The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Chapter Nine

Edouard’s carriage wasn’t there.

Amy looked out over the street for the fifth time in as many minutes. There was still no sign of a carriage bearing the Balcourt crest. The dock at Calais lacked the bustle and flurry Miss Gwen had frowned over at Dover. In the weak, early morning light, the wharf was almost eerily deserted. Only one carriage had braved the dawn chill, a battered black carriage with a broken sidelamp, and starbursts of mud along its sides. When they had wobbled off the ship an hour before in predawn dark, Amy had seen the bulk of a carriage, and assumed it must be Edouard’s. The coachman’s striding past them and making straight for the cargo in the hold had dispelled that happy notion. With little else to do, Amy tugged her shawl tighter and watched idly as three men in rough work clothes trotted up and down the gangplank, heaving assorted boxes and bundles into the carriage. Surely Edouard would arrive soon?

Amy started at the sound of hooves racketing against cobblestones. Four black horses trotted into view, followed by a sleek black carriage. The coachman rose on his box and gave an unservile halloo in a decidedly English voice. He was answered by the all too familiar tones of Lord Richard Selwick. It was utterly unfair, thought Amy, that a man as devoid of honor as Lord Richard should have his coach arrive on time while theirs was nowhere in sight. Where was the justice in that? Shouldn’t he be at the top of the list for divine retribution for his perfidy? Oh well, there was yet time for justice to be served. Maybe his carriage wheel would fall off and leave him stranded in a ditch.

“Hullo, Robbins!” Richard left his perch atop a pile of trunks and strode over to his carriage. “Have a nice drive?”

“As nice as can be had on them damned French roads, milord—begging your pardon, ladies,” the coachman hastily added, as Miss Gwen’s loud sniff of reproach alerted him to the presence of three rather disheveled female persons on the wharf. “All pits and potholes, they are,” he earnestly explained to Miss Gwen.

Miss Gwen sniffed again.

Feeling that he’d done the best he could to atone for his profanity, Robbins shrugged and turned his back on the old harpy with the strange hat. “When do I get to drive on good English roads again, milord?”

“When Bonaparte donates his collection of antiquities to the British Museum,” Richard said dryly. The words came out by rote; he and Robbins had been through the same routine several times before. Richard’s attention had shifted to the tousled collection of females huddling on the windy wharf.

The second he looked at Amy, she scowled violently.

It would have been quite an effective scowl if the wind hadn’t blown her curls into her face. Richard couldn’t help grinning as he watched Amy paw clumps of hair out of her mouth. She looked like a bedraggled kitten dealing with fur balls.

He, of course, didn’t feel one way or the other about the girl. Well, all right, he did feel quite an uncomfortable tightening in certain parts of his breeches when the wind flattened her skirts against her legs, just as it was doing now, outlining her—Richard let out his breath in a rush. It was best not to think about what the wind was outlining. At any rate, aside from lust—which, he quickly reminded himself, was a physical reaction, which could have been brought on by any other female with kissable Cupid’s-bow lips and intriguing curves outlined by fine yellow muslin—he felt nothing for her. She was just a chance acquaintance, and if she happened to dislike him, that was her own affair. He scarcely knew her.

He did, however, know Edouard de Balcourt. Balcourt would think nothing of leaving his female relations stranded in Calais for a week, if sending the carriage to pick them up didn’t suit his own schedule. Richard could easily imagine Balcourt being distracted by a fitting for the latest style of breeches and completely forgetting to send the carriage at all. He didn’t like to think of three gently bred young ladies being stranded by the wharf. Certainly, there were inns in Calais, but they catered to a very different sort of clientele. No doubt there was at least one respectable establishment, but docks, as Richard knew far too well from his peregrinations back and forth across the Channel, tended to attract the most unsavory sort of riffraff. With that deadly parasol of hers, Miss Gwen made a formidable guard—whoever picked her to look after Amy and Jane had known what they were about—but, even so . . . Richard imagined Henrietta stranded for a week in Calais and his lips tightened grimly. There was nothing for it but to take the women back to Paris with him.

Amy caught Richard’s eye, flushed, and quickly looked away again. “Insufferable man!” she muttered.

“Amy, I really wish you would tell me what happened between you and Lord Richard.”

“Shhhh! He’s coming this way!”

Casually swinging his hat in one hand, Lord Richard strolled towards them . . . and past them, bowing to Miss Gwen.

“Madam, your carriage seems to have been . . . delayed. May I be so bold as to offer the use of mine?”

