The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

Chapter Seven

As they ducked under the tapestry, the glare of the candlelight hit his eyes like an attack of conscience. After the dim confines of the chapel anteroom, the light of the gallery was blinding, with all the candles in their mirror-backed sconces blazing away, beaming off of the gilding on ceiling and walls and the jewels worn by ladies and gentlemen alike. The sudden glow left spots in front of Robert’s eyes, like fireworks on the King’s birthday. Wincing, Robert imagined this must be what it would be like on the Judgment Day, with truth winkling out all the dark places in one’s soul.

“Hullo!” Lord Frederick Staines hailed him across the room. “There you are, Dovedale. We’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh?” Robert deliberately looked anywhere but at Charlotte.

It was an entirely unnecessary measure. Staines looked right over Charlotte’s head as if he hadn’t even noticed her presence at Robert’s side. Admittedly, being a good foot shorter than the two men, she was well below Staines’s eye level. And Staines wasn’t the sort of man to notice anything that didn’t immediately touch his own concerns.

Staines’s cheeks were flushed with what might have been wine or windburn or both. Judging from the matching color in Miss Deveraux’s cheeks, apparently he had been enjoying the amenities of the balcony, despite the inclemency of the weather.

“Are you coming?” Staines demanded, jerking his head in the direction of the door.

“Where?” Robert asked warily, prepared to politely extricate himself from high-stakes card games and absurd wagers, like betting on how many times Turnip Fitzhugh could hop the length of the gallery on one foot while balancing a glass of port on his head.

“To the tree.”

“I beg your pardon?” Robert might be going mad, but he wasn’t quite that mad. King George might occasionally think that he was Noah and lived in an ark, but Robert was fairly sure one didn’t go calling on trees at midnight. Or ever.

Staines looked at him as though he suspected Robert might be just a little bit thick. “To the Epiphany tree.”

Charlotte came to his rescue, stepping in before he could embarrass himself any further. “It’s an old country tradition,” she explained. “On Epiphany Eve, the gentlemen gather round the biggest tree on the estate — or at least the most convenient big tree — to scare away the evil spirits.”

“How does one go about doing that?”

Lord Henry Innes clapped Rob on the shoulder in passing. “You shoot them, man. What else?”

Robert eyed the pistol Lord Henry was idly swinging from one finger. He hoped to hell it wasn’t primed. “Does the Duchess know you have that in her ballroom?”

“It’s your ballroom now, old sport,” said Lord Henry, and went on swinging.

“Brilliant,” muttered Robert. “Why don’t you go along outside and I’ll grab up a weapon and be right with you.”

“No need.” Lord Henry produced the twin to the pistol in his hand. He twirled it professionally before handing it over to Robert. It was not, Robert was relieved to see, loaded. At least, not yet.

“Thought you might not have come prepared, having been away and all that.” Some of Robert’s surprise must have shown on his face, because Lord Henry added, “You’re one of us now. We take care of our own.”

“Not quite one of you yet,” said Robert guardedly, all too aware of Charlotte at his side.

Lord Henry brushed that aside with a sweep of his pistol. “Soon enough. Now we just need the rest of the kit for tonight.”

“The rest of the kit?”

Freddy Staines, who had been unabashedly sizing up the ladies as the men talked, popped back into the conversation. An expectant grin spread across his face, all but dislodging his ridiculously high shirt points. “The cider.”

Charlotte held up her hands. “I can’t tell you anything about the cider, other than that it is also a local tradition.”

“No old stories about it?” Robert teased. “No local lore?”

“Well . . . ,” began Charlotte, but Lord Freddy’s loud voice overrode hers as though she weren’t even there.

“To tell stories, you need to remember them,” said Lord Freddy sagely. “And you won’t after this cider.” Raising his gloved fist in the air, he called out, “To the tree!”

“To the tree!” echoed raggedly throughout the room.

The cry was seconded as loudly by the local men as it was by the London bucks. From around the room, red-faced squires rousted out muskets that looked like they had last been used during the War of the Spanish Succession and charged towards the ballroom door as though personally on their way to stave off a French advance. Or a horde of maddened trees.

