The Shadow of Albion (13 page)

haughty indignation now informed it.

„Unless we two can prevent him. I do not know who the assassin may be, and if

we are to take him alive we dare not alert him to our knowledge. That is why I came

– because it is easy enough to claim that I have some business with you.“

„Because we are betrothed.“ Now there was open disdain in her voice, and

Wessex repressed an urge to shake the chit until her teeth raided. Had the woman no

sense of timing?

„Yes,“ he said shortly. „Though there is no cause to refine too much upon it, as

we have been promised these past nine years and may go on unwed another sixty for

all of me. But to business. Tonight you give a bal masque, as all the county knows,

and I believe that is when the assassin will strike.“

„He must be stopped,“ Sarah said automatically, then frowned, thinking. „But

how?“

„Leave that to me,“ Wessex said. „All I ask is that you make it known I am your

guest, and I shall contrive the rest.“

* * *

For a moment Sarah stood silent before him, wondering what she should do.

Something deep within her cried out that this was all wrong, all strange, all alien –

but that inner voice was faint, muffled by the assurances of the doctor and the

servants, by the very existence of Mooncoign itself. I am Lady Roxbury, Sarah

repeated to herself, echoing what she had repeatedly been told since she awoke to

find the world new to her. I am mistress of Mooncoign. I am a loyal subject of the

lung. The feeble cry vanished, muted by these pronounced truths. Reassured, Sarah

lifted her head and stared into Wessex’s midnight eyes.

„Tell me what you wish me to do,“ Lady Roxbury said firmly.

Chapter 7

Ill-Met by Moonlight

Wessex gazed sourly down at the articles of punctilious Court dress spread out

before him in the dressing-room of his country house. The elaborate costumes

appropriate to a formal masquerade were commissioned weeks – if not months – in

advance, and naturally Wessex, who had not expected to attend, had not done so.

Formal dress would have to suffire him.

Wessex had spent a few hours mingling informally with Lady Roxbury’s guests

before riding back to his own ducal seat to dress – somehow – for the evening’s

masquerade. Roxbury’s great house was filled to overflowing with guests who had

been arriving for the past three days, swelling the ranks of the original houseparty

and overflowing into the houses around. Even his own house was full. No other

member of the Family was in residence, but Wessex supposed he must have

extended an invitation to someone before he’d left for France – Wessex Court was

well-populated with young bachelors of the ton who had taken advantage of the

opportunity to remove to more spacious quarters than Mooncoign currently

provided.

Wessex glowered in disapproval at the harmless garments. Tonight’s bal masque

was the perfect venue for an assassination – and Wessex had nothing truly suitable

to wear for the occasion. Plain formal dress would be both conspicuous and

unsuitable.

At least he could count on the Marchioness’s support, even though she could not

be quite certain he shared her membership in the League. He ought to enlighten her,

but some strange reluctance held him back. A lifetime’s habit of secrecy was too

strong. But her revelation left him wondering – not for the first time – what secrets

those he thought he knew were keeping as well.

A sudden rustling in the branches of the tree outside his open window made the

hair on the back of Wessex’s neck prickle. He slid his hand into a waistcoat pocket,

easing his fingers around his pocket watch – an item that, in addition to telling time,

could end time for some; it was a single-shot pistol to those who knew its secret.

Moving cat-footed, Wessex backed toward the wall, holding the timepiece in his

right hand.

„I say, Your Grace, you might give a fellow a hand up,“ a familiar voice

complained. Wessex grinned to himself, relaxing, and went to help his partner in

through his dressing-room window.

„What the devil are you doing here?“ Wessex demanded, not unreasonably.

„Bringing your costume,“ Illya Koscuisko answered breathlessly-if-amiably.

His English was idiomatic but accented, though he spoke French, German, and

his native Polish without flaw. He was in uniform, Wessex noted with a certain

resignation – Illya’s bearskin shako was tilted at an angle upon his head, and the

eagle’s wings wired into full extension and stitched to the back of his dark green,

caped, and fur-trimmed, uniform pelisse scraped at the top of the window as he

clambered into the room, Wessex caught the shako as it fell and tossed it into a

corner.

„Traveling incognito, I see,“ Wessex observed.

„Ah, well, this rig-out should serve for a mere fancy-dress party, and if I’m not

needed there I can always use it to terrify children,“ Illya said. His dark eyes flashed

with self-mockery, and he ran his hand through his chestnut hair, most of which was

short-cropped atop his head in the current mode. Longer side-locks were braided

into long, silk-wrapped pigtails in the fashion of the Polish Hussar regiments.

In his native Poland, Illya Koscuisko was an aristocrat, and like the eldest sons of

many aristocratic families, had found a career in the Army, joining the elite cavalry

regiment whose uniform he still wore. Though his country had not truly existed since

before he was born – having been sliced like a rich pie among Russia, Prussia, and

Austria in three separate Acts of Partition – Illya Koscuisko was a fierce nationalist

who longed for the return of Polish sovereignty, though not at any price. Unlike

many of his countrymen – who, after Poland’s final destruction in 1795, fled to

France to seek preferment and promises at the French Court – Koscuisko had come

to believe that salvation would come not from the Corsican Tyrant, but in a Europe

free of him. Koscuisko had not followed his regiment to France, embarking instead

upon a course of intrigue and resistance that had brought him first to Wessex’s

attention, and then to that of the White Tower. For five years now he had been

Wessex’s partner and closest friend.

They were an unlikely pair. Poland was the victim of three powers who were

Britain’s allies, and France, Britain’s enemy, was widely thought to be Poland’s

salvation.

