The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Chapter Four

At the sound of the door cracking against the wall, Richard automatically whirled toward the entrance, his whole body tensing for trouble. Blast it all, nobody was supposed to be on the packet from Dover to Calais but him. Ten crowns he had pressed into the hands of the rather oily-looking captain, ten crowns of good British sterling, with another five promised upon arrival. The captain had assured him that the boat would be his alone and would set sail at the next promising gust of wind, instead of lolling about for a week, waiting for passengers.

So who was banging doors? The sound of oak bashing oak, in his experience, generally preceded flying chairs, toppling candlesticks, snarled oaths in three languages, and, if one were really unlucky, the acrid smoke of powder from a pistol. The cabin of a Channel boat was a damnable place to be ambushed. The ceiling was too low for a man to stand and fight properly. And if the bloody boat began swaying . . . Richard winced at the prospect. It could lend a whole new aspect to fencing. Richard whirled towards the door in a grim frame of mind.

The figure in the doorway nearly made Richard tip his chair over backwards in surprise. In the place of the burly oafs he had expected, he saw one rather agitated young lady, planted indignantly in the middle of the entrance. “But why not?” she was arguing with someone in front of her.

“Harrumph,” said Richard. The girl’s back, clad in a narrowly cut yellow frock, was quite as pleasing a back as one could hope for, but this was his boat, blast it, and no one else had any business being on it, not even young ladies with fetching backs.

The young lady paid no attention.

“Really, Miss Gwen! The captain said the wind won’t be right for hours yet! We could just stop in at the Fisherman’s Rest for a lemonade. I’m sure there can’t possibly be anything improper about stopping for a lemonade.”

Richard harrumphed again. Very loudly. The girl in yellow half-turned, affording Richard a momentary view of a pert nose, a determined chin, and one large blue eye. The eye settled briefly on Richard and as rapidly dismissed him. With a toss of her mahogany curls, she continued pleading with her invisible chaperone.

“And Jane agrees with me, don’t you, Jane?” the girl went on. “Just one lemonade, Miss Gwen!”

Could anyone really be that thirsty? Richard failed to see the earth-shattering importance of a lemonade. Unless, of course, the girl had some unfortunate medical condition which could only be soothed by constant application of lemonade. From the energy with which the girl was arguing her case, and the enthusiastic way she bounced on her feet, like a prizefighter waiting to be let into the ring, Richard rather doubted she was suffering from any weakening, wasting malady.

Richard listened to the ridiculous one-sided argument for a few more minutes before reminding himself that, much as he enjoyed speculating on the girl’s reasons and pleasing as it was to watch her skirts sway with every vehement word, the time had come to intervene. He had dispatches to read, and if he tarried too long, he risked the boat setting sail with these noisy interlopers still aboard.

“I say,” Richard drawled, loudly enough that they might have heard him say it back in London.

That finally got her attention. The girl turned. In full, her face fulfilled the promise of her profile. It wasn’t what one would call a classically beautiful face; her features lacked the sort of sculpted dignity one expected from a statue in marble. Instead, her face was a talented engraver’s etching, small and decisive, her cupid’s bow of a mouth in constant movement, exclaiming, talking, laughing. No, Richard changed his mind, not an etching after all. Her coloring was too vivid for the stark black and white of a print. The deep brown of her hair glimmered with hidden alloys of red gold, like fire shining through a screen of mahogany. Between dark lashes and fair cheeks, her eyes gleamed startlingly blue.

Her face bore a perplexed look, as if she had only just noticed Richard and wasn’t quite sure what to do about him. To help her along, Richard raised a sardonic brow. It was an expression that had been known to make cardsharps fling in their aces and the secretest of secret agents babble like babes. For a moment, confusion continued to hover in the girl’s narrowed blue eyes. Then she beamed at Richard and bounded into the room towards him.