Robert had assumed the locals had been invited as a courtesy to the county set; now he wondered whether they were part of this ceremony of the tree. Yet another thing he didn’t know about his own estate. Not for the first time, he heartily wished himself back in India. Among other things, in India, he wouldn’t be freezing in the January cold, shooting at a tree.

“Coming, Dovedale?” tossed off Innes over his shoulder. “It is your tree.”

Medmenham was heading to the exit with the rest, holding an elegant pistol with silver chasing and mother-of-pearl inlay as though he knew exactly what to do with it. Robert looked down at Charlotte’s golden head. She didn’t seem the least bit alarmed at being surrounded by an inebriated mob of heavily armed men, although whether that was the result of a country upbringing or because her imagination transmuted them all to dashing cavaliers, he wasn’t quite sure.

At least if Medmenham was outside shooting at a tree, he wouldn’t be inside with Charlotte.

“Sweet dreams, cousin.” Robert squeezed her hand in what he hoped was a cousinly way, adding with all the emphasis he could muster, “Stay inside.”

“Of course,” said Charlotte, blinking up at him in complete and happy obliviousness. “I wouldn’t dream of trespassing. It might ruin the ritual.”

“I was thinking more of stray bullets,” Robert lied.

“I believe the general practice is to fire up,” said Charlotte thoughtfully. “But I’ve never actually seen it.”

“I wish I could say the same. It’s bloo — er, ridiculously cold out there.”

“You’ve spent too much time in India,” teased Charlotte. “This is nothing more than a stiff breeze.”

“Dovedale!” hollered Lord Henry.

Robert sighed. “Duty calls.”

Charlotte flapped a hand at him in farewell. “Enjoy your tree.”

Robert cast a comic look of disgruntlement over his shoulder as he followed after the other tree-hunters.

“Well!” said Henrietta, grabbing Charlotte by the crook of the arm and dragging her towards the nearest alcove. “That was interesting.”

“Define that,” said Charlotte breathlessly, trotting along in her friend’s wake.

Henrietta dropped her arm and gestured broadly. “Him. You. That.”

She peeked around the corner of the ice blue brocade screening the alcove and, finding it unoccupied, waved at Charlotte to precede her in. Dragging the drape shut behind them, she dropped onto the cushioned bench.

“That look. And you were out of the ballroom together for the longest time. You were together, weren’t you?”

“Yes, we were,” admitted Charlotte. A dimple appeared in her left cheek. “Tête-à-tête, even.”

Henrietta’s hazel eyes gleamed. “Tête-à-tête? Or TÊTE-À-TÊTE tête-à-tête?”

On a sudden impulse, Charlotte reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand. “Oh, Hen, I am glad you’re here. You don’t know how much I’ve missed you these past few days.”

Henrietta beamed. “I’ve missed you, too. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

Charlotte considered the question. “Somewhere in between, I think. I don’t believe it was initially intended as a tête-à-tête, but it became . . . somewhat tête-à-tête-y along the way.”

“And by that, you mean . . . ?”

Charlotte thought back over those few minutes in the chapel anteroom. It was already becoming hazy in memory, filmed with a heavy layer of wishful thinking. “I wish I knew.”

“Charlotte!”

“There’s not terribly much to tell. He was very insistent that I should stay away from Sir Francis Medmenham — ”

“Jealous!” crowed Henrietta. “He’s jealous!”

“Or just being protective,” corrected Charlotte, in the interest of fairness. “Sir Francis’s reputation isn’t the best. And Robert is the head of the family, no matter how long he’s been away. It’s his responsibility to look out for me.”

Amazing what a lowering word “responsibility” could be. Charlotte approved of responsibility in principle, just not as directed towards her.

Henrietta waved that aside. “Protective, jealous. They’re both sides of the same coin. Just ask Miles.” A satisfied smile spread across her face. “He was delightfully cranky about Lord Vaughn.”

“So was your mother.”

