The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

by Lauren Willig

  ‘Why hesitate?’ Lord Richard pressed his advantage. ‘You’re not afraid, are you?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of ancient curses? Of enjoying my company?’

  Since that was precisely what terrified Amy, she bristled indignantly. ‘Of course not! Tomorrow afternoon, you said?’

  ‘Two o’clock, perhaps? The artefacts are lodged in a wing of the Tuilleries, until we move them into the Louvre. Ask any sentry to show you the way,’ Lord Richard directed, with a smile that struck Amy as uncomfortably close to a smirk.

  Too late, Amy realised how neatly she had been seduced and goaded into accepting.

  ‘You don’t have any apples to offer while you’re at it, do you?’ she asked sourly.

  ‘Satan tempting Eve in the garden? Not a terribly flattering role for me, is it? And you’re overdressed for the part.’

  Amy’s blush rivalled the hue of the dangerous fruit they had been discussing. Somehow, Lord Richard’s frankly admiring gaze made the yellow muslin of her gown feel as insubstantial as a string of fig leaves. Amy covered her confusion by saying quickly, ‘Might I ask a favour, my lord?’

  ‘A phoenix feather from the farthest deserts of Arabia? The head of a dragon on a bejewelled platter?’

  ‘Nothing quite that complicated,’ replied Amy, marvelling once again at the chameleon quality of the man beside her. How could anyone be so utterly infuriating at one moment and equally charming the next? Untrustworthy, she reminded herself. Mercurial. Changeable. ‘A dragon’s head wouldn’t be much use to me just now, unless it could offer me directions.’

  Richard crooked an arm. ‘Tell me where you need to be, and I’ll escort you.’

  Amy tentatively rested her hand on the soft blue fabric of his coat. ‘That’s quite a generous offer when you don’t know where I’m going.’

  ‘Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end?’ suggested Richard with a lazy grin.

  ‘Methinks it is no journey?’ Amy matched the quotation triumphantly, and was rewarded by the admiring light that flamed in Lord Richard’s eyes. ‘No, not nearly that far – at least, I hope not. This palace does seem large enough to house a couple of continents. I was looking for Hortense Bonaparte’s chambers.’

  The statement was close enough to the truth, and Lord Richard accepted it without a murmur of disbelief. ‘You’re in the right place,’ he informed her, steering her back into Bonaparte’s study, ‘just a flight below where you ought to be. That little staircase will take you right up to Josephine’s chambers, and Hortense’s are next door.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Amy lifted one foot to the first step.

  ‘Think nothing of it.’ Lord Richard leant an arm on the newel of the stair. Even with Amy a step up, he still smiled down at her. ‘It wasn’t much of a journey. I owe you nine leagues at least.’

  ‘Bring me a phoenix feather, and we’ll cancel the debt. Good day, my lord, and thank you for the directions.’ Amy lifted her skirt and ascended another step.

  ‘You’ll have to accept a mummy case or two instead.’ Lord Richard’s voice arrested Amy mid-step. Letting fall her skirt, she turned, only to discover that his smile was even more devastating when faced eye to eye. Or lip to lip, as the case might be. Amy swallowed hard.

  ‘Why were you so eager for me to visit?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘Because,’ Richard said quite simply, ‘I like you.’

  And then he smiled and bowed as if his last statement hadn’t made Amy’s jaw drop till it practically hit the bottom stair, and, with a bland, ‘Good day, Miss Balcourt,’ took his leave before Amy could retrieve her jaw and her faculties of speech.

  ‘And good day to you too,’ she muttered as she flounced up the stairs. ‘“Because I like you.” What on earth is that supposed to mean? And why do I care? I don’t care. Of course I don’t care. What difference does it make if Richard Selwick likes me or not? None. None at all. Of course it makes no difference.’

  Amy stopped short on the upper landing and lifted her chin. ‘I have more important things to worry about.’

  Amy collared one of the young pages who seemed to do nothing but loiter about the corridors waiting to carry messages, clandestine or otherwise.

  Which was why, when Amy hissed, ‘Can you take a message for me?’ the page gave her a look that questioned her mental capacities.

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘Can you keep it secret?’

  Another look, this time compounded with wounded dignity. Amy was sinking in the page’s estimation by the moment. ‘Of course, miss.’

