The Queen's Necklace (48 page)

With a heavy heart, she returned to the table, to her pen and paper. Dipping the quill into the inkwell, she scribbled a few quick words. Then she folded the paper, wrote Will's name very clearly on the outside, and handed the letter to one of the servants, to be delivered the moment Wilrowan arrived.

Inside the berlin with Sir Bastian, Lili settled her hat, smoothed out her skirts, and tried to compose herself for the journey ahead. “I take it we are going in search of the Mountfalcon Jewel?”

“Yes, Lilliana. Your hour has truly arrived. No one but you, with your peculiar divining abilities, could hope to succeed at this important task.”

“But—I suppose we are not going out to look at random?”

“We are going to Fermouline in Chêneboix. Whether we go on from there remains to be seen.”

As the berlin rumbled toward the city gate, the old gentleman explained how the king had just received news of such curious behavior on the part of the mills and compasses. “It is a part of the world that had already attracted our attention before—not only because two of the conspirators involved in the theft were traced to Chetterly near the Chêneboix border, but because we had already received word of a fire, a riot, and a serious outbreak of disease, all within a twenty-mile radius of Fermouline. If the Chaos Machine is not in that city at this very moment, then I suspect it has recently passed through.”

He glanced across at Lili. “But you are the one who has established an affinity for the Jewel. When we arrive at our destination,
you
must be the one to tell
me
if the Chaos Machine is still in the vicinity.”

Lili sat staring down at the muddy toes of her shoes; in her haste, she had walked right through a puddle to reach the coach. “I left Hawkesbridge so suddenly; there can be little doubt that people will talk. I don't want Papa and Aunt Allora to worry.”

“You need not concern yourself about that. A message in cipher has already been sent to your aunt, telling her everything.” His glance sharpened. “What excuse, may I ask, did you leave Captain Blackheart?”

Lili tried to remember, attempted to call up that hurried letter in her mind. “I told him—very little. I could hardly tell him where I was going, even had I wanted to. And I certainly didn't mention my reasons for going.”

“That is what I would have expected. If we should chance to
meet your husband later, you must continue to tell him as little as possible. In fact,” Sir Bastian added, “it would be far better if we never stopped to make any explanation at all.”

Blaise Trefallon was still in bed when Wilrowan burst into his rented lodgings. He had spent most of the night after the opera gaming at Silas Gant's, returning to his chambers a little after sunrise. He had slept for several hours, was just sitting up in bed and beginning to think about breakfast, when the door of his room flew open and Will strode in, dressed for travel in jack-boots, doeskin trousers, and a long drab coat, nervously flicking a silver-handled riding crop in one white-knuckled hand.

“Trefallon,” he demanded without any preamble, “what have you done with my wife?”

Blaise rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and gave a gaping yawn. He was never at his best in the morning, before he spent that first crucial hour with his barber and valet. “I beg your pardon? What do you
suppose
I've done with your wife?”

Will waved a clenched fist. “Lili has disappeared. She rode off in a black berlin, taking a trunk full of clothes with her. The servants tell me they are certain there was a gentleman with her, but no one caught a glimpse of his face. As there is no other man I can even imagine Lili eloping with, I come to you and I ask again: What—have—you—done—with—my wife?”

Blaise threw back the covers and rose to his feet. He was a very different Trefallon, just now, from the elegant creature of the court and the drawing room, from the rakish habitué of the taverns and the gaming hells. Nevertheless, standing there in his night-shirt, with his fair hair disheveled, he was able to assume a certain amount of hauteur as he raised one arched eyebrow and asked:

“It does not occur to you, Wilrowan, that if I had eloped with
anyone
, I would not be here speaking with you now?”

“It occurs to me,” said Will, looking very white around the mouth, “that you might have taken her away and left her—somewhere—and doubled back here to allay my suspicions.”

“I see,” said Trefallon, his chin going up and a belligerent look coming into his eye. “You burst into my room at this ungodly hour, and inform me, firstly, that I am a vile seducer and have stolen your wife, and secondly, that I am undoubtedly a coward and a sneak.”

