into the chair across from Wickham's desk, placing his hat and gloves neatly on one knee. "Circumstances detained me."

"Let us hope they do not continue to do so." Without further preamble, Wickham struck straight at the heart of the matter. "You're aware that Robert Emmet is back in Ireland?"

Geoff dragged his mind away from his own difficulties and onto England's. As far as the safety of the realm was concerned, Robert Emmet spelled trouble.

"So I heard. Along with Russell, Quigley, and Byrne."

"Exactly," said Wickham. "All veterans of the rising in 'ninety-eight. I hardly need tell you what this signifies."

Like many Irish nationalists, Emmet had fled to France in the wake of the abortive rebellion of 1798, leaving behind his country, but not his cause. It was too much to hope that Emmet might have been distracted by the legendary wine and women of France. As far as Emmet was concerned, a tavern was just a convenient place to hold clandestine meetings. Had they been on the same side, Geoff would have found that tendency admirable. As it was, it was merely alarming. Since their arrival in France, Emmet and his fellow United Irishmen had been laboring tirelessly to drum up funds and troops to have another go at what they had been unable to accomplish in '98.

Emmet's reappearance in Ireland could mean just one thing.

"Unless they've suddenly changed their tune?" Geoff propped one leg against the opposite knee. "Rebellion."

"They are moving far faster than we anticipated. We had hoped Emmet would remain in Paris until he could be sure of French aid. It would, at least, have given us more time," Wick-ham said tiredly. "You know how the situation stands in Ireland."

"Unfortunately," replied Geoff. The reports from his informant in Dublin had grown increasingly bleak over the last few months. The word "desperate" had been liberally scattered through the last. He knew how they felt.

"'Unfortunately' is too mild a word. We've been systematically stripping our garrisons there to swell our defenses at home. A damnably shortsighted strategy, but there it is. Keeps the people back home happy, makes them feel safe in their beds." Wick-ham's grimace betrayed what he thought of the shifts of politicians. "We're short of men and we're short of munitions. We've made it ludicrously easy for them. All Bonaparte needs to do is to stir the waters a bit, give the rebels their heads ."

"And the back door to England lies open to him," finished Geoff grimly. "Why do something yourself when you can get someone else to do it for you?"

Wickham rubbed one wrist with the opposite hand in a habitual gesture of fatigue. "Bonaparte will let the rebels do their worst, and then march his men in at as little bother and expense to himself as possible."

"Unless," said Geoff, his keen gray eyes fixing on the map of Ireland above Wickham's head, "the rebellion can be snuffed out before it begins. Bonaparte won't be willing to invest in a full-scale invasion. He doesn't have the money."

"Not snuffed out," corrected Wickham. "Rooted out."

Geoff weighed the distinction, nodding slightly to signify understanding. "That's where I come in."

"Exactly. The Pink Carnation is already in Dublin, working to subvert Emmet's contacts with France. I want you to cover the Irish side." Wickham began ticking off tasks on his fingers. "We'll need the names of the ringleaders, their methods of operation, and their sources of funds. We know they've been manufacturing and storing arms. Those caches will need to be found and confiscated." Wickham paused, frowning abstractedly into space. "Emmet has rented a house in Butterfield Lane in Rathfarnham under the name of Robert Ellis."

"Hardly the most creative of aliases," commented Geoff. "You think he meant to be found out?"

"Precisely. We waste our resources watching the house in Rathfarnham while he wreaks havoc in Dublin. He's a clever man, even if he does write damnably bad poetry."

An unexpected stab of pain caught Geoff somewhere just below the heart. In the study at Pinchingdale House sat a half-finished poem, dedicated to his Mary. He never had succeeded in rhyming "entice" with "delight." It was too late now. Any poems he addressed to Mary at this point would be elegies, rather than love lyrics.

With an effort Geoff pulled his attention back to the matter at hand. "Emmet's verse was bad enough that Richard and I suspected it might be a code, but it didn't prove susceptible to any of the usual tests."

Wickham nodded. "I had Whittlesby in Paris look Emmet's poems over. He arrived at the same conclusion. You'll have to look farther than his poetry to divine his plans."

Geoff nodded and rose to his feet. "I have some ideas."

Wickham held up an admonitory finger. "One more thing. You know that your friend Dorrington has apprehended the Black Tulip?"

"He mentioned something to that effect," replied Geoff. "But he didn't go into details."

As to why Miles hadn't gone into details well, there were some things the War Office just didn't need to know.

In response to a summons from Miles, as urgent as it was incoherent ("Black Tulip has Hen. Help!"), Geoff had gone haring off to Loring House, ready to do his bit for the rescue mission. Instead, he had found the fray already over, and a very battered Miles and Henrietta beaming at each other in a way that didn't bode well for Miles's continued bachelordom. Where there was Miles, one could usually find Henrietta, but one didn't usually find Henrietta with her arm around Miles's waist, gazing up at him as though she were Cortez and he was her newfound land.

Geoff had retreated with a haste that bordered on flight.

He was happy for them. Truly. He couldn't imagine two people more ideally suited than Miles and Henrietta.

