Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

“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.”

“Emma Delagardie?” repeated Augustus. “Oh, right. Your American friend. The noisy one.”

“Emma is the obvious solution,” Jane said calmly.

In the dusky light, the white fabric of Jane’s skirts blended with the marble of the bench, making her look even farther removed from the mortal realm than usual, a goddess on her pedestal, perfect and pure.

It was hard enough to argue with a goddess, harder when one was mute with love, tongue-tied with infatuation.

It had crept up on him slowly, over the course of months. At first, he had been aware only of admiration, admiration for her calm under pressure, for her endless serenity, for the cool, Grecian good looks that had won her a place in Bonaparte’s court, and the rigorous self-discipline with which she played her chosen role. Augustus had seen so many agents come and go over the years. Some lost their nerve at the first hint of danger; others cracked through boredom, unable to sustain the pretense needed to maintain an alias over an extended period of time.

Not Jane. She made it seem so easy, as effortless and inevitable as the endless washing of waves against the beach. He had to remind himself, sometimes, that she was nearly a decade his junior. She had arrived in France fresh from the seclusion of the English countryside, with no training other than that which she had devised for herself. As far as Augustus could tell, she hadn’t put a foot wrong since.

He had been instructed to liaise with her last summer, over a matter of mutual interest: the capture and containment of the spy known as the Black Tulip. It seemed a reasonable collaboration. The English government had been looking for the Black Tulip for some time; the Black Tulip had vowed to find and eliminate the Pink Carnation.

It wasn’t her professionalism that caught him, or her beauty. It was the humor with which she entered into his ridiculous charades, the glint in her eye as she received his more alarming effusions. Competent, beautiful, and clever.

What man wouldn’t succumb? After years of writing about love, he was finally prey to it, and it hurt like hell. It was the worst of poetic clichés: the poet infatuated, the lady indifferent. It didn’t help that their professional relationship depended upon the endless perpetuation of that particular scenario, exaggerated into farce and played out before the entire audience of Paris society.

“The party at Malmaison is being held in honor of Emma’s cousin, the American envoy,” Jane was saying. “It’s not common knowledge yet, but he’s due to be recalled. This is meant by way of farewell. If anyone has the power to secure your entrée, it will be Emma.”

“Yes, but will she?” Augustus dragged his attention back to the matter at hand. No use in mooning. “Emma Delagardie has no use for me.”

“You mean you have no use for Emma Delagardie. Those are two very different propositions.”

“The woman called my writing an expense of ink in a waste of shame.”

“Clever,” said Jane.

“Shakespeare,” countered Augustus. “Sonnet 129.”

“Is it the sentiment you object to, or the lack of originality?”

“She said my poetry was drivel.”

Jane regarded him with amusement. “It is drivel. You’ve said as much yourself. Credit Emma with taste, at least, if not with tact. I should think you would approve of that. I’m not asking you to marry her—”

“Much obliged,” muttered Augustus.

“—merely to offer her your poetic talents, such as they are, for the purpose of gaining admission into Malmaison.”

“I fail to see how the one translates to the other.”

“Madame Bonaparte has asked Emma to compose a masque for the gathering at Malmaison next month. Emma can turn a neat enough phrase, but she doesn’t claim to be a poet. She’s wary of taking on the task. You might offer to collaborate.”

Augustus bit down on his automatic objection. It wasn’t a bad idea, on the face of it. The theatre-mad Bonapartes weren’t averse to employing professional help for their amateur theatricals. The great actor Talma regularly directed their productions. No one would think twice about Mme. Delagardie delegating the writing of her masque to a poet, nor object to that poet being on hand throughout rehearsals to tinker with the odd line or extend a soliloquy upon the request of the actor.

There were, however, some rather glaring obstacles.

Augustus gave voice to the most obvious of them. “Even if I were prepared to do so, what makes you think Madame Delagardie would accept the help of a man guilty of perpetrating unspeakable crimes against unsuspecting adverbs? That’s a direct quotation, by the way,” he added.

Jane was silent for a moment. “When you were young, did you ever pull a girl’s hair ribbon? Or tug at her braid to get her attention?”

“Hair ribbon?” Augustus echoed. “Braid? I don’t follow.”

He looked at Jane with concern. He had seen this before in agents deployed too long in the field. The strain must be beginning to get to her.

Jane started to say something but thought better of it. “Never mind. Do give my suggestion some thought, won’t you? Emma is less than thrilled at the prospect of crafting a masque in a month, even if it’s only a short piece. She’ll take help where she can find it.”

“Or where it’s offered?”