Oh no, thought Amy. Oh no, no, no.

Amy drew herself to her full five feet and three inches and set her chin. “That really won’t be necessary! I’m sure Edouard’s coach will arrive any minute now, don’t you think? There are dozens of reasons why it might have been delayed. Broken wheels or bandits or . . .” Amy’s voice petered out. Miss Gwen and Lord Richard, on either side, were looking down at her with frighteningly similar expressions of polite incredulity. “Well, I’m sure there must be bandits, and a broken wheel could happen to anyone!”

“Indeed.” Lord Richard positively exuded skepticism in a highly unpleasant way.

Richard felt highly unpleasant. Here he was, trying to do something nice for the girl, dash it all, despite all of the extremely rude things she had said to him the night before, and she was treating him as though he had offered to convey her to a leper colony! She could at least attempt to be civil in return. For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t as though he had murdered her parents.

Amy took a deep breath and resisted the urge to stamp her foot. Preferably on Lord Richard’s. Again. “At any rate, when Edouard’s carriage does arrive—which it will—it would be dreadfully rude of us not to have waited for it, after he’s put his coachman to so much trouble. And what if the coachman thinks we haven’t arrived yet and stays to wait for us? Why, the poor man could be stranded here for days!”

“Your concern for your brother’s coachman does you credit, Miss Balcourt,” Lord Richard commented dryly, with a wry twist of the lips that suggested that he knew it was not Edouard’s coachman who troubled her, “but, at present, you seem to be the one stranded, not he.”

Amy squared her shoulders for further argument, but Miss Gwen prevented her with a commanding thump of her parasol. “I will have no more argument from you, Miss Amy! Your brother’s coach was to have been here this morning. It was not. Therefore we are accepting Lord Richard’s kind offer, and I trust that your brother’s coachman, should he appear, shall have the basic sense to return to Paris. Is that understood? My lord, you may instruct your man to load our baggage.”

“Miss Meadows, I am yours to command. Miss Balcourt, the opportunity to extend our acquaintance, as I am sure you will agree, is an unexpected delight.”

“Indeed.” Amy tossed his own word back at him with twice the skepticism.

And he laughed. The bounder actually laughed.

Amy stomped off to the side of the dock as Richard’s coachman joined two sailors in loading all of their trunks onto the top of the carriage. At least, she tried to stomp. Her kid boots made disappointingly little noise on the wooden planks. Amy longed for loud noises—stomping boots, slamming doors, breaking china—to vent her displeasure. Oh for a parasol to thump like Miss Gwen! “Maybe that’s why she carries it,” Amy murmured to the waves. The waves crashed obligingly in affirmative response.

“It is very good of him.” Jane slipped an arm through Amy’s.

“It gives the appearance of goodness,” Amy corrected crossly. She stole a glance at Richard, who was speaking gravely to Miss Gwen. “All the better to hide a thoroughly black heart.”

Jane’s pale brows drew together in concern. “What did he do to make you feel so about him? Amy, he didn’t behave improperly to you?”

“No,” Amy said grumpily, feeling, if possible, even crosser than before. The memory of the almost-kiss—had it even been an almost-kiss?—danced mockingly at the edge of memory, taunting her with her own foolishness. Good heavens, how could she even have considered kissing such a base rogue? Amy wasn’t sure whether she was more irate with Richard for charming her into liking him or with herself for allowing herself to be charmed when she ought to have known better. Either way, she was irate.

Jane was still watching her expectantly. Jane, Amy decided, could not be told of the almost-kiss. “No,” Amy repeated. “It was his principles, not his actions, that offended me. Can you believe that the man is employed by Bonaparte! An Englishman, a member of the peerage, working for that—”

“It might be well not to judge him too hastily,” Jane interjected as Amy’s voice rose dangerously above the slapping of the waves.

“Trust me, Jane, it’s a very well-considered judgment!”

“Amy, you’ve known him all of a day.”

“That was more than long enough,” Amy stated stubbornly. “Oh blast, the trunks are loaded. I was so hoping Edouard’s coach would appear before we had to leave with him.”

Lord Richard greeted each girl with a deep bow as they fell in beside Miss Gwen. Such an excess of civility, thought Amy grimly, could only be meant as insult. Her darkest suspicions were confirmed when Richard followed up his bows with, “Good morning, Miss Wooliston, Miss Balcourt. I trust you slept well.” He spoke lightly, his gaze resting impersonally on Jane and Amy in turn.

“Quite well, thank you,” said Jane.