Despite twists of fortune that had delivered his tides and estates into the hands of

others, Koscuisko was gay and outgoing, warm where Wessex was cool, genuine

where Wessex was mannered. But in the end, like his partner, all Illya Koscuisko

asked of life was the chance to play the Shadow Game, and to strike out at the tyrant

who had redrawn the map of Europe more brutally than Czar Alexander ever had.

„My costume,“ Wessex said. „How could you possibly…?“

„We have our little ways,“ Koscuisko said cheerfully. „But I dare swear you will

deal more amiably with the little Roxbury and Talleyrand’s pet if you wear this.“

Warily – he had some experience of his friend’s sense of humor – Wessex

unwrapped the bundle.

There was a golden papier-mâché helmet with a nodding crest of scarlet egret

feathers, a sweeping silken cloak in the same color, a breastplate and back, and

several other light pieces of painted and gilded wood and leather, all cunningly

crafted to mimic armor.

„It’s a grand concealment for a brace of Mantons, any road – you’ll never hide

them in an unexceptional, Duke-about-town coat and knee-breeches,“ Koscuisko

pointed out.

„So I am to be a noble Roman?“ Wessex asked quizzically.

„Ave, Caesar,“ Koscuisko murmured, sweeping him a low bow. Wessex stepped

back quickly out of range of the wings that cut through the air like feathery guillotine

blades. They extended nearly a yard above Koscuisko’s head, and at the gallop the

wind flying through them produced a weird rushing moaning sighing sound that was

quite disheartening to the enemy, or so Wessex had heard.

„I do wish you’d learn how to manage those things,“ Wessex remarked, staring

pointedly at the eagle wings.

Koscuisko regarded him placidly from a pair of pellucid velvet-brown eyes.

„Oh, I manage well enough,“ Koscuisko said cryptically. „I shall even manage to

skulk about Lady Roxbury’s gardens all evening without being taken up by her

gamekeepers.“

„Let us hope that another individual will not be as fortunate,“ Wessex responded.

No one shall be murdered at Mooncoign! That determination provided Sarah

with a certain fortitude during the hours that followed her conversation with Wessex.

Dinner had been set forward an hour to give all the guests time to dress themselves

suitably for the bal masque, and forty-five covers were laid in the Main Hall. Dame

Alecto had returned from her mysterious afternoon absence and reassured Sarah that

all would go well that evening, and indeed it had.

As if strengthened in her role by the expectations of her guests, Lady Roxbury

presided over the table easily, falling as if by long practice into the character of witty

and autocratic Marchioness.

The table-talk turned upon the recent betrothal of the Prince of Wales to Princess

Stephanie Julianna of Denmark, a move that Prince Jamie’s Either hoped would end

Danish neutrality and deny Beast Bonaparte a northern staging area for an invasion of

England and Scotland.

„No nation, however much we value our sovereignty, must be allowed to conduct

wholesale executions of its citizenry – much less behead its king. Still less may one

nation be permitted to make all of Europe its empire, for in the natural checks and

balances of nations and crowns are peace and freedom made,“ Victor Saint-Lazarre

said.

After hearing Wessex’s revelations, Sarah had arranged to seat Saint-Lazarre

upon her right hand at dinner, and had taken the opportunity to study him closely. A

fair-haired, slender gentleman with blue eyes, Saint-Lazarre spoke words of peace

and sense against the bloodbath that threatened to suck all Europe down into

destruction.

„Indeed, sir – and is it true that the Corsican Tyrant is – as some would have him

– an atheist?“ the lady to Saint-Lazarre’s right asked.

„He is worse than that,“ Saint-Lazarre replied. „He is a man who believes that he

is the particular favorite of God, and chooses that there should be no one to gainsay

him. In those lands where he rules he has driven the witches from their circles and

the Fair Folk from their hills. In fact, he has banned the practice of the Art Magickal

entirely.“

There was a murmur of horrified disbelief around the table, and one woman

reached slender fingers to touch the silver star that hung at her throat, as if to

reassure herself that it was still there. But then talk turned easily to other matters, as

foreign politics was not truly a matter of interest to the members of this company,

save perhaps for Saint-Lazarre.

It was hard for Sarah not to warn Saint-Lazarre, or to search the faces of her

guests for the mask of the assassin. But she must trust Wessex, or be willing to chart

her course alone through the fearsome waters and treacherous shoals of this vast sea

of uncertainty that threatened to drown her. At that prospect, even Sarah’s iron

resolve quailed. Anything was better than that. And Wessex had seemed so

confident his plan would work – that the two of them could skulk among the revelers

and take Saint-Lazarre’s hopeful murderer just as hunters would take a fat deer….

With the prospect of action, the fearsome voids in her memory seemed to close,

or at least be covered over with laughter and talk, and Sarah was in high spirits

indeed when she led the ladies from the table upon a general exodus to the dressing

rooms, there to have the elaborate toilette of dinner removed and an even more

outlandish garb substituted.

Sarah Cunningham regarded her reflection critically in «her dressing-room mirror.

Her light brown hair was elaborately dressed on the back of her head, with feathers

and a rope of pearls braided through its strands. Her eyes were kohled and her

cheeks were rouged, and a gilded mask – gaily painted and beaded in the fashion

that the savages adorned their deer skins – waited to provide the finishing touch.

Her costume’s overdress was sewn of thinnest buckskin, with fringe along the

divided overskirt and all along the hem. Long tight sleeves puffed gently at the

shoulders, and a long silk fringe was sewn in a line across the back, giving the effect