Lauren Willig - The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

It really was just as well that he would be rid of her in a few hours. Of course, since she was Balcourt’s sister, they would be bound to run into each other at the Tuilleries, but with any luck—and it was luck, Richard firmly reminded himself—she’d likely avoid him like the plague. And he could get back to his real job. This whole boat interlude . . . well, necessity made odd bedfellows.

Brusquely, Richard flung the shawl over the sleeping girl.

Amy mumbled something and flopped over. Right into Richard’s shoulder.

She must have been very soundly asleep, indeed, because rather than springing away in horror, she nuzzled against the fine wool of Richard’s coat. Instinctively, Richard’s arm rose to wrap around her shoulders. It was, of course, just a reflex reaction. With a quick, guilty look at Miss Gwen, who, thank goodness, was deep in a book and didn’t seem to notice that her charge was snuggled up against a member of the opposite sex, Richard clamped his arm to his side. He had no desire to find himself on the pointy end of Miss Gwen’s parasol for improper advances. And how much more infuriating it would be to earn a punctured kidney for half-unconscious improper advances to a girl who wouldn’t give him a civil how-do-you-do if she were awake. If he were to get poked by anyone’s parasol, it might at least be for something enjoyable. Not that it wasn’t rather pleasant having Amy curled up against him. She was soft, and warm, and smelled nice, too, notwithstanding their bathless night on the boat. Like—Richard gave an experimental sniff—lavender water. Nice. Richard sniffed again.

Thump! Miss Gwen’s book slammed shut.

Richard’s head jerked up with enough force to make him dizzy.

“Could you kindly contrive to breathe in a more decorous fashion?” Miss Gwen admonished. “I have known sheepdogs with more genteel respiratory habits. Amy! Yes, you!” Amy had begun to stir next to Richard and seemed to be trying very hard to lodge her nose permanently in a fold of his coat.

“What sheep?” murmured Amy into Richard’s collarbone. “I detest sheep.”

A sound suspiciously like a chuckle emerged from Jane. Miss Gwen reached for her parasol. Richard prepared to dodge, but this time Miss Gwen’s instrument of torture had another victim at its tip. One well-placed poke in the ribs, and Amy’s eyes fluttered open.

“Whaaa?”

“You are to remove yourself from Lord Richard at once.”

Her words had far more effect on Amy than the point of the parasol; Amy looked down at Richard’s coat, up at his face, and recoiled with such force that she nearly rebounded off the wall of the coach. “I . . . did I . . . oh goodness, I never intended . . .”

Richard plucked a curling brown hair from the wool of his jacket. Holding it out towards Amy, he said gravely, “I believe this belongs to you.”

“What? Oh. Um, you may keep it.” Amy was busy wedging herself back into the far corner of the seat.

“Most obliged.”

Amy looked at him skeptically through bleary eyes and leaned her head against the side of the coach. In front of her, Miss Gwen had resumed reading intently. Amy squinted at the letters on the spine.

“You’re reading The Mysteries of Udolpho.”

“How very clever of you, Amy.” Miss Gwen turned a page.

“I didn’t think you cared for—that is, I didn’t know you read novels.”

“I don’t.” Miss Gwen looked up over the top of the volume that gave the lie to her statement. “There was nothing else to read in the carriage and not all of us care to sleep in public.” Looking much more cheerful once she had made her jab at Amy, Miss Gwen continued. “The style of the book is quite arresting, but I find the heroine entirely unsympathetic. Swooning solves nothing.”

“You should write your own,” suggested Richard. “For the purpose of edifying young females, of course.”

Amy’s and Richard’s eyes met in a moment of pure amusement. Amy started to return Richard’s grin when it suddenly hit her that she had just exchanged a significant glance with Lord Richard Selwick. Amy hunched down in her seat, feeling beleaguered.

Good heavens, why couldn’t the man leave her be!

Abruptly, she turned her head and stared out the window. Paris couldn’t be that much farther, could it?

It could. It was well past teatime, or what would have been teatime had they been back in Shropshire, by the time the coach lurched its way through the gates of the city.

Robbins had slowed down to a pace little faster than a walk, not out of concern for Miss Gwen’s sensibilities (despite Miss Gwen’s threat after one hairpin turn that unless he slowed down she would take her parasol to him), but because the narrow streets would not permit anything more. Most were missing cobblestones; water and refuse ran in streams down the center of the street, and Amy had to duck back as a rivulet of filth poured from one window to join the muck below. People scurried back and forth through the refuse, occasionally stopping to curse at the carriage. Amy added more colloquialisms to her rapidly growing collection.

“How very French.” Miss Gwen conspicuously held a handkerchief to her nose.

“It’s not all like this, is it, my lord?” Jane asked Richard in tones of such polite distress that Richard laughed.

“Your cousin’s house is in a far nicer neighborhood, I assure you, but, yes, much of Paris is in a sorry state. Bonaparte has grand plans to rebuild, but he hasn’t had the time to put his schemes into practice.”

“Too busy conquering the world?”

“I’m sure he would be flattered by your summation, Miss Balcourt.”

Amy flushed irritably and returned to her window.

Making a sharp turn that nearly sent Miss Gwen’s parasol into Richard’s ribs, the carriage clattered into the stone courtyard of the Hotel de Balcourt—and stopped abruptly. The drive was blocked by a shabby black carriage; mud splattered its sides, and a shattered lamp hung drunkenly on the side nearer Amy. Several men were occupied in unloading large, brown paper packages tied up with string.

“Why have we stopped?” demanded Miss Gwen.

