Chapter 27
Containing the Essential Code
Since she'd tossed her heart to a man with no use for it, Louisa saw no reason to dress for dinner with special care.
Her aunt disagreed, and had coaxed her into an evening gown they hadn't managed to ruin. A wintry froth of ivory muslin, overlaid with silver net and tiny crystals.
“There's no need for me to look so elegant tonight, Aunt,” Louisa said as her lady's maid wove glass beads through her hair under the countess's supervision.
“That is utter rot,” said Lady Irving. “Everyone's talking about how the earl is carrying on with that opera singer. Also rot, my girl, and you don't want anyone to think you're the slightest bit concerned. You want to look dazzling.”
Was that what she wanted? Louisa hardly knew. This rumor about the opera singerâit didn't matter if it was true or not. It proved that Alex was letting rumor eat him alive. If she saw him again, and the man she loved was already gone, that would be worse than if she'd never known him at all.
Underneath her beaded, silken armor, she was dreadfully afraid. Why had she returned?
Because she didn't want either Alex or Lockwood to think she'd been defeated. And because she did not want to be.
So she acted as though she was brimful of bravery. With her aunt, she entered the drawing room before dinner, her smile as crystalline as the beads on her gown. The conversation of the other guests buzzed faintly in her ears.
She greeted Jane with unfeigned happiness; then came the gauntlet of reacquainting with the other guests. Shaking hands all around, complimenting gowns, waving off comments concerning her sudden departure. A family situation with her sisterâexpecting, you knowâhad called them away.
This cheerful chatter was easier than she'd expected. Every smile she won was a victory; not over the guests, but over herself. No one looked beyond the crystal beads.
As long as she didn't see Alex, she could hold herself together. As long as she didn't meet his eye, she'd be fine.
Naturally, he entered the drawing room at that moment, all blacks and grays and blade-sharp handsomeness. Yearning stabbed through her, so suddenly that she was unprepared with her polite mask, and her expression must have shown him all her naked desire, her regret.
And what did he do with this knowledge?
He smiled at her, as though everything was right in the world. And then he turned away again.
She wasn't sure whether she loved him more, or whether she hated him for that.
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After dinner, Lady Irving settled herself in a chair near the drawing room fireplace.
Not that she was getting old. It was January, damn it; anyone's bones would ache.
Jane Tindall, the earl's bold little cousin, had found a bean in her Twelfth Day cake, which made her queen for the evening. That silly fop Freddie Pellington was the king. They had put their heads together with Xavier as soon as everyone flocked into the drawing room. Something afoot, apparently. Lady Irving hoped it would be enough to distract Louisa. Xavier had promised he'd a plan in mind.
With a clap of hands, Xavier called for the attention of the party.
“Let
me
talk, Xavier,” the Tindall girl said. She wore a gilt-paper crown and a rebellious expression. “You didn't find a bean. You ought to go sit down with the rest of the groundlings.”
Their host folded his arms and stared at his cousin.
“Dash it,” said Freddie Pellington. “No need to keep everyone in suspense and whatnot. Going to play a game of charades. Er, we all are, or most of us are, if you like. Plenty of roles to go around. Special type of charades.”
Lady Irving disliked babblers. And her ankles ached. “Special type of charades? What rot are you talking?”
“In the usual fashion, the actors would perform a syllable at a time,” Xavier began, but Miss Tindall interrupted.
“Tonight we'll act each letter separately. A tableau for each letter of the secret word. It won't be a very long word, or we'd be playing for days.”
“Nothing wrong with prolonging a pleasurable sport.” The oily voice of Lord Lockwood.
Lady Irving craned her neck to see what the marquess was going on about. At the far end of the room, Lockwood lounged on the arm of a long, silk-covered divan, looming over Signora Frittarelli. The singer seemed unbothered by this attention; she simply sat, lush as a cherry in a dark red gown of cotton velvet. Every few seconds, she blew smoke into Lockwood's face.
Good for her.
“In fact,” the marquess was now saying, “let's put a wager on the game. First to guess the secret word wins the prize. Xavier, what do you say?”
Lady Irving noted that Xavier shot a glance at Louisa before answering. “As I suggested the secret word, there's no sense in wagering.”
“Wager on who will guess it first, then,” Lockwood pressed. The prima donna blew a particularly large cloud of ash into his face, and he had to stifle a cough.
Xavier shook his head. “I don't care to wager.”
The room went silent.
“Honestly,” Lady Irving muttered. Not even Lord Xavier took every wager.
Come to think of it, maybe he did. She looked sharply at the earl. He appeared calm as he stared his cousin the marquess in the eye. Who would blink first?
Another cloud of smoke enveloped Lockwood's head.
Blink.
“But you always care to wager,” Lockwood choked out. “Come, let's put a tenner on it.”
“I don't care to wager,” Xavier repeated. “Not this time. Find your amusement somewhere else.”
The room remained silent. Lockwood broke it with a feeble “But . . .”
Lady Irving had age and gender on her side. Therefore, she felt free to snort her derision at Lockwood. “Quiet, you. Let's get on with the game.”
Besides turning a bit purple around the edges, there wasn't a thing Lockwood could do by way of reply.
“Anyone who wants to act, come up here.” Miss Tindall waved her arms.
As several guests joined her, Louisa perched on the arm of Lady Irving's chair.
“Turn the chair so I can see everything, girl,” the countess addressed her. “But make sure I stay by the fire. Damned cold in here.”
“It doesn't seem cold to me,” Louisa said as she tugged at the chair.
