The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

by Lauren Willig

  No! Amy’s mind shouted. Marston’s arms around her pinned her entire upper body immobile. With his free hand, he grabbed a handful of her hair, and yanked her head back. Amy’s eyes teared with the unexpected pain.

  ‘Now,’ he snarled, pulling savagely on her hair, ‘we can discuss what you can do to make this up to me.’

  ‘My brother will call you out for this!’ spat Amy.

  Marston chuckled unpleasantly, tugging her curls again, harder. ‘Your brother couldn’t shoot a slug.’

  Amy’s nostrils flared. ‘You value yourself highly, don’t you?’

  ‘Why, you little – arrrrrr!’

  Amy’s sturdy boot slammed down on Marston’s little toe. The hard, square heel ground down into the leather with a marvellous crackling noise that was rapidly drowned out by a stentorian roar of pain. Twisting her wrists, Amy pulled free from Marston’s loosened grasp. Blast! Marston’s hands were already grabbing for her, pulling at her dress as she tried to run. She should have broken his fingers, not his toes. She heard the unpleasant sound of rending cloth, but Marston still held firm. Any moment now, Marston’s other hand would shoot out and it would start all over again.

  No! She wouldn’t stand for it! Amy whirled and swung at Marston’s face with her right fist. Her knuckles grazed the underside of Marston’s chin and plunged into empty air.

  Marston tumbled to the ground at her feet with a crash like the fall of Goliath.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Still struggling to catch her breath, Amy stared in confusion at Marston’s fallen body. She really hadn’t thought she had hit him that hard. And then she heard it. The sound of another person’s breathing, issuing from the place where Marston had stood. Amy looked up abruptly, just as a shadowy figure bounded over Marston’s body and stopped short in front of her.

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ it barked.

  Amy blinked, glancing from the crumpled figure on the ground to the hooded phantom in front of her. ‘If you’re not Marston, who are you?’ she blurted out.

  ‘You thought I was Marston? That’s why you – never mind. We’ll address that later.’ If a masked face in the dark could contrive to look stern, his did. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘No.’ Amy shook her head. Her heart still beat at triple the normal rate, but her thoughts scurried along even faster. How could she have ever thought Marston was the Gentian? Looking at the two of them together admittedly, Marston was in a heap on the floor, which prejudiced the comparison somewhat – the distinctions were so obvious that Amy felt an absolute idiot for not having known, and run, the moment she saw Marston striding down that alley of trees. Where Marston was bulky, the Gentian had a graceful, slender strength. One broad-fingered hand lay on the ground near Amy’s foot, brown hair sprouting around the knuckles. So very different from the long-fingered hands in black leather gloves clenched at the Purple Gentian’s sides. Even Marston’s teeth seemed larger and coarser than the Gentian’s. Good heavens, could one have elegant teeth?

  Amy pressed her palms to her face and rubbed them up and down, suppressing a gaggle of mad giggles.

  ‘What in the hell were you thinking?’ growled the Purple Gentian. ‘Well?’ he bit out when Amy didn’t respond immediately. ‘How in the hell could you think he and I were the same person?’

  The Gentian glared fiercely at the body on the ground.

  ‘You don’t see the resemblance?’ Amy shook with suppressed giggles. Hiccup! Hiccup! It was no use trying to contain it; her whole body quaked with laughter.

  ‘Damn it, Amy, this is not funny!’

  Amy doubled over, her arms wrapped around her stomach. ‘You look,’ she gasped, ‘s-s-so indignant!’

  ‘You’re bloody well right I’m indignant!’ the Purple Gentian roared as he yanked Amy upwards until her streaming eyes peered directly into his. ‘Do you know what Marston was going to do with you? Do you? He was going to rape you, damn it!’

  ‘I don’t… I can’t… Put me down!’

  Eyes intent on hers, he opened his hands. Amy sat down heavily on the paced dirt of the pathway. Her legs didn’t seem to want to lift her, and on the whole, Amy agreed with them.

  ‘Is that what you said to Marston? Did he listen?’

