The Garden Intrigue

Chapter 25

Augustus and Emma froze in the face of imperial wrath, arrested mid-argument.

Had they been speaking that loudly? From the expressions of amusement and derision, Augustus could only assume they must have been.

It wasn’t just Bonaparte on the steps but the entire flower of France’s navy ranged behind him, staring over his shoulder in varying degrees of annoyance, curiosity, and yawning indifference. Even the bees on the roses seemed to have stopped their buzzing to pause and stare.

Augustus had forgotten, at some point in their discussion, that Bonaparte was just a window away. He had forgotten about everything except Emma and the words pouring from her lips. They buffeted him like the wind and waves of Mr. Fulton’s machine, sending him racketing about as helplessly as Americanus in his ill-fated barque, his mast broken, his defenses down. He felt like a necromancer who had summoned a storm only to find it turned against him, scourged with lightning, deafened by thunder.

Metaphor again, always metaphor. If he clung to metaphor, he wouldn’t have to think about the meat of it, what Emma had actually told him.

She wasn’t the only one who knew how to hide.

Next to him, Emma sank into a deep and hasty curtsy. Augustus could see only the very top of her head, gilded by sunlight. “I beg pardon, sire. We were just…talking. About the masque.”

“Practicing the love scenes, were they?” murmured one officer to another.

Augustus could see the tips of Emma’s ears go red. It was the only bit of her he could make out. It made him feel like the worst sort of cad. Exposing himself to scorn and derision—well, he was used to that. To expose her to the amusement and censure of Bonaparte’s entourage, that was another matter entirely.

Bonaparte made a grunting noise. “The production had better be worth the trouble.”

Trying to draw attention from Emma to himself, Augustus said loudly, “We strive to amuse, sire. We trust the mellifluous meditations of our meandering marauders shall be to your certain satisfaction.”

“Yes, yes,” said Bonaparte impatiently. “Next time, confine your scenes to the theatre.”

“Sire,” said Emma, and bowed her head still farther.

“Enough, Madame Delagardie, enough.” The Emperor was inclined to be benevolent. Chucking her under the chin, he raised her to her feet. He wasn’t a large man, but she looked very small in his grasp. A moment ago, Augustus would have sworn she was the size of the Athena Nike, able to overleap buildings and shake the foundations of empires with the volume of her voice. “There’s no need for that. We were done here anyway. Weren’t we, gentlemen?”

There was a decided note of challenge in his voice.

Admiral Villeneuve opened his mouth and then closed it again.

Robert Fulton stepped forward, holding himself stiffly. “I do not imagine we can have anything more to say.”

“Come back to me when you have made the changes,” said the Emperor dismissively. He turned to Villeneuve, turning his back on Fulton. “Where did you leave the other plan?”

“In the council room, sire.”

“What are we waiting for? Come!” With a wave of his hand, Bonaparte motioned his minions onward. They surged forward, making for the house, leaving Emma, Augustus, and Fulton in their wake, the summerhouse abandoned but for the detritus of paper and one red jacket that someone had tossed carelessly across the back of a chair and forgotten in the race to the house. Mr. Fulton’s portfolio was sprawled open on the table.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, the bit that sounded strangely like Miss Gwen, Augustus dimly remembered that this was what he was here for, that he was meant to discover what Mr. Fulton had devised and how Bonaparte meant to deploy it.

Right now, though, all that felt curiously insubstantial. Emma’s words still rang in his ears. He had been in the midst of a cannon fusillade once, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had felt something like this, the explosion followed by a painful, ringing silence, with the black soot griming his face and clouding his eyes. He had felt it then, too, this curious stillness. The senses faltered before the enormity of the bombardment.

Augustus opened his mouth to speak, but the words clogged in his throat. For once in his life, he had no idea what to say.

A fainéant, she had called him. A do-nothing.

Emma’s back was to him, the line of her spine showing clearly through the thin fabric of her dress.

If Paul hadn’t died, I would still be married.

Was that what she agonized over, behind that fake, bright smile? Did she pretend that Paul was still alive, that they had a nursery of children together at that estate of his, the one with the drainage issues? Was it Paul she still dreamed of at night, Paul whose name she murmured in her sleep?

Augustus felt as though the world had just been picked up and dropped again, all his certitudes and convictions lying in pieces around him. All these weeks of working together, laughing together, being together, and he had never suspected, never even imagined. Emma was what she was, the widow Delagardie, so long a widow that her widowhood was a fact rather than an event. It had never occurred to him that to her, the late Delagardie was more than the precondition to her widowhood, or that she might, despite the time, despite the rumors, despite it all, still mourn him.

