The Garden Intrigue (32 page)

“Are we—are we talking about the same thing?”

“The steamship,” said Emma matter-of-factly.

“The—” Augustus blinked at her.

She had heard so much about it that she had forgotten that he might not have.

“A ship propelled by steam,” she translated. “The French call it a
chariot d’eau mu par le feu
. They’re holding a demonstration of it tomorrow.”

M
r. Fulton had a lovely day for his steamship exhibition.

The imperial couple had made an event of it. Servants had spread silk cloths to protect the ladies’ dresses from the turf. They lolled in little clusters along the bank, some reclining like Mme. Récamier, others with their legs tucked beneath them like children at a picnic, leaning forward to exclaim over a freshly picked flower or stretching to pluck a sweetmeat from the tray of a circling attendant.

Mme. Bonaparte’s personal china service was spread in opulent array on a low table laden with all the delicacies a sophisticated palate might desire. Ladies picked delicately at candied chestnuts and hothouse peaches, munching sweetmeats and flinging bits of cake to the ducks on the river. The sunlight glittered off cut-crystal glasses dangling idly from the hands of young gallants as they pressed their suits with the prettier of Mme. Bonaparte’s ladies-in-waiting, all giggles and coy fans.

Over it all, the imperial couple presided, seated on twin chairs. Augustus recognized the chairs from the gilded drawing room, incongruous in the rustic idyll in which they purported to participate. Many of the ladies, in keeping with the rural theme, had twined flowers in their hair, but Mme. Bonaparte wore a tiny gilt diadem, a token of the status she had yet to formally attain. She might be Empress by courtesy, but she hadn’t yet been crowned, a fact of which everyone was very much aware. A silk canopy held by four poles had been stretched above them to protect Mme. Bonaparte’s delicate complexion.

In the place of honor beside Mme. Bonaparte sat Robert Livingston, with his nephew, still under the canopy but less favored, standing beside him. Likewise, Robert Fulton had a place beneath the canopy but no chair. He stood by the Emperor’s left hand.

Augustus lounged on the grass, flirting idly with Mme. de Rémusat, and wondered what in the hell was going on.

A demonstration, Horace de Lilly had said. Bonaparte’s secret weapon awaited only a demonstration. But this public demonstration, held for a full audience of giggling ladies-in-waiting and yawning courtiers, was nothing like what Augustus had imagined.

Then why, if this wasn’t the device, had the flower of France’s admiralty been summoned from their various obligations to cluster behind Bonaparte’s chair?

They were all there: Rear Admiral Decres, openly fidgeting; Vice Admiral Bruix, looking tired and ill but standing nonetheless; Admiral Latouche-Tréville, commander of the Mediterranean fleet, summoned summarily from Toulon, travel strained and weary; Vice Admiral Truguet, at the very verge of the group, being punished for his public stance in opposition to the imperial title; and, with them, but slightly behind, a protective cluster of aides and lesser commanders. France’s best—or at least its most prominent—naval minds stood beneath a silk canopy sipping champagne punch and waiting as Robert Livingston, at a sign from the Emperor, heaved himself to his feet and raised his champagne glass in the air.

“My thanks,” he began, “to His Excellency the Emperor for making my stay in France such a pleasant and productive one.”

The Emperor inclined his head curtly in reply, striving for imperial dignity, and missing.

“Together,” said Livingston, “we have strengthened the bond between our countries and accomplished great things.”

An appreciative murmur from the crowd. He referred, Augustus knew, to the purchase of New France, which he had brokered the year before, refilling Bonaparte’s anemic coffers and vastly increasing the size of the fledgling American republic.

“My tenure here,” said Livingston, “is sadly at an end. But before I go, it pleases me to share with you the fruits of my latest endeavor—”

At a gesture from Mme. Bonaparte, a lackey obediently moved towards the river to remove the shielding cover from whatever it was that rocked on makeshift moorings. The lackey yanked the cover off, revealing a boat
about three feet long and two feet high, with a cylinder, instead of a sail, sticking out of the middle.

“—the steamship!”

