The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel (6 page)

“Hello,” Lucien said inadequately.

His sister took a step forward. Their mother had been petite, but Marie-Clarice had inherited the Caldicott height, as well as the family’s famed silver-gilt hair. Only her eyes belonged to their mother.

“Did you mean to call?” she inquired dangerously. “Or were we not to be privileged with the pleasure of your company?”

Every word stung like the lash of a whip, all the more so for being—Lucien had to admit—deserved.

“I had thought you would have been at Hullingden,” he ventured.

Hullingden was the primary family seat. Lucien had grown up there, had roamed those woods and explored those secret passageways. It had been, for the bulk of his childhood, his entire world; Belliston House, in London, was a faraway place he knew of only from his parents’ conversation.

The estate had been passed into the stewardship of Uncle Henry until such time as Lucien came of age.

By the time Lucien came of age, he was already halfway across the world.

He ought, he knew, to have presented himself at Hullingden first. It wasn’t much good for the prodigal to return without making his presence known. But the idea of passing through those portals again had filled him with a fine sweat of fear. Belliston House was different. It was bland. It was safe.

“It’s your sister’s first Season.” Aunt Winifred sailed into the fray, her feathers bobbing ominously. “Naturally, we are in London. As you would have known had you shown any of the consideration due as the Head of the House.”

Lucien could hear the capital letters as she pronounced it and the bite of venom behind it.

“But what,” Aunt Winifred added, addressing herself to the suit of armor, “can one expect?”

From the witchwoman’s brat.

The boys at Eton weren’t the only ones to have cast slurs on Lucien’s parentage; Aunt Winifred had been more subtle, but no less vicious. It was one of the reasons that Lucien had bolted when he had. Without his parents in it, Hullingden hadn’t been home; with Aunt Winifred in it, it had become a form of prison. Aunt Winifred had made it quite clear that she thought it a sad mistake on the part of Fate to allow the dukedom to fall to so unworthy a creature as Lucien, the debased product of a sad mésalliance.

One would think she might be a bit more pleased that Lucien had obliged her by removing himself.

“We would have consulted you,” said Uncle Henry mildly, “but we supposed you abroad.”

The gentle reproach in Uncle Henry’s voice was worse than the vitriol in Aunt Winifred’s.

Lucien looked from one hostile face to the next, at a loss as to what to say. Yes, it had been a childish trick to bolt, as he had, all those years ago. He could see that now. But he had never imagined his presence being missed. In fact, quite the contrary. Uncle Henry had the care of Hullingden and of Marie-Clarice; if Lucien had thought of it, he had imagined it all meandering on just as it had. He had never thought of himself as having any part of it, or as shirking by being away. He had never thought of Marie-Clarice as growing older; in his head, she was eternally a child of six, in the nursery with her governess.

Lucien took a tentative step towards her. “Marie-Clarice—”

“Clarissa,” she corrected him sharply, her accent very proper, very correct. Very English.

“Clarissa,” he amended. “You are . . . well?”

He didn’t know her, this woman with the proud face and the narrow, angry eyes. But, then, he’d never known her. Not well. She had been a child when he left, too much younger to be of much interest to a boy of fifteen, and particularly a boy so occupied with his own wrongs as he had been. She had seemed happy enough at Hullingden.

Hullingden, a paradise in Lucien’s memory, turned so suddenly and unexpectedly into a nightmare.

Had he been wrong? Lucien had told himself he was obliging them all by staying away, by failing to inflict upon them his unwanted presence. He had assumed that Marie-Clarice would be happy enough without him.

She didn’t look particularly happy right now.

“Very well,” she said, in clipped tones.

“Her ball is in two days’ time,” said Aunt Winifred. Her hard round eyes swept the dusty hall. “It
ought
to have been at Belliston House.”

From far away, Lucien could hear the echo of his mother’s voice, a half-remembered snippet of conversation.

Winifred will never forgive Henry for not being the duke
.