He just wasn't awfully keen on the word "marriage" at the moment.

"I assume you know the Marquise de Montval?" Wickham inquired, reaching for a small packet toward the end of his desk.

"Peripherally," replied Geoff. The English-born widow of a guillotined French nobleman, her undeniable beauty had made her hard to miss. Ever since her arrival in London, she had been determinedly pursuing Miles, much to the distress of Henrietta.

Henrietta had had a ridiculous theory that the marquise was working for the French, that she was, indeed

Geoff frowned. "You don't mean to say ?"

"The Black Tulip," confirmed Wickham.

"With all due respect, sir," countered Geoff, "are you certain?"

Geoff couldn't deny that all the details fit. The marquise had been in France at the start of the Terror; she had, according to Geoff's informants in Paris, belonged to a series of revolutionary societies devoted to liberty, equality, and the chopping off of heads. Her revolutionary credentials were impeccable. By all accounts, her marriage to the marquis had been a miserably unhappy one. Whether the last fact was relevant to the former was a matter of pure surmise, but, human nature being what it was, Geoff suspected that a loathing for one aristo in particular might have had something to do with the marquise's sudden spurt of egalitarian fervor.

But, try as he might, Geoff couldn't fit the Marquise de Montval into the frame marked out for the Black Tulip. Her looks were too showy, her pursuit of Miles too heavy-handed. None were what Geoff would have expected of the archrival of the League of the Purple Gentian, the operative who had personally accounted for the deaths of several of their best men. The hallmark of the Black Tulip had always been a shadowy subtlety in keeping with the silhouetted image of the flower he had chosen for his name, not the brazen bustle adopted by the marquise.

Geoff grimaced. He was sure Wickham would be thrilled to entertain a theory that flew in the face of all logic, simply because he, Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe, was having an attack of masculine intuition.

Not to mention that Geoff's intuition didn't seem to be in the best working order these days. He would have been prepared to swear that Mary's little sister was a good-natured, well-meaning sort of girl, and look where that had brought him.

"Quite certain." Wickham yanked on the string that bound the package in front of him. In a nest of brown paper lay a piece of silver shaped like the pawn from a chess set, but smaller; a tiny crystal vial; and a flimsy piece of paper twisted into the shape of a cylinder.

Geoff reached for the pawn first, knowing what he would find before he even turned it over. On the underside, just as he had expected, a series of deeply incised lines marked out the silhouette of a round-bellied flower. A tulip.

"These were discovered on her person," explained Wickham, keeping a proprietary eye on the tiny cache.

Geoff turned the seal over in his hand, feeling the faint residue of wax along the edge, his skin scraping against the nicks in the silver that came from long and careless use. The knob fit neatly into the palm of his hand. Against the tangible reality of the seal, his objections seemed even more illusory.

"You have her in custody?" he asked.

"We did."

"Did?"

Geoff waited for Wickham to elaborate. He didn't. Instead, he tapped a finger against the scarred surface of his desk, and said, "We have reason to believe that the marquise is even now on her way to Ireland."

Geoff set the seal down on the desk with a distinct click. "Won't she wonder at my sudden appearance in Ireland? The Dublin Season doesn't begin until December."

Wickham handed Geoff a folded piece of paper. "You," he instructed, "are in Ireland to purchase a horse you wish to run in the Epsom. Naturally, you would wish to inspect the animal yourself. All of your instructions are on this piece of paper. Read it and then burn it."

Geoff refrained from commenting that it had never occurred to him to carry out those tasks in the opposite order. Wickham would not be amused.

He was also still speaking. "A packet leaves for Dublin by way of Holyhead tomorrow afternoon."

Geoff resisted the craven desire to run for the packet and disappear into Hibernian obscurity where scheming adventuresses in search of a title would fear to follow. But the special license—the new special license—was already in his pocket, the papers drawn up, and the parson engaged.

With a twist of his lips, he shook his head. "I can't leave tomorrow. I have one small annoyance to deal with before I can leave for Ireland."

Wickham frowned. "See that this small annoyance doesn't detain you too long."

"Oh, it won't," said Geoff blandly, drawing on his gloves. "You can be sure of that."

Wickham lowered the Black Tulip's seal to the desk with a fatalistic thump. "Lord Pinchingdale, the one thing I have learned is that it is best never to be sure of anything."

Given last night's events, Geoff was inclined to agree. Until midnight last night, he had been quite sure that the dawn would see him married to Mary Alsworthy. Instead instead he found himself making hurried—and unwanted—preparations to marry her scheming sister.

Replacing his hat, Geoff took his leave of Wickham. He had one last, unpleasant errand to undertake before he could seek out his study and a bottle of brandy, not necessarily in that order.

Sleep would have been an impossibility the night before, even if there had been any night left to sleep in. Instead, upon departing the Alsworthys', Geoff had gone straight to his study. Stacking his working papers to one side, he had pulled out a blank piece of paper and dipped his quill in the ink pot. And got no further. The sound of ink dripping from his pen joined the steady tick of the clock on the mantel.