The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel (7 page)

“Yes,” said Delia, bumping into Sally in her enthusiasm. Sally frowned at her, but she didn’t pay the least bit of attention. “But what if he were to
set his mark upon you
?”

“It’s the curse,” said Lucy Ponsonby, pronouncing the word with relish. She preened in the mirror. “The curse of the Caldicotts. I don’t care how large his lands are. I wouldn’t have him if he were the last duke in London, and I told that to my mama just this morning. Mama, I said—”

“What makes her think he’d have her?” Sally whispered to Lizzy. She hadn’t seen buckteeth like that since her beloved pony, Bucky the Bucktooth, had gone off to that good pasture in the sky.

“Well,” said Lizzy innocently, “with that hideous scar across his face and the hunchback and clubfoot—not to mention the curse—I imagine he can’t be picky.”

“He’s not hunchbacked,” snapped Sally. “In fact he’s quite—”

Handsome? He wasn’t handsome in the way society assessed such things: his hair was too long, his eyes too deep, his lips too full, his features too marked. All of him was just too . . . too. He was like the embers on the hearth, burning from within.

Infuriating? Intriguing?

“Quite?” Lizzy’s ears perked up.

“Presentable,” said Sally quellingly. “Quite presentable.”

Lizzy looked at her knowingly. “As good-looking as all that?”

“Hmph.” No other sound was adequate to express her feelings. Sally drove a pearl comb into her hair with more force than necessary. “All of this is worse than nonsense—it’s
unkind
.”

Normally, Sally enjoyed a spot of gossip as much as the next girl, but this wasn’t innocent chitter chatter of the who-danced-with-whom variety. This was the sort of hysterical speculation that drove villagers out in the dead of night armed with garden implements to essay a spot of castle burning.

She turned to glower at the oblivious women behind them. “Besides, he isn’t like that.”

Lizzy linked an arm through hers. “What is he like, then?” she asked.

Mysterious. Terribly mysterious.

The word rose unbidden to Sally’s mind, along with the memory of a wilderness of a garden, willows weeping above a frost-blasted fountain, and a black-garbed figure in its midst. He had been other things—enigmatic, infuriating, more than a little bit sardonic—but the primary word that came to mind was “mysterious.” He looked as though he had grown out of the fallen leaves and moss-covered stones, like a creature of shadow and moonlight, condemned to lonely durance in his haunted castle.

All nonsense, of course. Next thing one knew, she’d be mooning over
The Convent of Orsino
and begging Miss Gwen for her autograph.

“Human,” said Sally tartly. “And very much alive.”

Alive and quipping. It still rankled that she had allowed him to seize the last word. No one, but no one, was allowed to best Miss Sally Fitzhugh. Not even reclusive dukes rumored to be vampires.

Particularly not reclusive dukes rumored to be vampires.

Sally had spent the rest of the evening meticulously constructing pithy parting lines, none of which were the least bit of use after the fact.

“I can’t imagine the duke would be here,” said Sally loftily. “It isn’t at all the sort of affair one would expect creatures of the night to frequent.”

Best time for creatures of the night to travel, indeed!

“It is after dark,” said Lizzy impishly.

Returning from behind one of the screens, Agnes looked from one to the other in surprise. “But, of course, the duke would be here. Didn’t you know? Lady Clarissa Caldicott is his sister.”

“I knew that,” said Sally quickly. And maybe she had, at one point.
Debrett’s Peerage
had been required reading at Miss Climpson’s, right there next to the Bible. Miss Climpson believed in books that began with “begat.” “I just didn’t think he looked much like a Caldicott.”

“What does a Caldicott look like?” asked Agnes.

Sally wafted a hand. “Fair. Bland. Unobjectionable.”

Hal Caldicott was just her age and a member of her brother’s club; Sally had danced with him from time to time. He was everything that was conventional and predictable: he drove his phaeton too fast, he wore too many capes on his coat, he played for high stakes, he tortured his cravat into elaborate styles, all in the most inoffensive way possible. In short, all the usual rites of passage of a young man of good fortune and limited imagination. Sally found him quite pleasant and entirely uninteresting.

