—Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby, Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts

“You want me to do what?” asked Kort.

“Take part in a theatrical production,” Emma repeated. This wasn’t going exactly as she had intended.

“A theatrical production? As in a stage? And tights?” The last word was uttered in tones of masculine disgust.

“There don’t need to be tights,” said Emma soothingly. “You always seemed to enjoy our amateur theatricals at Belvedere. Remember the time you got in such trouble for stealing the rooster’s tail feathers to make a Cavalier’s hat?”

“Yes, but that was conducted in English,” protested Kort. “Not French.”

“No, it was really more of a squawk,” said Emma. “Followed by loud pecking noises.”

“I meant the play.”

“If you do take the role, you’ll be playing an American. Everyone will expect you to have an accent. It will lend verisimilitude.” She didn’t tell him she had borrowed the phrase from Mr. Whittlesby. Somehow, she didn’t think that would help her argument. Kort hadn’t seemed overly impressed by Mr. Whittlesby. It might have had something to do with all the mincing and wafting and entirely unnecessary alliteration.

Kort wasn’t convinced. “It’s one thing to embarrass myself in front of family, quite another to do so on the international stage.”

“It’s not the international stage, just a little stage at Malmaison.” Emma gave him her best smile, the one she had perfected way back when, in the days of the rooster-tail hat. “And Madame Bonaparte has been all but family to me, which means that, by extension, she’s family to you.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

“Why not?”

Kort gave her an incredulous look. “You can’t just declare a family by fiat.”

“Don’t be silly. The law courts do it all the time. It’s called adoption.”

Kort wisely decided not to pursue that line of argument. Instead, he narrowed his blue eyes at Emma, asking shrewdly, “Why do you want me there so badly?”

Emma rolled her eyes. “So badly? You flatter yourself.”

“In that case,” said Kort, “why not find another leading man for your theatricals? I’m sure there are any number of them lining up in the wings.”

“Yes, but none who can affect an American accent quite so convincingly.” Emma linked her arm through his. “Do I have to have a reason for wanting to prolong the visit of my favorite cousin?”

“I can just see the headlines now,” Kort grumbled, and Emma knew she had won. ‘American Merchant Makes Fool of Self in French Farce.’ And that will just be the offstage part.”

“Just think of all the adoring maidens flinging themselves at your feet. No one can resist an actor.” Emma cunningly played her ace. She pointed down the gallery, past a strapping Apollo garbed in the latest in fig-leaf fashion. “Speaking of which, there’s your leading lady, should you choose to take the part.”

Kort squinted. “The purple horror?”

Emma thumped him in the side with her reticule. “No, silliness. The other one. The pretty one.”

Almost as though on cue, Jane emerged from behind the outstretched arm of the statue, a symphony in lilac linen. There was a man with her, a man garbed in tight, knit pantaloons and a shirt that billowed out at the waist and sleeves. His eyes met Emma’s over Jane’s shoulder, and Emma felt an absurd flutter of excitement, as though he were a lover rather than a collaborator, as though their assignations had involved something more than ink.

All nonsense, of course. Nonsense and tight breeches. Emma forced herself to attend to her cousin, turning her head deliberately away from the poet.

“I met her, didn’t I?”

“Yes, at the rout at the Hotel de Balcourt last week.”

Kort looked blank.

“The house with all the Egyptian bits in it,” Emma translated. She fluttered her lashes at Kort. “See? Aren’t you glad you’ve decided to take the part?”

“I hadn’t said I would,” Kort corrected. With studied casualness, he added, “As it happens, I’m going to be at Malmaison anyway. Uncle Robert secured an invitation for me.”

“Oh.” That took the wind out of her sails. So much for impressing her cousin with her French connections when he was able to obtain the same coveted invitation by other means. “Well, then! You have even less excuse not to play my leading man. I’ll expect you in rehearsals next week. Once we’ve written it,” she added, as an afterthought.

“Unless you decide not to,” said Kort hopefully.

Emma struck him playfully on the arm. “Don’t even think it. Resistance is futile. I will have you in those tights.” Something else struck her. “Wasn’t your business meant to be concluded by then?”

Kort flexed his hands in his tan gloves, manipulating the muscles to make his knuckles crack. “There have been unexpected complications,” he said shortly.

“Ah,” said Emma knowingly. Not that she actually knew anything about conducting business, but it was always best to assume the pretense. “You’ll have to book a later passage, won’t you?”

Kort looked down at her, shifting slightly from foot to foot. “Emma…”

“Yes?” Was that an apology she heard coming?

Kort stepped abruptly back, his boot heel connecting with a sharp sound against the marble floor. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Come along. Don’t you want to reintroduce me to your friends?”

Before Emma could argue that it did matter, that whatever he had to say, she wanted to hear it, he had started forward, tugging her along behind him, like…like a poodle on a leash, she thought indignantly. Just like back at Belvedere. Her flat-heeled slippers skidded against the marble floor as she scrambled to keep up.

“Emma,” said Jane, her voice rich with amusement. “What a surprise to see you here. And your charming cousin as well.”

Kort executed an old-fashioned bow. “Ladies.”

Jane stepped forward and extended a hand to Kort. “I hear you are to be my hero.”

“On the stage, at least,” Kort said. His eyes slid towards Miss Gwen. Miss Gwen nodded regally, giving Kort permission to take Jane’s hand.

“Hero?” managed Whittlesby, in a mangled voice.

