The Garden Intrigue

Chapter 33

“We,” Augustus repeated. “England. We?”

Augustus blinked at her, as though he, rather than Marston, had sustained a blow to the head.

That wasn’t entirely the reaction Emma had been hoping for. For a man who had been urging her to come live with him and be his love, his reaction savored more of shock than joy.

“Unless you don’t want me,” Emma said quickly. “I quite understand. You’re leaving in haste. The last thing you need is—”

She never finished the sentence. The air swooshed out of her lungs as Augustus swept her into a crushing embrace. There was a pin digging into her shoulder blade, and her right arm was caught uncomfortably somewhere between his chest and her side, but Emma didn’t care, not with her nose squished into his waistcoat and his lips against her hair and Augustus holding on to her as though she were his only port in a storm.

“Want you?” Augustus laughed breathlessly. Emma could feel the shiver of it straight through his chest to hers. His arms, which she had thought as tight as they could go, somehow, impossibly, tightened around her. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone or anything. I want you even though I know it would be better for you to let you go.”

“Just enough for breathing,” croaked Emma.

“For—oh.” His chin nuzzled against her hair. “I didn’t mean to crush you.”

Emma leaned back just far enough to look up at him. “That sort of crushing,” she said softly, “I don’t mind. I—oh!”

Something was grabbing at the back of her skirt. She kicked back and heard a squishy crunch, followed by a loud curse. She turned in Augustus’s arms, treading on his toe as she backed up against him in an instinctive reaction of revulsion.

Georges had always had a hard head.

He had levered himself up onto his hands and knees. His nose was streaming blood, dripping rivulets of red down the folds of his cravat. His eyes slowly fixed on the plans beneath Emma’s arm—and on Augustus, dressed in his cloak and prepared to travel.

“Bitch.” A spatter of blood and spittle accompanied the word. Georges shook his head like a dog’s. “Should have known…”

Emma backed away, into Augustus.

Augustus’s hand tightened briefly on her waist before moving her aside. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said beneath his breath. He moved purposefully towards Georges. “I’ll take care of this.”

A cunning glint lit in Georges’ eyes. He was no match for Augustus, but there was one thing he could do.

“Thieves!” he shouted hoarsely. “Murder! Treason! Fire!”

He left out rape, but otherwise it was a fairly comprehensive cry for help.

Augustus acted with remarkable speed, dealing Marston a well-calculated kick in the jaw that sent him sprawling flat out in the bushes, but it was too late; Emma could already hear the rumblings from within the house. There was the sudden glint of candles in the windows, the sound of scurrying feet, voices raised in confusion.

“Quick!” Augustus grabbed Emma’s hand and ran with her for the carriage, Marston’s cape flapping around his ankles. Emma stumbled along with him, her slippers skidding and scuffing on the gravel. Augustus boosted her up into the carriage with such force that Emma bounced as she hit the squabs, hauling himself in behind her, and swinging the door shut.

“Drive!” he shouted to the coachman. “Drive like you’ve never driven before.”

The coachman didn’t have to be asked twice. With a crack of the whip, the coach lurched into motion, careening down the drive of Malmaison, sending Emma sprawling onto Augustus’s lap.

He must have thought Augustus was Georges, Emma thought dimly, struggling to try to sit up. Georges’ cloak, Georges’ hat—that had been her plan, to be sure, but she had known it was a weak one. It was the sort of thing she had read about in novels, but she never thought it would actually work.

“We did it,” she said wonderingly, squirming her way to a sitting position. She looked at the plans jammed half beneath her, and at Augustus, with Georges’ hat pulled down low over his eyes. A laugh bubbled up in her, a laugh of sheer glee. “We actually did it.”

Augustus’s face was lit by a similar exultation. “We didn’t even have to use your diamonds!”

“Diamonds construed loosely,” Emma reminded him, laughing up into his glowing face. The brim of Georges’ hat kept sloping down over his eyes. She pushed it back, setting it rakishly askew. “There. Now you look like an adventurer.”

“And you—” He broke off as the carriage hit a particularly deep rut. “You—”

“Yes?” said Emma breathlessly. Her arms were around Augustus’s neck, although she really couldn’t remember putting them there. “What do I look like?”