It might be difficult for a man to stand on his dignity while barefoot and in dire need of a shave, but Blaise was succeeding admirably. “I take leave to inform you, Captain Blackheart, that if I had any designs on your wife, I would never think of ruining her with an elopement. Instead, I would take the more honorable course of putting a sword or a bullet through your
bastard
heart, and then marrying your widow. I do trust I have made myself perfectly clear?”

Will made a mighty effort and swallowed his wrath. “I suppose that I owe you an apology,” he said, in a stifled voice.

“I should very well think that you do. But pray don't offer one if it's too much trouble. I had just as soon meet you as not, considering your insufferable—” Blaise stopped himself and stared at his friend, suddenly struck by Will's tragic demeanor. “You really mean this! You sincerely believe that Lili has done this.”

“Yes,” said Will, collapsing in a chair. “And please don't tell me how richly I deserve it. I know that as well as you do, and it only makes everything infinitely worse.”

“Yes,” said Blaise, reaching for the pair of nankeen breeches he had thrown over a chair a few hours earlier, beginning to put them on. “I feel certain it must. But this is ghastly, Will. Do you tell me she left without any explanation?”

Will shook his head bleakly. “An apology but no explanation. I have to get her back, Blaise. The truth is—I don't think I can possibly live without her.”

Trefallon examined him thoughtfully. “I must confess, I've suspected something of the sort. How long have
you
known?” He pulled off his night-shirt and tossed it on the bed.

“That I love Lili?” Will gave a bitter laugh. “I can't say how long. Almost from the very beginning, I think.”

Blaise shook his head in exasperation. “Sometimes I despair of you.” He crossed the room, opened a drawer, and pulled out a clean shirt. “If this is true, then why on earth did you never tell
Lili
?”

Will bent the riding crop in his hands until it seemed it must snap. “Because I was a coward. Even in so short a time, I had already—transgressed a dozen times, and I was afraid she would never be able to love me in return.”

At this point, Blaise surprised him with a shout of laughter. “My dear Blackheart, are you absolutely blind? If there is one thing I know, one thing I have become utterly certain of this last month, it's that Lili loves you. I find it hard to believe she has really run off with another man. Besides, who would she go with? She doesn't really
know
any men but you and me and Nick and Rodaric, and you surely don't suspect either of them.

“And, oh yes,” he added, as he went on dressing, “that civil old gentleman I saw her walking with, one day by the river.”

“Civil old gentleman?” Will's eyebrows drew sharply together.

Blaise waved a hand. “I forget his name, if she ever mentioned it. Well past seventy and exceedingly avuncular. Besides, they were very well chaperoned, and by no less a personage than Sir Frederic Tregaron-Marlowe.”

This news had the unexpected effect of galvanizing Will. He had been sitting slumped and dejected in his chair; now he jerked erect. “Sir Frederic
Marlowe
?”

“Why yes,” Blaise answered coolly, as he knotted his fringed neckcloth. “Did you ever attend any of his lectures? I did, and he was the most prolix old—Why do you look at me that way? Undoubtedly
Marlowe and the other man were friends of Miss Brakeburn, paying a duty call on her great-niece.”

Will settled back into his chair. “Of course.”

“I feel very certain,” Trefallon went on, “that if Lili is truly gone, she must be going home to Brakeburn Hall, to nurse her wounded feelings.”

“But why?” said Will, continuing to look both ill and bewildered. “Last night—I thought—I swear to you, Blaise, everything was different. And if she was only going home, why didn't she say so in her letter?”

Blaise shrugged. “I don't pretend to know what happened between the two of you last night. But I do know what Lili has been feeling this last month.” He pulled back his hair and tied it up at the nape of his neck with a brown silk ribbon. “If she didn't write to say she was going to Brakeburn, it was probably because she thought it might sound like an invitation to follow her. She does have some pride, you know. And you have treated her abominably.”

“I don't dispute that,” said Will, wearily. “But not, I tell you, last night. I told her everything I had been feeling for so many years and we—we settled everything between us.”

