Lauren Willig - The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Egyptian artifacts might seem a topic beyond the scope of the War Office. But not when their top agent played the role of Bonaparte’s pet scholar.

When Richard created the Purple Gentian, the talent for ancient languages that had stunned his schoolmasters at Eton had come to his aid once again. While Sir Percy had pretended to be a fop, Richard bored the French into complacency with long lectures about antiquity. When Frenchmen demanded to know what he was doing in France, and Englishmen reproached him for fraternizing with the enemy, Richard opened his eyes wide and proclaimed, “But a scholar is a citizen of the world!” Then he quoted Greek at them. They usually didn’t ask again. Even Gaston Delaroche, the Assistant Minister of Police, who had sworn in blood to be avenged on the Purple Gentian and had the tenacity of . . . well, of Richard’s mother, had stopped snooping around Richard after being subjected to two particularly knotty passages from the Odyssey .

Bonaparte’s decision to invade Egypt had been a disaster for France but a triumph for Richard. He already had a reputation as a scholar and an antiquarian; who better to join the group of academics Bonaparte was bringing with him to Egypt? Under cover of antiquarian fervor, Richard had gathered more information about French activities than Egyptian antiquities. With Richard’s reports, the English had been able to destroy the French fleet and strand Bonaparte in Egypt for months.

Over those long months in Egypt, Richard became fast friends with Bonaparte’s stepson, Eugene de Beauharnais, a sunny, good-natured boy with a genius for friendship. When Eugene introduced Richard to Bonaparte, presenting him as a scholar of antiquities, Bonaparte had immediately engaged Richard in a long debate over Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars . Impressed by Richard’s cool argument and immense store of quotations, he had extended an open invitation to drop by his tent and dispute the ancient past. Within a month, he had appointed Richard his director of Egyptian antiquities. Among the sands of the French camp in Egypt, it was a rather empty title. But on their return to Paris, Richard found himself with two rooms full of artifacts and an entrée into the palace. What spy could ask for more? And now his artifacts had been moved into the palace, Bonaparte’s lair. . . .

Miles looked as though he had been handed a pile of Christmas presents in July. “And your office with it?”

“And my office with it.”

“Damn it, Richard, this is brilliant! Brilliant!” Miles so forgot himself as to raise his voice above a whisper. Quite far above a whisper.

At the far end of the room, old Falconstone stirred. “Whaaat? Eh, what?”

“I quite agree,” Richard said loudly. “Wordsworth’s poetry is quite brilliant, but I shall always prefer Catullus.”

Miles cast him a dubious glance. “Wordsworth and Catullus?” he whispered.

“Look, you were the one who shouted,” cast back Richard. “I had to come up with something.”

“If it gets around that I’ve been reading Wordsworth, I’ll be booted out of my clubs. My mistress will disown me. My reputation will be ruined,” Miles hissed in exaggerated distress.

Meanwhile, Falconstone had staggered to his feet, and did a bizarre little dance as he tried to catch his balance with his cane. Spotting Richard across the room, his face darkened to match his burgundy waistcoat.

“Blasted cheek showing your face here! After you been consorting with them Frenchies, eh, what?” Falconstone roared with the complete lack of shame of the extremely deaf and the complete lack of grammar of the extremely inbred. “Blasted cheek, I say!” He tried to poke at Richard with his cane, but the effort proved too much for him, and he would have gone tumbling had Richard not steadied him.

Glowering, Falconstone yanked his arm away and stalked off, mumbling.

Miles had jumped to his feet when Falconstone had charged Richard. He looked at his friend with concern. “Do you get much of that?”

“Only from Falconstone. I really do have to get around to freeing his son from the Temple prison one of these days.” Richard resumed his seat and drained the remainder of his scotch in a single swallow. “Don’t be such an old woman, Miles. It doesn’t bother me. Look, I prefer Falconstone’s rantings to all those debutantes twittering about the Purple Gentian. Can you imagine what I’d have to put up with if the truth got out?”

Miles cocked his head thoughtfully, sending a lock of floppy blond hair tumbling in front of his eyes. “Hmm, adoring debutantes . . .”

“Think how jealous your mistress would be,” Richard said dryly.

Miles flinched. His current mistress was an opera singer as well known for the range of her throwing arm as that of her voice. He had already courted concussion by flirting openly with a ballet dancer and had no desire to repeat the experience. “All right, all right, point taken,” he said. “Oh, damnation! I promised her I would have supper with her before the opera. She’ll probably break half the dishes in the house if I’m late.”

“Most of them over your head,” commented Richard helpfully. “Since I prefer you with your head all in one piece, you’d better relay my assignment quickly.”

“How right you are!” Miles replied fervently. He struggled to collect himself and regain the gravity incumbent upon a representative of the War Office. “All right. Your assignment. We’re pretty sure that Bonaparte is using the peace to plot an invasion of England.”

Richard nodded grimly. “I thought as much.”

“Your job is to uncover as much as you can about his preparations. We want dates, locations, and numbers, as quickly as you can get them. We’ll have a string of couriers posted from Paris to Calais to relay the information as you find it. This is it, Richard!” Miles’s eyes glowed with sporting fervor, like a hound on the trail of a fox. “ The assignment. We’re relying on you to keep old Boney out of England.”

A familiar tingle of anticipation rushed through Richard. How had Percy been able to give this up? The rush, the excitement, the challenge! Heady stuff, to know the safety of England depended upon him. Of course, Richard didn’t delude himself that he was the country’s sole hope. He knew the War Office had a good dozen spies scattered around the French capital, all striving to uncover the same things. But he also knew, without false modesty, that he was their best.

“The usual code, I suppose?” They had developed the code their first year at Eton as part of an elaborate plan to outwit their bullying proctor.

Miles nodded. “You’ll leave for Paris in two weeks?”

Richard rubbed his forehead. “Yes. I have some personal business to take care of—and I’ve promised my mother to squire Hen around to scare the fortune hunters away. Bonaparte should be away at Malmaison for most of next week, anyway, and I’ve left Geoff to keep an eye on things while I’m gone.”

“Good man, Geoff.” Miles rose and stretched. “Now if he were here, the three of us could have a bang-up night of carousing just like old times. I guess it’ll have to wait till we’ve foiled old Boney once and for all. Cry God for England, Harry, and St. George, and all that.” Miles was frantically trying to rearrange his cravat and smooth down his hair. “Damn. No time to stop off at home and get my valet to tidy me up. Oh well. Give Hen a kiss for me.”

Richard shot him a sharp look.

“On the cheek, man, on the cheek. God knows I’d never try anything improper with your sister. Not that she isn’t a beautiful girl and all that, it’s just, well, she’s your sister .”

Richard clapped his friend on the shoulder in approval. “Well said! That’s exactly the way I want you to think of her.”