The Masque of the Black Tulip (41 page)

"You couldn't?" she said neutrally, wondering if it might not have been better just to have been shot back at Streatham Common and have done with it. At least then, Miles could have borne her broken body in his manly arms. Hmph. Henrietta abandoned the image. Knowing her, she would probably have contrived only to be wounded, and would have been cranky and in pain, and there would have been nothing the least bit romantic about it.

Miles squared his shoulders, which, given the breadth of his shoulders, was an impressive sight to behold, and one to which Henrietta, even in her state of confusion, could not be completely immune.

"They're not bad as bachelor lodgings go, and Downey keeps things tiptop, but—you would be out of place. They're not what you're used to."

"But—" began Henrietta, and then checked herself, biting down on the impulse to protest that wherever he was would be a home to her. If he was looking for excuses, reasons to be rid of her, it would be far more graceful just to accede and let him take her home. But why hadn't he taken her to Uppington House?

Some of the strain evident in Miles's face eased as he grinned unwillingly at her. "Hear me out before you argue with me, all right?"

Henrietta's heart clenched at the affectionate tone, and she nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak.

"I couldn't take you to Jermyn Street, because Turnip would be right, it would be havey-cavey. It would smack of…" Miles waved a hand helplessly in the air.

"Elopement?" supplied Henrietta numbly.

"Exactly. Hiding out in hired rooms… it would just be all wrong. You deserve a real home, not shoddy hired rooms."

"But, why here?" she asked. Was he planning to put her up in Lor-ing House for the night before conveying her back to her family for the inevitable conflagration? She supposed she could always go to Europe for a bit until the resulting scandal died down… the nunnery was beginning to look very attractive again.

"Well"—Miles stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the railing in his favorite pose, looking painfully boyish—"I couldn't very well take you back to Uppington House, and it might have taken a while to find a suitable townhouse to let. And my parents are never here to use this old pile, so… welcome home."

"Home?"

Miles began to look a little worried. "The furnishings are probably a bit out of date, but the house itself isn't that bad. It will need some cleaning up, but at least there's plenty of room, and—"

"You mean you don't want an annulment?" Henrietta blurted out.

"What?" exclaimed Miles, staring at her with evident confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh," said Henrietta, feeling about two inches tall and wishing there were a convenient toadstool she could crawl under. "Never mind, then."

"Hen." Miles put a hand beneath her chin and tipped her face up towards his, looking earnestly down at her. Henrietta didn't even want to think what she must look like, her face streaked with dust and grime from the road, her hair a snarled mess. "I have a proposition to put to you."

"Yes?" she said hesitantly, wishing she didn't look quite so much like Medusa after a particularly violent rampage.

"A sort of favor," Miles continued. "Not just for me, but for both of us."

Henrietta waited in silence, nerves stretched to the breaking point. She wasn't even going to venture to guess. Bad things happened when she did that. Like annulments and toadstools and cabbages.

"I know this hasn't been the most"—Miles cast about for words— "regular of courtships. But, if you think you can manage it, I'd like to put the manner of our marriage behind us. After all, we have more of a chance than most couples. We rub along fairly well together. And we like each other. That's more than most marriages have to start out with." Miles's hands dropped from her face to her shoulders, holding her just far enough away so he could see her face. "What do you say?"

What Henrietta wanted to say wasn't easily translated into words. Part of her was basking in sheer relief. Having braced herself all day for the moment when Miles would present all sorts of excellent arguments for the dissolution of their marriage, having him entreat for the contrary took her completely by surprise.

And yet… yet… there was a sting to it. It was kind, and it was sensible, but how meager kind and sensible felt. Henrietta certainly had no hopes for effusive declarations, but, in an inexplicable way, the lukewarm affections Miles had invoked were almost more hurtful than an outright repudiation. A line from an old poem flitted through her head: "Give me more love or more disdain, the torrid or the frozen zone." She had never understood it then, but now she did; love or disdain, at least either stirred the passions. But, oh, to be treated by the object of one's adoration with temperate fondness! It blighted any romantic illusions more surely than an outright rejection.