“Not in the same way,” said Henrietta definitely.

Charlotte decided it was better not to go into that one. Lady Uppington, like Henrietta, was a woman of strong opinions and not afraid to voice them. Charlotte wondered what Lady Uppington would think of Robert. . . . With an effort, Charlotte wrenched her attention back from that fascinating line of speculation.

“So?” demanded Henrietta. “What happened after he warned you off of Medmenham?”

“Well . . .” Charlotte bit down on her lower lip. “We were standing in the chapel anteroom, and I thought, for a moment — ”

“Yes?”

The color rose in Charlotte’s cheeks as she fiddled with one of the pearl buttons on her glove. “I thought for a moment he was going to kiss me. But he didn’t,” she added hastily, before Henrietta could say whatever it was she was obviously bursting to say. “So I must have been imagining things. As I am wont to do.” She sighed.

Sometimes, having an overactive imagination could be a distinct liability. The daydreams were lovely, but it was always so disappointing when they turned out to have no relation to reality. Her debut three years ago had been a case in point.

Henrietta, on the other hand, saw nothing to be disappointed about. She sat bolt upright and jabbed a finger into the air. “Ah! An almost kiss!”

Charlotte wrinkled her nose at her dearest friend. “I didn’t know there could be an almost about a kiss. It seems like the sort of thing that either happens or it doesn’t.”

“Oh, no,” said Henrietta, with the worldly wise air of someone who had been married for a whole six months. “There’s an entire universe of near misses out there, kisses that almost were, but weren’t.”

“How very sad,” said Charlotte. “Can’t you just picture it? The Land of Lost Kisses. All the loves that might have been but weren’t.”

Henrietta’s chin lifted with an expression of pure determination that Charlotte recognized all too well. “Yours will be. You just need to make almost an actuality.”

It wasn’t as cold as he had feared. That was one of the saving graces with which Robert consoled himself as they tramped across the park towards their designated tree. Like good elves, the ubiquitous staff had been there before them. In their wake, a substantial bonfire burned a safe distance from the tree line, the leaping flames adding a pagan tang to the evening.

The servants had also left a folding table on which rested two rows of rough brown jugs made of a coarse pottery that contrasted strikingly with the snowy cloth of Irish linen that had been laid across the table. Lord Henry Innes made straight for the table, while two of the locals, clearly men of substance in the local community with preexisting grudges, began quibbling over which oak was meant to be the Epiphany tree.

Robert didn’t see how the particular tree mattered; once they started shooting off all those pistols, rifles, muskets, and — heaven help them all, was that a blunderbuss? — any evil spirits who had had the poor judgment to roost anywhere within a two-mile radius were sure to be rousted out and set to flight.

Both men tramped over to him, firearms in hand, and poured out their competing theories. Fortunately, Robert managed to refrain from asking why in the devil they were chewing his ear off. He had nearly forgotten. He was meant to be the Duke, and thus expected to settle this sort of dispute. He might not know about trees, but he did know about quarreling men.

Robert picked a third tree at random.

“This one,” he said as the flames cast grotesque shadows across their expectant faces. “It’s clearly the biggest of the lot.”

“How positively Solomonic,” murmured Medmenham. It didn’t sound like a compliment. Strolling to the other side of the tree, he tapped it lightly with one knuckle. “Crammed full of evil spirits, too, I warrant.”

Robert suspected any evil spirits were outside rather than inside the tree. But since they were holding firearms, it didn’t seem like a good time to press the point.

Instead, he said mildly, “Shall we get on?”

Turnip Fitzhugh warily circled the tree, as though expecting it to engage in a preemptive strike. “I say, are we meant to shoot at the tree or away from it?”

“At it, I should think,” replied Lord Freddy Staines, polishing the stock of his pistol to bring out its pretty sheen. His initials were tooled onto the stock in shiny silver filigree, all extravagant curlicues and improbable flourishes. “How else are we to kill the evil spirits?”

Fitzhugh nodded as though that made perfect sense to him.

