The Garden Intrigue

Chapter 3

“I know I can trust you, Miss Wooliston, to listen to my ode without the offense of unnecessary interruptions,” Augustus proclaimed loudly.

Jane slid her arm through his, giving him a warning look under cover of her fan as she strolled with him to French doors that stood slightly ajar to allow the cool night air to reach the overheated guests. “Do come out into the garden, Mr. Whittlesby,” she said. “The night is pleasant, and I find poetry is often enhanced by its surroundings.”

“Ah, Miss Wooliston!” Augustus gestured extravagantly with his free arm, making the fabric of his sleeve billow like a ship under full sail. “But what rose could possibly compare to you?”

He opened the door that led down from the drawing room into the internal courtyard, motioning Jane to precede him. In the center of the garden, there would be no fear of being overheard. The musicians playing in the ballroom and the accumulated chatter of several hundred party guests masked their voices more effectively than any attempt at subterfuge.

There was nothing like conducting clandestine business in plain sight.

“Their bloom will fade; yours, fair lady, is rendered immortal, impressed on parchment by the unflagging labors of my humble pen.”

“Really, Mr. Whittlesby,” said Jane. “Nothing so showy as a rose.”

“A rose by any other name…”

“Would be a different poet. I thought you were borrowing from Coleridge these days.”

Mindful of potential viewers, Augustus thumped a fist against his chest. “You wound me, O cruel one. My execrations are entirely my own. With the occasional nod to Mr. Wordsworth.”

“I’m sure he would be deeply flattered to hear it. Little does he realize how much he has done to secure freedom on either side of the Channel.” Jane seated herself on a low stone bench in the center of the garden, in plain view of the many windows that surrounded them. “Would you prefer to stand or to disport yourself at my feet?”

Augustus flung himself dramatically onto the flagstones in front of her. It was too early in the season for flowers to bloom, so Balcourt had brought in flowering shrubs in faux porphyry tubs, scattering them strategically around the garden to create the illusion of abundance.

“I’ll disport,” he said. “It provides better cover.”

From the windows, all anyone would see was the familiar scene of the poet lolling at beauty’s feet, boring her with his latest ode.

Augustus unrolled the scroll of paper. “So, my fair Cytherea, I have tidings for you.”

“From across the boundless sea?”

“Close enough. My sources claim Bonaparte’s fleet is prepared to sail.”

Jane turned her head away, as though abashed by his praise. “That can’t be. His admirals wouldn’t approve the plan. It was impracticable.”

“They have now.” Augustus gazed up at her yearningly over the end of the paper, the poet worshipping his muse. They had played this game many times before. “Both Villeneuve and Decres signed off on it. The fleet is due to depart in July.”

He didn’t tell her where he had acquired his information and she didn’t ask. They both knew better than that.

Augustus looked up at her from his vantage point on the ground, marveling, not at the clean lines of cheek and jaw that were nature’s gift and not her own, but at her calm good sense, unusual in anyone at all, let alone one so young.

The Pink Carnation had burst upon the scene a little more than a year before, in the spring of 1803, with the spectacular theft of the gold that Bonaparte had intended for the manufacture of a fleet to invade England. Augustus had shrugged and gone about his business. He had been in Paris since 1792. Would-be heroes came and went. One spectacular intrigue, they went all cocky, and the next thing you knew, they were in the Bastille, babbling the names of their confederates and collaborators.

Not Augustus. He was in it for the long haul. His brief was simple. Observe, record, relay. No heroics, no direct action. Just the simple gathering and transmission of information. Idiots who went swanning about Paris in a black mask seldom lasted terribly long.

But the Pink Carnation had followed up that first success with a second and then a third. There were no unnecessary heroics, no reckless bits of daring. The French press had taken note, and so had Augustus. It had been in June that his superiors in London had ordered him to liaise with the Carnation. Augustus had gone to the rendezvous expecting a man: middle-aged, gnarled, nondescript.

Instead, he had found Jane.

In profile, her face was shadowed, the lanterns strung along the edges of the garden casting strange patterns of light and shade. There was something to be written there, something about dark and bright, her aspect, her eyes, but the words eluded him.