The carriage rocked back and forth, traveling far too fast for safety, sending them swaying with the motion. It was a dizzying effect, but not nearly as dizzying as the expression in Augustus’s eyes.

“Heaven,” he said, and his arms closed around her, and there was no more carriage and no more rocking, just her head spinning with the delight of his arms around her and his lips on hers, dizzy and scattered and exactly where she was supposed to be.

It was some time before she could speak again, and when she did, she said, “Heaven’s a place, not a person.”

Augustus touched a finger to her lips. “Hush,” he said. And then, with a slow smile, “You always did criticize my poetry.”

“Jane thought I was trying to get your attention,” said Emma ruefully. She wondered, belatedly, whether mentioning Jane was the best of ideas, but Augustus didn’t even seem to notice. His eyes were all for her.

“And were you?” he asked.

“Mmm…” Emma pursed up her lips. “No?”

Augustus grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Emma ran her hands up his torso beneath George’s cloak. “Can we compromise on maybe?”

“Keep doing that,” said Augustus, “and we can compromise on anything you like.”

“Good,” murmured Emma, her eyes already closing as her face tilted up towards his. “I’ll let you know when I think of something.”

“I,” said Augustus, his breath playing against her lips, “wasn’t planning on doing any thinking at all.” And then, “How far is it to the coast?”

“Far,” said Emma.

“Good,” murmured Augustus.

Not precisely good from an escape point of view, considered Emma, but very, very good in every other way. Georges hadn’t stinted on his carriage. It might have been built for speed, but it was nicely padded, with a wider than average bench. Naturally. Ordinarily, Emma might have rolled her eyes at that. But Emma was too busy rolling other things to worry about Georges and his morals. She was feeling rather delightfully immoral at the moment.

“They warned me about poets,” she whispered, kissing the side of his neck. “Out for just one thing.”

“Inspiration?” Augustus suggested, touched the side of her cheek in a way that made her feel like every Venus ever painted or carved.

She cradled his hand, mirroring the curve of it with hers, putting everything she felt into her touch and her lips as he eased her slowly back against Georges’ extravagantly padded cushions.

“What?” Emma scooted sideways, breaking the kiss as something collapsed noisily beneath her back.

Augustus levered himself upright, his breathing labored. “Not. Again.”

“Yes, again.” It would have been amusing if it hadn’t been quite so annoying. Emma removed the slightly squashed roll of plans from beneath her back. “These plans are alarmingly ubiquitous.”

“For you,” said Augustus wryly. “Others search for them. You sit on them.”

Had that only been last night? It felt as though a lifetime had passed since she had last sat on these plans. Like Shakespeare’s great reckoning in a little room, it took only a tiny speck of time for everything to change around one. She wondered, now, how she hadn’t known before.

“What did you resolve with Mr. Fulton?” she asked. “Is he to follow?”

Augustus settled back against the seat. “Fulton will pretend to be properly indignant. Then he’ll join us in London en route to New York.”

Us. He said it so unself-consciously. She hadn’t been part of an us for a very long time. “Are we to settle in London, then?” she asked tentatively.

He didn’t answer directly. Instead, he looked at her from under the brim of Georges’ hat. “Will you miss your house?”

She didn’t ask which one. He had never seen Carmagnac. She knew the one he meant, the one in town, the one where they had spent hours together in her book room. It wasn’t just her house he was asking about, she knew; he meant her cook, who prepared those tea cakes he liked so much, and the footmen who opened the door to him, and her own personalized sedan chair, and all the rounds of parties and friends that had been so much a part of her life in Paris. She had only, she realized, the clothes on her back, and those were now rumpled and stained. They would be even worse by the time they reached London.

She had the clothes on her back and some paste jewelry. She went to a place where she knew no one, a place where she would have to learn everything except the language, and even that had its own divergences from the one she knew.

Back in Paris, there was a town house decorated to her specifications; a wardrobe full of clothes they couldn’t afford to replace; a whole world, a life. Emma looked at Augustus, and down at his hand, where it held hers. No, she thought. She regretted none of it.