Robert gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to bang someone’s head against the tree, preferably Staines’s. He had seen Staines’s type time and again in the army, pampered aristocrats, confident to the point of obtuseness, who barely knew one end of a gun from the other but had no scruples about sending whole regiments of men far more seasoned than they to their deaths in battle plans so ridiculous that even a five-year-old child could have seen the flaws.

In short, the sort of man who would recommend so idiotic a measure as pointing a bullet at a hard object at point-blank range with a large group of people clustered around. There was a name for that. It was called suicide.

Robert did his best to put it in an idiom they would all understand. “I’d say shooting at the tree would be a jolly dangerous idea.”

“Why?” demanded Lord Henry Innes, trooping over to join the group, a brown jug in one hand and his pistol in the other. “It ain’t going to shoot back.”

Medmenham rose to Robert’s aid. “Ricochet,” he said succinctly. “I, for one, have no desire to breathe my last because of a bullet bouncing off a tree.”

“Better than at the hand of a jealous husband, eh?” put in Frobisher, sending an elbow towards Medmenham’s ribs.

Medmenham neatly sidestepped, sending Frobisher stumbling sideways into the tree. Given the way Frobisher bounced off, Robert decided that the score was tree: one; men: zero. “My dear fellow,” he said in a tone of mock censure, “I do not toy with married women.”

“Safer than the unmarried ones,” retorted Frobisher, brushing bark off his sleeve. “Right, Staines?”

Staines looked up from his pistol with a smug grin. “I’d say it depends on which unmarried woman.” It was painfully clear to whom he was referring.

Tommy pushed away from his post by the tree. “Don’t you mean lady?”

Staines regarded him coolly, his fashionably high shirt points pushing against his cheekbones. “I always say exactly what I mean.”

Something crackled in the air that wasn’t the bonfire.

Robert stepped neatly between them. “Isn’t it about time we got our revels underway?”

Neither man moved. Robert could hear the puff of their breath in the cold air, the shuffle of feet against the cold ground in the unnatural stillness that preceded a challenge.

But there wasn’t going to be one. Not if he could bloody well help it.

Robert seized on the first expedient that came to mind. Assuming his best ducal air, he called out, “As your host, I claim the privilege of the first toast.”

He didn’t have a glass to hand, or even a jug, so he made up for it by lifting both hands in what he hoped was a magisterial gesture.

“To Epiphany Eve, a time for revelry” — there was some cheering and lifting of bottles at that, a nervous, too shrill sound — “reconciliation” — he looked pointedly at Tommy, who looked grimly back at him — “and revelation.”

Around him, he could hear the popping sound of stoppers being yanked from jugs. “Epiphany Eve!”

Staines let his pistol drop to his side.

Robert raised his voice to be heard above the others. “And now — let’s drink!”

“I’ll drink to that!” one of the locals called out and the group dissolved into a milling mass, separating into small groups, as the men let their weapons fall and dropped onto the frozen ground for a good spot of drinking and masculine companionship. Robert wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the whole ritual was largely an excuse for getting out of the house while the women fussed over preparations for Twelfth Night. Charlotte would probably know, or at least have a theory about it.

No one seemed particularly concerned about frightening away the spirits; they were far more interested in getting at the cider and telling long, boastful stories about their weaponry. Given the amount of cider sloshing into the roots of the tree, any evil spirits were going to be too sloshed by the end of the evening to work any harm. Robert hoped that the same could be said for the humans.

Tommy stalked past, moving in the direction of the house. “I’ll be in my room,” he tossed over his shoulder in passing. He was clearly not in the mood for either revelry or reconciliation. That still left revelation.

Snagging Tommy by the arm, Robert fixed a wide smile to his face. “I need you to talk to Frobisher,” he said softly, smiling all the while. “Engage him about their club. Find out whatever you can.”

“Can’t you do it?”

“I’m going to tackle Innes.”

Tommy shrugged his shoulders irritably. “All right. Just don’t expect me to cozy up to Staines.”