Jane nodded. “It might be the easiest way to get you in. Whatever you may think of her, Emma’s wishes carry a great deal of weight with Madame Bonaparte.” She flicked demurely at an invisible speck of dust on her skirt. “You must admit, it would be a marked improvement on creeping into the grounds in the middle of the night.”

“I certainly won’t argue with that.” Climbing fences and dodging night watchmen had lost its charm years ago. Augustus had never been much for swinging on a rope, either. Ropes had an annoying tendency to break. “The concept is sound. It’s the execution that gives me pause.”

“Tell her I sent you,” Jane suggested. “At the worst, she says no.”

“At the best?”

“You have an invitation to Malmaison. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

There was no arguing with that. “If my sources are correct,” Augustus said darkly. “This could all be for nothing.”

“You’ll never know unless you try.”

Why was it that cheering expressions were invariably so infuriating?

“Are you always right?” Augustus asked wearily.

Jane spread her fan, uncovering a charming scene of swans drifting on an improbably azure lake. “Only when I’m not wrong. I take it that’s a yes, then?”

It was going to have to be, but there were still questions niggling. Something smelled wrong. Augustus seized on the least of them. “Why a masque? I thought those went out with the Sun King.”

“Because Emma wouldn’t write a play?” Jane spread her hands wide. “I know little more than you do. My guess would be that this is less about the performance and more about Emma’s involvement.”

“In other words,” Augustus translated, “the entire rigmarole is meant to demonstrate to the American envoy how very attached his cousin is to the house of Bonaparte.”

It made a certain amount of sense. For centuries, powers had risen and fallen based on a marriage here, a friendship there.

Jane perched primly on her bench, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “Bonaparte believes in personal alliances. Look at the way he married his sister off to that Roman prince. He hasn’t any spare siblings to espouse to Emma, but he can show the Americans that she’s a valued part of his household.”

“And that way,” finished Augustus, seeing the pieces fall into place, “the Americans will be less likely to cut up rough when he makes his big announcement.”

Jane nodded solemnly. “It is coming,” she said. “Sooner rather than later.”

Neither needed to specify. The rumors had been circulating for months that Bonaparte meant to trade his consular staff for an imperial diadem. Thus far, America had remained neutral in the great struggle between England and France, the sympathies of many tending towards the supposedly republican French who had aided them in their own fight for freedom.

Their Washington had turned down a crown; Bonaparte didn’t intend to. There was no telling how the volatile colonials would react when Bonaparte jettisoned the last pretense of liberté, égalité, and fraternité.

Augustus sighed. “What else did she tell you about this masque?”

Jane didn’t waste time reveling in her victory. “The details were sparse. All Emma said was that it was to be relatively brief, Talma was to direct, and there needs to be a singing part for Hortense. Oh, yes,” she added, tapping her furled fan against her chin. “One more thing. Madame Bonaparte requested that the masque have a nautical theme.”

That afterthought was about as accidental as the Sistine Chapel.

“Nautical,” Augustus repeated. “As in having to do with the water and the sea.”

Jane arranged her hands neatly in her lap, looking a bit like the cat who got the cream. “One might call it just a step away from naval.”

Coincidence? Augustus would have liked to think so, but it was too much. Horace’s hasty report was beginning to sound more and more credible. It would be just like Bonaparte to celebrate the completion of his invasion plans with a nautically themed masque.

It might be more than that, though. One could only assume that this mysterious device had something to do with the sea. As Augustus recalled, one of the primary features of a masque as a form of entertainment was the ingenious machinery involved. A masque was as much or more about spectacle as it was about verse.

Was Bonaparte planning to conceal his precious device among the props and pulleys of his theatre?

There was, as Jane had so sagely observed, only one way to find out.

“Why that weekend?” Augustus wondered aloud. “Why the Americans? If there is a device, why choose that gathering to test it?”

“It won’t do us any good to speculate. Not without further information.” Jane rose, her pale skirts whispering against the marble bench. “We should be getting in. Even your poetry can only run so long. People will start to wonder.”

“Don’t be silly. I have at least ten cantos left to go.” He reached impulsively for Jane’s hand. “If I can persuade Madame Delagardie to this collaboration, I could write in a part for you.”

Jane twitched her hand away. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Why not?” The more he thought about the idea, the better it seemed. “An extra pair of hands makes light work.”

Not to mention that Mme. Bonaparte’s gardens at Malmaison were justifiably famous. With the moonlight silvering the gravel, and the scent of roses heavy in the air, they would be irresistible.

Jane navigated around him, her flat slippers whispering against the flagstones. “We agreed. No more communication than necessary. It’s safer that way.”

“People are used to seeing me following you about.” Augustus tried to make a joke of it. “It’s no secret that I’m mad about you. What man wouldn’t craft a role for his muse?”