Lauren Willig - The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Miles muttered something about being grateful that his sisters were a good deal older. “You turn into a complete bore when you’re chaperoning Hen, you know,” he grumbled.

Richard raised one eyebrow at Miles, a skill that had taken several months of practice in front of his mirror when he was twelve, but had been well worth the investment. “At least I didn’t let my sister dress me up in her petticoat when I was five.”

Miles’s jaw dropped. “Who told you about that?” he demanded indignantly.

Richard grinned. “I have my sources,” he said airily.

Miles, not a top agent of the War Office for nothing, considered for a moment and his eyes narrowed. “You can tell your source that she’s going to have to find someone else to fetch her lemonade at the Alsworthys’ ball tomorrow night unless she apologizes. You can also tell her that I’ll accept either a verbal or a written apology as long as it’s suitably abject. And that means very, very abject,” he added darkly. Miles snatched his hat and gloves up from a side table. “Oh, stop grinning already! It wasn’t that amusing.”

Richard rubbed his chin as though in deep thought. “Tell me, Miles, was it a lacy petticoat?”

With a wordless grunt of annoyance, Miles turned on his heel and stomped out of the room.

Picking up the news sheet Miles had left behind, Richard settled back down into the comfortable leather chair.

Two weeks, he thought. In two weeks he would be back in France, risking discovery and death.

Richard couldn’t wait.

“How do you possibly expect to find the Purple Gentian?” Jane hurried after Amy into the airy white-and-blue-papered room they had shared since they were old enough to abandon the nursery. “The French have been trying for years!”

Their bedroom was beginning to look like a modiste’s shop struck by a hurricane. A garter dangled off the clock on the mantelpiece, Amy’s bed was snowed under by a pile of frothy petticoats, and, somehow, with one wild fling, Amy had even managed to land a bonnet on the canopy of Jane’s bed. Jane could just make out the tips of pink ribbons dangling over the edge of the canopy.

Amy had gotten it into her head that if she packed at once she might be able to leave the next day. It was, reflected Jane, a typically Amy reaction. If Amy had been around for the creation of the world, Jane had no doubt that she would have chivvied the Lord into creating the earth in two days rather than seven.

Several pairs of stockings came whizzing Jane’s way. “Remember that inn the papers said the Scarlet Pimpernel always stopped at? The one in Dover?”

“The Fisherman’s Rest,” Jane supplied.

“Well the Shropshire Intelligencer said that they thought the Purple Gentian might be continuing the tradition. So . . . what if we were to stop at the Fisherman’s Rest before we sail? With a little careful eavesdropping, who knows?”

“The Shropshire Intelligencer, ” Jane reminded her, “also carried a piece about the birth of a two-headed goat in Nottingham. And last month’s edition claimed that His Majesty had gone mad again and appointed Queen Charlotte Regent.”

“Oh, all right, I’ll grant you that it’s not the most reliable publication—”

“Not the most reliable?”

“Did you see today’s headline, Jane? In the Spectator, mind you, not the Intelligencer .” Snatching up the much-thumbed sheet of paper, Amy read rapturously, “ENGLAND’S FAVORITE FLOWER FILCHES FRENCH FILES IN DARING RAID.”

Amy was cut off by the scrape of the door inching open. It couldn’t move more than an inch or two, because Amy’s trunk, which she had dragged out from under the bed, was blocking it. “Begging your pardon, Miss Jane, Miss Amy”—Mary, the upstairs maid, poked her head in and bobbed a curtsy—“but the mistress said I was to see if you would be needing any help dressing for dinner.”

Amy’s face contorted with horror like Mrs. Siddons performing Lady Macbeth’s mad scene. “Oh, no! It’s Thursday!”

“Yes, miss, and tomorrow’s Friday,” Mary supplied helpfully.

“Oh, drat, drat, drat, drat,” Amy was muttering to herself, so it was left to Jane to smile graciously and say, “We won’t be requiring your assistance, Mary. You may tell Mama that Miss Amy and I will be down shortly.”

“Yes, miss.” The maid curtsied again, closing the door carefully behind her.

“Drat, drat, drat,” said Amy.

“You might wear your peach muslin,” suggested Jane.

“Tell them I have the headache—no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious.”

“At least half a dozen people saw you running across the lawn in perfect health not half an hour ago.”

“We’ll tell them it was a sudden case?” Jane shook her head at Amy and handed her the peach gown. Amy docilely turned her back to Jane to be unbuttoned. “I haven’t the patience for Derek tonight! Not tonight of all nights! I have to plan !” Her voice was slightly muffled as Jane pulled the clean frock over her head. “Why did it have to be a Thursday?”

Jane gave Amy a sympathetic pat on the back as she began buttoning her into the peach dress.

They would be twelve for dinner tonight, as they were every Thursday. Every Thursday night, with the same inevitable regularity as the shearing of the sheep, an outmoded carriage with a blurred crest on the side rattled down the drive. Every Thursday, out piled their nearest neighbors: Mr. Henry Meadows, his wife, his spinster sister, and his son, Derek.

Amy flung herself into the low chair before the dressing table and began to brush her short curls with a violence that made them crackle and frizz around her face. “I really don’t think I can take it much longer, Jane. Derek is more than anyone should be expected to bear!”

“There are easier ways to escape Derek than to go chasing the Purple Gentian.” Jane reached around Amy to pluck a locket on a blue ribbon off the dressing table.

“How can you even combine their names in the same sentence?” Amy protested with a grimace. Resting her chin on clasped hands, she grinned up at Jane in the mirror. “Admit it. You want to go chasing the Purple Gentian just as much as I do. Don’t try to pretend you’re not excited.”

“I suppose someone needs to go with you and keep you out of scrapes.” There was no mistaking the glint in Jane’s gray eyes.

Amy leaped up from her stool and flung her arms around her cousin. “Finally!” she crowed. “After all these years!”

“And all our planning.” Jane hugged Amy back exultantly. She added, “I do draw the line at soot on my teeth and Papa’s old periwig.”

“Agreed. I’m sure I can think of something much, much cleverer than that. . . .”

Jane pulled back with a sudden frown. “What do we do if Papa says no?”

“Oh, Jane! How could he possibly refuse?”

“Absolutely out of the question,” said Uncle Bertrand.

Amy bristled in indignation. “But . . .”

Uncle Bertrand forestalled her with a wave of his fork, sending a trail of gravy snaking across the dining room. “I’ll not see a niece of mine among those murderous French. Black sheep, the lot of them! Eh, vicar?” Uncle Bertrand drove an elbow into the vicar’s black frock coat, causing the vicar to reel into the footman and the footman to spill half the carafe of claret onto the Aubusson rug.

Amy put down her heavily engraved silver fork. “May I remind you, Uncle Bertrand, that I myself am half French?”

Uncle Bertrand had little sense of tone or nuance. “Never mind that, lass,” he replied jovially. “Your pa was a good chap for all that he was a Frenchman. We don’t hold it against you. Eh, Derek?”