“Trust me,” said Robert. “You will immeasurably improve my evening if you both stay as far from each other as possible. And I don’t mean forty paces.”

Tommy knew exactly what he meant. “He deserves it,” he said.

Considering that the lady in question had absconded to a balcony with Staines, the question of her honor was rather debatable. But he knew better than to say that to Tommy, at least not if he didn’t want to be facing the other end of his friend’s pistol. Tommy tended to fall in love about twice a year, and it was always excruciating while it lasted. Fortunately, it seldom lasted long.

“Fair enough,” Robert said evenly. “But not now. Not when we need him to find Wrothan. Who knows? We may discover enough to bring your friend down as well.”

The latter argument had its intended effect. Without saying anything else, Tommy turned and made his way towards Frobisher. With any luck, Frobisher would already be foxed enough not to notice that the smile pasted across Tommy’s face was decidedly lopsided.

Meanwhile, Robert set off in search of his own quarry. Medmenham might know the most, but of all the group, Innes struck him as the weakest link, blunt, straightforward, a reminder that man wasn’t all that far removed from the animals when it came down to it. He was also, unfortunately, the one least likely to be entrusted with information of any use.

“Is that the famous cider?” Robert asked by way of opening gambit, flinging himself down onto the turf beside Lord Henry. Damp immediately began to seep through his breeches. The frozen ground was bloody cold and bloody hard.

Hoisting the jug up in the air, Lord Henry regarded it tenderly. “The very same. Norfolk’s finest.”

Yanking out the cork with his teeth, Lord Henry spat it out onto the ground beside him and took a long pull from the bottle. “Ah,” he said, shaking his head like a dog after a dousing. “That’s more the thing. Dovedale?”

Robert accepted the jug in a philosophical spirit. It was many years since he had tasted English cider, apples not being exactly a staple of the Indian diet. But it was made out of fermented fruit. How bad could it be?

It was like drinking gunpowder.

Robert took a swig and nearly spat it out again. That had been apples once? He didn’t believe it. After just one slug, his ears were ringing as though he’d been standing in the middle of a cannonade.

“Good God, man, what do they put in this brew?”

Innes snagged the bottle back. “Don’t ask, just enjoy.”

“Words to live by.” Robert snatched the bottle back and made a show of drinking deeply, working the muscles of his throat in imitation of a swallow even as he blocked the flow of liquid with his teeth. He knew how to make it look convincing. Hadn’t he been trained by his father, after all? The man’s main talent, the one of which he had been the most proud, had been his ability to drain any cup of spirits without coming up for air.

The effort wasn’t a wasted one.

“Not bad.” Innes’s voice was tinged with a connoisseur’s appreciation for the concerted consumption of alcohol. “My turn.”

His exhibition was even more impressive, given the fact that Robert was pretty sure that Innes was actually drinking. His throat muscles worked convulsively as he held the jug tilted over his mouth, some of the amber liquid trickling down along the sides of his face. Putting the jug down with an explosive gasp, he dashed the back of his hand across his mouth.

“You are clearly a master,” said Robert politely.

“It just takes practice.” Innes’s voice was a little ragged, so he soothed his throat with another slug of cider.

“Cider-drinking contests at your secret society?” Robert suggested, just to get him talking. “I’ll have to start getting back in practice, then.”

The cider hadn’t had time to do its work. Innes tapped his nose. “Can’t expect me to give away the club’s secrets till you’ve been initiated, old man. Strictly against the rules.”

“Whose rules?”

Innes dropped his voice. “Our avatar.”

“You mean Medmenham?”

“No, no. Medmenham’s the fakir.” Innes helped himself to more cider.

“The what?” Robert didn’t have to feign incredulity. Fakir or faker? It was just the sort of play on words Medmenham would enjoy, promising exotic mysteries to his credulous friends and laughing up his sleeve all the way.

“Some Oriental something-or-other,” said Innes vaguely. “He used to be the Abbot, back when we still called ourselves the Friars of Medmenham, but then old Francis decided that that was too last s-season.” Innes hiccuped on the last word. “Bloody stuff,” he said, regarding the cider fondly.

