The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel (16 page)

The butler gestured Lucien into a parlor notably lacking in thugs, armaments, or instruments of torture—unless one counted the tall harp in one corner—assured him that Mith would be with him prethently, and limped off to fetch Lucien refreshment.

It was all suspiciously unsuspicious.

A pair of double doors to Lucien’s right opened onto another parlor. “Well,
really
,” Lucien heard Miss Fitzhugh exclaim, in tones of distinct annoyance.

Looking through a keyhole would have been undignified. A gap between the doors, however, was quite a different matter.

Lucien positioned himself comfortably at the gap, through which he could see Miss Fitzhugh gesticulating with considerable vigor, her slender fingers fluttering. There was a man in the room with her. Lucien could make out only a frock coat of a dull brown and close-cropped gray hair, thinning in the back.

“Really, Sir Matthew,” chirped Miss Fitzhugh. She sounded entirely unlike the decisive woman who had ordered Lucien off the balcony. “I can’t think what I can tell you that I didn’t tell everyone last night.”

The man drew a notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open. Licking a finger, he thumbed through the papers.

Lucien froze, transported to another place, another time. Standing in his mother’s greenhouse, as the magistrate in the case licked his finger and flipped through his notes, the susurration of the pages grating against Lucien’s raw nerves.

The man turned, and Lucien knew there was no doubt as to his identity. The magistrate in charge of his parents’ case had worn a bagwig, while this man was close shorn. That man had been corpulent and red-faced; this man’s jowls had begun to sag. But they were undoubtedly one and the same.

Lucien should know. He had dogged Sir Matthew’s footsteps, haunted his doorstep. The magistrate had shook him off as he might a flea. Upon hearing that Lucien had discovered his parents’ bodies, Sir Matthew had fired off a series of curt questions at Lucien, and then dismissed him to the schoolroom, refusing to answer his questions, turning a deaf ear to pleas that he be told what was going on.
Ask your tutor
,
he had said curtly.

But Sherry was already gone, gone the morning after Lucien’s parents died, and there was no one for Lucien to ask. Only Uncle Henry, who had squeezed his shoulder and looked sad and told him to go on, there was a good boy.

Confused and alone, Lucien had been forced to piece together what had happened, bit by bit, from a patchwork of gossip and half-heard conversations. It would have meant so very much if Sir Matthew had taken half an hour, ten minutes even, to sit down with him and tell him frankly what had happened, what he believed to have happened. Instead, he had left Lucien in an agony of doubt and uncertainty.

Lucien had been to hell and back; Sir Matthew didn’t look as if he had missed a hot dinner.

A wave of blinding anger assaulted Lucien, enough to make his knees shake.

Consulting his notes, Sir Matthew recited, “‘Dreadful, just dreadful. Oh, heavens, it was dreadful.’” He looked up at Miss Fitzhugh over his spectacles. “Do you have anything to add to that statement, Miss Fitzhugh?”

Miss Fitzhugh lifted her chin imperiously. “It was a frightful experience. And I cannot believe you are being so unkind as to ask me to revisit it.” She clasped her hands to her chest in a manner reminiscent of Mrs. Siddons. “Have you no finer feelings, sir?”

The magistrate looked pained. “What I have, Miss Fitzhugh, is a woman murdered.”

And, from the looks of it, a massive headache.

Lucien’s own head wasn’t feeling too clever. Sir Matthew was the magistrate they’d summoned to deal with the matter of the murdered girl? He supposed it made a certain amount of sense; Uncle Henry would have been familiar with him from Lucien’s parents’ case all those years ago. All the same, it filled Lucien with a deep sense of foreboding.

Sir Matthew, as he recalled, had preferred to judge first, investigate later.

If he knew that Lucien had been there on that balcony . . .

“Well, it isn’t
my
fault I happened to discover her,” declared Miss Fitzhugh, managing to sound quite as empty-headed as any debutante could wish. “It might just as well have been anyone!”

“But it wasn’t anyone, Miss Fitzhugh,” said Sir Matthew, with exaggerated patience. “It was you. And—”

“I do call it
most
unfair.”

Sir Matthew made himself heard over her by dint of main force. “—And yours is the only testimony we have as to the killer.”