“You look like you’ve traveled a great deal! Don’t you agree that there’s plenty of time to stop off at the inn for a lemonade?”

Before Richard could suggest that she do just that—preferably lingering over her lemonade until after his boat had sailed—another figure appeared behind her. Ah, the chaperone, Richard decided. There were, he had come to the conclusion after many tedious evenings at Almack’s, two types of chaperone. Given the number of events he had been forced to squire Hen to, Richard considered he had conducted something of an exhaustive study of chaperones.

Both types were aging spinsters (Richard discounted young widows looking after their younger sisters’ debuts; those tended to need a chaperone even more than the young ladies they were ostensibly supervising), but that was all they had in common. The first was the frumpy henwit. Although of indeterminate age, she dressed in the ruffles of a seventeen-year-old. Her hair, no matter how sparse or gray, was curled and frizzed until it looked like a nest built by a particularly talentless blue jay. She twittered and simpered when spoken to, read the sappiest sort of novels in her spare time, and generally contrived to accidentally lose her charge at least twice a day. Rogues and seducers loved the first sort of chaperone; she made their endeavors that much easier.

And then there was the other type of chaperone. The grim dragon of a chaperone. The sort who looked like her spine had been reinforced with a few Doric columns. Chaperone number two would sneer at a flounce or a frizz. She never simpered when she could snarl, read forbidding sermons by seventeenth-century puritans, and all but chained her charge to her wrist.

As the woman bore down on him, Richard, using his brilliant powers of deduction, was quickly able to conclude that this chaperone fell into the second type. Gray hair rigidly pulled back. Mouth pressed into a grim line. The only incongruous note was the cluster of alarmingly purple flowers on the top of her otherwise severe gray bonnet. Maybe the milliner confused her order and she didn’t have time to change it, Richard concluded charitably.

At any rate, he decided, here was someone he could deal with sensibly. One of the benefits of type number two was that they were nearly always extremely sensible. Richard darted a quick glance down at her feet. Underneath the gray hem of her skirt, he could just make out two sturdy, thick-soled black boots. Yes, definitely sensible.

Richard opened his mouth to speak, and the tip of a parasol jammed in between his ribs.

“Who are you, young man, and what are you doing on our boat?”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” the words came out somewhat more raggedly than Richard would have liked, but it was hard sounding sophisticated when all the air had just been forced out of your lungs in a most unpleasant fashion. “Your boat?”

“Why don’t Jane and I just pop by the inn while you straighten matters out with this gentleman . . . ,” began the girl in yellow brightly, but she was cut off by the forbidding voice of her duenna.

“You, miss, are staying right here.” The dragon managed to reach out and snag the girl’s arm without taking her beady eyes from Richard. “Yes, sirrah, our boat. That greasy-looking fellow who calls himself the captain assured us that we should be the only passengers. If you are one of the crew—which, judging from your dress and speech, I assume you are not—go about your duties. If not, kindly depart at once.”

She looked as though she were ready to enforce her words with the point of her parasol. Richard judged it wise to move out of range. Who had ever heard of a parasol with a steel tip that sharp and pointy? They were supposed to be dainty, feminine things, not lethal weapons.

Rising from his chair, Richard sidestepped the gleaming parasol point and executed a small but elegant bow. “Forgive me, madam, I have been remiss in my social obligations. I am Lord Richard Selwick.”

The chaperone still looked like she would rather poke him than chat with him, but she obviously knew what was proper. With a bend of the knees that only just resembled a curtsy, she inclined her head and said, “I, my lord, am Miss Gwendolyn Meadows. Allow me to make known to you my two charges, Miss Jane Wooliston”—a girl Richard had failed to notice moved out from the shadows behind Miss Meadows and made her curtsy—“and Miss Amy Balcourt.”

The quiet girl in blue subtly took Amy’s arm and tried to lead her away. Squeezing the other girl’s hand affectionately, Amy shook her head and stayed where she was. Richard was so caught up in this byplay that he completely lost track of what the chaperone was saying until the point of her parasol made another sortie at his waistcoat.

