The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (15 page)

She drew something out of her pocket and laid it on the table. It was a trumpery thing, a bracelet of gilt and pale pink enamel, with tiny seed pearls embedded in a pattern in the plaques. Gwen recognized it instantly.

“That is part of the set you gave Agnes for Christmas.”

“Yes, and look.” Jane turned the bracelet over. “The clasp isn’t broken.”

Gwen took the bracelet from her, examining it. The silver gilt was worn off in places, but it was the wear that would come with regular use, not anything that betokened foul play. “Which means it is unlikely that it was torn from her wrist. Were there any other signs of a struggle in the cottage?”

“No,” said Jane. “Of course, it’s been three weeks, so someone might have tidied the place since. But there were ashes in the fireplace. They did not look over a year old.”

Gwen looked hard at Jane, trying to winkle out what she was surmising. “You think the girls stayed there. Of their own volition.”

Jane nodded. “Possibly. Or someone made every attempt to make it look as though they did. There was also,” she added, as though it were a matter of minor import, “a schedule for the London stage on the table.”

Two young ladies, fleeing their select seminary for adventures in town, leaving their timetable behind . . .

“No,” said Gwen. “It’s too easy.”

“That was my thought too.” Jane rose, her skirt drifting gently around her as she wandered towards the mantelpiece, ticking off theories on her fingers. “One possibility: The girls were lured out into the garden, abducted, and held overnight in the gardener’s cottage. The kidnapper left the stage schedule as a false trail.”

“I don’t like it,” said Gwen. “Why would the kidnapper keep them on the school grounds overnight? There would be too much chance of being discovered. Someone might have heard them struggling—and, again, you say there was no sign of a struggle—or seen the smoke from that fire. No. I don’t believe it. Next?”

“Possibility the second.” Jane took a deep breath. “The girls planted their own false trail, deliberately leaving the bracelet to let us know they had been there.”

Gwen pulled at a loose thread on the silk upholstery. That made somewhat more sense. The girls, unused to being on their own, would have wanted someplace familiar to shelter. “Yes, but it still doesn’t tell us where they went. Or why they went,” she added as an afterthought.

Jane leaned an elbow against the mantelpiece, regarding her chaperone seriously. “Do you incline towards the kidnapping theory?”

“I don’t believe they were taken from the school, but there is some sort of foul play afoot.” Gwen left off tugging at the upholstery. “Colonel Reid and I were attacked in Bristol.”

“I gathered as much from your note,” said Jane.

Gwen shrugged. “I deemed it better to be oblique. They might merely have been footpads, but one complained to his fellows that he hadn’t been warned that we would be armed.”

“Which suggests a planned attack,” said Jane. “On you or on the Colonel?”

“I don’t know. All three rushed the Colonel, although that might have been an attempt to immobilize him and make off with me.”

Jane was quiet, thinking. She looked like a statue, entirely still, her muslin dress falling in the required classical folds by her feet. The only jarring note was the locket she wore on a ribbon around her neck. On the other side lay her signet, the sign of the Pink Carnation.

“They might just have been footpads,” said Gwen.

Jane smiled wryly, her expression too old, too world-weary for someone so young. “I thought you didn’t believe in coincidence.” She stepped lightly away from the mantel, her usual mask back in place. “Speaking of coincidence, I have secured us the tickets to the opera that you required. Aurelia Fiorila sings the part of Semira in
Artaxerxes
.” She raised a brow. “I hear it is
much
anticipated.”

Gwen rose too, lifting her reticule by the strings. Her dirty dress made her skin itch. She was yearning for a bath and some clean linen, but she had to ask, “Will the Chevalier be attending this much-anticipated event as well?”

“He will be most honored and delighted to escort us.”

Gwen looked back over her shoulder at her charge. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, missy?” she demanded. “Love—”

“Has no place in grand schemes, I know,” said Jane patiently. “Who said anything about love? You yourself once told me to keep one’s enemies close enough to poke with a parasol.”

“Yes,” said Gwen crossly. “Arm’s length.”

“Shall I ring for water for a bath for you?” said Jane, crossing the foyer ahead of her.

Gwen scowled at the back of her charge’s head, which was, as always, impeccably coiffed, no hair out of place. Her dress was spotless, her back straight, everything was entirely in order, and, yet, Gwen had a slight sense of impending doom.

“I have a slight sense of impending doom,” she declared. The words resonated rather nicely in the marble hallway.

Jane turned, one brow lifted. “A
slight
sense of impending doom? Isn’t that rather like saying that one has a mild case of bubonic plague?”

