The Masque of the Black Tulip Read Free Page A

I did, anyway. "Your affectionate cousin, Jane."
    There are any number of Janes in history, most of them as gentle and unassuming as their name. Lady Jane Grey, the ill-fated seven-day queen of England. Jane Austen, the sweet-faced authoress, lionized by English majors and the BBC costume-drama-watching set.
    And then there was Miss Jane Wooliston, better known as the Pink Carnation.
    I clutched the binding of the folio as though it might scuttle away if I loosened my grip, refraining from making squealing noises of delight. Colin probably already thought I was a madwoman, without my providing him any additional proof. But I was squealing inside. As far as the rest of the historical community was concerned (I indulged in a bit of personal gloating), the only surviving references to the Pink Carnation were mentions in newspapers of the period, not exactly the most reliable report. Indeed, there were even scholars who opined that the Pink Carnation did not in fact exist, that the escapades attributed to the mythical flower figure over a ten-year period—stealing a shipment of gold from under Bonaparte's nose, burning down a French boot factory,spiriting away a convoy of munitions in Portugal during the Peninsular War, to name just a few—had been the work of a number of unrelated actors. The Pink Carnation, they insisted, was something like Robin Hood, a useful myth, perpetuated to keep people's morale up during the grim days of the Napoleonic Wars, when England stood staunchly alone as the rest of Europe tumbled under Napoleon's sway.
    Weren't they in for a surprise!
    I knew who the Pink Carnation was, thanks to Mrs. Selwick-Alderly. But I needed more. I needed to be able to link Jane Wooliston to the events attributed to the Pink Carnation by the news sheets, to provide concrete proof that the Pink Carnation had not only existed, but had been continuously in operation throughout that period.
    The letter in my lap was an excellent start. A reference to the Pink Carnation would have been good. A letter from the Pink Carnation herself was even better.
    Greedily, I skimmed the first few lines.
    "Dearest Cousin, Paris has been a whirl of gaiety since last I wrote, with scarcely a moment to rest between engagements…"
    * * *

Chapter Two
    Venetian Breakfast: a midnight excursion of a clandestine kind —from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation
    "…Yesterday, I attended a Venetian breakfast at the home of a gentleman very closely connected to the Consul. He was all that was amiable."
    In the morning room at Uppington House, Lady Henrietta Selwick checked the level of liquid in her teacup, positioned a little red book on the cushion next to her, and curled up against the arm of her favorite settee.
    Under her elbow, the fabric was beginning to snag and fray; suspicious tea-colored splotches marred the white-and-yellow-striped silk, and worn patches farther down the settee testified to the fact that the two slippered feet that currently occupied them had been there before. The morning room was usually the province of the lady of the house, but Lady Uppington, who lacked the capacity for sitting in one place longer than it took to deliver a pithy epigram, had long since ceded the sunny room to Henrietta, who used it as her receiving room, her library (the real library having the unfortunate defect of being too dark to actually read in), and her study. Haloed in the late morning sunlight, it was a pleasant, peaceful room, a room for innocent daydreams and restrained tea parties.
    At the moment, it was a hub for international espionage.
    On the little yellow-and-white settee rested secrets for which Bonaparte's most talented agents would have given their eyeteeth—or their eyes, for that matter, if that wouldn't have gotten in the way of actually reading the contents of the little red book.
    Henrietta spread Jane's latest letter out on her muslin-clad lap. Even if a French operative did happen to be peering through the