And his father, responding in his own, dry way.
No, my love. Winifred will never forgive you for being my duchess
.

They had spoken in French. They always spoke in French at home, his father’s the elegant accents of Versailles, his mother’s the rolling cadences of her island home.

“I have no desire for a ball at Belliston House,” said Marie-Clarice—Clarissa—flatly.

Lucien felt himself the center of a circle of censorious eyes. “The house isn’t really in any condition to hold an entertainment,” he said mildly. “From what I’ve seen of such things.”

It seemed like a sacrilege to invite a herd of strangers to trample through the ashes of his past. He was too busy doing that himself.

“Nonsense,” said Aunt Winifred, her bosom swelling to new and impossible proportions. She was a tall, thin woman, but, like a toad, she could inflate to several times her own size when the occasion called for it. “What do men know of such things? It’s no large matter to have the servants soap the chandeliers and shake out the rugs. It’s a scandal for the daughter of the duke not to have her ball in her own family home.”

She made Lucien feel as though he were personally responsible for trampling on a litter of particularly adorable puppies.

“I have no desire for a ball at Belliston House,” repeated Clarissa, in a tight, hard voice.

“Your family heritage—,” began Aunt Winifred stridently.

“The ball is in two days,” said Uncle Henry wearily. “The cards have gone out already.”

Lucien looked at him with gratitude.

“All the same,” Uncle Henry added, looking to Lucien, “we do trust we will see you there.”

It was more a command than a request.

In a gentler tone, Uncle Henry added, “It would mean a great deal to us to have you join us.”

The last thing Lucien wanted was to go out into society. But, with the weight of four pairs of Caldicott eyes upon him, there was little he could do but say, “I will not fail you.”

“Haven’t you?” said Aunt Winifred. And then, “Come, Clarissa.”

Clarissa went, pausing only to give Lucien a long, hard look on her way out. “Welcome home,” she said.

Her welcome did not sound particularly welcoming.

Uncle Henry squeezed his shoulder in passing. “It’s good to have you back, my boy.”

“Thank you,” said Lucien, his throat tight with a tangle of emotions. Uncle Henry, of all of them, sounded as though he meant it.

The only one left was Hal.

Hal had been eleven when Lucien left. Now he was a young man, with his fine, fair hair cut fashionably short, and his waistcoat generously adorned with jangling fobs. Once upon a time, he had been Lucien’s shadow, tagging along after him to the stable and the Home Woods, filching tarts from the kitchen as a signal of his devotion, always ready to take the junior part in any drama.

Now he looked at Lucien with hurt, accusing eyes. “I didn’t believe it when they told me,” he said, in a low voice.

“Believe—”

“That you had come back.” Hal’s voice broke on the last word. He gave a bitter laugh. It made him sound, thought Lucien, very young. “But, then, I didn’t believe it when you left, either. Just like that. Without a word.”

If he had left word, they would have found him and made him come back. But Lucien couldn’t say that.

“I’m sorry?” he ventured.

“Sorry,”
his cousin echoed, with all the scorn of twenty. “And now, I suppose, you expect to waltz right in and have everything just as it was.” His voice went up. “Well, it isn’t. And it can’t be.”

“No,” agreed Lucien, thinking of Marie-Clarice’s cold, hard eyes, of his mother’s grave, his father’s portrait on the wall, “it can’t be.”

Hal gave Lucien one last, suspicious look. “Mock all you like,” he said furiously, “but you’ll see. We don’t want you here.”

And he slammed the heavy door behind him.

“I don’t want to be here either,” said Lucien. But Hal was already gone.

No use to explain that he couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not until he brought his parents’ murderer to justice.

But in the meantime, it seemed that he had a ball to attend.

Chapter Three

Lady Clarissa Caldicott’s ball was held in Richmond, at the home of Lord Henry Caldicott and his wife.

The trip from London had taken even longer than usual, due to the glut of carriages on the road. The circular drive before the house was jammed, and the pale marble stairs were all but invisible due to the procession of ladies and gentlemen making their way up to the great doorway that loomed between two tall flambeaux.