  ‘Oh, good!’ Leaning forward, Amy whispered, ‘Tell him I must see him urgently. Don’t forget! Urgently. Because I have something terribly important I have to tell him, and he’ll know what it is, after our conversation last night. I’ll meet him at the Luxembourg Gardens at midnight. And don’t forget – urgently!’

  The page looked understandably confused. ‘Tell who, miss?’

  Amy refrained from banging her hand against her head in extreme self-disgust. Just because she had let Lord Richard rattle her…

  ‘Georges Marston,’ she said, pressing a coin from her reticule into the boy’s hand. ‘Make sure to deliver my message solely to the ears of Georges Marston. And don’t forget—’

  ‘I know,’ said the boy, with the world-weary air of one who had heard it all before. ‘Urgently.’

  Richard allowed himself a moment to watch the delightful sway of Amy’s hips as she ascended the stairs towards Hortense’s apartments. It was, he assured himself, a permissible luxury. Bounding up the stairs after her, flinging her over his shoulder, and bearing her off to the nearest empty chamber was not. Pity, that.

  Shaking his head, Richard wandered back out of Bonaparte’s study and through the anteroom, which suddenly seemed much darker without the cheerful yellow of Amy’s dress. He wondered if she was as beset by memories of their kiss last night as he was. It was ludicrous! He had kissed hundreds of women in his time. Actually… Richard did a quick calculation, casting his mind back over his teenage career as a rakehell. Well, maybe only dozens. At any rate, not one of them had plagued him nearly as much as Amy. None of them had kept him awake for the rest of the night in a state of uncomfortable desire, wondering whether such an opportunity would arise again.

  Usually Richard made his own opportunities.

  Back in his rakehell days, all it had taken had been a smile across a ballroom, a nod of the head towards a garden, a note passed surreptitiously from gloved hand to gloved hand. So easy. But then had come Deirdre and her betrayal, and Richard had become adept at sending opportunity scurrying away. And now… Richard frowned at a bird chirping with excessive force in the open window of an empty salon.

  He could easily arrange another assignation with Amy. Ah, but only if he were willing to do so as the Purple Gentian. Therein lay the rub. The Purple Gentian and Lord Richard Selwick unanimously concurred that Amy was to have nothing more to do with the former. Just look at last night. She had curtailed his inspection of Balcourt’s study, just as he had got to the good part, the mysterious cache of papers in the globe. True, for all he knew the globe might contain nothing more exciting than Balcourt’s billets-doux. Or it might contain papers vital to the defence of England. As if that weren’t enough, he had entirely missed whatever had been going on in the courtyard. He had arrived just in time to see villainous-looking rascals trailing out into the night, and to hear Balcourt bidding Marston an uninformative farewell.

  He probably should have tailed Marston home. Richard excised the probably. No doubt about it, the responsible thing to do, the Purple Gentian thing to do, was to follow Marston. Instead, the Purple Gentian had lurked in the bushes outside the Hotel de Balcourt, making sure that one Miss Amy Balcourt made it safely inside.

  Richard grinned in recollection. Hell, it had been worth the missed intelligence just to watch Amy desperately trying to haul herself over that windowsill. She’d plant her elbows on the edge, screw up her face,
wiggle in an exceedingly appealing way, and plop back down. Richard had admired her tenacity and her derrière.

  One night’s work – Richard sternly pulled his mind back to the matter at hand. One night’s work could be accounted lost with good grace. To lose another night’s work verged on irresponsibility. Besides, Amy wouldn’t be Amy if she didn’t keep pestering him for his identity and a place in the League. Sooner or later, under the influence of her lips and arms and…anyway, sooner or later, he was bound to weaken on one or the other, and either would be disaster. Thus his resolution, as he trudged back home last night through the dark and smelly streets of Paris, that the Purple Gentian was to avoid Miss Amy Balcourt as though she were Delaroche himself.

  Lord Richard Selwick, on the other hand, was quite free to call on Miss Balcourt.

  After all, Richard reasoned with himself, as long as he confined his calls to non-spying hours, his relationship with Amy could be kept separate from his work.