  At the sound of his name, the recumbent figure on the ground stirred and moaned. The Gentian crossed over to him in one quick stride and administered a brisk, brutal kick to Marston’s jaw. Amy winced as Marston’s head snapped back.

  ‘Wasn’t that a little…unnecessary?’

  ‘Not at all. Do you want him waking up?’ As Amy shuddered, the Gentian smiled nastily. ‘I thought not. You’d better hope that his brains are addled enough that he won’t remember any of tonight’s events. Let’s make sure of that, shall we?’

  The Purple Gentian’s boot connected again with Marston’s head, flipping Marston neatly over. The Gentian surveyed his handiwork. ‘Much better.’

  Amy scooted herself, crablike, away from Marston. Her arms throbbed where he had grabbed them and she could still taste his nasty slobbering mouth on hers. Amy wrapped her arms around her stomach and wondered what the Gentian would say if she was sick all over his shiny black boots.

  ‘I think I’d like to go home now.’

  ‘I’m not done with you yet.’ The Purple Gentian crossed his arms over his chest and regarded Amy with asperity.

  A bath. That was what she needed. She’d scrub out her mouth with tooth powder while the servants drew her a long, painfully hot bath.

  ‘Please don’t start screeching at me again.’

  ‘I am not screeching. Men do not screech. Damn it, stop looking at me like that!’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like—’ Richard bit off his words before they developed into a full-blown screech of the variety he had just denied indulging in. ‘Do you have no sense at all of the danger you were in?’ Richard kept his voice cool and level. Ha! He’d defy her to label that a screech.

  Amy frowned at him, stumbling slowly to her feet. ‘This would never have happened if you had told me who you were.’

  ‘Who told you to go looking for me?’

  ‘I had something I had to tell you! And I had no idea if you were ever going to deign to contact me. After the way you ran off last night…’

  ‘Now this is my fault? I run like a madman to rescue you—’

  ‘And I already told you I didn’t need rescuing!’

  ‘So you were having a peaceful little chat with Marston when I approached? Was that it? And that’s the least of it! You left the house alone, unchaperoned, unguarded, at midnight of all idiot times! You’re lucky that Marston was the only one who attacked you! Footpads, pickpockets…’

  Assaulted by images of Amy in danger – Amy being dragged into a dark alley, Amy being flung to the ground, Amy being hit over the head from behind, and, worst of all because it had been true, because he had seen it, because he couldn’t seem to stop replaying it in his head with varying degrees of panic, Amy being overpowered in Marston’s brutal embrace – Richard reacted without thinking. He reached out across the barrier of Marston’s body and grabbed Amy by the shoulders and hauled her right over the fallen man. Too shocked to resist, Amy didn’t struggle. She didn’t even squeal. She did let out a small whoosh of breath as she smacked against Richard’s chest, but that was clearly unintentional.

  Richard didn’t give her a chance to make any other sound.

  His lips covered hers with an urgency that bordered on the savage. All the anger and tension Richard had been feeling since Marston had first uttered Amy’s name poured into the kiss. His mouth moulded against hers, pressing hard against it, as though the fabric of their separate lips could become one. Rather than shying back from the sheer force of his kiss, Amy threw her arms up around his shoulders, clasping him about the neck as she raised herself on tiptoe to match her mouth more perfectly to his. Richard groaned low in his throat and clamped her tighter to him, revelling in the way her body moulded to his. Richard’s br
eath came fast and his lungs ached as though he had been running for miles, but he didn’t want to ever stop; he would keep running and running, with Amy’s hands in his hair, and every muscle in his body alive where she was pressed against him; his thighs, his chest, his shoulders, all throbbing with the feel of Amy against him.

  Amy clung to the Purple Gentian as his lips seared away the dreadful taint of Marston’s unwanted kisses. Fire purifies, some dim part of her brain remembered. Amy blazed up, fired by the warmth radiating from the Gentian’s lips, his arms enveloping her, the way his black cape enveloped her as it wrapped around her. She was the phoenix, reborn through fire, rising restored from the flames that consumed her. That explained the crackling in her ears and the flames behind her eyelids.