Sally, Lizzy, and Agnes zigzagged their way up the stairs, trailing behind Sally’s sister-in-law, Arabella, who had been tasked with chaperoning them for the evening, and Sally’s brother, Turnip, who bounded enthusiastically ahead to clear a path for them, like a particularly energetic golden retriever.

Technically, both Lizzy and Agnes were meant to be under the eye of Lizzy’s stepmother, Mrs. Reid, the former Miss Gwen. But ever since it had come out that Miss Gwen was the author of
The Covent of Orsino
, she couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed by admirers.

Miss Gwen did not admire her admirers.

And when Miss Gwen did not admire, she tended to apply the pointier portion of her parasol to whichever bit of anatomy was nearest. Matrimony and the arrival of an infant daughter had done nothing to blunt the sharp end of Miss Gwen’s tongue or her parasol. Colonel Reid was suspected of having taken it upon himself to supply his wife with an even larger collection of sharp-edged accessories, although, when taxed about this by those with sore extremities, he generally disclaimed responsibility with an innocence entirely at odds with the glint in his eye.

It was thought safer for everyone concerned if Miss Gwen accompany the girls as infrequently as possible.

It was particularly fortunate that she hadn’t accompanied them this evening, as it seemed that all of London’s fops and fribbles were out in force. By the time Sally had fought her way up the stairs, she was hot, rumpled, and generally annoyed.

“Retiring room?” Sally bellowed to Lizzy. It wasn’t meant to be a bellow, but the din was such that even private conversations required stentorian tones.

If Sally had wondered why London’s elite hadn’t quibbled at rattling all the way out to Richmond, the answer soon became clear: the ladies’ retiring room was buzzing with the rumor that the Ghoul of Belliston Hall was due to put in an appearance.

“It’s not a hall—it’s a house,” commented Sally in annoyance to Lizzy, as they made the necessary repairs to their appearances.

“Just be glad they’re not calling it an abbey.” Lizzy leaned forward, admiring the effect of her emerald-and-filigree earrings. They weren’t at all the thing for a girl in her first Season, but the stepdaughter of the author of
The Convent of Orsino
was allowed to be just a little bit outrageous. Sally’s own blue-enamel-and-seed-pearl set, a gift from her brother, Turnip, seemed decidedly bland in comparison.

“In order to be an abbey,” said Agnes, looking at them owlishly in the mirror, “the house would have had to have belonged to a religious institution of that order.
Were
there monks on the site of Belliston House?”

Sally rolled her eyes. “Why not just say there’s an ancient druid burial ground and have done?”

“An ancient druid burial ground?” The girl next to them, repairing a microscopic tear in her flounce, dropped her pins. “Oh, my! That explains so much. Did you hear—”

And she turned to the woman on her other side to gush out the latest intelligence.

Sally regarded them both with a jaundiced eye. “Piffle,” she said.

Lizzy’s lips twitched. “Would you care to share your real feelings?”

Behind them, two other women were exchanging the latest
on dits
about the Duke of Belliston. “—a jagged scar across his face!” Delia Cathcart was saying. “They say you’ll know him because his eyes glow red . . . when he’s about to
feed
.”

“It’s not at all surprising,” returned Georgiana Thynne, looking superior, “when you think what they say about his mother. . . .”

What did they say about his mother?

“They say”—Delia leaned forward, the words coming out in a rush—“that the reason no one has seen him all these years is that the family has kept him confined. In a
crypt
.” She shivered deliciously.

“I wager you all of next quarter’s allowance that you don’t have the courage to dance with him,” said Lucy Ponsonby, with a titter.

“I couldn’t,” Delia said, clasping her plump hands to her bosom. “I just couldn’t.”

“I don’t know,” said Georgiana Thynne. “For a whole quarter’s allowance? There’s a hat I’ve been wanting that Mama refuses to buy. . . .”