Augustus spared a glance at the scroll in his hands. All he had to offer was reams of endless drivel and the odd nugget of military intelligence. Quite a wooing, that. Cyrano would weep.

“But how?” she asked, tilting her head in a practiced pose of feigned interest, her face a mask of polite boredom. Her shoulders were relaxed, her hands loosely folded, her body language at complete odds with her tone, low and urgent. “A month ago, Decres said it couldn’t be done.”

Augustus took refuge behind his scroll. “A month ago, they didn’t have the device.”

“The device? What sort of device?”

“That’s the rub,” said Augustus. “My source doesn’t know what it is. The device, Decres called it, and that was all. Whatever it is, though, they seem to set a great deal of store in it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “Aside from professional courtesy.”

“You know I don’t like to ask for favors—”

“But I owe you one,” Jane said. “For the Silver Orchid.”

He had played liaison for Jane with one of her agents, helping to spirit the woman and the duc de Berri out of Paris. Augustus had played no part in the actual escape; he had merely relayed a message when it had proved impolitic for Jane to do so herself. It had been a small enough favor, and Augustus said as much.

“Even so,” said Jane. “Don’t think I’m not sensible of my debt to you.”

“There can be no debt between friends,” Augustus said.

Didn’t she know he would have done more for her if she had asked? A phoenix feather from the far ends of the earth, a dragon’s horde from the depths of a flame-scorched cave, the head of a prophet on a platter.

At least, so the poet liked to think. The agent was well aware that he had compromised the terms of his own mission by doing even such a little thing for her. His mandate was to observe, not to act. Any action he took made detection more likely. Wickham had other men planted in Paris, but no one of his standing, no one who had been there as long or seen as much. He might not be indispensible, but he would be bloody hard to replace.

“What do you need of me?” she asked.

“Entrée into Malmaison,” he said promptly. “Whatever this device is, they plan a final test a month from now, somewhere on the grounds of Malmaison. The trial is planned for the weekend of June ninth.”

Jane looked thoughtfully over his shoulder. “They have a party planned that weekend, in honor of the American envoy.”

Augustus leaned back on one elbow, lolling artistically on the flagstones. “Distraction,” he said. “It provides Bonaparte with an excuse.”

At Saint-Cloud, the consular court lived in state, surrounded by a growing entourage of servants and hangers-on. At Malmaison, on the other hand, the Bonapartes maintained the pretense of simplicity. Even with the addition of tents to house the servants and the consular staff, the house was nothing more than a modest gentleman’s residence, its small size necessarily limiting the number of people invited. The grounds, constantly in the process of improvement, stretched out for hectares in either direction, the private preserve of Mme. Bonaparte.

It was, in other words, the perfect place to conduct a trial of Decres’ mysterious device, far away from Paris and prying eyes.

“I had wondered,” admitted Jane, “why he was having Mr. Livingston to Malmaison, rather than to Saint-Cloud. The excuse given was that the choice was for sentimental reasons. Mr. Livingston is Emma’s cousin, and Emma is so very fond of Malmaison.”

Augustus snorted. “Bonaparte is about as sentimental as a barracuda. Can you get me in?”

Jane paused a moment, then shook her head. “Not this time. I haven’t been invited myself.”

Augustus reacted to the tone rather than the words. “Do you think Fouché suspects you?” His mind was already racing ahead, formulating plans, ways to dodge the all-seeing eye of Bonaparte’s sinister Minister of Police. He could get Jane out of Paris if he had to. The old network, stretching from Paris to Boulogne, had been eviscerated in Fouché’s latest raids, but he still had connections, personal ones. “Don’t be heroic.”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. Nefarious behavior from the lady of the cameos? They would sooner suspect the statuary. But the group is small and Mr. Livingston is known to have little sympathy for the English. My invitation might be considered an insult.” She paused, her head cocked to one side. “But there is a way.”

“La belle Hortense?” Jane had become fast friends with Mme. Bonaparte’s daughter from her first marriage. The two were of an age. Hortense was universally acknowledged as the best of the Bonapartes, probably because she was one only by marriage: her mother’s marriage to Bonaparte, and her own marriage to Bonaparte’s younger brother, Louis. “Hortense finds me amusing. Perhaps you can convince her that the weekend demands immortalizing in verse.”