Blaise looked across at him with pitying eyes. “Then why, Wilrowan, is Lili gone today?”

Will spread his hands. “I don't know. I don't know. And that is the very thing that stabs at my heart! It may be—I can hardly say—but it may be that she didn't believe anything I said.”

“Well then, it is clearly up to you to find her and convince her that you were entirely in earnest. If you follow her all the way to Brakeburn Hall, that should make a good beginning.”

Will threw down the whip, sprang to his feet, and began to pace a circle around the room. “But that is the worst of it. I can't go to Lili—at Brakeburn or anywhere else. I am leaving the city on urgent business. I can't tell you where and I can't tell you why. But if Lili
should come back to Hawkesbridge for any reason—” He stopped and gave Trefallon a pleading glance. “If she should write to you and tell you her whereabouts—tell her—tell her—”

“I'll tell her how you looked and what you said,” Blaise answered soothingly. “I'll do everything in my power to persuade her to stay here and wait for your return.”

Will paid a quick visit to his secret rooms at the wigmaker's house, where he retrieved a number of odd little bottles and curious potions, and dropped them into a coat pocket. Then it was back to the palace, where he learned that Young Swallow had already packed up his things in a small wooden chest and two portmanteaux.

“Send them by the mail coach to meet me at the Cinque d'Or in Fermouline.” Will had previously arranged to meet Nick and his other two men at the same inn. They were travelling separately to avoid attracting attention.

Arming himself with pistols, powder-horn, shot, and a silver-hilted rapier on a red silk baldric, he caught up the shovel-brim hat and a pair of pigskin gauntlets, and headed for the door.

Will's next stop was the king's apartments, where Rodaric gave him a warrant they had discussed earlier—one with such broad and sweeping powers that it virtually amounted to a carte blanche. It would lose some of its force once he crossed the border, but it would still carry considerable weight in Chêneboix, Bridemoor, and Montagne-du-Soliel, according to recent treaties signed with those nations.

“Short of murder, arson, or highway robbery,” said Rodaric, as he handed the paper over, “it ought to clear you of practically anything in any of those places. But be careful how you use it and to whom you show it.”

Will nodded, slipped the warrant into an inside pocket, and then went upstairs to exchange a final word with the queen.

He found her alone in her pretty bedchamber, where the songbirds in their silver cages were ominously silent. When Will came in, his riding coat flapping around him, Dionee turned a haggard face to greet him. Ever since Rodaric had informed her earlier that day that the Chaos Machine had perhaps been located, she had been alternately filled with transports of joy and the most agitating apprehension.

“You will bring it back. Promise that you will bring it back,” she whispered, as Wilrowan cast himself down kneeling at her feet. The look on her face terrified him.

“I promise,” he said, taking both of her hands and kissing them repeatedly, “that whatever happens I won't come back without the Mountfalcon Jewel. This waiting about for information has gone on too long. If I don't find the Chaos Machine in Fermouline, I will keep on searching until I do.”

He rode out through the Volary gate on the same grey mare that had carried him to Brakeburn Hall earlier that year, and he could only regret that a visit to Lili at Brakeburn was not his goal today.

But riding through the mountains, many hours later and close to midnight, Will began to entertain second thoughts. Travelling down the pass linking Hawkesbridge to the plains of Chêneboix and Bridemoor, torturing himself with thoughts of Lili all along the way, he finally came to realize that the purpose of his journey, no matter how vital, was never going to receive his full attention until and unless he made some final attempt to find and speak to his wife.

Brakeburn Hall and the village of Fernbrake were located several hours to the north, Fermouline many miles more to the northeast. While Brakeburn was not on his way, neither was it so far afield that a flying visit would cost him more than eight or ten hours. He could make up some of that time later by changing horses, by riding through the following night, as he was riding through this one.

Will made his decision. When he came out of the mountains, he
and the tired mare headed north. It was a clear night and the moon was waxing near to full, the road was familiar, and he had no difficulty finding his way.