Belliston, on the other hand . . . There was something dark and brooding about the very name “Belliston.” Something with a hint of passion to it.

Rather like the duke.

“Do vampires
have
sisters?” asked Lizzy with feigned innocence.

“This one does,” said Agnes earnestly. Pursing her lips, she recited, “Lucien, sixth Duke of Belliston, and Lady Clarissa Caldicott are the sole surviving offspring of the fifth Duke of Belliston, and his wife, the former Hortense de la Pagerie.”

Sally looked narrowly at Agnes. “Sole surviving—does that mean there were others?”

Agnes looked a little sheepish. “I don’t think so. It just sounded better that way.”

“Unless you think he ate them?” suggested Lizzy.

Agnes’s pale brows drew together. “I don’t think vampires are meant to eat people. They just . . .”

“Nibble?” provided Lizzy.

Another two women pushed past them, arm in arm. “—druid curse!” Sally could hear one saying, in strictest confidence, at the top of her lungs.

“I thought we had ascertained that there are no vampires,” said Sally, in her best imitation of Miss Gwendolyn Meadows. There were times when she really did wish that she owned a sword parasol.

Lizzy narrowed her brown eyes. “Even so, there must be something wrong with the man. Why stay so secluded all these years? Why hide from society?”

“Perhaps he simply doesn’t like them,” said Sally. She wasn’t sure why she felt so defensive on the duke’s behalf. It wasn’t as though he had been particularly warm or welcoming to her—unless one considered sarcasm a sign of regard.

Maybe it was that he was a challenge, her own private challenge, not to be shared with anyone else.

Which was, of course, equally ridiculous, given that she was unlikely to see the man ever again, current rumor notwithstanding.

“We should be getting back,” Sally said. She could see Arabella looking for them, with her perturbed-chaperone face on. Arabella enjoyed chaperoning just about as much as Sally enjoyed being chaperoned; Sally knew she would much rather be home, watching her daughter, Parsnip, attempt new aerial feats with a spoonful of mushy peas. “They’re sure to begin the dancing soon.”

“Hmm.” Lizzy raised a hand in greeting to Lady Vaughn just to watch Lady Vaughn do her best imitation of a block of ice. That task accomplished, she turned back to Sally. “You can’t avoid me forever, you know. You’ve been remarkably chary with the details of your tête-à-tête.”

Sally shot a warning glare at Lizzy, but it was too late. Arabella might look as meek as milk, but she had ears like a hawk. If hawks had ears. Sally wasn’t sure, ornithology not having been prominently featured in the curriculum of Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary.

“Tête-á-tête?” said Arabella, in a deceptively mild voice.

Lizzy looked from Sally to Arabella and scented danger. “Oh, goodness,” she said, her eyes wide and innocent. “Has my flounce torn? I must go and see to it.”

Sally wondered if Miss Gwen would consider the loan of her infamous sword parasol. Just for use on Lizzy. She would make sure to clean it thoroughly before she returned it.

“Did you see Lady Vaughn snub Lizzy?” Sally said quickly. There was nothing like a good diversion.

Arabella was not to be diverted. “Lady Vaughn snubs everybody. What was that about a tête-à-tête?”

“Tete a whatsis?” Sally’s brother, Turnip, appeared, balancing five glasses of ratafia, two in each hand and one under his chin, adding an extra dent to his cravat and a trail of sticky liquid down his waistcoat. He apportioned the beverages among the three ladies, and looked in some confusion to the place where Lizzy had been standing. “Where’s your friend?”

“Departed,” said Sally bitterly. “Decamped. Deserted.”

“With a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no,” agreed Turnip. He looked at the extraneous glass of ratafia, gave a philosophical shrug, and drained the glass himself. He glanced up to see all three women looking at him. He grinned sheepishly at his wife. “Sounded like a verse, don’tcha know.”

“Yes,” said Sally sourly. “Ratafia brings poetry into everyone’s lives.”

“Leave a kiss but in the cup and I’ll not ask for thingummy,” said Turnip, looking soulfully at Arabella.

Arabella blew her husband a kiss over her fan.

