by Лорен Уиллиг
Augustus kicked the wall of the theatre and succeeded only in stubbing his toe. They had made it so much easier for Americanus, he and Emma. All Americanus had to do was rescue his lady from a band of rascally pirates. It wasn’t his persuasions that won her from her tower, but a chance abduction.
Augustus doubted that a band of pirates was going to come marauding through Malmaison just for his convenience.
In this version, he couldn’t prove his devotion with pretty speeches or daring feats of rescue. Instead, he had no choice but to wait for his Cytherea to come to him, flawed and false though she knew him to be. He had to trust to the strength of the strange rapport between them to overcome all the objections of reason and all the fears that came with making oneself vulnerable to another. No tricks, no gimmicks, no deceptions. All he could was hope that love would prove stronger than reason.
It was not a very comforting thought.
“Mr. Whittlesby!” Someone was bouncing towards him around the side of the theatre. It was Horace de Lilly, pink of face and green of waistcoat, looking disgustingly healthy and happy and far too eager to see Augustus. “What luck! I was hoping to have a chance to speak to you.”
“Now is really not the time,” said Augustus quellingly.
The last thing he needed right now was another round of “I want to be just like you when I grow up.” Hell, he didn’t want to be just like him when he grew up. Horace de Lilly could just find another agent to idolize. He was done.
Horace, unfortunately, wasn’t. He bounced to a stop in front of Augustus, quivering with excitement. “You’ve done it! You’ve done it, haven’t you?”
“Shouldn’t you be reserving your seat for the masque?” Augustus said shortly. “I hear it’s to be the theatrical event of the summer.”
Horace wasn’t to be deterred. His boyish face shone with excitement. “You have them, don’t you? The plans? I knew you would do it!”
“Your confidence overwhelms me,” said Augustus. “Not now.”
Of all the ill-chosen agents, de Lilly was about as subtle as a cartload of monkeys. The concept of “not in public” appeared to have passed him by. At least after this week, he would no longer be Augustus’s problem.
But he would still be someone else’s.
Augustus took a deep breath. “A word of advice, de Lilly. Curb your enthusiasm. I know you’re terribly excited about the poetry you commissioned from me,” he placed heavy emphasis on the words, “but unless you want to tip your lady off to your purpose, I would advise a modicum of discretion. Hell hath no fury.” Like an Emperor betrayed.
De Lilly’s brow wrinkled. “Er, right. But you do have the, um, poetry? Where is it? Was it what we thought it was? Can I do anything to help?”
Augustus kept a careful rein on his temper. “If you want to make yourself useful, look into fast carriages. I look to leave in three days’ time.”
In fact, he looked to leave in one. It didn’t matter whether de Lilly’s erratic behavior was simply youth or something else; either way, he was a danger. Better to send him off on a useless errand, believing himself to have time to spare. If he were a double agent, he would wait to pounce until the last minute. They generally did. If he weren’t, his energies would be safely and uselessly expended examining horseflesh and racing curricles. Either way, by the time de Lilly moved, Augustus would be gone.
With or without Emma.
That was all he had. One day. One day to convince Emma of his good intentions and persuade her to leave behind everything she knew for an uncertain future in an unfamiliar country, all for love of him.
Put that way, it sounded pretty damn improbable. Improbable? Try impossible.
From inside the theatre, thunder rumbled.
Chapter 32
All the world may not be young
Nor truth on every sailor’s tongue,
But this tongue, this truth, these I trust
Because my heart says I must.
—Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby, Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts
“For I shall bring you crimson leaves.”
On the stage, Kort was doing a credible, if not an inspired job as Americanus. From her tower, all that could be seen of Cytherea was her long blond wig as Kort declaimed to her the list of wonders that awaited her in the new world.
“And rippling wheat in golden sheaves.”
It wasn’t Kort’s fault that he sounded like he was reading off a ship’s inventory—which, when one came down to it, was rather what he was. Not everyone could take those words and make of them what Augustus had, imbuing them with magic far beyond their basic form. He had taken them and turned them from an inventory into an incantation.