“A coach is blocking the door,” Amy explained. She poked her head back out. “Mr. Robbins, could you please ask them to let us pass? Tell them the vicomte’s sister has arrived.”

Robbins puffed out his chest. With great enthusiasm, he shouted out in his ungrammatical French that they were all to clear out as the lady of the house had arrived.

One of the workers paused to shout back that there was no lady of the house.

“There is now!” declared Robbins. “Just who do you think that there lady is if she ain’t the lady of the ’ouse?”

The worker made an extremely rude suggestion in French. Amy, abruptly remembering that she wasn’t supposed to understand the language, opened her eyes wide at Richard and inquired, “What did he say?”

“He voiced his disbelief as to your identity,” Richard translated blandly.

Robbins, red-faced with fury, retorted with an inventive blend of French and English invective.

“Really!” exclaimed Miss Gwen, who had caught the English half.

“Really, indeed,” echoed Richard, looking quite impressed. That one comment about the reproductive habits of camels had been quite original.

“This is ridiculous!” Amy exclaimed.

“I quite agree.” Thump! “To refer to an innocent camel in that salacious way—”

“No! Not that! This!” Amy’s arm gesture encompassed the stalled carriage, the courtyard, and almost decked Richard on the chin. Richard eyed Amy speculatively but concluded that bodily harm to him had been a by-product, not a goal. “Don’t you see? It’s ridiculous to remain mewed up in the carriage when we’re here already. Why on earth can’t we just walk to the door? That’s why we have legs, for heaven’s sake! I’m going to find Edouard.” And with that, Amy unlatched her carriage door and prepared to hop out.

Only to be unceremoniously hauled back into the carriage by the scruff of her skirt.

“Oh no, you don’t,” said Richard, making up in firmness what he lacked in originality. “You are not going out there.”

It was hard to glare at someone when he still had his fist wound in the back of one’s skirt. Amy yanked irritably away and twisted to face Richard. Much better. Able to glare at him full on, she demanded, “Why not?”

Richard raised a sardonic eyebrow and indicated the courtyard where two other men in varying states of dirt and undress had joined the first in exchanging less than witty repartee with Robbins. Amy hated to admit it, but he had a point.

“But we can’t just sit here!”

“I agree. I’ll go.”

“You’ll go?” Amy echoed idiotically. Wait—had Lord Richard just agreed with her?

“I’m the only one who knows what your brother looks like.”

“I suppose I can recognize my own brother,” Amy muttered, but since she wasn’t awfully sure on that point, she muttered it very softly.

It was at that point that the door to the house opened and a portly man with too much lace on his cuffs emerged and began chastising the workers in the courtyard in rapid French, demanding to know the cause of the delay.

Richard swung out of the carriage.

“Ho! Balcourt!”

The man raised his head. Like Richard, his hair had been cut short in the classical style made popular by the Revolution, but this man had a pair of fuzzy sideburns crawling down his face towards his chin. They stretched so far down his face that they touched the absurdly high points of his shirt collar. It was a wonder that he was able to turn his head to look at Richard at all; his shirt points stretched up to his cheeks, and his chin was entirely buried by an exuberant cravat.

A voice emerged from the folds of the cravat. “Selwick? What are you doing here?”

Oh dear, that couldn’t be Edouard, could it?

Amy’s suspicions were confirmed by Richard’s next words. “I’m delivering your sister, Balcourt. You seem to have misplaced her.”

The last time she had seen Edouard, he had been a gawky youth of thirteen, preening in front of the mirror in the gold salon and tripping over his court sword. He had worn his hair in a queue tied with a blue ribbon and dusted over his adolescent spots with powder filched from Mama’s boudoir. To her five-year-old eyes, he had seemed impossibly tall. Of course, that might also have owed something to the heels then in fashion. Edouard had been so infuriated when she had sneaked into his room and paraded about in his heels. . . . This man, his puce waistcoat straining across his stomach, his puffy cheeks pinched behind his starched collar—he was a stranger.

But then he looked towards the carriage.

“My sister, you say?”

And all of a sudden, his face took on that exact same look it had worn all those years ago when he had caught Amy with his favorite heels.

“Edouard! It is you!”

Amy flung herself from the carriage. She stumbled a bit on the uneven cobblestones as she landed, but by dint of waving her arms about managed to keep herself upright. She heard a quickly muffled chuckle from Richard. Amy ignored it, the same way she ignored the bold stares of the French servants and the nasty smell rising from the cobblestones. Grabbing her skirts in both hands, she dashed at her brother. “Edouard! It’s me! Amy! I’ve finally come home!”

Edouard’s face—or what one could see of it—wavered between bewilderment and horror.

“Amy? You weren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow!”

“Oh, that explains why your coach wasn’t there! I knew there had to be a good reason! I was so sure we’d told you we would arrive today—”

“We did,” inserted Miss Gwen coldly.

“—but we’re here and that’s all that matters! Oh, Edouard, I am so glad to see you again!” Amy threw her arms impulsively around her brother.

Edouard patted her rather awkwardly on the back. “Likewise, I’m sure.”

“And this is our cousin Jane, who is one of the cleverest, most wonderful people you will ever meet.” Amy tugged Edouard across the courtyard towards the carriage. A great deal of tugging was required; Edouard eyed the filth on the cobbles with extreme distaste, mincing in Amy’s wake with all the care of a young lady in new white slippers on a rainy day. Richard grinned at the sight. Everyone knew that Edouard de Balcourt had servants run ahead of him to lay wooden planks across the streets so he wouldn’t get his fine shoes and stockings dirty. But Amy was a force not to be gainsaid.