Leaning on one arm, Robert adopted his best man-to-man voice. “You strike me as a man of action.”

In fact, Innes struck him as a man of violence, a very different thing. But Innes preened, just as Robert had known he would. He was the sort who had never entered the army, but always wished he had. He did have some sort of position in the King’s household, as gentleman usher or gentleman-in-waiting or something of that ilk, a role Robert found entirely incongruous for the blunt-speaking, hard-drinking, horse-hounds-and-wenches Innes. Almost as incongruous as hearing the Eastern terms “avatar” and “fakir” issuing out of his chapped lips.

“Do you actually believe all this rubbish about avatars and ancient rites?”

Innes sputtered into the cider jug. “Hell, no! I’m here for the same reasons you are.”

A deathbed promise to a good and noble man?

“The women,” finished Lord Henry. “It’s too much demmed trouble hunting them down oneself. I don’t know where Medmenham finds them, but his lot will do anything. No screeching, no ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ I tell you, they’re above rubies.”

It had been a while since Robert had consulted a Bible, but he could have sworn it was the virtuous woman who was above rubies. Lord Henry obviously had a rather different concept of virtue.

“Only the best for our orgies, that’s our motto.”

“I imagine it sounds better translated into Latin,” said Robert kindly.

Lord Henry waved the jug, sending cider sloshing in an arc across his own coat “Oh, it’s all Indian these days.”

It didn’t seem worth explaining to him that there wasn’t any such language. During his twelve years on the subcontinent, Robert had picked up a smattering of Hindustani and Marathi, just enough to say “please,” “thank you,” “is this really the price?” and “can you tell me where the Mahratta intend to attack?”

Robert leaned back on his elbows, watching as Turnip Fitzhugh executed a mock duel with a tree branch, using another tree branch. “Really? I didn’t realize Medmenham had traveled in India.”

“Francis? No.” Innes was being to look vaguely cross-eyed. “Freddy brought the chap back from India.”

“Chap?”

“The avatar.” Lord Henry tossed aside the empty jug, narrowly missing one of the locals in the process, and reached for another from the little stockpile he had cunningly set up next to his chosen spot on the ground.

“Is he Indian, then?”

“I haven’t the foggiest, old chap. Comes masked, you know,” slurred Lord Henry. “We all do. I say” — Lord Henry’s eyes took on a gleam of animal cunning — “shouldn’t be telling you this. Not before the sh-sheremony.”

“Of course,” said Robert smoothly, uncorking the next jug and handing it to him. “Any idea when that might be?”

If he could find out the date and time, there was always the chance he could spy on their ceremony and assure himself of Wrothan’s presence rather than actually going through with the whole rigmarole himself. If he could waylay Wrothan either on the way there or the way back . . . the whole dirty business could be done.

And then?

Rather than the winter-scarred tree, Robert had a hazy image of summer at Dovedale, summer as it had been all those years ago, with the gardens bright with flowers and summer sun gilding the surface of the lake. They had played bowls on the lawn and rowed on the lake and risked the wrath of the gardener making garlands for Charlotte to wear on her unicorn-hunting expeditions. Memory played tricks, though. Instead of a little girl in a black frock, it was a very grown-up Charlotte across from him in the boat on the lake, dabbling her fingers in the water and getting pecked at by an irate swan.

It might not be so very unpleasant staying on at Dovedale if Charlotte were there with him.

Robert viewed the brown jug with something approaching awe. That was certainly powerful stuff to send him woolgathering after just one swallow. Robert set the jug down. Hard.

“When’s the next meeting?” he asked, somewhat more brusquely than he had intended.

“Next meeting?” muttered Innes, trying to focus and failing. “Dunno. Never know.”

“Then how will I know to go?” asked Robert reasonably.

“When Francis wants you to come, you’ll know.” Innes upended the jug, following its movement backwards straight onto his back. It was a bit like watching a tree falling. His voice rose hollowly from the ground. “Trust me, you’ll know.”