Just as he had now. Emma’s fingers tightened on her fan, so hard she could feel the delicate wood slats begin to crack beneath the strain. Crowns of daisies and beds of violets. Warm fires on cold days. Apprentices skidding on the frozen Thames. Like Americanus’s leaves and berries, they were humble and homey items, a far cry from the usual enticements of jewels and money, position and power.
Emma ached for that simple hearth as she never had for diamonds or status.
On the stage, Kort held up his hands to Cytherea, bearing in them a bowl laden with crimson fruit. “A cache of berries, red and sweet…”
Like pomegranate seeds. In the myth, the fruit lured Persephone to Hades. In their masque, Americanus dangled them in front of Cytherea to entice her to the new world, that new world that was Emma’s old world, so familiar and rich and well loved.
If she went with Augustus, it would be only to the other side of the Channel. There was no threat of strange diseases or Indian attack or any of the other fears that might have bedeviled her ancestors going from the Old World to the New.
No, the only risk was to her heart.
Mme. de Rémusat’s shrill voice broke into Emma’s thoughts. She twisted in her seat to look back at Emma. “How wonderfully rustic!” she gushed. “Is that what they all wear back where you’re from?”
It took Emma a moment to realize that she was referring to Kort, all tricked out in buckskins and ragged shirt. To Emma, the ensemble looked palpably like the costume it was. The closest Kort had ever come to the frontier was Albany.
“Oh, all the time,” said Emma. “I used to sew my own skirts from skins. It was the scraping them that was so tedious.”
Mme. de Rémusat’s mouth pursed. “There’s no need to make fun,” she said, and settled back in a huff.
Next to her, Mme. Junot cast Emma a quick grin. Part of the Bonapartes’ old Corsican connection, Mme. Junot felt that Mme. de Rémusat put on airs.
“Is silence too much to ask?” demanded the Emperor loudly.
The chorus on stage abruptly stopped singing.
“Not you!” barked the Emperor.
The chorus resumed, somewhat raggedly, having lost their note in the interim. Talma, veteran of the Comédie-Française, buried his head in his hands. In her tower, Jane continued to look ethereal and lovely, the only one unperturbed.
Emma could only be grateful that the Emperor’s interruption hadn’t occurred during Miss Gwen’s pirate chorus. There was no telling what might have happened.
Bristling, Mme. de Rémusat sent an “I told you so” look over her shoulder at Emma. All too aware of the Emperor sitting two rows ahead, Emma found herself in the annoying position of being unable to point out that she had started it.
Good heavens, they were all behaving like five-year-olds.
This, thought Emma, sinking down in her seat in the back of the imperial box, was what she had to look forward to if she stayed in Paris. The Emperor and his wife sat in the front, with cousin Robert in the place of honor at the Emperor’s right. It helped to be the envoy of a foreign power, even a not so very powerful power. Behind them, in a phalanx armored in feathers and jewels, sat Mme. Bonaparte’s ladies-in-waiting. The Emperor’s aides, less privileged, were left to crouch on stools along the sides, casting glan
ces at the ladies and occasionally the stage. Guards—once consular guards, now imperial—ranged themselves at the entrance to the box, controlling access to the Emperor.
At the back sat Emma. The Emperor was cross with her, she knew, for refusing Mme. Bonaparte’s offer. As the American envoy’s niece, however, and the author of the masque, she couldn’t be entirely slighted. So here she sat, at the back of the box, simultaneously honored and chastised, her silk skirt neatly arrayed around her legs, her hands folded demurely in her lap, and her mind in turmoil.
Emma cast a longing look at the back of Hortense’s head. Imperial princess that she now was, Hortense was seated on Mme. Bonaparte’s left, too far away to whisper or gossip or drag outside for a hurried consultation.
But what would she say to her if she could say it? I think I’m in love with an English spy? Who also happens to be a truly awful poet? And he’s going to leave within the next few days and he wants me to go with him and I don’t know what to do.