Gazing wordless into Miles's earnest brown eyes, Henrietta felt very small and very vulnerable. But it was, after all, not his fault if she didn't inspire him with burning passion, and he was doing his utmost to make the best of an awkward situation—which was more than she was doing. Henrietta gathered her scattered wits together. What Miles proposed was eminently sensible. And she was, she thought to herself wryly, always sensible. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing. And maybe… in time… Henrietta squelched that thought before it could grow up. She was letting herself in for enough heartbreak as it was.

"Yes," she said tentatively. "Yes. I'd like that."

Miles let out a gusty sigh of relief. "You won't regret it, Hen." With one exuberant movement, he swooped down and whisked Henrietta into his arms.

"What"—Henrietta clung to his neck for dear life as he bounded up the front steps two at a time—"on earth do you think you're doing?"

Miles grinned rakishly. "Carrying my wife over the threshold, what else?"

* * *

Nuptials: an alliance between interested parties for the furtherance of a mutual goal

—from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

"The threshold appears to be closed," pointed out Henrietta. "So little faith," complained Miles. "Watch and learn."

"If you even think of using me as a battering ram…" warned Henrietta, as Miles lifted a booted foot and rammed it hard against the door.

On the third kick, the door flew open, propelled by an indignant individual with white hair growing in tufts from either side of his forehead like the horns of an untidy devil.

"In civilized establishments," he began strongly, chest puffing out to alarming proportions, before registering the identity of the heedless hoodlum who had been battering at the hallowed portals of Loring House. Henrietta, held horizontal at just that level, watched with fascination as the irate personage's chest abrupdy deflated. "Master Miles! Master Miles?"

The butler's eyes flew from Miles to Henrietta and back to Miles in a state of evident alarm. The Loyal Retainer's Guide to Better Buttling, while excellent with regard to tips for polishing silver and removing the cloaks of foreign dignitaries, was highly unclear as to the proper protocol for receiving prodigal sons and prone women.

"Hullo, Stwyth," said Miles exuberantly, not in the least bit daunted. Henrietta resisted the urge to hide under his cravat. "This is your new mistress, Lady Henrietta."

Henrietta gave a sheepish little wave as Miles bore her triumphantly across the threshold beneath the nose of the flabbergasted butler.

"Stwyth?" she whispered to Miles.

"He's from Wales," Miles whispered back. "They haven't discovered vowels yet."

"My lady," stuttered Stwyth. "Sir. We weren't informed of your arrival. Your rooms… the house… we didn't know…"

"That's all right, Stwyth. Neither did I," Miles tossed back nonchalantly over his shoulder as he strode towards the stairs. "But we'll be staying here from now on."

The butler hastily gathered the tattered shreds of his composure, drawing himself up to his full height, which was somewhat shorter than Henrietta's, or what Henrietta's would have been, had she not been dangling several feet off the ground. Henrietta tried to remedy that fact by dint of rolling sideways, but Miles held firm.

"May I say, sir, on behalf of the entire staff," announced Stwyth, trotting along behind, "how delighted we are that you have finally decided to make your home at Loring House."

"You may," acceded Miles, starting up the stairs, Henrietta squished firmly against his chest, "but preferably some other time. You can go, Stwyth. Go…" What did butlers do when they weren't opening doors? "Go buttle."

Under the crook of Miles's arm, Henrietta saw Stwyth's rigid features curve into what, in a lesser mortal, would have been a grin.

"Indeed, sir," he intoned, and bowed himself hastily out of the hall.

Henrietta turned bright red and banged her head against Miles's cravat. "Oh dear," she moaned. "He knows."

"Hen?" Miles jiggled her to make her look up. "We're married. It's allowed."

"I still don't really feel married," admitted Henrietta.

"We can work on that," said Miles, kicking open a door at the head of the stairs. "In fact, we will definitely work on that."

The door opened onto a small room furnished with a writing desk and several delicate chairs. It was hard to tell what else the room might contain, because the drapes were drawn, and most of the furniture shrouded in Holland covers to protect against dust and the ravages of time.

