The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Freddy managed to be quite as much bother in death as he had been in life.

James Kirkpatrick, the Resident, went gray when he heard the news, tugging at his carefully cultivated mustachio as he murmured the proper words of condolence, his mind all the while obviously already working over the phrasing of diplomatic dispatches. How did one tell Wellesley that his pet had perished in the wilderness four days north of Hyderabad?

Penelope didn’t envy him the task, although she would gladly have traded his for hers, the letters Charlotte had reminded her were due to both Freddy’s mother and her own.

It fleetingly occurred to her that she would never be able to go back to London. Well, not never. But not for a very long time. She had no desire to spend her remaining days shrouded in widow’s weeds, to face the anger and accusations of Freddy’s family and the opprobrium of her own, returning to the family home where her mother would have free rein to vent at her all the rage of her thwarted ambitions.

No, she couldn’t go back to London. What was odder was that the thought brought with it no regret.

England and their respective families seemed very far away. In the confused days after Freddy’s death, Penelope hadn’t thought about that. She hadn’t thought about a lot of things. It was the Resident’s task to remind her, ably seconded by Charlotte, who fluttered and fussed and produced enough tea to keep the servants permanently engaged in emptying chamber pots. There were funeral arrangements to be seen to — sooner, rather than later, as the Resident intimated with charming delicacy.

“You mean he’s beginning to rot,” Penelope said bluntly, to which the Resident had replied, with a diplomat’s tact, “In hot climates, funerals tend to be held sooner than those to which we are accustomed. As it has already been several days . . .”

They arranged for the funeral and a myriad of administrative details, as Henry Russell made notes and a variety of functionaries were sent back and forth on various related tasks. Alex was sent for at one point, something about official representations of Freddy’s death to the Nizam and pacifying Mir Alam for the non-arrival of his guests, but the servant sent on that errand returned with the news that Captain Reid had gone into the town and hadn’t left word when he would return.

Securing his second for the meeting the next day? Penelope wondered where Fiske had got to.

The Resident said something, loudly, and Penelope realized that they were all looking at her, waiting for her to respond to a question that had been asked twice, or even three times.

“I’m sorry,” Penelope said. “I’m afraid I was elsewhere.”

A look of insufferable understanding passed between Russell and Kirkpatrick. “No matter,” the Resident said kindly. “If you would prefer to retire . . .”

Penelope stiffened her spine. “No. No. Carry on.”

She knew they were watching her, waiting for signs of the anticipated breakdown, the grieving widow’s grieving. It would be the womanly and proper thing to do. But she had had her hysterics already, in the caravan courtyard the day before. She had had four days to walk through her shock and guilt and despair. All she wanted now was to get it done with, to have the arrangements arranged and Freddy safely in the earth.

“I have ordered a room prepared for you in the Residency,” the Resident said delicately, as they rose after what seemed a very long time.

It was a kindly gesture, even if misplaced. It served her current purposes perfectly. It would be easier to incapacitate Fiske if she was spending the night beneath the same roof.

“Thank you,” she said demurely, as they passed through a high ceilinged room that lay still and dark in the evening cool. “I shall take supper in my room.”

She could sense the approval from her entourage. It was the sort of thing a grieving widow was supposed to do. It also left her free to hunt down Fiske.

“I shall see that — ,” the Resident began, and broke off to dart forward as Charlotte, who had been walking a little way ahead, suddenly launched herself into the air, flailing her arms madly for balance.

“Oooph!” she said descriptively, as the Resident caught her neatly around the waist, preventing her from pitching over.

As Charlotte grimaced at him apologetically, Penelope discreetly rolled her eyes. Charlotte had a habit of collisions with inanimate objects; her mind and her body seldom kept company together on their various wanderings, leaving her prone to tripping over anything that wasn’t wise enough to get out of her way first. Rolled-up carpet edges and small tables were not known for their self-preserving instincts.

“I’m so sorry,” Charlotte said brightly. “I seem to have tripped over . . . Oh. Oh, dear.”

Her fair skin went waxy in the uneven light of the candles. The Resident hastily stepped between her and whatever it was, shielding Charlotte’s tender sensibilities. He also obstructed Penelope’s view.

Charlotte swallowed hard. “Oh, dear,” she repeated.