“Well, really.” Miss Fitzhugh gave a theatrical shiver. “Whoever it was, I am quite sure he had a hunch. And a limp. And possibly a harelip.”

What the devil? Taking care not to jar the doors, Lucien pressed his eye to the gap.

The harelip proved too much for Sir Matthew. “Are these attributes the evidence of your own eyes or the products of speculation?”

Miss Fitzhugh opened her eyes wide. “Shouldn’t a villain look like a villain, Sir Matthew?”

“Sadly,” said Sir Matthew drily, “most of them do not.” He looked at Miss Fitzhugh sternly over the pages of his notebook. “Do you know the Duke of Belliston?”

Lucien tensed, waiting.

“Oh, but of course!” Miss Fitzhugh gave a little hop of excitement. “Who doesn’t know about the Duke of Belliston?”

Sir Matthew’s pen, which had begun to move, paused again. “That wasn’t precisely what I—”

“Everyone was talking about him last night.
Everyone
. You do know that he was kept chained in an attic until he broke free? It’s all on account of the Gypsy curse, you know.”

“The—” Sir Matthew appeared to be having difficulty speaking.

“The Gypsy curse,” repeated Miss Fitzhugh, checking to see if he was writing it down. “That’s G-Y, not G-I. I do respect a good Gypsy curse, don’t you? There’s no sense in having a curse by halves. It was all over the ballroom last night, how the duke had been cursed in his cradle. Or maybe it was the duke’s mother who had been cursed in her cradle? And, then”—Miss Fitzhugh lowered her voice confidingly—“there are all those dead chickens.”

Sir Matthew appeared to be in the early stage of apoplexy. His jowls quivered alarmingly. “Dead
chickens
?”

“I don’t like to talk about the chickens,” said Miss Fitzhugh darkly.

It was almost enough to make Lucien feel sorry for Sir Matthew. Almost. Through the gap in the door, Lucien eyed Miss Fitzhugh speculatively, trying to figure out just what she was playing at.

Sir Matthew appeared to be having similar thoughts.

“Miss Fitzhugh,” the magistrate said severely, “you do realize that obstructing the prosecution of a crime is a serious charge?”

Miss Fitzhugh drew herself up to her full height and looked down her nose at the magistrate. “I have already told you precisely what occurred. I ventured onto the balcony for air and happened upon that poor, poor woman. It was, I can assure you,
most
unsettling.” She added spiritedly, “I am not accustomed to frequenting establishments with corpses on the balcony. It is
most
untidy.”

Sir Matthew closed his notebook with a distinct snap. “Yes. Yes, I suppose one might call it that.” He drew a handkerchief across his brow. Returning the crumpled cloth to his waistcoat pocket, the magistrate harrumphed with all the majesty of the law. “Forgive me if I tell you that I find your account of the evening’s events unenlightening, Miss Fitzhugh. Distinctly unenlightening.”

“Do you know,” said Miss Fitzhugh, opening her eyes wide, “I had wondered why they didn’t bother to light the torches on the balcony.”

“Sally,” said someone quellingly.

A woman whom Lucien hadn’t noticed before rose from a rose and gold settee in the corner of the room. She was dressed modestly in a pale blue wool dress with a high neck and white trim on the collar and sleeves, her blond hair in soft waves beneath a white lace cap.

The second woman held out a hand to the magistrate. “Sir Matthew, we shouldn’t wish to take up any more of your time. I am quite sure that if Sally recalls anything—anything at all”—this with a stern look at Miss Fitzhugh—“she will notify you at once.”

Sir Matthew was still trying to regain his lost dignity. “I do not think you appreciate the seriousness of this matter.”

“Oh, we do,” said Miss Fitzhugh, a little too enthusiastically. “We do.”

“Hmph.” With one last, suspicious glance at Miss Fitzhugh, Sir Matthew took his leave.

Lucien deemed it prudent to draw out of sight as the butler escorted the magistrate to the front door.

Why hadn’t Miss Fitzhugh told him that Lucien had been on the balcony? It seemed impossible that her motives could be purely altruistic. But Lucien was increasingly hard-pressed to arrive at another alternative.

Unless she was merely off her bean. That would explain a great deal.