Miles backed out again. "Damn. Wrong room."

"Shouldn't you put me down?" asked Henrietta plaintively, as her dangling feet narrowly escaped amputation on the door frame.

"Only"—Miles leered dramatically down at her—"once I've found a bed."

Just in case she had any ideas of escaping, Miles boosted her higher into the air. Henrietta let out a squeal of protest and clasped her arms more firmly around his neck. "Don't drop me!" she demanded, laughing.

"That's more like it," said Miles with great satisfaction, hefting her happily in his arms. His voice softened. "I like it when you laugh."

Something in his expression made Henrietta's throat tighten. "With you, or at you?" she quipped uneasily.

"Near me," Miles said, tightening his hold on her. He rubbed his cheek against her hair. "Definitely near me."

"I think that could be arranged," Henrietta managed, doing her utmost to refrain from blurting out embarrassing declarations of love that could only alarm Miles and put an end to their precarious entente.

"I think it already has been," Miles countered, striding down the hall. "Or didn't you hear that bit this morning?"

"I was a bit distracted."

Miles sobered. "I noticed. But," he said firmly, stopping in front of a door at the end of the hall, "we are not going to think about any of that tonight. Tonight, there is just us. No French spies, no angry relatives. Agreed?"

Henrietta was quite sure there was a flaw in that plan somewhere, a rather large flaw, having to do with someone chasing them while hurling bullets in their direction, but it was very hard to think logically when Miles looked at her like that, his brown eyes intent on hers. He was so close that she could see the little crinkles at the sides of his eyes, crinkled caused by a lifetime of smiles, and the darker hue of his hair near the brow where the sun hadn't touched it.

"Do I have any choice in the matter?" asked Henrietta with mock solemnity, wishing her voice didn't sound quite so breathless.

"You did promise to obey." Miles tipped her towards the doorknob. "Would you mind getting that, please? My hands are full."

"I'm not sure I would exactly call that a promise," Henrietta hedged, obediently leaning over and turning the doorknob. "It was really more of a… um…"

"Promise," reiterated Miles smugly, shouldering open the door and edging sideways into the room. It smelt of dust and disuse, but in the light from the hallway, he could see that it contained the crucial item: a bed.

"Strongly worded suggestion," Henrietta finished triumphantly, tipping her face up towards his, with an expression that dared him to try to top that.

"So what you're saying," said Miles, with a mischievous glint in his eye that Henrietta knew of old, combined with something new and infinitely more unsettling, "is that I have to find other ways of making you cooperate."

"Ye-es," said Henrietta, noticing slightly uneasily that they were rapidly approaching the bed. Beds and wedding nights did tend to go together. She tried to look as though being borne off to a very large bed were a commonplace occurrence.

Which, she thought with a slight pang of jealousy, for the marquise it probably was. Whether the marquise had been borne off by Miles was too distressing a question for Henrietta to consider.

"What did you have in mind?" she asked instead.

"This," said Miles, and kissed her before she could say anything else, kicking the door closed behind them.

As a technique for inducing cooperation, it had much to recommend it. By the time Miles lifted his mouth from hers, Henrietta was having a very hard time remembering what they had been sparring about in the first place. She wasn't even entirely sure about her own name.

"But…" she began dazedly, since Miles couldn't be allowed to have the last word—or the last kiss.

Miles grinned roguishly. "Not convinced yet?" he asked rhetorically, and kissed her again, a kiss that made its predecessor feel like a discreet peck in a drawing room. His arms were warm and tight around her, pressing her so closely that Henrietta lost all sense of where her body left off and his began. The rising heat between them burned layers of clothes into nothingness. Henrietta's senses were filled with Miles; the scent of his hair and his skin, the sensation of his tongue filling her mouth, sealing her lips to his, the press of his waistcoat buttons against her side, and the prickle of his hair beneath her fingers, all melded into a complete cosmos, a world where nothing existed but the unit formed by their joined lips, hands, bodies. The room tilted and swayed, like a planet spinning on an astronomer's model.