The Betrayal of the Blood Lily (49 page)

Pinchingdale plucked the piece of cloth from the Resident’s hand.

“Reid,”
he breathed. “It would be.”

“What?” said Charlotte.

“Reid.
Captain
Reid.” His exaggerated pronunciation turned the title into a mockery. Pinchingdale shook the scrap of cloth at the Resident. “It is his handkerchief, isn’t it?”

“They are his initials,” said the Resident carefully. “That does not, however, mean . . .”

Balling the handkerchief in one fist, Pinchingdale flung it to the ground beside his friend’s body. “It is Reid. I know it is.” He swore, viciously. “He’s the one who did this to old Lemmy.”

“I don’t see . . . ,” Charlotte began hesitantly.

“Captain Reid couldn’t have done it,” interrupted Penelope. “He isn’t even here.”

“Wasn’t he?” Jasper Pinchingdale kicked violently at the square of fabric on the floor. “His handkerchief says otherwise.”

“Nonsense,” said Penelope stridently. “Anyone might have dropped that handkerchief. Anyone can see that.”

“With his initials on it?”

Penelope set her arms akimbo. “If Captain Reid had meant to strike anyone, he would have done it fair and square, in the face, not snuck up on him and hit him over the back of the head.”

“Fair and square at twenty paces?” said Pinchingdale nastily. “Didn’t anyone here know? Reid and Lemmy were due to duel tomorrow morning.”

The Resident looked up sharply. “Is this true?”

Penelope glowered at Pinchingdale. “They had words earlier today. But only words.”

“A challenge,” corrected Pinchingdale. “I was there.”

“Over what?” asked the Resident, adding, slowly, “Reid has never struck me as a dueling sort of man.”

Pinchingdale didn’t say anything. He just looked pointedly at Penelope. He kept on looking at her until it was abundantly clear just what was meant.

The Resident pressed his eyes closed for a moment, looking very, very weary. He, too, had nearly thrown away everything for love, not so very long before.

Pinchingdale knew he had won his point. In a voice high with triumph, he said, “I was Lemmy’s second. I was waiting for word from Reid’s second. But the coward never sent one.”

“Because there was no duel,” Penelope said tightly.

“Because he intended to incapacitate Lemmy a different way!” shot back Pinchingdale.

“That is absurd,” said Penelope coldly.

“Not absurd enough, I’m afraid,” said the Resident wearily, looking down at Alex’s handkerchief as though the weight of the world rested in its well-laundered folds. He looked to Pinchingdale. “Reid will be taken into custody as soon as he returns from wherever he may be.”

“And tried for murder,” insisted Pinchingdale.

“It does seem rather hard to be tried for murder when one hasn’t murdered anyone,” Charlotte contributed. “For it to be a murder, doesn’t someone have to be dead?”

“Murder?” The portly Dr. Ure, who had just arrived, took a hasty step back, nearly overbalancing himself. Penelope was reminded of a child’s toy, rocking back and forth on its rounded base.

“Just a flesh wound,” said the Resident soothingly. “He seems to be unconscious. But alive,” he added, with a pointed look at Pinchingdale.

The doctor knelt down beside Fiske’s body and the men all clustered around. Penelope wondered how long the examination would keep them occupied. How long before someone came up with the clever idea of sending a search party out after Alex? Someone needed to get to him first.

“I believe I need to lie down,” Penelope said loudly, making a show of tottering. She had never done it before, but after three Seasons in London, she had seen more than her fair share of faux swoons. She wafted her hands dramatically in the air. “All of this . . . so soon after Freddy . . .”

“Of course.” The Resident was all solicitude, eager to get her out of the way so he could deal with the latest crisis.

Charlotte knew better. She tagged along after Penelope down the hallway. “You’re going after him, aren’t you?” she said in a stage whisper.

Penelope cast her a look of extreme irritation. “Not so loud!” she hissed back. “And, yes. Someone needs to warn him.”

“But what will you do?” asked Charlotte breathlessly.

“Find out who did it,” said Penelope, with more confidence than she felt. “It will be easier done without Alex mewed in a cell somewhere.”

“I think it would be his room, actually,” said Charlotte apologetically. “House arrest.”