Amy glowered. “I was kept awake by the sound of someone stamping about on deck.”

Richard smiled blandly. “It’s well you didn’t go up to investigate. You never know what rough sorts you might encounter on a Dover packet.”

“I believe I have a fair idea, my lord.”

Jane’s bonneted head swiveled from one to the other. She gave Amy a hard look from under the straw brim. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” she whispered.

“Later,” Amy whispered back.

Richard regarded them with that infuriatingly benign look of condescension men assume when women whisper in front of them.

Miss Gwen was less benign; she rapped her parasol against the ground like an exasperated orchestra conductor. “Are we to stand here taking the air or shall we depart? Sir?” Grabbing Richard’s outstretched arm, she climbed regally into the carriage. Murmuring her thanks to Richard, Jane followed, taking the seat beside Miss Gwen.

Pointedly avoiding resting her fingers on the arm Richard proffered, Amy peered into the interior of the carriage. Oh, drat! She would have to sit next to Lord Richard.

Amy wedged herself into the very farthest corner of the bench. Richard gave her a somewhat sardonic look as he settled down on his side. He called an order to the coachman, and the carriage jostled into movement. Under pretense of picking up a fallen glove from the floor, Richard leaned towards Amy.

“It’s not catching, you know.”

Amy opened her mouth to retort, but Miss Gwen’s eye was upon her like a falcon sighting its prey. With as much dignity as she could muster, Amy turned her back on Richard and stared out the window.

Amy stared out the window for quite some time. She stared out the window until there was no sign of the coast in sight. She stared out the window until her neck ached. After an hour, she began to wonder if she would ever be able to move her head again. Beside her, Lord Richard was conversing with Jane in low, pleasant tones. “Compared with the works of Mozart, Herr Beethoven . . .” Jane was saying earnestly. Next to Amy, Richard’s voice rumbled in reply, but it was fading . . . fading . . . fading . . . Amy only had time to think, confusedly, how odd that his voice should be so pleasant when he was so very unpleasant himself, before she fell into sleep.

Amy slept through a debate on the merits of the new romantic music and Jane leaning precariously across the coach to tuck a shawl around her sleeping form.

“I’ll do it,” Richard volunteered, as Jane tottered on the edge of her seat. He reached for the shawl, and Jane handed it to him gratefully before sliding back against the velvet squabs. Robbins tended to display his feelings for the French by lurching violently into every pothole he could find, which meant that the coach was swaying from side to side with greater force than the boat in last night’s storm.

Richard toppled back into his own seat more hastily than intended and turned toward Amy. She had fallen asleep curled up against the window, one hand under her cheek, and her back rather pointedly towards Richard. With her booted feet dangling an inch or two off the floor, she looked quite tiny and fragile. Funny, she hadn’t seemed all that little before. Probably, thought Richard ruefully, because she never stayed still long enough for one to notice. Awake, she exuded enough energy for a whole troupe of Amazons. And packed as furious a punch. Or did he mean a kick? Richard half smiled. He knew the memory of Amy’s assault on his foot—and his honor—should anger rather than amuse him, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to muster up a decent spurt of indignation. Instead, he found himself squelching down an entirely inappropriate feeling of fondness.

It really was just as well that he would be rid of her in a few hours. Of course, since she was Balcourt’s sister, they would be bound to run into each other at the Tuilleries, but with any luck—and it was luck, Richard firmly reminded himself—she’d likely avoid him like the plague. And he could get back to his real job. This whole boat interlude . . . well, necessity made odd bedfellows.

Brusquely, Richard flung the shawl over the sleeping girl.

Amy mumbled something and flopped over. Right into Richard’s shoulder.

She must have been very soundly asleep, indeed, because rather than springing away in horror, she nuzzled against the fine wool of Richard’s coat. Instinctively, Richard’s arm rose to wrap around her shoulders. It was, of course, just a reflex reaction. With a quick, guilty look at Miss Gwen, who, thank goodness, was deep in a book and didn’t seem to notice that her charge was snuggled up against a member of the opposite sex, Richard clamped his arm to his side. He had no desire to find himself on the pointy end of Miss Gwen’s parasol for improper advances. And how much more infuriating it would be to earn a punctured kidney for half-unconscious improper advances to a girl who wouldn’t give him a civil how-do-you-do if she were awake. If he were to get poked by anyone’s parasol, it might at least be for something enjoyable. Not that it wasn’t rather pleasant having Amy curled up against him. She was soft, and warm, and smelled nice, too, notwithstanding their bathless night on the boat. Like—Richard gave an experimental sniff—lavender water. Nice. Richard sniffed again.