There was an entirely inappropriate giggle from one of the blankets. Everyone twisted to look. The lady-in-waiting in question flushed and hastily moved away from the gallant who had been murmuring salacious nothings in her ear.

“As I was saying,” said Livingston.

Augustus let the words wash over him and looked about for Emma. He found her on one of the blankets, safely sandwiched between Mme. Junot and another one of her Mme. Campan’s comrades, picking at a candied chestnut. Her eyes met his and she looked away, biting with unnecessary vigor into her sweetmeat. Her lips puckered at the rush of cloying sweetness.

Augustus held himself back, resisting the urge to go to her. He had made a right muck of it, hadn’t he? And he didn’t know what to say to set it right. He wanted things back the way they were, the way they had been before, when they had been comfortable and happy with each other. He wanted her fussing over him and arguing with him, popping up at his elbow to murmur idiosyncratic observations. He wanted—

Augustus caught himself short, but not soon enough, not before the image of tousled hair and parted lips, the memory of her skin against his palm and her lips against his lips left him staggered and short of breath, as though he had been sprinting instead of standing. His chest felt tight and his head ached from the sun. The glare from the river offended his eyes, too bright, too brassy.

“…partnership,” Livingston was saying, and Augustus squinted in their direction to see the younger Livingston standing at his uncle’s elbow, looking properly modest. “It takes over a week for goods to make their way from New York to Albany by ship. With Mr. Fulton’s steamship, we believe the same journey can be undertaken in under sixty hours.”

“Or fewer!” chimed in Mr. Fulton.

Goods? Sixty hours from New York to Albany instead of a week? This was all very exciting, Augustus was sure, but it wasn’t exactly the warship of his imagining. He might have believed that Horace de Lilly—young, overeager, still wet behind the ears—had misunderstood, but for the fact that the accumulated force of the admiralty was all gathered on the banks of the small stream.

What was he missing? What was there about this boat that didn’t meet the eye?

Something glittered at the corner of his vision, and Augustus felt his pulse pick up. Emma’s diamonds? No. Just Mme. de Treville raising a glass to her lips, sunlight scintillating off crystal.

“It will be better, bigger, faster,” declaimed Robert Livingston. He raised his glass to the model ship bobbing at its makeshift moorings. “We have lived long, but I can only believe there are greater works still to come. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the face of our future—the steamship.”

“The steamship.” Some of the assemblage obediently raised their glasses.

The bulk of them kept on with their picnicking and their gossiping, deeming the progress of commerce far less interesting than who had disappeared with whom into the shrubbery last night and was it really true that the princess Borghese had already abandoned her husband and was on her way back to Paris, bringing an honor guard of new lovers, a dancing bear, and, quite possibly, the Pope.

Even the admirals standing in phalanx around the chair of their Emperor looked bored. One or two seemed intrigued, on general principles, but it was an academic interest, not the focused attention of men whose careers might rest on the success or failure of this venture.

“A pretty toy,” Augustus heard Truguet murmur to Decres.

“It might be valuable,” said Decres sharply, moving away from Truguet, as though disgrace were a disease that might spread.

Truguet essayed the classic Gallic shrug, redolent of disbelief.

“If you would be so good as to do the honors?” With a bow, Robert Livingston handed the glass of champagne to Bonaparte.

“Only a glass, not a bottle?”

“It’s only a model,” Fulton hastened to explain. “The impact of an entire bottle of champagne would likely sink it before it ever got under way!”

Bonaparte looked at him from under beetled brows. “I hope your other projects are more hardy, Mr. Fulton.”

Other projects?

The Emperor poured the champagne over the ship, and the audience mustered a polite cheer as Mr. Fulton bent over his creation, coaxing it into motion. There was handshaking and backslapping and congratulatory noises made as those more politic rose to congratulate the Livingstons on their ambitious venture.

Someone joggled Augustus’s elbow, making him spill his punch. “It’s a sensible match,” said a voice in Augustus’s ear.

“Pardon?” His mind elsewhere, Augustus looked vaguely around him. His gaze settled on Horace de Lilly, decked out in a rose satin waistcoat with jade buttons. His fair-skinned face was pink with the heat of the day and, perhaps, from the glass he held in his hand.