“Sir! Have you been attending?”

As Richard had learned from his youthful encounters with the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale, the best way to deal with irate ladies of a certain age was to be disarmingly honest.

“No, madam, I fear I was not.”

“Hmph. I said that now that the amenities have been served we would be pleased if you would take yourself off our boat.”

“I was afraid that was what you might have said.” Richard smiled winningly, while taking care to move himself out of the path of the parasol. “You see, I also paid the captain for the sole use of this ship.”

Miss Gwen’s face darkened alarmingly. Richard watched in some fascination as the flowers on her hat began to quiver with rage. Had she been a man, she would undoubtedly be indulging in strong language. As it was, given the ominous way she was swinging her parasol, it appeared that she was planning severe bodily harm to the captain, Richard, or both.

The quiet girl, Jane, moved forward to put a reassuring hand on the chaperone’s arm. “There must have been some mistake,” she said soothingly. “I’m sure we can all reach an amiable conclusion.”

Miss Gwen looked about as amiable as Attila the Hun.

“The only possible conclusion is for this gentleman to remove his person from our conveyance.”

Richard felt himself beginning to grow annoyed. Watching the chaperone bicker with her charge had been a mildly amusing diversion, but, blast it all, he had real work to do. Important work. War Office work. And, anyway, he had been here first.

That fact seemed like a particularly conclusive one to Richard, so he decided to point it out.

“Who was here first, madam?”

That argument had failed the Saxons in 1066; it was equally ineffectual with Miss Gwen, who regarded Richard with all the imperiousness of William the Conquerer. “You, my lord, may have been here first, but we are ladies,” Miss Gwen responded with a most unladylike scowl. “And there are more of us. Therefore, you should cede your place.”

“Why don’t we all go to the inn for a nice glass of lemonade and talk it over?” suggested Amy hopefully.

Neither of the combatants paid the least bit of attention to her.

Standing back with her arms folded across her chest—highly unladylike, but then, Miss Gwen wasn’t looking—Amy watched the debacle with the avid interest she would have accorded to a duel. As the two sparred, their barbed sentences ended with incongruous civilities, like protective tips on epées.

Lord Richard took a step closer to Miss Gwen, close enough that the chaperone had to tip her head back to see him. Miss Gwen was fairly tall for a woman, but Lord Richard Selwick topped her by nearly half a foot. His blond head loomed over the waving purple flowers on her bonnet, gleaming with its own light in the dim cabin. Unlike the men Amy had known back in Shropshire, who still wore their hair clubbed back with a ribbon, Lord Richard’s was cut short in the new French style. Lord Richard carried himself with an air of easy assurance infinitely more convincing than Derek’s swaggering. From his highly polished boots to his waistcoat embroidered in a subtle pattern in silver, he was dressed with a casual elegance that made Derek and his ilk look foppish and overdone. He had evidently anticipated being alone on the boat, because his black frock coat was tossed over a chair, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his cravat loosened. Where his collar gaped open, Amy could see the strong lines of his throat. He looked, Amy thought, like an illustration she had once seen of Horatius at the bridge, defending Rome against all comers.

Her cheeks flushed a deep, uncomfortable red as she realized that the cords of his throat had gone still, the room was silent, and Lord Richard was staring at her staring at him.

Amy covered her confusion by saying hastily, “This is absolutely ridiculous! There’s no reason at all why anybody should be forced to wait for the next boat. After all, there’s plenty of room for all of us.” With a sweeping gesture, she indicated the four walls of the room.

“Out of the question,” snapped Miss Gwen.

Amy shook her dark curls in an unconscious gesture of defiance. “Why?”

“Because,” Miss Gwen pronounced witheringly, “you cannot stay the night in the same room as a gentleman.”