  He just had to charm Amy into liking him. It shouldn’t be too hard. She might have kissed the Purple Gentian last night, but it was clearly Richard she was thinking about. Of course, it would be even better if it were Richard she was thinking about and kissing.

  All he had to do was dispel her lingering anxieties about his character. Hmm. Richard paused next to a painting by David. That might be too difficult a feat without revealing his secret identity. Too much effort. No, he decided. Far better to seduce Amy out of her scruples.

  Ah, now there was a plan worthy of the master strategist who had saved scads of French noblemen from the guillotine.

  With that out of the way, Richard could once more concentrate on sallying forth and doing his bit to defend England against old Boney by drinking French brandy and winning at cards.

  Richard dropped in on a record-breaking four salons and card parties between eight and eleven o’clock. At one, he eavesdropped on conversations under the cover of music; at another, he elicited information over cards; at yet another, he rifled through his host’s desk while a poet declaimed in a room across the hall. It would have been five parties had he not spotted Pauline Leclerc as he entered the fifth salon. Grabbing his hat and gloves back from the astonished maid, he had barely escaped with his trousers intact.

  Robbins dropped Richard off beneath the portico of Mme Rochefort’s town house, Richard’s final destination, just after eleven. ‘Don’t bother coming back for me,’ Richard told his coachman, as he swung out of the chaise. ‘I’ll find my own way back.’

  ‘You’re quite sure, my lord?’ Robbins believed the population of Paris to be comprised entirely of footpads and assassins, all just waiting to leap out at his young master from dark alleyways.

  ‘Quite sure. Get some rest.’

  ‘Aye, my lord.’

  As his carriage pulled away, Richard settled his hat more firmly on his head, gave his gloves one last tug, pasted on a social smile, and ascended the steps to the front door. He was let in by a maid, who took his hat and cloak and pointed him upstairs. Richard made his way up the marble staircase, skirting around a young dandy clinging to the banister, who was already clearly the worse for drink. Richard feared for the next guest to pass below the staircase.

  Reaching the landing, Richard considered his options. To his right, food had already been laid out in the supper-room, and a cadre of devoted gallants were making up plates for their beloveds of the moment.

  Richard spotted his hostess in the crush, and nodded to her. Mme Rochefort waved her fan at him with more enthusiasm than decorum, a description that suited the majority of the guests rather well. Mme Rochefort’s parties teemed with young adventurers, aging flirts, and hardened roues, all barely clinging to the fringes of society. Mme Rochefort herself fell into the second category; a former crony of Josephine’s, she had been banished from the Tuilleries when Bonaparte had decided to become respectable.

  Down the hall, the crowd in the card room was thinner than usual. Therese Tallien, another former friend of the First Consul’s wife, was playing a rubber of whist with a brightly dressed dandy, a heavy-lidded young officer, and Desiree Hamelin, who was chiefly famed for having walked topless all the way from the Place Royale to the Luxembourg Palace in the harum-scarum days of the Directorate.

  Richard wandered through the room, murmuring polite inconsequentialities to acquaintances, and declining the offer of a rubber of whist from Mme Tallien. Under fashionably languid lids, Richard’s green eyes darted ahead of him across the room. Paul Barras, a former head of state (and, it was rumoured, former lover of Josephine), sat over solitaire at a table near the door. He would be no use. Richard likewise dismissed a gaggle of giggling women in hideous striped turbans. Ah, but there, by the fireplace…

  ‘Marston, old chap,’ Richard drawled. ‘Not having much luck at cards tonight, I see! Murat.’ Richard nodded to the Consul’s brother-in-law, who was listing in his chair at an angle that declared that the snifter of brandy before him was by no means his first.

  Marston kicked a chair at Richard. ‘Care to try your luck, Selwick?’

  ‘Jolly good of you.’ Richard dropped lazily into the little gilded chair.

  Marston rose and stretched, swaying only a bit in the process. ‘Think nothing of it. I’m off as soon as I win some of my blunt back from Murat here. Got an assignation with a hot piece of baggage.’

  Richard yanked his chair up to the table. ‘How much does she cost?’

  Marston guffawed, baring large white teeth. ‘This one’s free. Makes a nice change, eh?’

  Richard politely bared his teeth in response, but since his interest in Marston’s romantic affairs was about on a par with his desire to learn about the finer points of taxonomy, he quickly turned the topic of conversation to a more promising avenue.