  The Purple Gentian’s lips left hers and his arms freed her waist. With an inarticulate gasp of distress, Amy lifted her face blindly towards his and locked her own arms more tightly about him. ‘Don’t let go. Not yet…’

  ‘Oh, Amy,’ the Purple Gentian groaned. Cupping her face in protective hands, the kid leather of his gloves soft against her skin, he pressed kisses on her forehead, her eyelids, her cheekbones, the tip of her nose, her lips. ‘God, Amy, you had me so worried. The thought of him touching you…’

  ‘Didn’t much appeal to me either,’ Amy riposted, leaning all of her weight against him. Just in case he had any ideas about pulling away again.

  Amy rubbed her cheek against the Gentian’s waistcoat – no hard metallic watch fob to bruise her, as there had been on Marston’s clothes – and went limp with relief as she felt his arm steal back around her waist and his lips brush gently along the crown of her head.

  ‘We should do something about Marston,’ Richard mumbled into Amy’s hair, his voice scarcely louder than the muted rustle of the wind in the leaves.

  ‘Couldn’t we just leave him here?’

  Regretfully, Richard straightened, gently putting Amy at arm’s length. ‘It wouldn’t be prudent.’

  ‘Should we return him to his house?’

  ‘No. There’s bound to be a valet or a servant about, and we don’t want to cause too much comment.’

  Richard grimly circled the fallen form of Georges Marston, thinking what a bother the man had proven to be. If he had any recollection of tonight’s activities, if he made the link between Richard and the masked man who had bopped him over the head, some of Richard’s best intelligence sources would evaporate with all the speed of spilt water in the Egyptian sun. And, of course, there was the more immediate concern of what the devil one was to do with the lout. Why couldn’t he have just collapsed from too much drink on the way over?

  ‘Too much drink! That’s it!’ the Gentian announced with as much glee as though he had just cracked the code of the Rosetta Stone.

  ‘You want a drink? Now?’ Amy, puzzled by the workings of the masculine mind, stepped out of the way as the Gentian swooped down on Marston’s recumbent body. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she demanded, as the Gentian began sniffing – sniffing! – at Marston’s waistcoat.

  The Purple Gentian rose easily to his feet and brushed off his hands. ‘Marston reeks of brandy. We can haul him over to the Latin Quarter and dump him behind a tavern. He’ll fit right in with the other drunks passed out in the gutter.’

  ‘That should work.’ Amy’s voice was unusually subdued as she joined the Purple Gentian in peering down at Marston’s collapsed form. Stretched out on the dirt as he was, arms limp, hands limper, the bulk of the man still made Amy’s flesh crawl. She took some comfort in the crooked angle of his nose, a sign that she had been able to protect herself, at least somewhat.

  The Gentian had circled round to Marston’s head, and was hauling the man’s limp torso upright, long sleeves protecting his arms from the scratchy gold braid on Marston’s jacket. Watching anxiously to make sure Marston’s eyes didn’t roll open, Amy took wary hold of Marston’s boots.

  They set off in silence down the path, between the row of silent trees, the Purple Gentian backing up with long strides that took two of Amy’s shorter steps to match.

  Amy gazed longingly at the tall, dark figure walking backwards in confident strides. If she asked, he would stop. And then she could bury her face in his chest and wrap her arms around his waist and let his strength support her. It was so terribly tempting. All she had to do was ask.

  All she had to do was scuttle her pride.

  Amy determinedly turned her thoughts to the quandary of filching the Swiss gold out from under the noses of Bonaparte’s agents. And if she jumped nervously when a man with gold embroidery on his cloak swaggered past them into the gardens, well, the Purple Gentian made no comment. Amy glanced swiftly at the burden hanging between them, just to make sure Marston was still there, unconscious, limp, and harmless. Momentarily reassured, she returned to considering the benefits and drawbacks of gunpowder, though she still flinched every time the leaves around them rustled with the passage of a human body.

  Much to Amy’s relief, the gardens finally gave way to the busy streets of the Latin Quarter. Shouts and laughter spilt from brightly lit tavern windows, making Amy blink at the sudden glare; the sour reek of spilt spirits caused her to scrunch up her nose.

