Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

“Muses work best from a distance, Mr. Whittlesby.”

The thorns of a potted rose clutched and tug at Augustus’s dangling sleeves as he followed after her. He could hear the rending noise as the linen snagged and tore. “Miss Wooliston—Jane—”

“Where is Emma?” Jane turned quickly about, making a survey of the lighted windows. “You should make sure to catch her before she goes home. She has a cousin visiting. Another Mr. Livingston. There seem to be a number of them out and about.”

Bother Mr. Livingston. Bother all of them. “Jane—”

If she saw Augustus’s outstretched hand, she ignored it. “Where can Emma have got to? She was in the music room when we left her.”

Augustus saw Mme. Delagardie’s feathers before he saw her, bobbing not far from the music room window. She was standing by a tall man in a uniform tailored more for show than combat, his dark hair brushed and curled into the very latest style, a half-cape draped rakishly across one shoulder.

Jane spoke only one word, but it was imbued with enough venom to wither all the apples in Eden.

“Marston.”

“You know him?”

Adventurer, opportunist, close friend of the First Consul’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, Georges Marston had left Paris under a cloud not long after Miss Wooliston’s arrival in Paris.

“Unfortunately. What is Marston doing bothering Emma?” Jane’s brows drew together with concern. “Come along. We’d best rescue her.” She started busily forward.

Augustus didn’t follow. “Are you sure she needs rescuing?”

Jane paused. “Emma may be fierce, but she is small. And Marston isn’t beyond using force. Strength of character only goes so far against brute strength.” From the expression on her face, she wasn’t thinking of Emma.

That wasn’t what Augustus had meant.

“Didn’t you know?”

Jane frowned. “Know what?”

Augustus would have thought all Paris had heard.

Perhaps not, though. It had been two years ago, before Jane’s time. For all Jane’s clandestine excursions, she was still an unmarried female. Paris might be more hedonistic than London, but even in France, there were certain topics one simply didn’t mention in the presence of maiden ladies.

Augustus gestured towards Marston. “That he and your Emma were lovers.”

Georges Marston possessed himself of Emma’s hand, bending to press a kiss to the back of it.

“Madame Delagardie,” he murmured, and, for a wild moment, Emma thought she had escaped, that he intended to be civilized and let bygones be. Marston lifted his head, his full lips curving in a sensual smile. “Emma.”

Or maybe not.

“Monsieur Marston,” Emma said stiffly, repossessing herself of her hand. “I trust you have been well.”

Marston’s gaze dropped from her eyes, to her lips, and below. “So formal… Emma?”

It wasn’t fair. Most of Paris accumulated amours as though they were going out of style. And she? She had committed one little indiscretion, followed by two years of absolutely impeccable behavior. Well, almost impeccable, unless one counted a little bit of recreational flirting, which hardly amounted to anything by any standards.

Didn’t Marston have a more recent inamorata to bedevil with his attentions? Someone? Anyone?

Emma snuck a glance at Kort. Kort, she was quite sure, wouldn’t understand the culture of casual carnality that had ruled the early days of the Consulate. Nor would he take “It was years ago, really, it was!” as an adequate defense.

Emma thought of her mother and her siblings back home and repressed the urge to shudder. There were some things beyond their comprehension or their forgiving, bits of her life they would never understand. It was all so simple for them. Marry, procreate, go to church on Sundays, attend the legislature in Albany, tend the tenant farmers, and pay calls on cousins. So simple and so easy.

No, no need for Kort to know about Georges. All she could do was attempt to finesse the situation as best she could and hope—oh, hopeless hope!—that Marston behaved himself or that Kort’s French would prove inadequate for nuance.

Unfortunately, a leer was a leer and Emma was Emma in just about any language.

Feathers bouncing, Emma gestured to her cousin. “Monsieur Marston, I don’t believe you know my cousin, Kortwright Livingston. Kort, this is Mr. Georges Marston, who occupies a very interesting position of some sort in Mr. Bonaparte’s army.”

Kort stepped closer to Emma. “A very interesting position of some sort?”

“Oh, you know.” Emma wafted her fan. “Military matters. Marching and things that go bang. What else is there to know?”

Kort ranged himself beside Emma, a self-appointed bodyguard. “Where are you stationed, Mr. Marston?”

“Colonel Marston,” Marston corrected him. When had he received so dramatic a promotion? He had been a mere lieutenant when Emma had known him, three years before. Friendship with the First Consul’s brother-in-law was a lucrative proposition. “I command part of the garrison at Boulogne.”

It was, his voice implied, a very important post.

“It is,” he added, “a very important post.”

So much for modesty.

“How utterly lovely for you!” Emma babbled. “I’m sure you’ll wish to be getting back there soon. One wouldn’t want to leave it unattended. Well, it was all very lovely to see you again and all that, but I wouldn’t want to keep you. Not when you have Boulogne to get back to.”

She sounded, she realized, like the veriest pea brain. No matter. Her brains had never been the bit of her in which Marston took an interest. As for Kort, she’d rather he think her dim than debauched.

Marston took a step forward. “One has one’s duty,” he said, his voice low and seductive. “But that doesn’t mean one cannot also take one’s pleasure.”

“Pleasure in a duty well done?” Emma prevaricated, backing into Kort, who gave a muffled grunt of pain as she stepped down heavily on his foot. “I’m sure that must be vastly gratifying. Oh, dear, I am sorry. Did I just mangle your toes?”

“I believe they’re mostly intact,” he said, in a slightly strangled voice. “Good Lord, Emma, did you attach spikes to the bottom of your sandals?”

