“No. I mean, yes, I do know them. We shared the boat over from Dover two days ago. One is Balcourt’s sister, the other his cousin, and the dragon with the purple plumage is their chaperone.”

“Une femme formidable!” breathed Denon, eyeing Miss Gwen’s plumage with considerable alarm. “I feel for you, my friend. These English—their women are lacking of all the social graces. They do not realize that the flirtation, it is an art! The boredom you must have endured upon that ship!”

“Not at all. You do these ladies an injustice.” Just because Amy bore him a grudge didn’t mean he had to be uncivil. “Miss Balcourt—the small, dark-haired one—is surprisingly well read. She has some very original observations about the relations between the Greeks and the Egyptians.”

Denon squinted at Amy’s back through his quizzing glass. “Ah, a—how do you call them?—a bluestocking?”

“She’s certainly not a bluestocking.” Richard contemplated Amy’s dark curls before adding, very, very softly, “I’m not sure what to call her.”

“An Original, perhaps?” Denon was peering through his quizzing glass at Amy with an intensity that had his mistress’s fan fluttering indignantly.

“An Original.” Richard couldn’t repress a smile as he remembered Amy’s comments on metaphorical cannibalism and the French Revolution. “Assuredly.”

On the other side of the room, waiting among the crush of people paying their respects to Mme Bonaparte, Jane whispered to her assuredly Original cousin, “How long do you intend to keep your head at that angle?”

“Is he still looking at me?”

“No.” If it was possible to whisper with asperity, Jane did so. “You’re being ridiculous, Amy!”

“I don’t want to have to talk to him. He annoys me.”

“And if you pretend not to see him, you don’t have to talk to him?”

“Exactly!”

“Girls! It is not polite to whisper!” whispered Miss Gwen.

Amy rolled her eyes at Jane behind her fan.

Resisting the urge to lift one gloved hand to massage her sore neck, Amy lurked behind her fan and contemplated the progress of the search for the Purple Gentian. Or, rather, the lack of progress. Since their arrival, she had eavesdropped on ten conversations with great stealth and skill. As a result, she now knew exactly how deeply M. Murat was in debt to his tailor, where to find the best kid gloves in Paris, and that a Mme Rochefort, whomever that might be, was supposedly engaging in illicit amorous relations with her footman, or maybe her groom (the woman in the large, green-silk turban telling the story hadn’t been entirely clear on that point). Unless the energetic Mme Rochefort somehow knew the identity of the Purple Gentian and could be blackmailed, Amy really didn’t see how any of this information could be the slightest bit useful.

As for the Gentian himself . . . Amy had dismissed most of the guests as far too French. Unless the Gentian were merely aping the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Gentian’s very name was an indication of his nationality. So far she had met only two men of English extraction. One, a Mr. Whittlesby, with hair and sleeves both flowing in romantic disorder, had taken one look at Jane, flung himself prostrate at her blue slippers, and composed an on-the-spot ode to “the pulchritudinous princess of the azure toes.” It didn’t scan. Mercifully, Miss Gwen stepped hard on the poet’s hand, cutting him off with a squeak in the middle of his second stanza. True, it could all be a disguise, but . . . Amy frowned behind her fan.

Her second candidate, Mr. Georges Marston, was, like his name, only half English, and his bright regimentals were as off-putting in their own way as Mr. Whittlesby’s rumpled white linen. But there was a certain bold gleam to Mr. Marston’s blue eyes that might bespeak a man of action hidden under all that gold braid.

A hand with plump white fingers reached out and tugged Amy’s fan down to below nose level. “Mme Bonaparte, it would please me very much to present to you my sister, Mlle Aimée de Balcourt,” Edouard was saying in French.

Amy sank into a deep court curtsy. Mme Bonaparte half rose from her chair and nodded in acknowledgment. She smiled very sweetly at Amy and said in French, “I knew your dear mother before the Revolution. She was such a dear, lovely woman! Why, when she discovered that I loved roses, she sent me some cuttings I’d been longing to add to my garden. You shall have to come someday to see my little garden at Malmaison, which wouldn’t be nearly so nice as it is but for your darling mama.”

Mme Bonaparte spoke French with a lilting Creole accent that settled on its hearers with the benevolent warmth of island sunshine. Under her diamond diadem, her large hazel eyes gleamed with kindness. Amy had seen drawings of Bonaparte’s wife, and puzzled over her reputation as a beauty. Face-to-face, Amy realized that her beauty resided not so much in regularity of feature, but in the serene goodwill that she seemed to exude as easily as breathing. Amy longed to curl up at her feet like a small child and beg for tales of her parents. But she couldn’t sacrifice all of her plans for a moment of nostalgia. If Mme Bonaparte—and thus all of the court—knew that she spoke French, half of her utility to the Purple Gentian would be lost.

So Amy forced a puzzled look onto her face and said in very bad, broken, schoolgirl French, “Remembering the French I am not. The esteemed lady is speaking the English maybe?”

An expression of mild distress crossed Mme Bonaparte’s pleasant face. From the corner of her eye, Amy could see Edouard turning bright red with horror and frustration. “I beg your pardon for my sister, your excellence,” he began hurriedly, but a pretty blond girl leaned over the back of Mme Bonaparte’s chair and said, “There’s no need for apologies, M. de Balcourt!” Switching to English as poor as Amy’s French, she said carefully, “Mama desire to tell to you zat she was ’aving zee acquaintance of your mama.”

Edouard, looking for all the world as though he wished the polished parquet floor to part and swallow him up, performed hasty introductions, presenting the blond girl as Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte, Mme Bonaparte’s daughter by her first marriage, now married herself to Napoleon’s younger brother Louis. When Miss Gwen stamped heavily on Edouard’s foot, he finally introduced Miss Gwen and Jane as well.