“Hortense has her own worries. You may have noticed she isn’t here tonight.” Jane spread her fan, revealing a painting of swans floating languidly on a lake. “No. I have a better idea.”

“Tunneling beneath the grounds?” Augustus teased. “Fighting my way through the gates with Miss Gwen’s parasol?”

“You miss the obvious,” said Jane calmly. “The simplest proposition is always the best.”

“I don’t follow.”

Jane smiled at him over the edge of her fan. “The answer was right in front of you all along. Emma Delagardie.”

“A poet?” echoed Kort.

“Miss Wooliston tends to inspire that sort of thing.” Emma wafted a dismissive hand, turning her attention back to her cousin. “Goodness, Kort. I can’t believe you’re really here. After all this time.”

She had forgotten how big he was, or perhaps it was that he had filled out since she had seen him last. He had been only eighteen then, after all, eighteen to her thirteen. At the time, she had thought him the last word in manliness and sophistication. She had been as infatuated as only a thirteen-year-old could be, saving his dropped handkerchiefs and scribbling maudlin verse in the solitude of her favorite branch of an apple tree.

Goodness, she’d forgotten that apple tree. She had created quite the fuss by tumbling out of it and breaking her arm. She could still feel the twinge in it when the wind blew in the wrong direction.

“Cousin Robert told me I would most likely find you here. I just hadn’t expected—” Kort’s eyes dipped from the plumes on her headdress to the diamonds glittering at her ears, her arms, her breast.

“To see quite so much of me?” Emma quipped, and her cousin’s gaze hastily snapped upwards again.

Oops. She hadn’t meant to make him squirm. She had forgotten. They were less frank at home, at least about certain things. It felt odd to be speaking English again; the once familiar syllables came uncomfortably to her tongue, although not as uncomfortably as Kort’s labored French.

“Something like that,” Kort admitted, carefully avoiding the general direction of her bodice. He shook his head again. “I would never have known you.”

It would have been nice if the statement had sounded a little bit more like a compliment.

“That’s not surprising,” she said, striving for sangfroid. She resisted the urge to tug at her décolletage. Her dress might be low by New York standards, but it was positively modest by Parisian ones, largely because she didn’t have terribly much to display. “It’s been over ten years since you last saw me. It would be more surprising if I hadn’t changed.”

“You’ve become so…French.”

The comment surprised her into a laugh. “The French find me very American. Or so I’ve been told.”

Refreshing, they had called her. Natural. Fruitlessly, Emma had tried to explain that her parents’ home in New York was as sophisticated as anything to be found in the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the only savages on their property were her brothers, but such protestations had been unpopular with her audience. They preferred to cherish Rousseauian notions of noble savages clad in loincloths and adorned with feathers.

“When did you arrive?” she asked. “Have you been in Paris long?”

“Tuesday,” he said. “Whenever I mention your name, I hear only effusions. Everyone adores Madame Delagardie.”

Mme. Delagardie had made a great effort to be adored. As for Emma…well, it was what it was and that was all. She was Mme. Delagardie now and had been for some time.

“Almost everyone. Not everyone has come to a full and proper appreciation of my inestimable worth, but they will in time. What brings you to Paris after all these years? Surely, you could have spared a visit to your favorite cousin before this. It’s just a little sea voyage. It’s only a few months at sea, and I have it on the very best authorities that sea monsters have gone out of fashion.”

He didn’t respond to her raillery in kind. A shadow passed across his face. He paused for a moment before saying, “You will have heard about Sarah, I expect.”

Oh, Lord. Emma felt like the scrapings off his boots, if he had been wearing boots. She was the lowest level of Paris gutter slime, heartless and unfeeling. She had heard. But it had been how long ago now? A year? Two? Time moved strangely in Paris, and the Atlantic divide meant that news was no longer news by the time of arrival.

“I had heard.” She touched a gloved hand fleetingly to his arm. “I’m sorry, Kort.”

His lips twisted with dark humor. Bitterness sat strangely on his clean-cut face. “So am I.”

