Lady Killer (10 page)

When any of the “broken” clocks in Miles’s house pointed at three, it meant that his attention was needed urgently. And the presence of Tom Furious only confirmed the importance of the situation.

“Tom. It is not every week I get to see you twice,” Miles said as Corin directed him to a seat and began pulling shaving implements out of a dumbwaiter hidden behind a painting. “Has there been some new word about the smugglers?”

Tom shook his head. “No. Nothing there. Pickering is still working on it, even if he is a bit distracted just at present. Seems he ran into a bit of trouble last night and lost some of his men. But that’s not why I’m here.”

Miles took in Tom’s serious expression. “What is it, then? Did someone find Castillo?”

Tarquino Castillo was Miles’s most recent recruit, a high-level secretary to the Spanish ambassador who had lost faith in the honor of his sovereign after King Philip refused to discipline one of his favorite nephews for seducing and then abandoning Castillo’s sister. Their first meeting had been in an old Turkish bathhouse in Madrid, a locale Miles selected because, with the steam obscuring their faces but not their words, it allowed information to be passed anonymously. Since then they had continued to rendezvous at such places, and Miles had used his pre-betrothal ball visit to a bathhouse with his cousins the day before to schedule a meeting. But Castillo had not arrived. Which meant that there was a very good chance that somewhere in London, Castillo’s broken and tortured body was being circled by flies.

The thought of what had probably befallen his agent was a potent reminder for Miles of why he worked so hard to keep his cousins away from him, why he continued to isolate himself, why he had made himself into Three, a figure with no family and no friends, why the only companion he allowed to get close to him was a full decanter of wine. At least a decanter of wine could not get itself killed because of you. Even his damn guard dogs—

“I’m afraid there’s still no word from Castillo,” Tom said, interrupting Miles’s thoughts. “It is something else.” He handed a single page of paper crudely printed with thick black gothic letters and woodcut images in two columns to Miles. “I got this from the printer on the way over. The ink’s still wet.”

Miles cast a cursory glance at the paper, then, pushing Corin’s hand with the razor away, leaned over to study it. His eyes had a hard, faraway look in them when he was finished. “They are sure?”

“Aye. Special Commissioner certified it. That girl was killed by the Vampire of London.”

“Gardenia?”

“Yes, there was a gardenia. He is back, Three. No question about it. At first we thought it might be a stunt by the Spanish, but it looks like the real thing. And Queen E wants you to make finding him your top priority. She is worried that if people get nervous, there could be riots. Which is just the sort of instability Spain could take advantage of. Three, she is worried that if he is not stopped quickly, this could be the end.”

Miles nodded, but his eyes were still unfocused. “Of course. It is a matter of domestic security. Of protection.”

“Aye. She has told the Special Commissioner to give you all the information he has, everything, and his full assistance.”

Corin smirked and said, “I bet he was whistling with joy at that news.”

Tom nodded. “I’d say he was not exactly delighted, but he knows he’s in over his head.” He fastened his eyes intently on Miles. “Queen E asked if you might refrain from describing to him again the ten ways he reminds you of a caterpillar, Three, at least until you find the vampire.”

“That is going to be tough,” Miles admitted. “The resemblances are striking.”

“When you feel the urge to abuse someone, Queen E wants you to turn your attention on your own men. They are also there for support, but for the sake of secrecy we think it best if you undertake this as a private party. Shouldn’t be hard to account for since the last word on his lips before he went down before was your name.”

You’ll pay for this Dearbourn.

The smile that Miles’s contemplation of the Special Commissioner had started, vanished. He looked grim. “I remember.”

“What Queen E is most concerned about,” Tom went on, “is this notion that the vampire gets stronger as the moon grows dimmer. Seems we are at half-moon now, and according to the astrologers, no moon in nine days. And when there is no moon it is supposed to be impossible to kill him. That means you only have—”

“I know what it means,” Miles interrupted.

“Right,” Tom confirmed. He was watching his boss closely. During the early days of their collaboration, Tom had thought that Miles’s cold, generic code name, Three, was perfect. Like a number, the boy had no heart, no personality, no humanity. He seemed to have extended his job of building defensive structures to his personal life, fortifying himself with an impenetrable psychological wall. But over the years of their working together, Tom had realized he was wrong, and had come to suspect that perhaps Miles was only too human underneath. The austere personal credo that he had caused to be carved into the molding above his office door—“Trust no one, believe nothing, the only certainty is death”—began to read less like the ideas of a cold investigator, and more like the words of a man who has been deeply and personally hurt. Tom had grown not only to respect, but to care deeply about the man called Three. He was also one of the few people who could see through his emotional armor, and right now he did not like what he was seeing. “Are you feeling all right, Miles?” he asked, his use of the name showing the depth of his concern.

“Yes. Fine.” Miles settled back into his chair and let Corin return to work on his face. “I want to meet with the Special Commissioner this morning,” he said to Tom. “In the meantime, give me all the information you have.”

Tom complied and Miles nodded thoughtfully as if he were listening, but all he really heard for the two hours of the briefing was
This is your fault. You failed.

Chapter Five

“This is your fault. Do not think to shift the blame to anyone else. You did this yourself,” Lady Alecia reiterated needlessly, setting her ringlets aquiver. “You are wicked and evil. That is how your father was. And how you are.”

“I know,” Clio said, her head bowed. “I broke my promise. I take full responsibility.”

“Broke it?” Lady Alecia snorted. “You decimated it. You made a scene. A scandal.”

“A debutante,” Mariana put in prettily.

“Debacle,” Doctor LaForge corrected.

Lady Alecia kept her eyes on Clio. “You mortified us. And you will pay for it. You will refrain from such behavior in the future, Clio,” she informed her granddaughter. “You will not set foot in Dearbourn Hall unless specifically requested to do so.”