Yes, that was going to go over well.
What would Hortense say? Emma realized that she didn’t know anymore. Her old friend, the one who had helped pack her belongings for her flurried flight with Paul, had cares and worries and divided loyalties she could only begin to understand. She would never doubt Hortense’s friendship or her love, but what would she say if Emma told her she was in love with a man sworn to bring down her stepfather’s empire?
From long ago, as clearly as though she were sitting next to her, Emma could hear her best friend’s voice.
Yes, yes, said Hortense. But do you love him?
But it’s not that simple, Emma argued with the phantom Hortense in her head. We’re older now. She was sure there were other considerations, if only she could remember what they were. Family? Hers was thousands of miles away, estranged long ago. Friends, then. Adele, careless and restless. Hortense, ever more a part of Bonaparte’s new imperial circle.
Carmagnac? Carmagnac practically ran itself, the fields drained, all of Paul’s reforms accomplished.
Emma could feel her excuses running through her fingers like straw. She frowned at the back of Mme. de Rémusat’s head. When she broke it down into its component parts, this life she had built for herself in France proved a surprisingly ephemeral thing. Cousin Robert was due to return to America; Mr. Fulton was going to England. Her structure of friends and acquaintances was collapsed around her as neatly and noiselessly as a Gypsy tent.
Which left her, then, with that one, crucial question: Do you love him?
On the stage, Americanus had retired for the night, and the pirates were beginning to creep around Cytherea’s tower. Emma found herself envying Cytherea, not for her beauty, but for the fact that her decisions were made for her. Carried off by pirates, rescued by the hero, she never had to wrestle with her heart or her conscience. There was a divinity that shaped her end: her author.
Whereas Emma…Emma was dithering, and she knew it.
She could toss a coin, she thought wildly. Heads, I love him; tails, I love him not. On the new coinage, the head was Bonaparte’s. That would be an amusing bit of irony right there, the Emperor unintentionally blessing her elopement with his enemy.
“But I must!” came an urgent whisper from the curtains that blocked the entrance to the box.
Emma twisted in her chair, grateful for any distraction. All she could see was a hand being waved about for emphasis, a hand and a bit of lace on the sleeve.
Whoever it was sounded as though he were in a high state of excitement, so excited that he was tipsy with it. “I must see the Emperor right now. I have urgent tidings for him. Important tidings.”
The guard was unimpressed. “The Emperor is not to be disturbed until after the performance.”
“But you don’t even know what my news is,” said the other man indignantly. “I assure you, the Emperor will want to know.”
The curtains moved and Emma could see him at last, Horace de Lilly, in a green waistcoat with cameo fobs. His light brown hair was charmingly tousled around his face, his cheeks pink.
He tugged at the guard’s arm. “Wouldn’t the Emperor want to know about…treason?”
The imperial box was warm, but Emma felt a chill prickle along the skin of her arms. Her nails dug into the arms of her chair. There were many treasons in France, she reassured herself. Georges for one. Treason didn’t necessarily mean Augustus.
De Lilly’s connections were with the aristocratic émigré community. If he were going to denounce anyone, it would be one of his childhood playmates. Perhaps someone had slighted his waistcoat or taken one of his toys away.
The thought didn’t bring the relief it should. Even if not from de Lilly, Augustus was in danger every moment he remained in France. Emma felt a sudden, impetuous need to urge him to flee, flee now. But that was foolish, wasn’t it? He knew what he was doing. He knew the risks.
Even so. Her eyes took in the guards stationed all around the theatre, seeing them as though for the first time. Guards at the imperial box, guards by the stage, guards on the stage, dressed as pirates. The new emperor didn’t stint on precautions, even at his wife’s beloved Malmaison.
The guard at the door took in de Lilly’s youth, his waistcoat, the slight English accent that persisted from a childhood in exile in England. Emma could see him arriving at the same conclusions she had, placing de Lilly in a compartment roughly labeled trouble-making aristo.
“After the performance,” said the guard implacably.