Penelope elbowed her way forward. There, in the flickering light, she saw the body of a man sprawled facedown on the Turkey rug. It was hard to tell what color his hair had been; it was matted with the blood that seeped from the gash in his skull. There was a ring on his outstretched hand, large and flashy with the incised lines of a lotus flower riven onto a ruby surface. Penelope recognized it as belonging to Fiske. Freddy had owned a similar one, insignia of the club to which they had both belonged.

That past tense suddenly sounded particularly significant.

“Call Dr. Ure,” said the Resident sharply. He bent over the body. When he straightened, there was an expression of inestimable relief on his face. But all he said was, “He breathes.”

There were pounding feet, behind them, the sound of bodies being dispatched and arriving.

As for Penelope, she was conscious of a distinct and ignoble sense of relief that someone had put Fiske out of commission before she had been required to do so. A man with a head wound couldn’t very well put in a dawn appearance on a dueling field.

“He might be breathing now, but for how long?” demanded Jasper Pinchingdale loudly, shouldering his way to the front of the group. “That’s the devil of a nasty head wound. And who did it?”

“Perhaps he fell,” suggested Charlotte innocently.

“And struck himself on the head with a candlestick in falling?” said Penelope, relief taking vent in sarcasm.

The candlestick lay on the ground beside Fiske. It was a silver candlestick, of sturdy construction. The fluted edging bore a disquieting smudge of some dark substance. Based on the dent in Fiske’s head, it did not take more than rudimentary intelligence to discern what it might be.

Charlotte bit her lip at Penelope’s tone. She covered her confusion by leaning over, scooping up a scrap of white fabric that showed pale against the dark red patterns of the carpet.

“You dropped this,” she said politely, holding it out to the Resident.

“I?” Taking it from her and turning it over in his hand, the Resident shook his head. “No. It’s not — ”

His voice broke off. Following his gaze, Penelope could see what he had seen. Three neatly marked initials, embroidered in hair, set into the white cambric. The large R in the middle dwarfed the smaller initials on either side, but there was no mistaking what they were.

On the Resident’s face, Penelope could see the reflection of the sick feeling that was currently rising from the pit of her stomach.

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.

It was all familiar, but tonight there seemed to be a shadow across the moon, something hanging in the air, lurking over him. Lord Frederick’s death? Penelope? The prospect of a duel? Tajalli’s so fortuitously supplied information?

He would have to make arrangements with Fiske before setting out for Raymond’s Tomb. Alex heaved a heavy sigh. He hadn’t the first idea what he was supposed to be doing; he had never put himself in a position to fight a duel before, or even to second one. It had always struck him as a profoundly silly and wasteful practice, the plaything of a leisured class with more time than sense. Honor was something one kept close by one’s side, not a commodity to be bandied about on the point of a sword. At least, not until it became a matter of Penelope’s honor rather than his.

He could send a message to Ollie Plowden over at the Subsidiary Force, he supposed, ask him to second him. Ollie would know what needed to be done, who was meant to be contacting whom.

It had been an impulse of the moment, that challenge, wrung out of him by the expression on Fiske’s face as he regarded Penelope, looking at her in a way he had no right to look. All the frustration and anger Alex had felt, all the impotent rage at the shade of Freddy Staines and at the strange Fate that flung Penelope into his path only to dance her out of reach, had found a vent in that red-rimmed moment, when all the injustice of it all reduced itself to a contest of strength, sword to sword, like the trial of ordeal of old.

Too bad it wasn’t really that simple. Once the moment had passed, it was impossible to delude himself that the world would right itself simply because he beat Lieutenant Sir Leamington Fiske at a contest of arms. Fiske would still go about spreading his poison about Penelope. And Penelope . . . Alex rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, feeling the ache of an incipient headache. He had no idea what she would do.

She wouldn’t fling herself into his arms and thank him for defending her honor, that much was for certain.

He had felt a momentary surge of hope at her obstinance in forbidding him to fight, but his irrational optimism had been forced to give way before the cold weight of reality. Just because she didn’t want him on her conscience didn’t mean she wanted him for anything else.

It was a grim thought. Alex grimaced to himself as he rode along the last stretch towards the Residency. The feeling of foreboding that had settled upon him as he left Tajalli’s grew heavier. His father would claim it was the Sight, legacy of some witch back along the family line. Alex called it instinct, and instinct was warning him that something was decidedly wrong.

He checked his pace, feeling to make sure his pistol was by his side even as he leaned forward to scan the shadows along the road for followers.

He never expected the danger to come from ahead.

Before he had time to do more than feint for his weapon, a rough hand grabbed his stirrup and an imperious voice called, “Halt!”