“That,” said Gwen, stalking towards the stairs and the promised bath, “isn’t the least bit funny.”

“Plague seldom is,” Jane agreed.

Gwen paused on the landing, glowering down at her charge. “Nor is allowing oneself to be distracted from one’s mission.”

For a moment, Jane seemed flummoxed. But only for a moment.

“Shall we invite Colonel Reid to the opera as well?” she asked.

Gwen was tempted to point out that Colonel Reid wasn’t a rogue of a Frenchman with dubious antecedents. No. He was a rogue of an American with dubious offspring. Since that argument wasn’t going to go very far, she stuck her nose in the air and said, “Do what you like. It’s no concern of mine.”

“We do have room in the box . . . ,” said Jane.

At some point, she would have to sneak away to investigate Fiorila’s dressing room. At least with the Colonel in the box, she would know that someone was keeping an eye on Jane. She would give him instructions. Explicit instructions. He was the father of daughters. He would understand.

“Fine,” said Gwen loftily. “Invite the Colonel. But it is entirely your decision, not mine.”

Plumeria waited until the others were occupied at the feast before slipping quietly away. From the Hall, she could hear the sounds of mirth and revelry, but in the rest of the Tower, all was silence. Somewhere, somewhere in those house of dark enchantment lay her charge, she was sure of it, no matter the many protestations of its master. It was but a matter of finding her. . . .

—From
The Convent of Orsino
by A Lady

T
he Colonel was waiting for them in the lobby when they arrived at the theatre the next night.

He had spruced himself up for the occasion, his shirt points starched and his red hair brushed to sleekness. He had traded the tattered and bloodstained jacket of their Bristol expedition for another of equally mediocre tailoring.

The elder Woolistons greeted him with pleasure and a marked lack of recollection. Upon discovering that what he knew of sheep could fit inside a bowl of porridge, Mr. Wooliston rapidly lost interest and went back into his pre-theatre sulk.

Jane walked ahead with her parents while the Colonel fell into step with Gwen behind.

“I missed you last night,” he said. “It was rather odd not having you sniping at me to drink my broth.”

“Shhh,” said Gwen automatically. Not that anyone was listening. No one would ever think to impugn her morals. She was, in the eyes of the world, not only unassailable, but hardly worth assailing. “Did you drink your broth?”

The Colonel looked like a small boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I decided a leg of mutton would do just as well.”

“They’re hardly the same thing.”

“No,” said the Colonel. “The mutton was tastier.”

The box the Woolistons had rented was off to the side, all the way to the right. It might well have been that by the time they’d arrived in Bath, all the better boxes were taken. Given that Jane had chosen the box, Gwen suspected that the choice was quite deliberate. One might not have the best view of the stage from the box, but one could see everyone else in the theatre, and far into the wings on that one side.

Gwen noticed that the Colonel relied heavily on the banister as they climbed the stairs. “How is your wound?” she asked.

“Healing cleanly.” A curtain blocked off the back of their box. The Colonel held it aside for Gwen to precede him. “Thanks to you.”

“Stop being grateful.” Gwen thumped down into the chair he held out for her. It was little, and gilded, and rocked slightly as she sat. “That much gratitude is excessively trying.”

“Would you rather I be ungrateful?” The Colonel pulled up a chair beside hers, adding, with an impish hint of mischief, “Mrs. Fustian.”

For a moment, she could imagine them back in that tiny room in the inn, waking beside him, his arm around her, his nose nuzzled into the back of her neck, the Colonel and his lady.

All pretense, she reminded herself. Pretense and expediency.

“I would rather,” said Gwen pointedly, “that we put the whole episode behind us.”

“You were the one who asked after my wound,” said the Colonel innocently.

Gwen drew herself up in her seat, her purple feathered headdress bobbing. “I was being polite.”

“You, polite?” The Colonel grinned at her. “Pull the other one.”

Blast the man. It was impossible not to smile back. Gwen did her best to convert the expression into a grimace. She was aided in that by the addition of the final member of their party, who came breezing into the box on a wave of expensive cologne.

“Forgive me,” said the Chevalier, executing an elaborate bow. “I did not mean to be late.”

“You’re hardly late,” said Jane. “It’s only the tumblers.”

On the stage, a bunch of dispirited acrobats turned somersaults, aided by projectiles from the pit. A handstand devolved abruptly into a roll as a tomato found its target.

The Chevalier appropriated a chair beside Jane. “What is tonight’s entertainment?”