Clio was only too happy to agree. Indeed, she had no desire to set foot in the place ever again, and would gladly have been anywhere else at that very moment. She had known the summons from her grandmother would come, it was inevitable after her appearance the night before, and she had known she would dread it and the withdrawal of her allowance it was sure to result in, but what had surprised her on the way from Which House was that even more than seeing her grandmother, she dreaded running into the Viscount Deerhound, as she had taken to calling him in her mind. She had been immensely relieved when she arrived and found that he would not be present at the interview.

Not that she could blame him. She had herself felt woozy walking into Mariana’s apartments. She had no doubt that her cousin and grandmother were responsible for the decor themselves, it had the unmistakable stamp of their taste. Three of the walls were covered in bright blue silk overstitched with green, gold, purple, and indigo threads to look like peacock feathers, all surrounded by gold moldings. The remaining wall was mainly taken up with a huge fireplace, whose beautiful medieval mantle had been gilded, and over which hung what had to be the largest mirror in London, held up by two baby angels. They were made of gold, as were all the sconces from which three dozen candles shined. Every piece of furniture was upholstered in the same fabric as the walls, and the floor was covered by the thickest, most silky looking, and most hideously overpatterned Turkish carpet Clio had ever seen. All in all, the effect was eye-popping.

Her grandmother—wearing the wig Clio had named “the Medusa”—and her cousin were seated on an oversized settee, at right angles to one occupied by the man she remembered having been introduced to once as her grandmother’s secretary. On a table between them lay a plate filled with hazelnut cakes, the one thing that Clio and Mariana had in common, the one thing they both loved. Despite his protests, Clio had decided to leave Toast at home in the interest of reminding her grandmother of as little as possible of the scene she had caused the previous night, but she was half wishing he had come, if only to smuggle a few of the hazelnut cakes out in his doublet. From where she was standing, Clio imagined she could smell them, and she began to fantasize about what they would taste like, the crisp outer crust giving way to a soft—

She forced herself to look away. Against the wall, the faded form of her uncle, Sir Edwin Nonesuch, was hunched over a chess table opposite the morose looking Doctor LaForge. The vacant expression on Sir Edwin’s face could have given anyone fierce competition in the “Daftest Man in England” contest if there had been one. Sir Edwin was the one member of her family for whom Clio felt any real affection, the one member of her family who had ever deigned to smile at her and wish her a good day, and for the first time she was glad that his mind wandered, because at least that meant it was not imprisoned in this hideous room which, despite being large and high-ceilinged, felt small and claustrophobic. Indeed, the sooner she could leave there, the happier she would be.

This was confirmed when her grandmother started waving about that morning’s edition of
News from Court.
“You even had to intrude yourself upon the public eye, didn’t you?” Lady Alecia asked, accusingly. “You could not allow us—”

“Did you hear someone whistling?” Sir Edwin asked abruptly, starting forward in his seat. He looked across the chess table. “Infernal noise. Kept me out of my bed all night. Did you catch it, too, Doctor?”

Doctor LaForge looked embarrassed. “
Non
, monsieur,” he said with a tight smile, then redirected his attention to Lady Alecia. “You were saying, madam?”

Mariana, a dreamy smile on her face, spoke instead. “Do not worry, Papa, I am sure it was just the mother dew drops singing to their babies in the moonlight.”

Sir Edwin scowled at her and sat back, muttering under his breath. Clio was thinking that she liked him better than ever, when she realized Mariana was speaking to her.

Mariana’s smile was still there, but beneath it Clio could see the hard determination in her cousin’s eyes. “You must not be so hard on poor, dear, Clio, grandmama. She cannot help herself. She has always been so eager for the merest thread of attention. The opportunity to have so many people talk about her must have been too strong to overcome. Poor thing, no one has paid any attention to her since that awful low woman with the horrible teeth and that dreadful Dover accent she had as a nurse died.” Clio tried to interject that the nurse had been from Devon, but Mariana was unstoppable. “No one has noticed her at all since then.” Mariana leaned forward and addressed Clio directly. “I ache for how much
you
must ache to know that all your efforts last night have gone to waste.”

Seeing Clio on the verge of speaking, Mariana put up a hand. “I know,” she said feelingly. “You don’t have to say anything. I can see your pain in your eyes. The eyes of a baby butterfly who has lost his way.”

“There is no such thing as a baby butterfly,” Clio pointed out.

Mariana ignored her. “Poor, dear, misguided Clio. Remember how you used to pretend to get presents on my birthday?
My
birthday. Just so people would pay attention to you. I never begrudged you that. I was always content to share with you, even though I knew you made it all up. How sad I felt for you that there was no one who would bother to send you gifts. That no one ever wished you a happy birthday.”

Her words, or rather their truth, stung Clio, but she hid her reaction under a blanket of sarcasm. “Your kindness to me was really astonishing.”

“I know.” Mariana prided herself on her graceful acceptance of compliments. “Even now, I feel sorry for you and the ruin of your plans.”

“What plans were those?”

“To wreck my wedding, like you always try to wreck everything of mine. That is why you came to the ball last night. I understand you cannot help it. That, like the baby duck, it is in your nature to follow me everywhere and nip at my heels. But it shall not work. Everyone is too busy discussing the Vampire of London.” Mariana leaned forward. “Do you know when he first appeared?”

“Three years ago,” Clio answered, without enthusiasm. This quiz did not seem poised to expedite her leaving, or her devouring the hazelnut cakes.

“No!” Mariana said triumphantly. “He first appeared the year I was born. When I was a baby duck myself. In
my
village. Isn’t that exciting?”

Clio refrained from pointing out that she had herself been born that same year, just a week earlier in fact, and in the same village. “Are you sure?”