“I must to you beg pardon for my English abominable!” Hortense said with a self-deprecating wave of her fan. “My stepfather, ’ee was not liking of my tutor, so I ’ave lacked for lessons.”

“Your English isn’t bad at all,” Jane reassured her. “It’s much better than my French, I assure you.”

“Yes, you do yourself far too little credit!” While Edouard waxed lyrical in showering the First Consul’s stepdaughter with compliments on her linguistic abilities, Amy found herself seized by the most brilliant of plans. A plan that would secure her access to the palace on a regular basis. . . .

“I would be happy to teach you English!” she blurted out.

Hortense looked so delighted and grateful that Amy almost felt guilty for her subterfuge. Almost.

“Would you vraiment?”

“Of course, she will!” Edouard’s face bore the expression of a man who has sighted the promised land after an uncomfortable session with brimstone and pitchforks down below. His sudden squeeze of Amy’s hand informed her that she was back in her brother’s good graces. “The Balcourts are always happy to be of service to the First Consul and his family! When would you like her to begin?”

Had Edouard always been such a deplorable toady?

With some mutual expressions of gratitude, much bad English from Hortense, and some even worse French from Amy, they settled upon the following afternoon for the first lesson. Edouard bowed himself out of the presence of the Bonaparte ladies to chat with some acquaintances, and Amy was about to do likewise, minus the bowing and the acquaintances, when someone cleared his throat behind her. Amy instantly knew just whose throat the sound had issued from. A strong, sun-browned throat she had once seen tantalizingly displayed by an opened collar and loosened cravat. The skin on her arms prickled and her neck ached with the pressure of not turning to look. Oh, blast the man, couldn’t he have even left her a moment to gloat over her good fortune?

“Richard!” On Hortense’s lips, the name was soft and exotic, Reeshard. She demanded of him in French, “When did you return?”

Richard bowed over Mme Bonaparte’s hand before kissing her daughter’s. “I returned Monday night.”

“And you have not called until now! Cad! Is he not a beast, Mama, to have deprived us of his company for so long? Eugene will be disappointed to have missed you—he is off at the theater tonight.”

Amy was about to back quietly away, when Hortense laid one gloved hand gently on Amy’s arm. “There is a lovely countrywoman of yours to whom I would like to introduce you!” Beaming, Hortense tilted her head in Amy’s direction, and drew Amy forward. Amy tried not to balk visibly under Lord Richard’s knowing eye. “Mlle Balcourt, I would like to you make zee acquaintance of Lord Reeshard Selweeck.”

“We’ve already met,” said Amy hastily.

“You ’ave?” Obviously intrigued, Hortense looked up inquiringly at Richard from under her eyelashes.

“Don’t matchmake, Hortense; it’s a beastly habit,” Richard advised in French. In English, he said to Amy, “If Hortense will spare you, I would like to introduce you to Vivant Denon, the director of the Egyptian expedition. Er—of the secondary part of the Egyptian expedition, that is. The scholarly bit.”

“I caught your meaning, my lord. You don’t have to belabor it.” Amy narrowed her eyes at Richard over the lace fringe of her fan. Fans were truly wonderfully useful items. Amy wished she could carry one all the time. “Why?”

“Amy!” Miss Gwen’s feathers shook reprovingly.

Richard ignored Amy’s rudeness. “Because I thought you would enjoy discussing the classics with him.”

“I would think my absurd efforts would have little to recommend them to scholars so widely traveled,” riposted Amy, snapping her fan closed.

Lord Richard’s green eyes glinted with amusement. “Oh, I wouldn’t say all of your ideas are absurd,” he said lightly. “Just some of them.”

“Josephine!” A stentorian bellow shook the candles in their sconces.

Unconsciously, Amy grabbed Richard’s arm, looking about anxiously for the source of the roar. About the room, people went on chatting as before.

“Steady there.” Richard patted the delicate hand clutching the material of his coat. “It’s just the First Consul.”

Snatching her hand away as though his coat were made of live coals, Amy snapped, “You would know.”

“Josephine!” The dreadful noise repeated itself, cutting off any further remarks. Out of an adjoining room charged a blur of red velvet, closely followed by the scurrying form of a young man. Amy sidestepped just in time, swaying on her slippers to avoid toppling into Lord Richard.

The red velvet came to an abrupt stop beside Mme Bonaparte’s chair. “Oh. Visitors.”

Once still, the red velvet resolved into a man of slightly less than medium height, clad in a long red velvet coat with breeches that must once have been white, but which now bore assorted stains that proclaimed as clearly as a menu what the wearer had eaten for supper.

“I do wish you wouldn’t shout so, Bonaparte.” Mme Bonaparte lifted one white hand and touched him gently on the cheek.

Bonaparte grabbed her hand and planted a resounding kiss on the palm. “How else am I to make myself heard?” Affectionately tweaking one of her curls, he demanded, “Well? Who is it tonight?”

“We have some visitors from England, sir,” his stepdaughter responded. “I should like to present . . .” Hortense began listing their names. Bonaparte stood, legs slightly apart, eyes hooded with apparent boredom, and one arm thrust into the opposite side of his jacket, as though in a sling.

Bonaparte inclined his head, looked down at his wife, and demanded, “Are we done yet?”

Thwap!

Everyone within earshot jumped at the sound of Miss Gwen’s reticule connecting with Bonaparte’s arm. “Sir! Take that hand out of your jacket! It is rude and it ruins your posture. A man of your diminutive stature needs to stand up straight.”

Something suspiciously like a chuckle emerged from Lord Richard’s lips, but when Amy glanced sharply up at him, his expression was studiedly bland.