The Garden Intrigue

Chapter 18

She smelled like violets and musk, innocence and experience, all rolled into one.

Augustus nuzzled the side of Emma’s face with his nose, breathing in the scent of her, so familiar and yet strangely heady at such close quarters, like perfume in its purest and distilled form, or spirits drunk straight.

She blinked at him, like one half asleep, eyes blurred and unfocused. She looked adorable that way, hair tousled, cheeks flushed. He had seen her flustered before, flustered, tousled, blustering, but never like this, soft around the corners.

“I don’t think—” she said hoarsely.

Augustus put a finger to her lips. “Yes, you do,” he said fondly. “All the time.”

Gently, he brushed his finger across her lips. For a moment, he thought she might argue, her lips parted as though to speak, but only air came out. Her eyelids flickered closed, lilac paint making purple shadows.

“Emma,” Augustus said, tasting the name on his tongue, invocation and question all in one. This was Emma and it wasn’t, commonplace and strange all at the same time, like a familiar landscape viewed from a new angle. What was the line? Suffer a sea change to something rich and strange.

Rich and strange, indeed. Her lips were soft and slightly parted beneath his finger, her breath a benediction on his skin. So many discussions they had had, so many conversations, so many arguments, and he had never imagined her lips would feel like this, like crinkled satin, smooth and soft to touch.

How had he known her without knowing this?

In fact, all of her was soft, from the whispery fabric of her dress to the bare skin of her arm beneath the small, puffed sleeve of her dress. The costly muslin of her dress felt coarse next to the silk of her skin, coarse and crude, the clumsy work of man a poor second to the wonders of nature. He skimmed his hand lightly up her arm, feeling the goose pimples rise beneath his fingers. He had dismissed her as skinny once, but there was flesh on her bones, soft, feminine flesh that quivered with the passage of his touch.

He ran his knuckles along the border of her bodice, once so seemingly low, now far too high.

“Emma,” he said again, and leaned in to kiss her.

“Don’t.” Emma jerked sharply sideways. Augustus’s lips grazed hair. “Augustus—don’t.”

Augustus spat out a blond hair that had attached itself to his tongue. “Emma?”

Using both hands, she held his head away from her. Her small hands had surprising strength in them. “No. Please.”

Augustus pulled back. “Of course. Whatever you say.” Seeing her look at him that way made him feel like the meanest sort of cad. Worse than a cad. Someone like Marston. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t.” Clumsily, she scrambled off his lap, her elbow digging hard into his chest as she pushed away. Her voice was muffled by the movement. “That’s just the problem.”

“That’s not—” Augustus broke off, befuddled.

He’d been going to say that wasn’t what he meant, but he’d be damned if he knew what he did mean. All he knew was that his lap felt very empty without Emma in it. His mind was still scrambling to catch up with his body.

His body, meanwhile, wanted to catch up with Emma.

“Emma, I don’t know what to say. I—”

Turning away, Emma yanked at her bodice. A few tugs, and she had hoisted the fabric higher than it had ever been meant to go. “It’s quite all right,” she said. She wouldn’t look him in the eye but concentrated on righting her bodice. “You don’t have to say anything. I understand.”

He was glad someone did. He sure as hell didn’t.

Augustus shoved himself up off the rounded keel of the rowboat, his movements stiff and awkward. “Emma—”

Turning, she shook out her skirts, rousting out creases with unnecessary force. “Shall we go back to the house? It must be nearly time for supper. Are you hungry?”

Hungry? Food was the last thing on his mind.

Emma kept up a steady flow of chatter. “It won’t be anything fancy; it never is at Malmaison. Bonaparte likes to be simple in the country—the Emperor, I mean. I can’t seem to remember to call him that.”

“Wait.” Augustus plunged desperately into the gap left by a semisecond’s silence. “That’s it?”

“What’s it?”

“This. Us. Now.” It wasn’t his most articulate moment.

“There isn’t an us.” She fiddled with her rings, turning a cluster of diamonds around and around and around. “It’s all right. You don’t have to pretend. I know this isn’t about me.”

His body disagreed. It thought it was very much about her. He could still feel the press of her against the crook of his arm and more distracting places, like an impression left in wax.

Emma took his silence as assent. “It’s just that I was here,” she said earnestly. “I do understand, you know. You were hurt. You wanted comforting.”

No. Yes. Maybe?