“Oh.” Amy took a quick look at the watch pinned to Miss Gwen’s bony chest. From what she could make out, it looked to be just a little past four. Edouard’s carriage wasn’t due to pick them up until the following morning, anyway, so they would put up for the night at an inn in Calais. Surely it couldn’t take all that long to cross such a narrow body of water as the Channel. As long as they reached France before midnight, remaining in the cabin with Lord Richard couldn’t really be counted as spending the night in the same room as a man. After all, Amy resolved with splendid illogic, if nobody went to bed, it wasn’t spending the night.

“How long does it take to reach Calais, my lord?”

“That depends on the weather. Anywhere from two hours to three days.”

“Three days?”

“Only in very bad weather,” Richard drawled.

“Oh. But look! It’s absolutely lovely outside. Really, what’s the harm of sharing the space for an insignificant two hours?”

Amy looked around the small group expectantly. Jane suddenly turned toward the window, and held up her hand for silence. “Listen,” she said.

Amy listened. She heard the steady slap of waves at the keel of the boat, the keening cry of a seagull, and the scrape of their bags on the wood floor as the motion of the boat made them shift back and forth. Nothing more.

“What am I supposed to hear?” she asked curiously. “I don’t hear anything. Just—oh.”

From the disgruntled expression on Lord Richard’s face, she knew he had reached a similar conclusion.

Miss Gwen rapped her parasol impatiently on the ground. “Just what? Speak up, girl.”

Amy glanced from Jane to Lord Richard for confirmation. “I don’t hear the sounds of the people on the dock anymore.”

“That’s right,” Lord Richard nodded grimly. “We’ve set sail.”

Amy’s face fell for a moment. “So much for plan A,” she muttered. Stopping at the inn had ceased to be an option. At least she had the consolation of knowing that the odds of running into the Purple Gentian there had been slim in the extreme. For all she knew, he was in France at this very moment, giving instructions to his band of devoted men or filching documents from under the noses of French officials or . . . Upon reflection, it really was best that they get to France as quickly as possible.

“Well, that’s that, then!” Amy proclaimed cheerfully, making for the porthole to peer out. “There’s no point in arguing about it anymore, is there? Two hours and we’ll be in France! Do come look, Jane—don’t they look like dolls on the wharf?”

Miss Gwen stayed where she was, standing ramrod straight smack in the center of the room. Richard sank back down into the chair he had been occupying when the ladies had barreled into the room. “I don’t like this any better than you do,” he said softly. “But I shall endeavor to stay out of your path if you will keep your charges out of mine.”

Miss Gwen afforded him a grudging nod. “We must hope it doesn’t rain,” she said tartly, and stalked off to join her young ladies at the window.

Precisely three-quarters of an hour later, the first drops hit the porthole. Richard was alerted to it by Amy’s loud cry of distress.

“It can’t be raining, it can’t be raining, it just can’t be raining,” she muttered, like an incantation.

“Yes, it can,” said Richard.

Amy’s expression indicated that she was not amused. She cast him a look of great disdain that was somewhat diminished by the fact that the boat swayed suddenly and she had to stagger to catch her balance. “I can see that, can’t I?” She returned to her mournful vigil by the window, but couldn’t resist turning around to ask anxiously, “How much longer do you think the trip will take?”

“My dear girl, I already told you, anywhere from—”

“I know, I know, anywhere from two hours to three days.” She looked as frustrated as his mother’s cat when someone dangled a cloth mouse in front of her and then drew it away.

“It depends on how bad the storm is.”

“How bad do you—?” A low growl of thunder cut off her words. “Never mind,” she finished, just as Richard answered her unfinished question, “That bad.”