Should he offer sympathy? It was a bit late for that, and the stiff line of Emma’s back denied it.

Besides, why would she want the sympathy of one such as he, a fainéant, a do-nothing? Augustus tried to muster anger and failed. Indignation sparked briefly and sputtered out again. It had been easy to be angry yesterday, over Jane. But this? He was too dazed for anger.

I think you wanted her because she was safe, she had said. Cytherea is only Cytherea because she doesn’t leave the tower.

There was a sick feeling at the pit of Augustus’s stomach. What if yesterday had resolved itself differently? What if Jane had turned around and told him she shared his feelings and loved him in return? Would he had held out his arms to her?

Or would he have fled in the opposite direction?

“Months of work!” Augustus jumped as Mr. Fulton whacked the side of the summerhouse with an openhanded slap. Mr. Fulton was having no trouble mustering all the rage that Augustus lacked. “A full-size model…a full trial…and he…”

Ignoring Augustus, Emma went to the inventor, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Mr. Fulton?”

Mr. Fulton was too busy with his own grievances to notice her flushed cheeks or strained voice. “Perfect, just perfect,” he said bitterly. “Changes, he says! And yet he still wants it by July!”

They had both forgotten Augustus was there. At least, Mr. Fulton had forgotten. Emma was quite studiously pretending Augustus didn’t exist.

“Oh, dear,” she said, in her soothing voice. Augustus knew that voice; it was the one that went with the head tilt and the arm pat. Emma had sympathy down to an art. “How trying for you.”

With an effort, Fulton got hold of his emotions. “I’m sorry, Madame Delagardie. You can’t want to hear this. You said you needed help with the wave machine?”

Emma threaded her arm through the inventor’s. She didn’t look at Augustus. Not once. He might have been invisible. “If you wouldn’t mind… ?”

“No, not at all.” Mr. Fulton visibly squared his shoulders. “Just show me where you’ve put it.”

Her back was to him. She was moving already, moving away, as if he weren’t there at all. He could hear her say to Fulton, in her society voice, “You’re so kind. It’s the lightning bit.…”

Augustus watched her walk away, the words all jammed up in his throat. She had handled it very neatly, in her own Emma way. If he ran after her now, there would be explanations to be made, a reproachful look in the direction of Fulton, a “But, Augustus, Mr. Fulton has offered to share his valuable time,” all civilized and pleasant, papering over what had just occurred as though it had never happened, just as she had papered over the kiss the night before. Pretend it wasn’t there, pretend it had never happened, pretend everything was light and easy and just fine.

He had thought he knew her, but he had been just as taken in as everyone else in the end, hadn’t he? Fooled by a frivolous exterior and an easygoing air. The pain in her voice etched into his memory like acid. Paul died. He had seen, in her haunted eyes too large for her face, the ghosts of all those children that never were, the domesticity that was not. Augustus wanted to wrap his arms around her and press the pain away, as if one embrace could cancel out another. He wanted to tuck her head under his chin and pretend he had never seen that, or the exasperation on her face as she said, That’s what normal, grown-up people do, Augustus. They grow up.

He had thought he had grown up. He had been pressed into Wickham’s service nearly as young as Emma had been a bride.

Well, all right, not quite as young, but still at an age when most other chaps were still bedeviling their tutors or betting on who could balance a chamber pot on the spire of the chapel. He had thought himself very noble.

A decade later, what did he have to show?

He had told himself that Jane was the answer to the question. But when he had imagined Jane, it was always poetry and moonlight, always set pieces, like something out of an opera. It was impossible to take the image and turn it into flesh, to make the fire crackle, to conjure the scent of food on the table. He couldn’t envision Jane’s hair unbound. It was all pasteboard, like the scenery in the theatre, the mere semblance and substitute of life.

If he loved and lovely hopelessly, he never had to make room for messy realities. He never had to genuinely care.

In the relentless sunshine, the summerhouse seemed to shimmer. The glare from the windows hurt his eyes. Augustus could only be glad there was no mirror. He didn’t think he would like what he saw in it.

This was what Emma had seen, what she had seen and he hadn’t, shortsightedness and cowardice and, above all, selfishness, all slicked over with poetry.

All was fair in espionage and war.

He didn’t want to live like that anymore.

The door to the summerhouse stood open, and, inside, Fulton’s plans still lay on the table, momentarily forgotten. Someone would be back for them soon enough. Whatever Fulton’s feelings, Bonaparte had made it clear he considered his changes only a delay, not a denial. Augustus regarded the open door without enthusiasm. Whatever else, it would be a dereliction of duty not to see this through. One last mission. And then?

