Лорен Уиллиг: The Garden Intrigue

“It’s called Retour d’Egypte ,” explained Emma, “in honor of the First Consul’s expedition to Egypt.”

“Hence the name,” contributed Jane blandly. “If you will excuse me, there’s a wounded soul I must soothe.”

Emma followed her gaze to the doorway. Whittlesby clasped his scroll to his heart, looking soulfully at Jane.

Was it silly that it stung, just a bit?

“Wounded soul, indeed!” Emma turned back to Jane, the silk of her skirt swirling around her legs with a very satisfying swish. “It was only a flesh wound.”

“You gouged his ego,” teased Jane.

“Yes, but I left his heart alone,” said Emma severely. “You’ll lead him on if you continue to encourage him so.”

Jane made a face. “That depends on whether you believe Petrarch really loved his Laura. I’m nothing more than a poetic object of expedience.”

Emma grinned. “A muse of convenience?”

“Every poet must have one,” said Jane. “Mr. Livingston.”

With a cordial nod to Emma’s cousin, she crossed the room to rejoin the poet, accepting the arm he held out to her.

Emma watched them as they made their way across the room. Jane was tall, but the poet was a head taller. He had to bend to speak to her, the linen of his shirt stretching across a back that was broader than it had any right to be. Hefting a quill must be better exercise than it seemed.

“What was that all about?” Kort asked.

Emma yanked her attention back to her cousin.

“Oh, nothing,” she said hastily. “Just a poet.”

“I know I can trust you , Miss Wooliston, to listen to my ode without the offense of unnecessary interruptions,” Augustus proclaimed loudly.

Jane slid her arm through his, giving him a warning look under cover of her fan as she strolled with him to French doors that stood slightly ajar to allow the cool night air to reach the overheated guests. “Do come out into the garden, Mr. Whittlesby,” she said. “The night is pleasant, and I find poetry is often enhanced by its surroundings.”

“Ah, Miss Wooliston!” Augustus gestured extravagantly with his free arm, making the fabric of his sleeve billow like a ship under full sail. “But what rose could possibly compare to you?”

He opened the door that led down from the drawing room into the internal courtyard, motioning Jane to precede him. In the center of the garden, there would be no fear of being overheard. The musicians playing in the ballroom and the accumulated chatter of several hundred party guests masked their voices more effectively than any attempt at subterfuge.

There was nothing like conducting clandestine business in plain sight.

“Their bloom will fade; yours, fair lady, is rendered immortal, impressed on parchment by the unflagging labors of my humble pen.”

“Really, Mr. Whittlesby,” said Jane. “Nothing so showy as a rose.”

“A rose by any other name…”

“Would be a different poet. I thought you were borrowing from Coleridge these days.”

Mindful of potential viewers, Augustus thumped a fist against his chest. “You wound me, O cruel one. My execrations are entirely my own. With the occasional nod to Mr. Wordsworth.”

“I’m sure he would be deeply flattered to hear it. Little does he realize how much he has done to secure freedom on either side of the Channel.” Jane seated herself on a low stone bench in the center of the garden, in plain view of the many windows that surrounded them. “Would you prefer to stand or to disport yourself at my feet?”

Augustus flung himself dramatically onto the flagstones in front of her. It was too early in the season for flowers to bloom, so Balcourt had brought in flowering shrubs in faux porphyry tubs, scattering them strategically around the garden to create the illusion of abundance.

“I’ll disport,” he said. “It provides better cover.”

From the windows, all anyone would see was the familiar scene of the poet lolling at beauty’s feet, boring her with his latest ode.

Augustus unrolled the scroll of paper. “So, my fair Cytherea, I have tidings for you.”

“From across the boundless sea?”

“Close enough. My sources claim Bonaparte’s fleet is prepared to sail.”

Jane turned her head away, as though abashed by his praise. “That can’t be. His admirals wouldn’t approve the plan. It was impracticable.”

“They have now.” Augustus gazed up at her yearningly over the end of the paper, the poet worshipping his muse. They had played this game many times before. “Both Villeneuve and Decres signed off on it. The fleet is due to depart in July.”

He didn’t tell her where he had acquired his information and she didn’t ask. They both knew better than that.

Augustus looked up at her from his vantage point on the ground, marveling, not at the clean lines of cheek and jaw that were nature’s gift and not her own, but at her calm good sense, unusual in anyone at all, let alone one so young.

The Pink Carnation had burst upon the scene a little more than a year before, in the spring of 1803, with the spectacular theft of the gold that Bonaparte had intended for the manufacture of a fleet to invade England. Augustus had shrugged and gone about his business. He had been in Paris since 1792. Would-be heroes came and went. One spectacular intrigue, they went all cocky, and the next thing you knew, they were in the Bastille, babbling the names of their confederates and collaborators.

Not Augustus. He was in it for the long haul. His brief was simple. Observe, record, relay. No heroics, no direct action. Just the simple gathering and transmission of information. Idiots who went swanning about Paris in a black mask seldom lasted terribly long.

But the Pink Carnation had followed up that first success with a second and then a third. There were no unnecessary heroics, no reckless bits of daring. The French press had taken note, and so had Augustus. It had been in June that his superiors in London had ordered him to liaise with the Carnation. Augustus had gone to the rendezvous expecting a man: middle-aged, gnarled, nondescript.

Instead, he had found Jane.

In profile, her face was shadowed, the lanterns strung along the edges of the garden casting strange patterns of light and shade. There was something to be written there, something about dark and bright, her aspect, her eyes, but the words eluded him.

Augustus spared a glance at the scroll in his hands. All he had to offer was reams of endless drivel and the odd nugget of military intelligence. Quite a wooing, that. Cyrano would weep.

“But how?” she asked, tilting her head in a practiced pose of feigned interest, her face a mask of polite boredom. Her shoulders were relaxed, her hands loosely folded, her body language at complete odds with her tone, low and urgent. “A month ago, Decres said it couldn’t be done.”

Augustus took refuge behind his scroll. “A month ago, they didn’t have the device.”

“The device? What sort of device?”

“That’s the rub,” said Augustus. “My source doesn’t know what it is. The device, Decres called it, and that was all. Whatever it is, though, they seem to set a great deal of store in it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “Aside from professional courtesy.”

“You know I don’t like to ask for favors—”