Despite herself, Amy laughed. The sound rang an unexpected note of gaiety in the rain-dimmed chamber. The portholes were too small to let in much light under any circumstances, and with the sun overcast with clouds, only the eerie gray glow of a stormy sky crept into the room. The gloom created a Sleeping Beauty effect. Jane had succumbed to sleep on a berth across the room, her embroidery still in her hand, her feet discreetly tucked up under the hem of her gown. Defying the usual laws of nature, Miss Gwen had managed to fall asleep upright in a rickety wooden chair. Even the combined forces of sleep and the rocking motion of the boat failed to relax Miss Gwen’s iron spine; she sat as bolt upright asleep as she had awake.

The only other person awake was Lord Richard Selwick.

Amy stifled the ignoble impulse to shake Jane awake. She needed to speak to someone about something, anything, just to dull the anticipatory jitters that were making her palms tingle. If she didn’t do something to distract herself soon, she would probably start running madly about the room or jumping up and down or twirling wildly in circles, just to spin off some of her excess energy. Even one of Uncle Bertrand’s lectures on cross-breeding sheep would be welcome.

Across the room, Lord Richard was sitting in a stiff wooden chair too small for his large frame, an ankle propped against the opposite knee, utterly engrossed in what looked to be some sort of journal. Amy stared shamelessly across the room, but she couldn’t make out the title. Whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be worse than Uncle Bertrand’s husbandry manuals. Unless . . . she had heard of one journal devoted entirely to the planting of small root vegetables. But Lord Richard really didn’t look the sort to have a turnip obsession and Amy could feel the pins and needles of nervous energy darting from her hands all the way down to her feet, pushing her forward.

Her yellow skirts made a bright splotch of color in the rapidly darkening cabin as she crossed the room.

“What are you reading?”

Richard flipped the fat pamphlet over to the other side of the table for her. Antiquarian literature usually worked as well for discouraging inquisitive young ladies as it did French spies.

Amy strained to see in the dim light. “Proceedings of the Royal Egyptological Society? I didn’t know we had one.”

“We do,” said Richard dryly.

Amy cast him an exasperated look. “Well, that much is clear.” She flipped through the pages, tilting the periodical to try to catch the light. “Has there been any progress on the Rosetta Stone?”

“You’ve heard of the Rosetta Stone?” Richard knew he sounded rude; he just couldn’t help himself. The last young lady to whom he had delivered his Rosetta Stone soliloquy had asked him if the Rosetta Stone was a new kind of gemstone, and if so, what color was it, and did he think it would look better with her blue silk than sapphires.

Amy made a face at him. “We do get the papers, even in the wilds of Shropshire, you know.”

“Are you interested in antiquities?”

For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he was going to the bother of carrying on a conversation with the chit. First off, he had better things to do, such as plot the Purple Gentian’s next escapade. Daring plans didn’t just invent themselves; they took time, and thought, and imagination. Secondly, voluntarily entering into conversation with young ladies of good family was inevitably a perilous venture. It gave them ideas. It gave them terrifying ideas that involved heirloom veils, ten-foot-long trains, and bouquets of orange flowers.

Yet here he was encouraging the girl to talk. Absurd.

“I don’t really know much about antiquities,” said Amy frankly. “But I love the old stories! Penelope fooling all of her suitors, Aeneas fighting his way down to the underworld . . .”

It was too dark to read, reasoned Richard. And the girl didn’t seem to be flirting with him, so carrying on a conversation with her was a harmless and sensible means of passing the time. Nothing at all absurd about that.

“I haven’t read any Ancient Egyptian literature, though. Is there any? All I know about Ancient Egypt is what I’ve read in Herodotus,” Amy went on. “And, really, I get the sense that about half of what he wrote about the Egyptians is pure sensationalism. All of that nonsense about sucking peoples’ brains out through their noses and putting them in jars. He’s worse than the Shropshire Intelligencer!”

Richard managed to stop himself from asking whether she had really read Herodotus in the original Greek. Coming on the heels of his Rosetta Stone comment, it might seem a bit insulting. “Actually, we think Herodotus may have been telling the truth on that one. In the burial chambers of tombs, we found canopic jars with the remains of human organs.” If the girl wasn’t genuinely interested, she was putting on a far better act than any Richard had ever seen.