“Dungeon, house.” Penelope dismissed the difference with a flick of her wrist. “It all amounts to the same thing in the end. I won’t have him hanged for something he didn’t do.”

“How do you know he didn’t?”

“He just didn’t!” Penelope snapped, driven past endurance. “He wouldn’t.”

She wouldn’t have let that go for a minute, but Charlotte seemed to take that as a perfectly reasonable explanation. “What do you need me to do?”

Penelope frowned at her second-oldest friend, moved by a powerful mixture of shame and gratitude. Unworldly Charlotte might be, irritatingly optimistic, infuriatingly vague, but when it came down to it, she always came up trumps. It was both endearing and infuriating.

“I don’t deserve you, do I?” Penelope said gruffly.

Charlotte beamed up at Penelope, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Will you need anything? Food? Supplies? Money?”

Penelope hastily turned away. This was no time for sentiment. Besides, she had no doubt that Charlotte would do something to irritate her in about five minutes and then they could be back to normal again.

“We shouldn’t need food or supplies,” said Penelope, ignoring the question of money. Freddy had been generous with his gifts, but stingy with providing funds. She had been well dressed and cash poor. “If this goes well, I expect to return in triumph, thumbing our noses at that vile toad of a Pinchingdale person. If it doesn’t”—No. That wasn’t to be thought of—“if it doesn’t, I’ll think of something.”

“Good luck!” Charlotte flung herself at Penelope for a quick, fierce hug, from which Penelope emerged feeling as though she had just been strangled by a kitten.

“Thank you,” said Penelope.

She needed all the luck she could get.

 

“
The falcon has returned to the nest
? What sort of absurd message is that?”

The unwitting object of Penelope’s concern strode into a jewel box of a garden designed to look like something out of the pages of an illuminated manuscript. He raised an eyebrow at the man in the midst of it all, who was posing as though determined to be just as ornamental as his surroundings. Lanterns twinkled like stars, their pierced sides creating an elaborate filigree of light and shadows over the stone flagging of the courtyard.

The storybook illumination was only ruined by the grin threatening to break through the other man’s deliberately serene countenance.

“It got your attention, didn’t it?” said Tajalli, reclining comfortably on a pile of cushions arrayed beneath a canopy in one of the many courtyards that dotted his father’s rambling city palace.

Beside him, a fountain tinkled gently, the constant flow of water creating a pleasant sense of coolness against the residual heat of the day. It also served the more practical purpose of muffling their conversation from any would-be eavesdroppers. It was an old trick, and one Alex had learned from Tajalli early on in their acquaintance.

So with assurance that his words would be heard by no one but the intended recipient, Alex said tartly, “Just what falcon might you be referring to?”

Tajalli smiled reassuringly and took a slurp of sherbet. “Not Jack.”

Alex scowled, plopping down onto the cushions across from his friend. He didn’t appreciate being quite that easy to read. “Who, then? Guignon? I knew about that already. Mah Laqa Bai told me he was back in town.”

“But she won’t have told you this.” Abandoning his languid pose, Tajalli leaned forward. “He goes tonight to Raymond’s Tomb to meet with the man who has been promising to all and sundry largesse from the treasure of Berar.”

“You mean—”

Leaning back against his cushions, Tajalli smiled smugly. “Your Marigold.”

“How do you know this?”

“How do you think?” Tajalli angled his head sideways, indicating his father’s house. Of course, everything around them for an acre in either direction belonged to his father, so the gesture was purely a symbolic one, but Alex took the point.

“He won’t like your telling me.”

Tajalli gave him an impatient look. “He doesn’t know I’m telling you.”

Alex doubted that. There was very little that escaped Akbar Khan. The man had been at the game longer than any of them, including James. He was a master of court politics and all the darker arts that went with it.

“What time?” If Tajalli’s father knew—as he must have known—that the information would be relayed by his scapegrace son, there was every reason to suppose that this might be a blind or, even worse, a trap. On the other hand, Tajalli wasn’t his father’s son for nothing. If the information had been acquired by more devious means, it could very well be an honest and valuable lead.

It was a gamble, like everything else in life, and one Alex couldn’t afford not to take. Not with Wellesley’s pet Cleave peering into dark corners and Jack in it all up to his stubborn neck and possibly beyond.