Augustus shoved his hair back away from his face. “Emma—”

She smiled a rueful smile. “Right now, I imagine any warm body would do. Mine just happened to be here.” Turning, she ducked beneath a painted proscenium, maneuvering around a miniature version of the leaning tower of Pisa. “Shall we take the side door? It’s faster.”

Augustus grabbed for her, catching her hand. “Not so fast.”

Her hand felt painfully frail in his, tiny bones in tiny fingers, the massive stones of her rings biting into his palms, the last defense of a kingdom unprepared for siege.

“Yes?”

Now that he had her attention, he didn’t know what to do with it. What was he supposed to tell her? You’re not just a warm body? In fact, you’re rather chilly? Or Yes, this was all about Jane, but you’re not so bad yourself?

Brilliant, Augustus, brilliant. One could launch ships with that.

Brusquely, he said, “Don’t sell yourself short.”

Emma’s eyes fell to their joined hands. “I’m not.” She closed her eyes and then opened them again. “I’m just being…realistic. It’s a natural reaction, to seek consolation. How can I fault you for that? I’ve done it too.”

“Have you?” Augustus’s reaction was visceral and negative. He didn’t like the thought of that, not one bit. It had probably been Marston, the bastard, based on all accounts. He had never heard Emma’s name linked with anyone else’s, not in that way at any rate. Flirtations, yes; courtships, naturally; but an affair? Only Marston.

He hated the thought of Emma in Marston’s arms, her tiny form engulfed in his embrace, Marston’s hands in her hair, on her shoulders, her breasts.

She nodded, but didn’t elaborate. “So you see, I do understand.”

Augustus wished she would stop understanding. “Yes, but…”

“Well, then,” Emma said, as though that answered everything. She smiled at him, the smile she wore in Paris, the bright, fake smile that went with her paste jewelry and glittery garments. It looked very out of place with her snagged gown and tousled hair. “We only have two days left to rehearse. I do hope Kort manages to remember his lines this time.”

Damn Kort and his lines. “It doesn’t matter what he says,” Augustus said shortly. “They would applaud if he recited the alphabet.”

“I don’t think we’re quite so desperate as all that.” Emma twisted open a door Augustus hadn’t even seen. It opened onto a short path between the theatre and gallery that ran along the right side of the house, a faster and more convenient route than going all the way around to the front. “We should have some semblance of a play by Saturday.”

Augustus caught the door just before it closed. He twisted through, hurrying after her. For a small person, Emma moved quickly, her dress whispering against her legs, her sandals slapping gently against the close-cut grass.

“Emma, wait.” Augustus caught her just as she reached for the door handle. He twisted himself into the gap, wedging himself between her and the door. “Shouldn’t we”—he couldn’t believe he was saying this—“talk?”

He caught her off her guard. The eyes she lifted to his were vulnerable, confused. “Talk?”

“About what happened.”

Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it. Her mask clamped down again, more effective than any amount of maquillage.

“Oh, Augustus. You are sweet.” It was her fake voice again, the society voice, like too-sweet champagne, sweet on the surface but cloying in quantity. Rising on her tiptoes, she pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. He caught a whiff of her perfume, musk and violets. “There’s no need, though. Friends?”

“Friends,” he echoed.

They were friends, friends in a way he hadn’t been friends since his early days at Cambridge and maybe not even then. He hadn’t counted anyone as friend for a long, long time. Not even Jane. Jane had been a poet’s fancy. A poet’s fancy and a very reliable colleague. They had trusted one another with their lives, but never with their inner selves.

They were friends, but that wasn’t the heart of it, what had happened between them here, now.

“Emma—”

“Good. I shouldn’t have wanted to lose you.” Her eyes seemed too large for her face, the kohl rimming them jarringly dark against her fair skin. With an attempt at a smile, she said, “Who else would provide me with adverbs?”

With that parting shot, she swung away, yanking open the door to the gallery with a decidedly dramatic flourish.

And froze.

Rather than the empty room they had anticipated, the gallery thronged with a collection of women in expensive evening dress and men in brightly colored uniforms. Servants scurried to lay out refreshments, while empty glasses were already accumulating on all available surfaces.

It wasn’t just the cast of the masque anymore. Their brief interlude of privacy was over.

Over Emma’s shoulder, Augustus saw a woman in white raise a languid hand in greeting, calling out, in an unmistakable Creole drawl, “Emma, my dear! We had wondered where you had got to.”