“We? Were you actually there, my lord?”

“Yes, several years ago.”

Questions tumbled out of Amy’s mouth so quickly that Richard scarcely had time to answer one before another rolled his way. She leaned forward across the table in a way that would have had Miss Gwen barking, “Posture!” had she been awake to see it. She listened avidly as Richard described the ancient Egyptian pantheon, interrupting him occasionally to compare them to the gods of the ancient Greeks.

“After all,” she argued, “there must have been some sort of communication between the Greeks and the Egyptians. Oh, not just Herodotus! Look at Antigone—that’s set in Thebes. And so are the myths of Jason, aren’t they? Unless, do you think the Greek authors used Egypt the way Shakespeare used Italy? As a sort of miraculous once upon a time where anything could happen?”

Outside, the storm still splattered across the windows and rocked the little boat away from its destination, but neither Amy nor Richard noticed. “I cannot tell you,” Amy confessed frankly, “how good it is to finally have a genuinely interesting conversation with someone! Nobody at home talks about anything but sheep or embroidery. No, really, I’m not exaggerating. And whenever I come across someone who has actually done something interesting, they change the subject and talk about the weather!”

Amy’s face was so disgruntled that Richard had to laugh. “Surely you must allow the weather some consequence?” he teased. “Look at the impact it has had upon us.”

“Yes, but if you start talking about it, I shall have to remember something I’ve forgotten on the other side of the room or develop a passionate desire to take a nap.”

“Do you think it will be fair tomorrow?”

“Oh, so that’s your ploy, sir! You really want to read your journal in peace, so you’ve decided to bore me away! That’s terribly devious of you. But, if I’m not wanted . . .” Amy swished her yellow skirts off her chair.

The plan she described did rather resemble his intentions of an hour before, but, without even taking the time to think about it, Richard found himself grinning and saying, “Stay. I’ll give you my word not to talk about the weather if you swear you won’t mention gowns, jewels, or the latest gossip columns.”

“Is that all the young ladies of your acquaintance talk about?”

“With a few notable exceptions, yes.”

Amy wondered who those notable exceptions might be. A betrothed, perhaps? “You should count yourself lucky, my lord. At least it’s not sheep.”

“No, they just behave like them.”

Their shared laughter rolled softly through the dim room.

Richard leaned back and regarded Amy intently. Amy’s laughter caught in her throat. Somehow, his gaze cut through the gloom, as if all the light in the dim cabin were concentrated in his eyes. Suddenly dizzy, Amy lowered her hands to the sides of her chair and held on tightly. It must be that the boat is swaying more now because of the storm, she thought vaguely. That really must be it.

Richard contemplated Amy with puzzled pleasure. He did know other intelligent women—Henrietta, for one, and a few others of his sister’s circle, bright, intelligent women who were too pretty to be dismissed as bluestockings. He had even, of his own free will, dropped by the drawing room to join them in their conversations on one or two occasions. But he couldn’t imagine bantering so easily with any of Hen’s entourage.

Perhaps it was the intimacy of darkness, or of the small quarters, but absurdly, he felt quite as comfortable chatting with Amy Balcourt as he ever had with Miles or Geoff. Only Miles didn’t have immense blue eyes fringed with dark lashes. And Geoff certainly didn’t possess a slender white neck with kissable indentations over the collarbones. . . .

At any rate, Richard concluded, the Fates had known what they were doing when they set Amy Balcourt upon his boat.

“I am truly delighted to have met you, Miss Balcourt. And I promise not to talk about the weather or sheep unless it is absolutely imperative.”

“In that case . . .” Amy clasped her hands under her chin and launched back into her eager inquisition.

Only once she had satisfied her curiosity on such important subjects as tombs, mummies, and curses did Amy ask, “But wasn’t Egypt swarming with French soldiers? How did you manage to slip in?”