“The Duke of Bellithton,” the butler intoned, and flung the connecting doors wide, revealing a pleasant parlor with a fire crackling merrily on the grate. The wall above the mantel was occupied by a charming family portrait featuring a blond man with an execrable waistcoat and a marked resemblance to Miss Fitzhugh beaming down at a woman holding an infant in a lacy white dress. A novel lay open on the settee and a plate of biscuits sat on a small, round table.

Anything less like a den of intrigue, Lucien couldn’t imagine.

The two ladies turned in Lucien’s direction. Miss Fitzhugh looked him up and down. “You’re late.”

“Didn’t you know that creatures of the night cannot travel by day?”

“It is still day,” pointed out Miss Fitzhugh. “It is merely somewhat later in the day.”

“Sally,” said the woman in the white lace cap, whom Lucien recognized as the harried-looking chaperone of the night before. She was also, quite clearly, the woman featured in the portrait above the mantel.

Miss Fitzhugh threaded an arm through that of the woman in the white lace cap. “This,” said Miss Fitzhugh fondly, “is my sister, Mrs. Fitzhugh. Arabella, may I present to you the Duke of Belliston?”

“Fangs and all,” said Lucien pleasantly.

Miss Fitzhugh sniffed.

Arabella Fitzhugh smiled at him. She had a pleasant-featured face, somewhat tired about the eyes. “Duke,” she said. Her voice was soft and well-bred. “You are very kind to call.”

There was something rather disarming to being called kind. “I understood the summons was somewhat in the nature of a command,” said Lucien.

“Don’t be silly,” said Miss Fitzhugh impatiently. “We have much to discuss.”

Lucien eyed her warily. “Yes, we do.” Such as why she had lied to the magistrate about the events of the night before.

Mrs. Fitzhugh intervened. “Would you care for some tea? Perhaps some apple cake?”

Lucien’s mouth began to water. It had been rather a while since breakfast. He caught himself before he could be diverted by the smell of cinnamon. “No, thank you. I—”

He was balked by a ululating cry that filled the hall, followed by the sound of pounding feet. The door banged against the wall. Lucien whirled, looking for danger.

Instead, he saw a very chubby infant moving at an alarming speed on short and unsteady legs, its face and hands smeared with a viscous red substance.

The child was rapidly followed by a nursemaid, her cap askew, her white apron streaked with gore. The nursemaid came to a stop, breathless, resting her hands against her knees as she panted, “Mistress! Mistress, I tried to stop her, but—”

“I know.” Mrs. Fitzhugh swept the gory infant into her arms, transferring a great deal of the red and sticky substance to the front of her dress.

Miss Fitzhugh prudently moved her muslin skirts out of the way.

It looked like the slaughter of the innocents but for the fact that the innocent was awake, and clapping her chubby hands with every appearance of delight.

In which case, that probably wasn’t blood. Lucien felt his breathing slowly return to normal.

Holding the infant out at arm’s length, Mrs. Fitzhugh surveyed the carnage with an experienced eye. “Has Parsnip got into the jam tarts again?”

Lucien inferred from the context that Parsnip was not, in fact, a root vegetable, but the angelic-looking infant chuckling and clucking in her mother’s arms.

“It was the raspberry,” said the nursemaid, in tones of doom.

“I don’t know how she does it,” murmured Mrs. Fitzhugh. She looked down at the baby, who appeared to have rubbed jam into her own ears, her hair, and, now, all along the front of her mother’s dress.

The child bared her tiny teeth in a delighted grin. There were raspberry seeds stuck between the two front teeth. Lucien detected a very strong resemblance to Miss Sally Fitzhugh. Particularly around the eyes, which were dancing with mischief.

Mrs. Fitzhugh hefted the begrimed child onto her shoulder. “Duke, if you will pardon me—?”

Sally Fitzhugh wafted a hand at her sister-in-law. “Do take all the time you need. I am sure I shall have no difficulty entertaining the duke in your absence.”

Lucien wasn’t sure that “entertain” was the correct verb.

Mrs. Fitzhugh appeared to harbor similar doubts. Clasping her child expertly around the knees, she fixed Sally with a meaningful look. “I will return momentarily.”