And then he would make it right with Emma. He wasn’t sure why, but the very thought of it made his spirits rise.

Augustus turned and slipped into the summerhouse.

Augustus would say she was running away.

Emma could hear her own voice saying things like It’s the lightning bit, and then, in response to something else, I can’t figure out how to attach it to the thunder. I’m deathly afraid of burning the building down. I should hate to be the one responsible for destroying the Emperor’s theatre, and then Mr. Fulton’s voice in reply, uttering words that pattered against her ears like pebbles on a windowpane, just a distant clatter from somewhere far outside. She could feel the grass beneath her slippers, her skirt slapping against her legs, the sun on her head as Augustus and the summerhouse receded farther and farther into the distance.

Running away, indeed!

What business was it of Augustus’s whether she married her cousin or moved to America or set up house in the outer Hebrides? What concern was it of his whether she slept with Georges Marston or half the imperial guard? As for this business of her playing with people and ideas—well, that was simply absurd. If he asked any of her friends from Mme. Campan’s, they could tell him that. To be fair, most of them she saw only for quick, whispered gossips at parties, or for casual chatter over chocolate, but at least she had friends.

This idea that she couldn’t commit to anything was pure nonsense. She had committed to Paul, hadn’t she? Nine years ago, on a whim, whispered a nasty little voice at the back of her head. And she had gone running as soon as the going had gotten rough.

Well, yes, but she had gone back to him. They had been trying to make it work that last time. She had made compromises, she had learned, she had tried, really tried. Yes, for all of four months. But that hadn’t been within her control, the fact that they had only four months. It wasn’t her fault that Paul had died.

The familiar refrain grated on her ears. Not my fault, not my fault, not my fault. She had been saying it for so long, and, yet, what did it really mean? Her fault, his fault, Fate’s fault, the outcome was the same. It was going on four years now. Soon Paul would have been dead longer than they had been together, and they had been together only for a fraction of the time they had officially been together.

Fine, so perhaps she had been using Paul as an excuse. And perhaps Augustus had a bit of a point when it came to Marston—or a lot of a point. But that didn’t mean she shirked her duties or hid from obligation or whatever else it was that he was trying to accuse her of. After all, there was Carmagnac, thought Emma, brightening. Always Carmagnac.

Only there wasn’t, really. For all that she took credit for it, all she had done was complete Paul’s plans in the most minimal possible of ways. She might have used her friendship with Mr. Fulton to improve upon those plans a bit, but it had still been Paul’s work, not hers. It had taken very little effort to take Mr. Fulton’s sketches and dispatch them to Paul’s old steward at Carmagnac. She dispensed funds when asked and went down once a year to survey the fields and think Profound Thoughts about the life that hadn’t been, but that was the extent of her involvement in Carmagnac. She could get along very well without Carmagnac, and Carmagnac could get along very well without her.

What had she done that was hers? Hers and not someone else’s? When had she taken a step that was entirely of her own choosing and, having stepped it, stayed with it?

“Madame Delagardie?”

She couldn’t even commit to a conversation. Mr. Fulton was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to say something.

Emma shook her head ruefully. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fulton,” she said. “I didn’t catch a word of that.”

“It will be easier to show you,” he said kindly, absolving her of inattention. His lip curled. “Apparently my powers of description leave something to be desired.”

Emma attempted to make up for her lapse with an excess of sympathy. “I am sorry your venture proved unfruitful.”

Fulton grimaced. “So am I. It’s been months in the planning, months of back and forth, a full demonstration in Boulogne, and now…He’s angry because I didn’t bring a full-size model with me! That silly little river behind the house isn’t deep enough.”

“It was deep enough for the steamship, wasn’t it?” Until Achille sank it. Only to be expected of a son of Caroline.

Fulton dismissed that. “Yes, but this isn’t a steamship. It’s a—well, it is what it is.” His face set in hard lines. “I’ve had enough of France anyway. I had a much better time of it in England. They, at least, knew how to appreciate the power of innovation. They didn’t string a man along from committee to committee and then tell him he has to add an extra torpedo.”

“I can see how that might be rather wearying.” Emma had no idea what he was on about, but the venting seemed to be doing him good.

“If Bonaparte doesn’t like my Nautilus as it is, I’m sure I can find someone else who will.”

“Of course,” said Emma soothingly. “I’m sure it’s a brilliant machine. But what is it?”

“It’s a submarine,” he said abruptly, and pushed open the door of the theatre. “A ship that sails under the water.”