  ‘Any chance you’re thinking of selling that curricle of yours?’

  ‘What! Sell the Chariot of Love? It would send the ladies of Paris into mourning.’

  ‘And their cuckolded husbands would throw a fête.’

  Marston smiled smugly. ‘Tonight’s lucky lady doesn’t have a husband. Just a—’

  ‘I ask,’ Richard interrupted, before Marston could embark again on his tedious tale of seduction and satiation, ‘because I have a friend who’s looking for a carriage, and I know he admires yours.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’ Marston stretched out his legs. Richard wondered how they managed to support the weight of such a massive ego on a daily basis.

  Concealing his distaste, Richard continued smoothly, ‘I’ve advised Geoff that a closed carriage would be far more useful. What do you think?’

  Marston snorted. ‘If you’re an old lady! Women go mad for a nice little curricle. I can tell you about the time—’

  ‘Curricles are very well for a spin about the park, but what about longer trips, or conveying packages? There’s simply not enough privacy or room. Are you dealing, Murat?’

  ‘I’ll deal.’ Marston grabbed the deck of cards before his friend could respond, and began shuffling with the ease of a practiced gamester. ‘What’s your game, Selwick? Commerce? Euchre? Vingt-et-un?’

  ‘Whatever you were playing. So you’d recommend the curricle, would you? What about midnight assignations and that sort of thing?’

  Marston flipped three cards Richard’s way. ‘It’s easy enough to hire a coach.’

  ‘Do you have any recommendations?’

  ‘There’s a little man in the rue St Jacques,’ Marston said easily, kicking back and looking at his cards. ‘Has a plain carriage and doesn’t ask too many questions, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ replied Richard, with an amused smile. A little man on the rue St Jacques… He would send Geoff down tomorrow to make inquiries. Richard mentally ticked off item one on his list. ‘How far does he let you take it?’

  ‘I’ve been as far as Calais and back.’ Marston frowned and dealt himself another card.

  ‘Did you have family visiting from England?’ Ric
hard inquired pleasantly.

  ‘No, I—’ Marston’s mouth snapped abruptly shut.

  Richard laughed the knowing laugh of the urbane man about town. ‘Say no more! Say no more!’ he protested, holding out a hand. ‘The lady’s reputation must be protected. I understand. Pass the decanter, would you?’

  Visibly relaxing, Marston shoved the crystal decanter across the green baize tabletop. Richard raised it in a comradely gesture before pulling out the stopper and pouring some of the amber contents into a glass. Damn. Marston wasn’t quite inebriated enough; if Richard probed further on that score, he would grow suspicious.

  ‘To nameless ladies!’ Richard pronounced, hoisting his brandy balloon aloft.

  ‘I’ll drink to that!’ Marston downed the contents of his glass and reached across Richard for the decanter.

  ‘Namelesh ladiesh,’ slurred Murat from his corner.

  Now there was a man who was drunk enough to be of use.

  ‘You’ve been at peace too long, Murat,’ Richard said cheerfully. ‘It’s weakened your head for drink! Better work on that or they’ll take away your commission.’

  ‘Him?’ Marston jabbed a finger at his friend, who was listing like a frigate after a bad storm. ‘There’s some perks to being the First Consul’s brother-in-law, eh, Murat? Even if you do have to put up with Caroline!’

  ‘Thash ri’,’ agreed Murat. ‘Have to put up wi’ Caroline. More brandy?’

  Richard helpfully leant across the table and refilled Murat’s glass. ‘Caroline giving you a hard time?’

  ‘Thash a’ri’.’ Murat gestured expansively, sending half the contents of his glass sloshing down Mme Rochefort’s rose silk moire walls. ‘Goin’ away shoon.’

  Two glasses of brandy and several slurred sibilants later, Richard had managed to determine that Murat, if he was to be believed, had been promised a high position in the army for the invasion of England. Caroline, Murat said, had bullied her brother into it, which Richard could well believe. Caroline possessed the face of an angel and the ruthless ambition of, well, her brother Napoleon. Her brother Napoleon crossed with Lucrezia Borgia on a bad day. Richard felt mildly sorry for poor Murat.