Sally rolled her eyes, but she took advantage of her chaperone’s momentary distraction to ask, “What do you know about the curse of the Caldicotts?”

Arabella raised her eyebrows slightly, signaling that she knew exactly what Sally was doing. The tête-à-tête discussion would be resumed at a later time—but not in front of Turnip, and not in the middle of a crowded ballroom. Arabella would never think of taking Sally to task in public, a fact of which Sally took shameless advantage.

“I shouldn’t have thought you would pay any attention to that sort of flummery,” Arabella said mildly.

“I’m not,” said Sally indignantly. “I mean, I haven’t. I was just curious.” She squirmed a little under her chaperone’s too acute gaze. “And, yes, I know what they say about curiosity and cats.”

“Speak of the devil,” said Turnip heartily. He raised a hand and flapped it in the direction of someone behind Sally’s back. “Caldicott. I say! Caldicott!”

A tingle like lightning ran down Sally’s spine. She turned slowly, frantically trying to get her expression under control. Should she look aloof? Amused? Sweetly angelic? Or—

Oh. It wasn’t the duke at all, just plain old Hal Caldicott, who was, to be fair, neither plain nor old. But he wasn’t the duke.

Hal had been making a beeline across the ballroom. At Turnip’s enthusiastic hail, he feinted sideways, as if trying to decide whether there was still time to make a run for it. As Turnip bellowed his name again—this time with a loud “halloo!”—Caldicott bowed to the inevitable and made his way to their side with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

“Fitzhugh,” he said.

“Off your feed, what, old bean?” said Turnip sympathetically. “You don’t look at all the thing.”

For once Turnip was right. The normally good-humored Hal looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week. His blond hair, usually brushed into a Corinthian crop, was straight and stringy; his cravat was clean and crisply starched, but crookedly tied; and his watch chain boasted only half the usual number of fobs. There were purple circles under his eyes and his fingers beat a nervous tattoo against his thighs.

If Sally had to guess, she would wager that he had been playing too deeply at the gaming tables. She looked him up and down with an experienced eye. He had the look of a man who had been badly dipped and was trying to figure out which was worse: braving his father or going to the moneylenders.

Hal Caldicott forced a smile. “I’m quite all right. Mrs. Fitzhugh. Miss Fitzhugh.”

He bowed over Arabella’s hand, then Sally’s. His gloved hand was cold against Sally’s lace mitt.

Turnip dealt him a resounding whack on the back in the accepted male gesture of affection. “Come to ask my sister to dance?”

There were times. . . . After that, the poor man could hardly do otherwise, when it was quite obvious it had never been his object.

Pointedly ignoring Turnip, Sally turned to Hal Caldicott, intending to afford him an honorable retreat. “Aren’t you opening the dancing with your cousin?”

The rumor in the ladies’ retiring room was that a betrothal was on the verge of being declared between the Honorable Harold and his cousin, Lady Clarissa.

Certainly, Hal squired his cousin frequently enough, although Sally had never been able to determine any signs of partiality between the two. Affection, yes. Partiality, no. The two sentiments were quite different. After a Season and a half, Sally considered herself a connoisseur.

Deep lines formed on either side of Hal’s mouth. He fidgeted with a cameo fob. “I was to have opened the ball with my cousin, but—”

“—my brother shamelessly waylaid you on your way to her side?” Sally provided, with a pointed glance at Turnip.

“—but I was cut out.” The words came out a little too loudly against the first scrapings of the musicians’ instruments. In the awkward silence that followed, Hal’s color rose slightly, and he said, a bit indistinctly, “Would you do me the honor of this dance, Miss Fitzhugh? I should be delighted.”

Turnip opened his mouth to say something. Arabella threaded her arm through his and gently but firmly led him away.

Thank you,
Sally mouthed. Turnip always meant well. It was just the execution that was the problem. Scenting gossip, Sally said soothingly, “There must have been some mistake. If the order was already set . . .”

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard,” said Hal Caldicott bitterly. “You must be the only one in London who hasn’t.”

Men were so prone to exaggeration. “Heard what?”