“Madame Delagardie and Mr. Livingston.” De Lilly nodded towards the tent. Under the ruched canopy, Kortright Livingston was smiling down at an animated Emma. “Don’t you agree?”

She had gone up to congratulate him, of course, just like the others. “Emma and—”

Horace de Lilly rummaged around in his sleeve, producing a monogrammed handkerchief. “Didn’t you know? I would have thought you would, with your spending so much time together over the masque. The rumor is that they were childhood sweethearts. I hear the cousin has a good estate in—well, wherever it is that they’re from.”

“New York,” said Augustus flatly. Emma had never said anything about being childhood sweethearts, never intimated that her cousin was anything more to her than a cousin. Other than the obvious joy with which she had greeted him. And the enthusiasm with which she was speaking to him now, her hand familiarly on his arm. “What makes you think—”

“Why else would she turn down a position at court?” De Lilly dropped his voice, leaning avidly forward. “Do you have it yet? The device?”

Augustus held up a hand to silence him. “She turned down a position at court?”

De Lilly shrugged. “So my mother says. Madame Bonaparte asked her last night and Madame Delagardie said no. There is,” said the Royalist agent, “no conceivable reason for it unless she intends to leave the country. Why else refuse the font from which favor flows?”

A curious sentiment from a man pledged to bring down the regime. Or, perhaps, not so curious after all, decided Augustus, watching Emma sparkling up at her cousin. De Lilly, after all, was engaged in a variant of the same scheme, working to restore a monarch in the hopes that said monarch would be sufficiently pleased with his efforts to return the family estates and provide him a place at court. Emperor or king, the basic principle was the same. De Lilly wasn’t in it for political philosophy.

“No one turns down that sort of opportunity,” said de Lilly decidedly. “It
must
be the cousin. Just look at them.”

Augustus did and wished he hadn’t. Standing on her tiptoes, Emma brushed her lips across her cousin’s cheek. Kortright Livingston’s arm folded protectively around her waist as he bent his head for her convenience. There was a comfort to them, the comfort of old and easy acquaintance.

And something more?

“Don’t they make a handsome pair?” said de Lilly blithely.

C
ongratulations, Kort.” Emma stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss against her cousin’s cheek. “You must be very proud.”

He squeezed her waist in a perfunctory half hug. “Proud
and
privileged. Just think, Emma. No more relying on winds or tides. We’ll open up the whole country for commerce! And I get to be part of it.”

Kort’s enthusiasm reminded Emma of summers long ago, of a fair-haired boy squatting over a fallen birds’ nest, marveling over its construction. He was more in his element here than he had been in the salons of Paris or treading the boards in Bonaparte’s theatre. This was Kort as she knew and remembered him, not the uncomfortable, stilted man of the past month.

Some people, reflected Emma, just weren’t meant for the Old World. It wasn’t good or bad; it just was. She had taken immediately to the more
leisured pace of life, to the endless and pointless arguments of the salons, the debate for the sake of debate, the idea of life lived as art for its own sake, with no need to actually go about producing anything at the end of it. Kort hadn’t.

“What if you run out of rivers?” she teased.

Kort grinned at her. “Then we’ll dig canals. Where’s your Yankee initiative, Madame Delagardie?”

“Left at the altar with my old name,” quipped Emma. “I’m a slow study these days.”

“Not if what I’ve heard about Carmagnac is true.” The name sounded strange coming from Kort. Kort and Carmagnac? The two just didn’t go together.

Emma rolled her eyes. “Mr. Fulton has been telling tales out of school.”

Kort wasn’t ready to let it go. “He told me that you had kept up your husband’s plans and improved on them. He’s not a man easily impressed.”

“He means I took his suggestions,” said Emma wryly. “Isn’t that enough to convince most people of one’s intelligence?”

Flying high on champagne and success, Kort caught her hand. “Come back with me, Emma. There’s so much to be done at home, so much you could do.”

Emma looked down at their joined hands. She had convinced Kort to invest in new gloves. They were tan, elegantly cut and stiff with newness. It might have been that that accounted for the awkwardness of his touch, but she thought not.