Thump! Miss Gwen’s book slammed shut.

Richard’s head jerked up with enough force to make him dizzy.

“Could you kindly contrive to breathe in a more decorous fashion?” Miss Gwen admonished. “I have known sheepdogs with more genteel respiratory habits. Amy! Yes, you!” Amy had begun to stir next to Richard and seemed to be trying very hard to lodge her nose permanently in a fold of his coat.

“What sheep?” murmured Amy into Richard’s collarbone. “I detest sheep.”

A sound suspiciously like a chuckle emerged from Jane. Miss Gwen reached for her parasol. Richard prepared to dodge, but this time Miss Gwen’s instrument of torture had another victim at its tip. One well-placed poke in the ribs, and Amy’s eyes fluttered open.

“Whaaa?”

“You are to remove yourself from Lord Richard at once.”

Her words had far more effect on Amy than the point of the parasol; Amy looked down at Richard’s coat, up at his face, and recoiled with such force that she nearly rebounded off the wall of the coach. “I . . . did I . . . oh goodness, I never intended . . .”

Richard plucked a curling brown hair from the wool of his jacket. Holding it out towards Amy, he said gravely, “I believe this belongs to you.”

“What? Oh. Um, you may keep it.” Amy was busy wedging herself back into the far corner of the seat.

“Most obliged.”

Amy looked at him skeptically through bleary eyes and leaned her head against the side of the coach. In front of her, Miss Gwen had resumed reading intently. Amy squinted at the letters on the spine.

“You’re reading The Mysteries of Udolpho.”

“How very clever of you, Amy.” Miss Gwen turned a page.

“I didn’t think you cared for—that is, I didn’t know you read novels.”

“I don’t.” Miss Gwen looked up over the top of the volume that gave the lie to her statement. “There was nothing else to read in the carriage and not all of us care to sleep in public.” Looking much more cheerful once she had made her jab at Amy, Miss Gwen continued. “The style of the book is quite arresting, but I find the heroine entirely unsympathetic. Swooning solves nothing.”

“You should write your own,” suggested Richard. “For the purpose of edifying young females, of course.”

Amy’s and Richard’s eyes met in a moment of pure amusement. Amy started to return Richard’s grin when it suddenly hit her that she had just exchanged a significant glance with Lord Richard Selwick. Amy hunched down in her seat, feeling beleaguered.

Good heavens, why couldn’t the man leave her be!

Abruptly, she turned her head and stared out the window. Paris couldn’t be that much farther, could it?

It could. It was well past teatime, or what would have been teatime had they been back in Shropshire, by the time the coach lurched its way through the gates of the city.

Robbins had slowed down to a pace little faster than a walk, not out of concern for Miss Gwen’s sensibilities (despite Miss Gwen’s threat after one hairpin turn that unless he slowed down she would take her parasol to him), but because the narrow streets would not permit anything more. Most were missing cobblestones; water and refuse ran in streams down the center of the street, and Amy had to duck back as a rivulet of filth poured from one window to join the muck below. People scurried back and forth through the refuse, occasionally stopping to curse at the carriage. Amy added more colloquialisms to her rapidly growing collection.

“How very French.” Miss Gwen conspicuously held a handkerchief to her nose.

“It’s not all like this, is it, my lord?” Jane asked Richard in tones of such polite distress that Richard laughed.

“Your cousin’s house is in a far nicer neighborhood, I assure you, but, yes, much of Paris is in a sorry state. Bonaparte has grand plans to rebuild, but he hasn’t had the time to put his schemes into practice.”

“Too busy conquering the world?”

“I’m sure he would be flattered by your summation, Miss Balcourt.”

Amy flushed irritably and returned to her window.

Making a sharp turn that nearly sent Miss Gwen’s parasol into Richard’s ribs, the carriage clattered into the stone courtyard of the Hotel de Balcourt—and stopped abruptly. The drive was blocked by a shabby black carriage; mud splattered its sides, and a shattered lamp hung drunkenly on the side nearer Amy. Several men were occupied in unloading large, brown paper packages tied up with string.

“Why have we stopped?” demanded Miss Gwen.

“A coach is blocking the door,” Amy explained. She poked her head back out. “Mr. Robbins, could you please ask them to let us pass? Tell them the vicomte’s sister has arrived.”