With the exception of one thing.

“I never said good-bye to Hortense,” she said.

Augustus’s hand tightened briefly on hers, in an almost convulsive gesture. When he spoke, his voice was so low that Emma had to strain to hear him. “You can still go back.”

“What?” said Emma.

“If you wanted to.” Augustus’s face was earnest in the shadows. He tried to draw his hand away, but Emma held on to it and wouldn’t let him go. “You could tell them that I kidnapped you, that I took you along as a bargaining chip in case of capture. They’ll believe you.”

“You’re willing to give me up?” said Emma, half laughing. “As easily as that?”

“Don’t think it’s easy,” he said quietly.

The smile died on Emma’s face. He meant it. If she asked him, he would let her out of the carriage, drop her off wherever it was that she asked, let her go back to her old life without him. Fair enough. On the face of it, what she was doing was absurd. Another elopement, this time with treason, in the middle of the night, with a man who had repeatedly lied to her.

It might be wrong, but it felt entirely right.

“You’re being noble,” she said. “Don’t be.”

“I don’t want to take your choices away from you,” he said. “Just because I pushed you into the carriage—”

“It was more of a pull, really,” said Emma absently. “With a bit of a yank.”

Augustus wasn’t smiling. “I’m serious.”

Emma lifted her eyes to his. “So am I. I made my choice. I made it long before you pulled me into this carriage. Well, several minutes before, at least. As soon as I heard de Lilly trying to get to the Emperor, I knew.”

“What did you know?” he asked quietly.

Emma pleated the folds of her dress between her fingers. Nervous hands, she could hear her mother say. Smoothing the fabric down over her thighs, she raised her eyes and said, “That some things are worth the risk.”

Outside, the countryside rattled past, but inside, all was still, the world reduced to Augustus’s eyes on hers. “Such as?”

Emma looked away. “I’ve always wanted a floral kirtle, embroidered all with leaves of myrtle. I’ll start a fashion for it.”

“Flowers wither,” Augustus reminded her. His hand found hers in the darkness, his thumb stroking up along the side of her hand towards her palm.

“Your masterful way with alliteration, then,” she said. “Your knee-weakening rhymes.”

“I thought they were stomach weakening,” he said. His finger moved in small circles in her palm, concentrating all sensation, all thought, on that one small motion.

Emma cast around for nonsense and couldn’t find it. Her arsenal of frivolity had deserted her, as surely as her jewels. She felt bare and exposed. Flowers withered; words lied.

“You make me feel like I’m special,” she blurted out. It sounded very silly, but Emma couldn’t think of any other way to put it. “You make me feel like I matter.”

Augustus lifted her hand to his lips. It was one of Georges’ favorite gestures, the kiss to the palm, but when Augustus did it, it felt different. It felt like he meant it. “You do matter. You matter to a lot of people.”

It was clearly meant to be a compliment, but Emma found herself feeling oddly disappointed. Yes, it was nice to matter to a lot of people, but she wanted to matter to him.

Augustus pressed his lips to her curled fingers. “You matter to your old school friends.” Another kiss. “You matter to your cousin.” He paused, brooding over her fingers, before adding, “You mattered to Delagardie.”

“Paul?” She felt Augustus stiffen a little at the name. If she had to get used to there having been a Jane, he would have to get used to there having been a Paul. “I never mattered as much to Paul as Carmagnac. As for Hortense and the others, they love me, but they don’t need me.”

She looked at him, asking a question she couldn’t make herself ask.

“You matter to me,” he said quietly. “Do I matter to you?”

What fools they both were, Emma thought. Here they had just written reams of extravagant poetry together, in which they had lightly tossed about such terms as “passion,” “devotion,” and yes, “love.” But when it came to their own hearts, they were like children, robbed of all their sophisticated vocabulary and grand ideas.

“I love you,” she said. “Will that do?”

His fingers twined in hers, holding her fast. “Only,” he said, “if you give me leave to spend the next fifty years showing you how much I love you.”

“Showing?” said Emma, a whisper away from his lips. “Not telling?”

Augustus raised his brows. “Do you really want me to write you poetry?”