“I was with the French.”

For a moment, the words just hung there. Amy frowned, trying to make sense of what he had just said. “Did you—were you a prisoner of war?” she asked hesitantly.

“No. I went at Bonaparte’s invitation, as one of his scholars.”

Amy’s spine snapped upright. Head up, shoulders back, as she stared at Richard her posture locked into a steely rigidity to please even Miss Gwen. “You were in Bonaparte’s pay?”

“Actually”—Richard lounged back in his chair—“he didn’t pay me. I went at my own expense.”

“You weren’t coerced? You went of your own free will?”

“You sound horrified, Miss Balcourt. You must admit, it is the chance of a lifetime for a scholar.”

Amy’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

Richard was right; she was horrified.

For an Englishman to accompany his country’s enemy . . . to disregard all duty and honor in the pursuit of scholarship . . . Couldn’t he have waited for the English to take control of Egypt before pursuing his pyramids? And how could any man, any thinking man, any intelligent man with a modicum of feeling, have anything to do with a nation which had so cruelly and senselessly slaughtered so many of its own people on the guillotine! And to disregard all that for the sake of a few tombs! It was a slight to his country and a slight to mankind.

But, if she was being quite, quite honest, what stung most wasn’t the slight to mankind, but the sense of betrayal his words caused. It was utterly ridiculous. She had known the man all of two hours. One couldn’t really claim betrayal after two hours’ acquaintance. Even so, in those two hours, it wasn’t as though he had lied and claimed to have fought for the English and then let slip by accident that he had been with the French.

He had been witty and interesting and charming. He had argued antiquities with Amy as though she were an equal, and not just a young girl who had never been out of the country and knew only what she had stumbled across in her uncle’s library. Good heavens, he had even told her, in the most sincere of tones, that he was honored to know her. In short, he had committed the crime of acting as though he liked her and the even greater crime of charming her into liking him. And then to reveal that he had defected to the French . . .

Suddenly, the man seated across from her took on all sorts of sinister attributes. The smile that a half an hour ago had seemed genial was now mocking. The gleam in his green eyes that had been good-natured became sinister. Even the dark hues of his clothing went from elegant to dangerous, the sleek pelt of a panther on the prowl. He was probably quite practiced at gulling the unwary into liking and trusting him. Good heavens, for all she knew he might be a French spy! Why else would he have been back in England? The logical part of her brain, the bit that always sounded like Jane, reminded her that he might very well have family back in England he wished to visit. Amy silenced it.

Across the table, Richard raised an eyebrow at her in silent inquiry. The gesture made Amy want to whack him over the head with The Proceedings of the Royal Egyptological Society.

Amy struggled for words to voice her revulsion. “Scholarship is all very well and good, but after what the French did—while your own country was at war with them! To join the French army!”

“I wasn’t in the French army,” Richard corrected. “I merely traveled with them.”

Amy rediscovered her voice and her vocabulary. “Egypt was a military action first and a scholarly expedition second! You can’t claim not to have known—I’m sure even the savages in the wilds of America knew!”

“Priorities, my dear, priorities.” Richard realized that he was being provoking, but something about the way Amy was looking at him, as though she had just discovered nine dismembered wives in a cupboard in his bedchamber, brought out the worst in him. The fact that he agreed with everything she was saying annoyed him even more. He brushed an imaginary speck of lint off his sleeve. “I chose to concentrate on the second.”

“You chose to ignore the thousands of innocent people slaughtered on the guillotine. You chose to range yourself with a murderous rabble against your own country!” Amy retorted.

How many people had he saved from the guillotine since he had first joined Percy and the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel? Fifty? A hundred? One lost count after the first few dozen. Richard was trying to remain calm and urbane, but irritation rose through him like heat radiating from the Egyptian sands.

“What,” he asked languidly, “has the guillotine to do with my researches?”