  Through one window, a group of students was pounding out a bawdy ballad in Latin, punctuating their verses with swigs from a giant jug of Bordeaux. The group of sailors in the inn across the way was doing its best to out-sing the students with an equally bawdy sea chanty. Just in front of them, a man reeled through a door into the street, nearly barrelling into the Purple Gentian before collapsing in the gutter. In the open doorway, a massive woman in a soiled kerchief brushed her hands in the universal gesture of good riddance.

  No one gave Richard and Amy a second look.

  Amy could only conclude that hooded men and dishevelled women bearing unconscious bodies weren’t as unusual an occurrence as one would suppose.

  Speaking softly under the cover of all of the merriment going on about them, the Purple Gentian leant across Marston’s unconscious body, and murmured to Amy, ‘Once we dispose of our cargo in a manner befitting him, I’ll take you home.’

  ‘Cargo,’ Amy repeated. Keeping a firm grasp on Marston’s feet, she hissed, ‘There’s something I have to—’

  ‘This looks like a promising alley, don’t you think?’ the Gentian interrupted, peering into a cul-de-sac between two noisy taverns. One man already occupied part of the gutter, arms flung wide, and one boot missing. ‘Let’s drop him right over there, shall we? We’ll even provide fitting company for him,’ the Gentian added with a chuckle.

  Right. Now was probably not the best of times to relay Bonaparte’s plans for invading England, Amy consoled herself. Certainly not over the body of a member of Bonaparte’s military, unconscious though he certainly seemed to be. Could Marston merely be pretending to be unconscious, waiting for them to let go to wreak his revenge? Amy winced as she remembered the sound of the Gentian’s boot connecting with Marston’s chin and quickly discarded the possibility that Marston might be feigning oblivion. The man would have to have a head of steel not to be unconscious. Nonetheless, it probably wouldn’t hurt to wait until they were in a less populated area before relaying her monumental information to the Gentian.

  Amy hastily let go of Marston’s feet as the Purple Gentian unceremoniously dumped Marston into a liquid that Amy hoped was spilt wine. Marston’s body landed with a satisfying thump.

  Brushing his hands together with the air of a man who considers a job well done, Richard took one last look at the crumpled figure in the gutter. Marston had begun snoring noisily, his mouth flopping open. His gaudy coat was smeared with dirt and mottled with blood. Between the state of his attire and his coarse expression, he looked like nothing more than a servant who had gone brawling in his master’s clothes. All he needed to complete the scene was an empty bottle in his limp hand.

  Richard glowered at the fallen body. ‘How could you think I was Marston?’

 
‘Vanity, thy name is man?’

  ‘Objecting to being compared to that’ – the Gentian jerked a finger over his shoulder at Marston as he took Amy by the arm and steered her towards the river – ‘is not vanity. It’s simple self-respect.’

  ‘The comparison made sense at the time,’ mused Amy. ‘No! No, I didn’t mean it that way,’ she hastily amended, as the Purple Gentian gave every sign of boiling over like an offended volcano. Taking care to emphasise that she found Marston in no way comparable to the Gentian, Amy explained the series of deductions that had led her to believe Marston must be he.

  ‘After all, there he was in the courtyard, wearing a black cloak just like yours. What else was I to think?’ she finished.

  ‘It does make a certain amount of sense,’ the Gentian admitted grudgingly, as they trudged down stone steps onto a pier to wait for one of the small boats that ferried passengers along the Seine for a fee. ‘Though why you couldn’t tell the difference—’

  ‘I had only met him once, and briefly, at that. And when I found the information…’

  The Purple Gentian’s eyes narrowed. ‘The information that was so vitally important that you had to set up an assignation in the middle of the night?’

  Amy cast him a sidelong glance. ‘Do we really have to go into all that again?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Gentian crossed his arms across his chest.

  ‘You may change your mind when you hear what I have to tell you.’

  Even through his cloak and mask, the Purple Gentian radiated scepticism.

  ‘All right, then. If you really don’t want to hear about Bonaparte’s plans for the invasion of England…’

  Chapter Twenty-Three