“Other than the limber gentlemen on the stage?” Jane made a show of consulting her program. “The main performance is Arne’s
Artaxerxes
. Have you seen it before?”

“I have not had that pleasure.” The man managed to make even a simple sentence sound like an innuendo.

Jane, thank goodness, seemed largely unaffected. “I would reserve the praise until you’ve seen the play. It’s a rather dark piece.” She consulted her program again and then looked up at the Chevalier. “The son of Xerxes revenges himself on his father’s murderers.”

“Not a comedy, then,” said the Chevalier. He looked up under his lashes at Jane. “I would ask you to translate for me, but that it’s in English.”

“I could translate it into Italian for you if you like.”

“Not into French?”

“My French,” said Jane demurely, “is hardly that polished. I should hate to embarrass myself before you.”

“Nonsense!” said Bertrand Wooliston, rousing himself from his pre-theatre sulk. “Croaks like a Frog, that one! Can’t think where she got it. Although there was that sister of yours, Prudence . . .”

Prudence Wooliston beamed mistily. “Dear Elinor. Did you know her, Chevalier? She married the Vicomte de Balcourt. He had,” she added, “the loveliest tapestries.”

“I had not the honor of her acquaintance, but I would have to have been the veriest bumpkin not to have heard of her beauty and wit.” He indicated Jane with a courtly gesture. “All of which I see live again in her niece.”

“A compliment as prettily tailored as his coat,” groused Gwen to the Colonel.

“I take it you don’t like the lad?”

Pointedly ignoring the Colonel, Gwen leaned forward and rapped the Chevalier’s shoulder with her folded fan. The fact that there was a slim knife embedded in the ivory shaft gave the ornament a pleasing added heft.

“Now that you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful. Lemonade. And some of those little iced cakes.”

“But of course,” said the Chevalier, rising gracefully from a chair. “Lemonade it shall be. In the company of such inebriating beauty, champagne would be a tasteless excess.”

“Just the lemonade,” said Gwen tartly. “None of your commentary.”

“I shall return with your lemonade.” A dimple appeared at the side of the Chevalier’s mouth. “And iced cakes.”

The Colonel hitched his chair closer to Gwen’s. His knee, respectably garbed in buff breeches, brushed the folds of her skirt. “Did you really want the lemonade, or was that just an excuse to remove the man from the box? You look like you’ve had the lemons without the sugar.”

“The man’s all stuff and puffery.” Gwen glowered at him. “Would you like a libertine like that sniffing around your daughters?”

The humor fled from the Colonel’s face. He swallowed, painfully. “Right now,” he said. “I’d like them here with me, sniffing or no.”

Gwen looked at him shrewdly. “When is Katherine arriving?”

The Colonel drummed his fingers against one knee. “She says she won’t move her grandmother. I’m to go out there again tomorrow. If I can’t persuade her to come back with me, I want to see what I can do to make her more comfortable.”

Gwen remembered him in the alley, blanched and bleeding. “Be careful,” she said roughly, and then, before she could be accused of undue sentiment: “Is there any word of your younger daughter?”

The Colonel’s face was grim. “No. I went back to the school today. They let me look through her room again, but—” He shook his head, the picture of hopelessness. “You’ve not heard from your Agnes?”

“Not a word,” said Gwen.

The Colonel drew in a deep breath. “I had hoped, when you invited me tonight . . . Never mind that.” So that was why he had responded to her invitation with such alacrity. Gwen swallowed a sour smile. She should have known better than that. “I’ve placed advertisements in twenty papers, all across the country, and one in Scotland. If anyone sees a girl of her description, or perhaps a lad of her size, they’re to contact me care of the White Hart.”

“That describes a good many people,” said Gwen.

The Colonel lifted an anguished face to hers. “I know. But what else am I to do? If I were at home, in India, there are favors I could call in, friends I might ask for help, but here—I’ve no idea where to begin. They’ve told me,” he added, diffidently, “that there are men who search out the missing for a fee. Runners, they called them.”

“You mean the Bow Street Runners?” The last thing they needed was the Bow Street Runners involved, bumbling about, poking into things that didn’t involve them. “There’s no need to be hasty.”

“Hasty? It’s been near on a month, now!”

“Yes,” said Gwen, improvising quickly. “But they’re not a good sort of people, those runners.”

There was steel behind the Colonel’s jovial facade. “I don’t care what sort of people they are as long as they bring my daughter back.”

Before Gwen could think of anything to say, the curtain at the back of the box breezed open.