Robbins puffed out his chest. With great enthusiasm, he shouted out in his ungrammatical French that they were all to clear out as the lady of the house had arrived.

One of the workers paused to shout back that there was no lady of the house.

“There is now!” declared Robbins. “Just who do you think that there lady is if she ain’t the lady of the ’ouse?”

The worker made an extremely rude suggestion in French. Amy, abruptly remembering that she wasn’t supposed to understand the language, opened her eyes wide at Richard and inquired, “What did he say?”

“He voiced his disbelief as to your identity,” Richard translated blandly.

Robbins, red-faced with fury, retorted with an inventive blend of French and English invective.

“Really!” exclaimed Miss Gwen, who had caught the English half.

“Really, indeed,” echoed Richard, looking quite impressed. That one comment about the reproductive habits of camels had been quite original.

“This is ridiculous!” Amy exclaimed.

“I quite agree.” Thump! “To refer to an innocent camel in that salacious way—”

“No! Not that! This!” Amy’s arm gesture encompassed the stalled carriage, the courtyard, and almost decked Richard on the chin. Richard eyed Amy speculatively but concluded that bodily harm to him had been a by-product, not a goal. “Don’t you see? It’s ridiculous to remain mewed up in the carriage when we’re here already. Why on earth can’t we just walk to the door? That’s why we have legs, for heaven’s sake! I’m going to find Edouard.” And with that, Amy unlatched her carriage door and prepared to hop out.

Only to be unceremoniously hauled back into the carriage by the scruff of her skirt.

“Oh no, you don’t,” said Richard, making up in firmness what he lacked in originality. “You are not going out there.”

It was hard to glare at someone when he still had his fist wound in the back of one’s skirt. Amy yanked irritably away and twisted to face Richard. Much better. Able to glare at him full on, she demanded, “Why not?”

Richard raised a sardonic eyebrow and indicated the courtyard where two other men in varying states of dirt and undress had joined the first in exchanging less than witty repartee with Robbins. Amy hated to admit it, but he had a point.

“But we can’t just sit here!”

“I agree. I’ll go.”

“You’ll go?” Amy echoed idiotically. Wait—had Lord Richard just agreed with her?

“I’m the only one who knows what your brother looks like.”

“I suppose I can recognize my own brother,” Amy muttered, but since she wasn’t awfully sure on that point, she muttered it very softly.

It was at that point that the door to the house opened and a portly man with too much lace on his cuffs emerged and began chastising the workers in the courtyard in rapid French, demanding to know the cause of the delay.

Richard swung out of the carriage.

“Ho! Balcourt!”

The man raised his head. Like Richard, his hair had been cut short in the classical style made popular by the Revolution, but this man had a pair of fuzzy sideburns crawling down his face towards his chin. They stretched so far down his face that they touched the absurdly high points of his shirt collar. It was a wonder that he was able to turn his head to look at Richard at all; his shirt points stretched up to his cheeks, and his chin was entirely buried by an exuberant cravat.

A voice emerged from the folds of the cravat. “Selwick? What are you doing here?”

Oh dear, that couldn’t be Edouard, could it?

Amy’s suspicions were confirmed by Richard’s next words. “I’m delivering your sister, Balcourt. You seem to have misplaced her.”

The last time she had seen Edouard, he had been a gawky youth of thirteen, preening in front of the mirror in the gold salon and tripping over his court sword. He had worn his hair in a queue tied with a blue ribbon and dusted over his adolescent spots with powder filched from Mama’s boudoir. To her five-year-old eyes, he had seemed impossibly tall. Of course, that might also have owed something to the heels then in fashion. Edouard had been so infuriated when she had sneaked into his room and paraded about in his heels. . . . This man, his puce waistcoat straining across his stomach, his puffy cheeks pinched behind his starched collar—he was a stranger.

But then he looked towards the carriage.

“My sister, you say?”

And all of a sudden, his face took on that exact same look it had worn all those years ago when he had caught Amy with his favorite heels.

“Edouard! It is you!”

Amy flung herself from the carriage. She stumbled a bit on the uneven cobblestones as she landed, but by dint of waving her arms about managed to keep herself upright. She heard a quickly muffled chuckle from Richard. Amy ignored it, the same way she ignored the bold stares of the French servants and the nasty smell rising from the cobblestones. Grabbing her skirts in both hands, she dashed at her brother. “Edouard! It’s me! Amy! I’ve finally come home!”

Edouard’s face—or what one could see of it—wavered between bewilderment and horror.

“Amy? You weren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow!”