“That's because you're secretly lusting after the earl. It's heating your blood.”
“Nonsense, Aunt Estella. I find the earl merely tolerable.”
Her blushing cheeks told a different story. Lady Irving decided to allow her that fiction.
She was accustomed to watching over her niecesâfirst Julia, now Louisaâwith fierce loyalty. With her own elderly lecher of a husband, she'd had the worst of the institution of marriage; she was determined her nieces would have the best.
Was Xavier the best? She hadn't decided yet. If he kept looking at Louisa as though she were a Twelfth Day cake he wanted to nibble up, then . . . possibly.
Jane Tindall had finished waving her arms about. “We will be ready with the first clue in a few minutes,” she called. The actors left the room, trailed by Pellington, who arranged a large folding screen in front of the door.
“Our host mentioned a code,” Louisa said. “I've never played charades in this way before, but it seems intriguing.”
“Only the game?”
Louisa stared at the folding screen. “I'm only talking about the game right now.”
“Clever girl.” Lady Irving shifted her feet to catch more warmth. “Lying is vulgar. Omission is good
ton
.”
After a few minutes had passed, they saw the top edge of the door click open behind the painted screen; a soft thunder of footsteps, clanking objects, and hushed voices followed.
Xavier emerged from behind the screen first. Not acting in the tableaux, then.
“Our word tonight is four letters. Presenting the first letter,” he intoned in a theatrical voice, then pulled the folding screen aside to reveal the actors.
Lord Lockwood, covered by a pink shawl, was down on all fours. He crawled about, snarling, bumping against a precarious mound of chairs over which had been thrown a tapestry showing a castle and moat. Lady Audrina Bradleighâone of Sylvia Alleyneham's flock of daughtersâstood next to the tower of chairs, a sheet draped across her body and a crossbow in one hand.
“They must have raided the hunting lodge,” Louisa murmured.
At the right of the tableau, four men wore pieces of a suit of armor and brandished pistols, muskets, and an old spear.
“They did indeed raid the hunting lodge,” Lady Irving agreed.
That quiet Mr. Channing stood in front of the others, shaking his weapon more vigorously, his hair powdered white with flour. Jane Tindall, wearing a man's waistcoat over her frock, walked past the men, holding a bow strung with a quill, which she threw at the crawling Lord Lockwood. Lockwood clutched the spot where the quill had struck him and rolled onto his back, twitching, tongue lolling out of his mouth. The four men surrounded him and mimed hacking at him with their weapons until he lay still.
Xavier drew the screen back across the scene. “End of the first tableau.”
He bowed and walked behind the screen, and the door opened and let out the same bustling and clanking assortment that had come in shortly before.
Interesting
, the countess thought.
Louisa seemed to think so, too. Her stubborn quiet had completely dissolved. “They killed Lockwood,” she observed.
“That's a good start to any game,” Lady Irving said.
Sylvia Alleyneham was fluttering around the room. “What could it be? Something from the Bible? The Tower of Babel?”
“Who was Miss Tindall, then?” asked Lord Kirkpatrick. “An avenging angel? A goddess? A maid from some legend?”
“If Jane heard him talking like that,” Louisa murmured, “she'd be leaping all over him again.”
Lady Irving suppressed another snort. In the general way of things, snorting was vulgar. “Have you any idea, my girl?”
Louisa shook her head, glass beads twinkling in her hair. “I know I've heard some tale in which a woman slays an animal. I can't quite think of it.”
Lord Weatherwax roused himself from the depths of his chair. “Port for anyone? Or sherry for the ladies?” He rang for a servant, and soon a footman was circulating with glasses of wine. The guests began to sip at them, still guessing.
“Something from the Crusades,” suggested that hussy of a widow, Lillian Protheroe.
“This game is a bore,” pouted Sylvia's other daughter, Charissa.
“A boar!” Louisa called. “That's it exactly.”
All eyes turned to her. She kept her chin up and explained, “It's Atalanta slaying the Calydonian boar. It's a story from classical mythology. Lord Lockwood was the boar, sent by Artemisâ”
“That was my daughter,” interrupted Sylvia. “My daughter was Artemis, wasn't she?”
“Yes,” Louisa continued. “She sent the boar to destroy a city that dishonored her, and there was a great hunt to kill it. The father of the hero Odysseus was one of the hunters, but the female hunter, Atalanta, drew first blood.”
She accepted a glass of sherry from a footman and took a sip, seeming not to notice the effect of her words on the room.
But Lady Irving noticed: they were stunned, and pleasantly so. Everyone was watching Louisa as though she'd tossed guineas at them.
“Smile, girl,” the countess hissed at her niece.
“What a wit, Miss Oliver,” said Lord Weatherwax in his slightly too-loud voice. “Bravo to you. Or rather, brava.”
This broke the odd silence, and the group began to talk and chuckle again.
“What's the letter, then?” This from Sylvia's daughter Charissa. “Is it B for the boar? Or A for . . . er, whatever the huntress's name was?”
“It could be either one,” Louisa said. “We'll figure it out once we see the other clues.”
With that, they heard the actors trooping back into the room behind the screen.
Xavier appeared first. “Presenting the second letter.” He drew the screen aside again.
A bearskin had been tacked to one of the drawing room doors and sprinkled with what appeared to be saffron.
“That'll be expensive,” Lady Irving said. Louisa shushed her, but the countess forgave her niece this disrespect. Louisa tended to get irritable when she was gnawing on a puzzle.