“Late. Midnight.”

It would be. So much for sleep. Alex pushed aside thoughts of his putative dawn meeting with Lieutenant Sir Leamington Fiske. It wasn’t the time for that now.

As if reading his thoughts, Tajalli said blandly, “I heard you just returned from Berar.”

Alex was sure that hadn’t been all he had heard. “I never made it all the way there. We had a casualty along the way.”

“Ah, yes. The Special Envoy.” Tajalli’s father’s spies had been busy. He made a lazy gesture that set the pearls on his wrist glimmering like condensed moonlight. “As I recall, he won’t be any great loss. What did he do, fall off his horse again?”

“He was bitten by a snake.” Alex suspected his friend knew that already. “Potentially one of the two-legged variety.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew.”

There were too many suspects, too many possibilities, among them the most mundane of all, the possibility that the snake might have simply been a snake, acting of pure snakeish instinct.

Tajalli proffered a dish of sugared sweetmeats. “Someone might not have wanted him to reach Berar?”

Alex waved away the sweets. “Is that idle speculation, or do you know something?”

Tajalli dodged the question. “Me, idle?” he said laughingly.

He worked very hard to give the appearance of being so, but Alex knew few men quite so active, or quite so well informed. “Far less than you would have me believe. What do you know?”

Tajalli helped himself to one of the rejected sweets. “He had taken Nur Bai to his bed, hadn’t he?”

Alex leaned forward, on the alert. “That much was common knowledge. Is she still working for Mir Alam?”

“Would she neglect a source of income?” Swallowing the last of the sweetmeat, he said more definitively, “Let’s just say that it wasn’t just your man’s personal charms that enticed her to take up a position in his bed.”

“Several positions from what I’ve heard,” murmured Alex, his mind elsewhere. If Nur Bai was Mir Alam’s creature, then the whole trip to Berar took on an entirely different complexion. It was a work of genius. No one would suspect a snakebite of being other than what it was, and even if they did, no one would think of holding the First Minister or the Nizam accountable for an event so far outside the capital. With the typical English disregard for the zenana, no one—short of James, whose own position was too precarious to force an inquiry—would make the connection between Lord Frederick’s mistress, his death, and the First Minister.

Alex looked up at his friend, blinking at the swaying shadows as a chance breeze set the lanterns in motion. “But why would Mir Alam bother? Why Lord Frederick?”

“A blind?” Tajalli suggested sagely. “Something to distract your Residency while the Marigold does his work?”

“Hence the timing,” said Alex slowly. “The meeting tonight, while the Resident is busy with the preparations for Lord Frederick’s funeral.”

Tajalli spread his hands. “Possibly. It is all merest speculation.”

Levering himself up, Alex smiled wryly down at his friend. “Your ‘possibly’ makes a good deal more sense than any of my probablys.”

“You won’t stay?” Tajalli indicated the cushions. “There is some time left until midnight.”

“Thank you, but no. I have other matters that need settling.” The pesky matter of a duel to arrange. Some things, he didn’t particularly feel like sharing, especially since he had a feeling that Tajalli’s reaction would involve a certain amount of polite incredulity and impolite derision. His own reaction would have been the same had their positions been reversed. “Good night. And thank you for the . . . news.”

The wind rocked the lantern forward, sending a pattern of shifting shadows across Tajalli’s face. He looked, for a moment, like another person entirely, a stranger, and an alarming one.

“Think nothing of it,” he said.

With one last nod, Alex saw himself out, leaving the perfumed perfection of the garden for the squalor of the streets beyond. The contrast never ceased to amaze him. From the street, the beauties cultivated so carefully within the walls of Tajalli’s father’s compound could only be guessed and wondered at; the high white walls formed a complete barrier between the pleasure gardens within and the thoroughfare without.

Bathsheba had been tended to and was wordlessly returned to him at the gates. Mounting, Alex made his way through the city, so familiar to him by now, all its twistings and turnings and scents and sounds, as much at night as by day. He had ridden this same route time and again before, visiting Tajalli or other friends for evening entertainments in the city, even though the city was technically banned by night to the denizens of the Residency, short of special permission to the Nizam.