Horace jiggled with frustration, setting his watch fobs jangling. “But by then the poet may have got away!”
The guard pointedly let the heavy velvet curtain drop, right in de Lilly’s flushed face.
On the stage, the first signs of the storm were brewing. Emma could hear the distant rumble of thunder, and the pattering sound of raindrops, cunningly created by pebbles in a jar. Thank goodness for it. It masked the frantic pattering of her heart, clattering a mile a minute. The poet. There was only one man at Malmaison who could, with confidence, be called the poet. The gray silk storm clouds drew together, eked out with a fine haze of mist. At any moment, the full force of the storm’s fury would be unleashed.
Right on Augustus’s unwitting head.
Energy crackled through Emma like lightning; she could feel her fingers tingle with it. The masque was half done, proceeding unevenly but inevitably towards the storm, the sea battle, the reconciliation and happily-ever-afters.
They had an hour.
Leaning forward, she whispered in Mme. Junot’s ear, “There’s something not quite right with the storm machine. I’m going to get someone to fix it.”
Mme. Junot nodded without looking at her. “Good luck,” she whispered back.
Emma appreciated the sentiment. She rather thought she would need it.
She forced herself to move slowly, even though every instinct urged her to run. Her silk skirts dragged on her legs; her fan weighed on her wrist like an anchor. She wanted to shake free of them and sprint, but she confined herself to a measured saunter, smiling and nodding at her acquaintances as she went.
Augustus was standing at the back of the theatre, in the section reserved for those not favored enough to deserve seats. She saw him look up at her, his eyes eager, hopeful.
“The wind machine isn’t working properly,” she said, loudly enough that the people on both sides could hear it. “I need you to fix it. Now.”
The wind machine? They both knew he couldn’t tell one end of a machine from another.
Augustus cloaked his surprise. Her expression was imperious, but her eyes were watchful, her nails digging into the palms of her gloves. All his instincts immediately went on the alert. Something was wrong.
“Immediately, Madame,” he said, with a deep bow, following her through the door, between the laughing courtiers, who were reaching their own conclusions about the urgent summons. Their comments about ballast might not be original, but they certainly made their point.
Emma
signaled silence, drawing him several yards away from the theatre, into the lee of a potted tree.
“If this is a seduction attempt…” Augustus began hopefully.
“It’s Horace de Lilly,” Emma said abruptly. “He knows.”
“Of course, he knows. He’s—” Augustus’s brain belatedly kicked back into service. “Wait. How do you know about de Lilly?”
Emma’s face was very pale in the starlight. “He came to the Emperor’s box. He demanded to speak to him. He said he had great tidings to impart. About treason.”
A double cross. He might have suspected it, but much as one played with the idea of drowning on a crossing. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but no one ever expected it. Augustus conjured up the image of old Mme. de Lilly, the spider in her web. She wanted the de Lilly estates back. How better to prove one’s loyalty to the new regime than a bit of double-dealing.
Augustus faced Emma. “What did he tell the Emperor?”
“He didn’t have the chance,” she said, and Augustus felt the weight on his chest lighten. “The guards wouldn’t admit him. They made him wait until after the performance.”
“Which means,” said Augustus, glancing sideways at the theatre, “that I have an hour. At the most.”
An hour. An hour to grab the plans, steal a horse, and get well away before Bonaparte could hear the news and snap into action. He would have to abandon any hope of taking Fulton with him. Fulton might come later, of his own volition. Or not. That wasn’t the worst of it.
Augustus looked wordlessly at Emma, struck silent by the sheer hopelessness of it all. What was there to say? He couldn’t ask her to come with him, riding pillion, on a midnight flight through the night. There wasn’t even time for a proper good-bye.
“Emma—” he said brokenly.
“I have a plan,” Emma blurted out.
“What?”
Diamonds dazzled his eyes as she waved her hands about. Her eyes blazed brighter than the jewels, excited and anxious all at the same time. “I have a plan,” she repeated rapidly. “It may not be the best plan, but—can you trust me?”