“Your lemonade, Madame.” The Chevalier snapped his fingers, producing, like a magician, a parade of footmen bearing carafes of lemonade, a platter of cakes, and a small three-legged table, which the gaggle of servitors hastened to set beside her.

He had brought a truly alarming quantity of lemonade. Gwen suspected she was being mocked, but as it played rather neatly into her own plans, she let it go. For now. She and the Chevalier would have their reckoning later.

The Colonel poured her a glass of lemonade. “Forgive me,” he said, with an attempt at a smile. “I shouldn’t take out my ill humor on you.”

“No,” said Gwen, draining her glass. It was very sweet, sweet and sticky. Had they used any lemon at all, or pure sugar? “You should take it out on the coxcomb in front of us. I’ll cheer you on if you do.”

Grimly, she drank another glass, and then another. The beverage was disgusting, but it was all part of her plan. By the time the opera was under way, she had consumed the better part of the pitcher of lemonade, making sure everyone saw her refilling her glass again and again. When Arbaces and Mandane launched into “Fair Aurora, prythee stay,” partway through the first act, she was squirming quite convincingly.

Gwen stood, abruptly. “I shan’t be long,” she said.

Jane glanced back over her shoulder. “Oh,” she said, and glanced at the nearly empty carafe. As a dumb show, it was certainly more effective than anything the actors were accomplishing on the stage. They had played these roles before, she and Jane.

Hardened by many years of female companionship, the Colonel made as if to rise. “Shall I accompany—”

“Most certainly not!” snapped Gwen. “I shall hardly be accosted between here and the retiring room!”

It made a good note on which to stamp off. It also made clear to everyone in her box and the two boxes on either side that she was going to the retiring room, and not by any means sneaking off into the wings to search a prima donna’s dressing room.

Gwen ducked behind a convenient pile of sandbags as Fiorila’s dresser bustled out of the dressing room, in search of a prop that had gone missing. The prop had been inconveniently stashed on the far side of the wings, behind two stacked stage sets. Gwen should know. She’d put it there herself. It was a jeweled hairpiece that Semira, aka Fiorila, wore in Act II. She had banked on the fact that the dresser wouldn’t notice it was missing until partway through Act I.

And had she been right or not? She would have preened, but there wasn’t room behind the sandbags.

Gwen waited until the dresser was around the bend of the hall before slipping into the dressing room, shutting the door softly behind her. If caught, she could always claim to be a great aficionado of opera, hoping to reach her idol before the rest of Fiorila’s adoring fans. People would believe anything if only one said it authoritatively enough.

The dressing room was larger than Gwen had hoped, large and cluttered, with two wardrobes spilling forth costumes, trunks of props, dressing tables stacked with paints and paste jewels, and flowers in various stages of decomposition attesting to the attentions of Fiorila’s many admirers. The room was obviously also being used partly as a storeroom. There were pieces of set and scenery stacked against the far wall.

The theatre had been new built that past year, with this
Artaxerxes
their first performance. They had contrived to finish the ornate public areas, but the backstage lagged behind; there were open beams still overhead, part of the elaborate superstructure of the warren of backstage areas.

Gwen moved to Fiorila’s dressing table, set in an area of relative privacy in a small nook around the corner of the room. Here were her pots of paints and powders, her dressing gown tossed casually over the back of the chair, where she might slip into it between acts as her dresser refreshed her paint. There was nothing in the little boxes of paint except paint.

Scrubbing her hands clean on the underside of her shift, Gwen slid her hands into Fiorila’s dressing gown pockets. There was a comb in one, with a broken tine. It must have fallen and been shoved in the pocket and forgotten.

In the other pocket, paper crinkled.

Gwen drew it out. It had been folded, again and again, folded into a tiny square. A love letter, no doubt. Gwen opened the first fold, then the second. The ink was smudged, as though with tears. Gwen wasn’t interested in Fiorila’s lovers, but the opening salutation caught her eye.

Chère Maman
, it began.

Maman
? Gwen shook out the sheet of paper and a very small sketch fell out, a watercolor, inexpertly painted, of a young girl of perhaps eight or nine in a white muslin frock. Despite the shortcomings of the watercolorist, there was no mistaking the color of the girl’s hair, a deep and familiar auburn.

Gwen quickly scanned the letter, blotched and blotted though it was. Her mother shouldn’t worry, she was being treated very well, everyone was all kindness at the château, and when was she to be allowed to go back to school? It wasn’t that she was ungrateful, and the country was very nice, but she felt awful about not saying good-bye, and could Maman please send her a new pair of slippers since she had quite worn through her old ones? Her affectionate daughter, Adele.