She had hated Sarah once. She had hated her for being older, for being taller, for catching Kort’s eye. Emma had wished warts on her, or hives, with all the petty desperation of her wounded adolescent soul. She had fantasized about Sarah, always so competent and complacent, tripping on the way to the altar or ripping her wedding dress or spilling punch down her front in some humiliating and public occasion.

But not this. Never this. Emma’s heart winced away from the image of Sarah and her babies, still and cold.

Sarah was the sort of woman her mother was, the sort of woman her mother had wanted to be. She ought to be running a bustling household with a brood of children around her, all good housewifery and Dutch thrift. They had had three children, Emma had been told. She had learned of them one by one, when her mother and brothers had gradually begun writing to her again, slowly resuming the flow of family news and gossip. Two girls and a boy, all dead of the influenza, and Sarah with them, a whole family gone in one cruel blow.

“If you need distraction,” said Emma, “Paris is the place to be. It’s very good at helping one to forget.”

Or, at least, at keeping one so busy one failed to remember. Either way, the result was the same, except in those wee, dark hours of the morning, the ones not filled with balls and the chatter of sophisticated people, when memories, regrets, and doubts came crowding in, one on top of the other, murdering sleep and shattering repose.

She had tried laudanum once, but hated the grogginess that came after. It made her feel less herself, less energetic, less alive. She was left with no recourse but to keep as busy as possible, careening from event to event in the hope that by the time the morning came, she would be tired enough to sleep.

Sometimes it even worked.

There were lines next to Kort’s eyes and circles under them, attributes foreign to the carefree boy Emma had known. He looked at her soberly. “I had forgotten. You know what it is. To lose someone.”

Emma shrugged, toying with the silver fringe of her shawl. It was a flimsy thing, designed more for ornament than warmth. “It was a long time ago.” She didn’t want to talk about Paul, especially not with Kort. It was all too complicated. She slid an arm through her cousin’s, forcing herself to speak cheerfully, “I am being horrid monopolizing you like this, when there are so many fascinating people for you to meet. Shall I introduce you to the reigning beauties of Paris? Or would you rather a poet or philosopher?”

“You sound like you’re offering them up for sale,” said Kort bemusedly.

“Everything in Paris is for sale, in some way or another,” said Emma cynically. “If it bothers you, consider it more a loan. A loan to a favorite cousin.”

Emma cast about for something else to cheer him up. There was her old friend Adele de Treville in the corner, a widow, too, and a merry one. Her husband had died on the expedition to Haiti, along with Pauline Bonaparte’s spouse, victim of the yellow fever that had done more to decimate the French ranks than all the efforts of the rebel army.

Adele had been part of the fellowship at Mme. Campan’s, but Emma wasn’t sure Kort was quite ready for her yet. Adele was a darling, but she couldn’t be called anything but fast. If her conversation made Emma blush, it would horrify Kort. Right now she was talking to—

No. Oh, no.

“You haven’t met our host yet, have you?” Emma babbled, taking Kort by the arm and towing him ungently away from Adele and her companion. There were some things about her life since New York that Kort just didn’t need to know. “I’ve been hideously remiss. I ought to have introduced you straightaway.”

“No, not at all,” said Kort, submitting to being tugged along, like a sturdy vessel in the grip of a particularly determined tug. “I have messages from home I’ve been pledged to deliver. May I call on you tomorrow?”

“You may call on me at any time,” Emma promised him extravagantly, yanking him along behind her. Of all the nights for her past indiscretions to catch up with her, why did it need to be tonight? “My door is open to you at any hour of the day or night. Not literally, of course. There’s a concierge for that. He opens and closes it. The door, I mean. He gets very upset when other people try to do it for him. He takes great pride in his door. I mean, his work.”

Kort looked at her with concern. “Are you feeling quite well?”

“I am merely overwhelmed with the joy of your visit,” Emma lied. “And champagne. Have you had any? It’s really quite excellent. Here, do.”

She thrust a glass at him, looking frantically for a means of escape. If there was anyone she didn’t need Kort to meet…

“Madame Delagardie.”

Too late.

Georges Marston took her hand without it being offered, took it with an assumption of intimacy that made Emma wince and Kort lower his glass of champagne.

“Madame Delagardie,” he said. “It has been too long.”