“No, those went out last season.” Making a strategic decision, Emma took a deep breath and turned to her cousin. “I suddenly find I am parched. Kort, would you be so kind as to fetch me a glass of punch?”

He gave her a strange look, but said, “Gladly. Is there anything else?”

“Oh, no, just the punch. The heat of the rooms, you know.” Emma gestured vaguely with her fan. “I’m sure you’ll find it.”

Kort gave Marston a hard look.

To Emma, he said, “I’ll be right back.”

It was both a promise and a warning.

Marston’s lips parted in a wolfish grin. “Take your time.”

“Thank you, Kort!” Emma called after him. She waved. Kort frowned back, but went.

Marston stepped up beside her, lowering his head until his breath tickled her ear. “I had hoped to see you here.”

“How fortunate for you,” said Emma brightly, twisting away. One of her plumes brushed across Marston’s nose, making him sneeze. “Now that you have achieved your object, you can go home.”

Marston discreetly wiped the back of his hand across his nose. It was hard to look soulful when one’s eyes were tearing, but he made a valiant effort. “To empty lodgings?”

Or a well-filled brothel. Georges had never been particularly particular in his tastes. That, at the time, had been one of his attractions. Emma had wanted nothing more than to lose herself in the potent distraction of flesh on flesh, with none of the messy complications attendant on emotions, channeling all her grief and confusion into the mindless pursuit of physical pleasure. And who better for that than Marston? It had been a brief and potent madness, over nearly as quickly as it had begun.

Two years hadn’t changed him. He still wore his hair long, with long sideburns that curled down below his ears to his chin. There was a bit more braid on his uniform than there had been before, but it was still closely tailored to a form maintained by a rigorous regimen of regular exercise. His batman had rigged an ingenious contraption of weights and pulleys that went with him everywhere, counteracting the effects of overindulgence in food, wine, and women.

Whatever else one thought of Georges Marston, Emma admitted, he was indisputably a fine figure of a man. He exuded animal spirits and casual carnality. That had been part of it.

But, mostly, he had been as far as she could get from Paul, muscular where Paul had been wiry, fair where Paul had been dark, broad where Paul had been slender. Not even his best friends would have called Paul handsome. His charm had resided in his lively manner and the quick intelligence in his fine, dark eyes. He had been a dreamer, a talker, a charmer. He had certainly charmed her, straight out of Mme. Campan’s school for young ladies.

Even now, the memory tore at her, not with the horrible rending force it once had, but with a dull ache, like a scratch half healed.

Marston would never believe her if she told him that his attraction had been less on his own merits and more because he was Not-Paul. She had been so angry at Paul, so angry at him for dying just when it seemed they finally a chance.

Marston leaned closer, mistaking her absorption for interest. “It’s been a long time, Emma.”

So it had. “Two years,” she said, suddenly feeling very old and very tired. Ten years since she had left New York, eight years since she had eloped with Paul. None of her happily-ever-afters had turned out the way she had intended them. “What do you want, Georges?”

She shouldn’t have called him by his first name. Marston’s eyes brightened with triumph.

“The pleasure of your company, of course,” he said, reaching for her hand.

Emma drew her hand sharply away.

Marston’s eyes narrowed. “You found pleasure in my company once. Or do I need to remind you?”

“I also wore puce,” said Emma flippantly. “Tastes change.”

She had never been particularly to his taste; even at the time, she had been aware of that. He had made no secret of all the ways in which he found her wanting: too small, too thin, too flat, too plain-spoken. The affair, such as it was, had been an aberration on both their parts. On her side, purely physical. On his—well, Emma had a good guess as to what his motives had been, and they had had little to do with her personal charms.

Marston crowded forward. Emma found herself regarding the buttons on his jacket. Brass, polished to the sheen of gold. He had been hard on his valets, demanding a level of sartorial perfection that would have daunted the staff of a duke. Darns and patches were anathema to him; it was new or it wasn’t used at all. He had been appalled by the state of her dressing gowns, old and worn and comfortable.

Apparently, he was prepared to put that aside.

“We had some good times. Didn’t we?” His voice dropped to a husky murmur. Emma gathered she was meant to find it seductive.

Once, she even had.

“They’re paste,” she said.

Georges blinked. “What?”

“The diamonds,” Emma said patiently. “They’re paste. If you want to be kept, find someone else to keep you.”

Marston mustered a halfhearted guffaw. “You will have your little joke.”

Who was joking?

He followed along after her as she began to make her way through the crowded room, train looped over one wrist, nodding to acquaintances as she went.

He dodged around a dowager who had planted herself firmly in the middle of the room. “May I call on you?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Emma said honestly.

Marston’s hands descended on her shoulders, holding her still. His fingers slid beneath the silver trim of her dress, seeking out the vulnerable hollows between muscle and bone. “You’re still angry about Mimi, aren’t you?”

“Was that her name?” She had never bothered to find out.

She had been more grateful than angry. Finding her lover actively engaged beneath the skirts of a maid had jarred her awake, out of the strange, waking nightmare in which she had been trapped since Paul’s death. It had been the jolt she needed to get away from Marston and out of Paris. She had gone back, as she always did, to Malmaison, taking long walks through the sprawling parklands, as she tried to make sense of what her life had become and what she wanted to be. She had been fifteen when she eloped with Paul, too young to understand that marriage was not, in itself, a guarantee of future happiness. Just when they had finally come to terms, just when they had begun to understand each other, Paul had died. Emma had been left a widow at twenty, angry and confused, seeking easy consolation.