Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

Marston wasn’t the one to say no to temptation when it offered itself to him, be it strong brandy, fast horses, or a quick lay.

“Five minutes,” said Marston so condescendingly that Augustus ached to flatten him then and there. He schooled his breathing to stillness. He had agreed to this plan.

Of course, when he had agreed to it, he hadn’t pictured Marston’s eyes on Emma’s bosom, his hands grasping for her waist.

Emma evaded him with a laugh and a wiggle, taking him by both hands. “This way,” she murmured, her voice low and husky. “There’s a nice, soft patch of grass just around the side.…”

She kept up a constant stream of patter, fluttering and promising, as she led Marston around the side of the house, out of the view of the page boys, out of the glow of the carriage lamps.

She did her job well. Marston’s gaze was fixed on his prize, the blood flowing to parts of his body other than his brain.

As Emma released his hands, taking a step back, it took him just one moment too many to spot Augustus lying in wait.

“What the—”

“No need to waste time on the amenities,” said Augustus. “I’ve been wanting to do this for some time.”

His fist connected with the other man’s jaw, sending Marston sprawling backwards. It was meant only to be a warning shot, but the other man’s head slammed back into the side of the wall, hitting the stone with a neat smack. Marston’s eyes opened wide with alarm before rolling back in his head.

Marston slumped down against the side of the house, leaving Augustus standing en garde, feeling slightly cheated.

Augustus inspected his knuckles. Barely grazed. Nice to know that all that boxing during his university days had paid off.

He glanced tentatively at Emma. Even though this had been, in the larger sense, her idea, she might still be put off by seeing her former lover laid out flat in front of her, without so much as an “en garde” for warning.

“Nicely done,” said Emma, retrieving the real plans from where he had stashed them behind a potted plant. Stepping over the unconscious man, she considered the plans for the wave machine, made a little clucking sound at the back of her throat, and plucked them out of Marston’s grasp, adding them to the roll of papers.

“Not exactly sporting…” demurred Augustus.

“He would have hit you over the back of the head and thought nothing of it,” said Emma crisply. Dropping down beside the unconscious man, she plucked his hat from his head and tossed it to Augustus. “Quick. Put that on.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Emma ruthlessly stripped Marston of his cloak. “This, too. You’ll have to pass yourself off as Georges, at least for the first stretch. Once safely away, you can resort to bribery instead.”

“I’ll take a long bath after,” Augustus joked, muffling himself in the cloak as directed.

Emma’s white silk dress shimmered in the moonlight, laughably inappropriate, her feathers and jewels at odds with her determined tone and the fierce set of her shoulders. How could he ever have thought her silly? She was a tiger, a tiger in dove’s clothing, and he had never admired anyone more.

Augustus watched as she crouched down next to Marston’s recumbent form, rifling through Marston’s pockets with more determination than skill. Emma squinted at the writing in the dark, then thrust a crumpled handful of papers up at Augustus. He could dimly make out the official seals at the bottom.

“Here. His papers. These might be useful to you. And,” she added, “he seems to have multiples of them.”

She staggered to her feet, grabbing at the wall for balance. Augustus caught her before she could stumble.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, not looking at him, and twitched away.

“Emma—” How in the hell did they say good-bye? He couldn’t let her go, not now. But what other choice was there? Short of picking her up and flinging her into his carriage à la the pirates in their masque, and that was the sort of thing he didn’t see Emma taking to terribly well.

“Here,” she said quickly. She stripped the diamonds off her wrist and dropped them in his hand, closing his fingers over them. “Take it. It may be paste, but most people see the glitter first and ask questions later. It should get you past at least one checkpoint. As for the others”—she wrenched the earrings from her ears, cascading, elaborate things composed of a dozen or more small stones—“there are these.”

She held them out to him. The looped chains of tiny diamonds swung back and forth, glittering in the moonlight. She looked, Augustus thought, even lovelier without them.

“Augustus?” She thrust the earrings forward. “They’re only paste, really.”

They might be paste, but she was the real thing, diamond to the core.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Augustus said.

Emma bit down on her lower lip. “There’s no need to waste time on that now, not with the carriage waiting.”

Come with me, he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat. He was asking her to risk her life on a frenzied run to the coast, then to entrust herself to whatever band of cutthroats Marston had in his pay.

“You could never be a waste of time,” he said softly.

“With imperial guards in pursuit? You might change your mind. Besides—” She mumbled something. Whatever it was, Augustus didn’t quite catch it.

He leaned forward, breathing in the familiar scent of her, the tickle of her feathers against his nose, trying not to think that this would be the last time, the last time he would smell her perfume, the last time she would make him sneeze.

Come with me.

“Pardon?” he said.

Emma twisted her hands together behind her back, not quite meeting his eyes. “I said…I said there will be plenty of time for that later.” She took a deep breath and lifted her eyes to his. “Once we get to England.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Just enough for breathing,” croaked Emma.

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

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

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

Georges had always had a hard head.

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

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

Emma backed away, into Augustus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And were you?” he asked.

“Mmm…” Emma pursed up her lips. “No?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Far,” said Emma.