“In our masque!” Emma’s voice came out too loud and too high, waking the echoes in the corners of the room. “Isn’t it above all things wonderful? Kort has agreed to take the role.”

“But…” Mr. Whittlesby was still looking at Jane, not at her. “Miss Wooliston?”

Jane gently retrieved her hand from Kort’s. She gestured to Emma, her smile never wavering. “Our ever persuasive Madame Delagardie has induced me to tread the boards. Provided, that is,” she added, with mock reproach, “that you write us something fit to act in.” She turned back to Kort. “What do you say, Mr. Livingston? Shall we leave them to their artistic musings? I fear we are sadly in the way.”

Kort offered his arm with flattering alacrity. “I wouldn’t want to be the man to stand in the way of genius.”

“Lovely.” It was very neatly done. Within a space of a moment, Jane was leading Kort away. Emma could hear her voice floating back, oddly distorted by the echoing space. “Have you had much experience on the stage, Mr. Livingston?”

Jane would never wink; it wasn’t her way. The look she cast Emma over her shoulder, however, might as well have been a wink. It had the same effect. As Miss Gwen stalked along behind her charge, Emma realized, with growing horror, exactly what her friend had done.

She had left Emma alone with Mr. Whittlesby.

On purpose.

And it wasn’t so they could discuss the masque.

It wasn’t fair, Emma thought passionately. She didn’t try to shove off her unwanted admirers on Jane or embarrass her friend by pointedly obvious efforts to throw her together with the object of her affections.

Of course, that was only because Jane was too circumspect to ever admit to having an object of affection. But the point still remained: Emma’s hands were clean, even if only by default.

Did Mr. Whittlesby realize? He would have to be an idiot not to.

An idiot…or a man in love. He was, Emma realized, not looking at her at all. He was still watching Jane, his eyes following her as she led Kort along the marble hall, as her hand gestured elegantly at this painting or that statue.

Of course he didn’t realize. Emma didn’t register for him at all, did she? At least, not that way.

The thought oughtn’t to be that lowering—she did only admire him for his breeches, after all—but it was. It clung to the back of her throat like lye, base and corrosive.

“She never told me,” he said, more to himself than Emma. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Perhaps she didn’t have the chance,” said Emma soothingly.

Whittlesby didn’t want to be soothed. He turned on her like the Grand Inquisitor. “Was it your idea that Miss Wooliston be in the masque?”

“No.” Emma realized she had sounded just as brusque as he had, and made a hasty effort at amends. It wouldn’t do to sound as though she hadn’t wanted Jane; she would never want anyone to think that. “Hortense suggested it—Madame Bonaparte, that is. She was to play the lead but now that— Let’s just say that circumstances have rendered it unlikely. She might still, though.”

Oh, good. Now she didn’t sound brusque. She just sounded like the village idiot.

Mustering her wits, she said, “Either way, I’m sure it will go splendidly. How can it not with my imagination and your pen? Everyone will be shouting for encores!”

She looked expectantly at him, but Mr. Whittlesby was not inclined to match her cheerful tone. “How long have you known?”

“Since Friday.”

“Friday?”

“I should have thought you would be glad to have Miss Wooliston in our cast,” said Emma, nettled past tact. “It will save you the bother of following her from place to place.”

Well, that got his attention. But not in a good way. From the look he gave her, one would have thought he had just caught her going through his jacket pockets. If he ever wore a jacket, that is. The billowy linen shirt left little to the imagination.

Emma colored. That was always the problem with fair skin—the slightest hint of embarrassment and there it came, out like a rash. But, really, there was no reason to be made to feel as though she were somehow rooting about in his private affairs. He had made his feelings for Jane entirely public.

Twenty-two cantos of public.

“You’re never going to win her that way,” said Emma officiously.

Whittlesby’s face was a study in outrage. “I beg your pardon?”

“You ought,” said Emma frankly. “All those cantos, all those readings, and all of them for nothing! It’s been very tedious.”

“No one asked you to subject yourself to my work,” said Whittlesby loftily. “They were not intended for you.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me,” said Emma. “I don’t mean to malign your poetry. It’s simply that as a technique for courtship, it leaves something to be desired. I know they say poetry is the way to a woman’s heart, but it didn’t work for Petrarch, either.”

“Has it occurred to you, madam, that I might write verse for the sake of verse? That the creation of poetry might in itself be the object of desire rather than the fallible human form that inspires it?”

Yes, but Jane had a very lovely form, and she had several years yet before it started to be fallible. Oh, the joys of being twenty-two and in little need of corsets!

“That is nicely said,” said Emma approvingly. “For your sake, I hope it’s true.”

“My intentions,” Whittlesby said with dignity, “are as pure as my poetry.”

“It isn’t your intentions that are the problem, but your methods. Twenty-two cantos? There are far better ways to get a lady’s attention.”

“Are you offering to play Cyrano?” There was a decidedly dangerous glint in Mr. Whittlesby’s eye. “Don’t confuse me with your Mr. Marston. Not all men are in his mold.”

“You mean, direct?” Emma wasn’t quite sure why she was defending Marston, other than that, at this particular moment, she would have negated anything Whittlesby said, up to and including green being the color of grass and the sky being up rather than down.

“Direct,” Whittlesby repeated. “That’s one way of putting it. Direct to your door?”

Emma flushed. “At least he made clear what he wanted.”

Whittlesby’s eyes narrowed on her face, taking on a speculative expression. “And what might that be?”

“Didn’t you know?” said Emma, with a forced laugh. “My diamonds. Pity for him they’re paste.”