It was quite a credible imitation of a vapid London fop, and Amy reacted just as expected. She sputtered.

Rationally, Richard knew that in her position he, too, would have sputtered, appalled by such selfish callousness. Rationally, he knew that he was behaving in an absolutely appalling fashion. Rationally. Of course, Richard was feeling quite irrationally irate just now and thus enjoying her distress accordingly. The five-year-old in him was of the firm opinion that it served her right. Just what it served her right for, he wasn’t quite sure, but why fret about details?

“That army was led by the same people who cold-bloodedly slaughtered thousands of their compatriots! The ground of the Place da la Guillotine was still red with the blood of the murdered when you went to Egypt. By your very presence, you condoned their villainy!” Amy’s voice rose and cracked with the intensity of her emotions.

“I quite agree, dear girl. What the French did was reprehensible. Did. Past tense. You’re a bit behind the times. They stopped killing off their aristocrats several years ago now.”

“You might as well say that just because a cannibal eats vegetables for a few years, he’s no longer a cannibal,” choked Amy. “The fact still remains that he once feasted on human flesh and he can’t be allowed to get away with it!”

The sheer oddity of the analogy left Richard speechless for a moment. He devoted his energy to fighting off a horrible image of Bonaparte, in the gilded dining room of the Tuilleries, polishing off a human leg, while his elegant wife Josephine munched on an arm. Richard winced. “Let’s keep cannibals out of this, shall we? I assure you, the French may eat horse but they haven’t descended to human.”

“I don’t want to discuss the eating habits of the French!”

“You brought them up.”

“I did no such—oh, for heaven’s sake, it was a metaphor!”

“So, metaphorically speaking, by going to Egypt I metaphorically feasted with the metaphorical cannibals.”

“Yes!”

“You are on a packet bound for Calais.”

Amy blinked. “If you so desperately want to change the subject, you could find a more subtle way of doing it, you know.”

“I’m not trying to change the subject. I’m simply pointing out that you, O scourge of metaphorical cannibals, are on a boat bound for France.”

Amy squirmed slightly in her chair, silent with frustrated anger. She had an uncomfortable inkling of where he was going with that statement.

“I say now, what was that comment you made about guilt by association?” Richard continued loftily. “Something about condoning their evil with my presence, wasn’t it? That’s all very well and good, but isn’t there an old saw about people in glass houses not lobbing stones at their neighbors?

“And that dress you’re wearing.” Amy’s hands flew automatically to her bodice. “Isn’t that in the French style? The revolutionary style? If associating with the revolutionaries is a hanging crime, what about aping their fashions? Speak to me again of condoning.”

Amy stood so suddenly her chair toppled over behind her. “It’s not at all equivalent! It’s been five years—”

“But a cannibal is still a cannibal, isn’t he, Miss Balcourt?”

“—and England is no longer at war with France . . . and . . .”

Amy couldn’t think of any more logical arguments, but she knew, just knew that she was right and he was absolutely, positively wrong. Blast him and blast his nasty, underhanded, sophistic debating techniques! This had gone on far too long. She should have gotten up and left the minute he’d told her he had accompanied the French, not stayed to argue like an idealistic fool.

“And?” Richard looked up from toying idly with the lace on his cuffs.

Amy fought back tears of pure rage. Oh, to be a man, to be able to just punch someone when she didn’t know what to say! “And how dare you judge me when you know nothing of my reasons! Nothing!”

Sweeping her skirts away as though from something infected, she resumed her post by the porthole, her back to Lord Richard.

Left alone in splendid solitude at the little table, Richard realized he finally had the quiet he had craved. After all, hadn’t he just wanted to be left in peace to work? Lighting one of the covered lamps, Richard moved to a berth at the far end of the room and took out the latest dispatches from the War Office. He went so far as to prop a page against his knee and stare at the words on the paper. But all he saw was a pair of angry blue eyes.