The Garden Intrigue (37 page)

The familiar refrain grated on her ears.
Not my fault, not my fault, not my fault
. She had been saying it for so long, and, yet, what did it really mean? Her fault, his fault, Fate’s fault, the outcome was the same. It was going on four years now. Soon Paul would have been dead longer than they had been together, and they had been together only for a fraction of the time they had officially been together.

Fine, so perhaps she had been using Paul as an excuse. And perhaps Augustus had a bit of a point when it came to Marston—or a lot of a point. But that didn’t mean she shirked her duties or hid from obligation or whatever else it was that he was trying to accuse her of. After all, there was Carmagnac, thought Emma, brightening. Always Carmagnac.

Only there wasn’t, really. For all that she took credit for it, all she had done was complete Paul’s plans in the most minimal possible of ways. She might have used her friendship with Mr. Fulton to improve upon those plans a bit, but it had still been Paul’s work, not hers. It had taken very little effort to take Mr. Fulton’s sketches and dispatch them to Paul’s old steward at Carmagnac. She dispensed funds when asked and went down once a year to survey the fields and think Profound Thoughts about the life that hadn’t been, but that was the extent of her involvement in Carmagnac. She could get along very well without Carmagnac, and Carmagnac could get along very well without her.

What had she done that was hers? Hers and not someone else’s? When had she taken a step that was entirely of her own choosing and, having stepped it, stayed with it?

“Madame Delagardie?”

She couldn’t even commit to a conversation. Mr. Fulton was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to say something.

Emma shook her head ruefully. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fulton,” she said. “I didn’t catch a word of that.”

“It will be easier to show you,” he said kindly, absolving her of inattention. His lip curled. “Apparently my powers of description leave something to be desired.”

Emma attempted to make up for her lapse with an excess of sympathy. “I am sorry your venture proved unfruitful.”

Fulton grimaced. “So am I. It’s been months in the planning, months of back and forth, a full demonstration in Boulogne, and now…He’s angry because I didn’t bring a full-size model with me! That silly little river behind the house isn’t deep enough.”

“It was deep enough for the steamship, wasn’t it?” Until Achille sank it. Only to be expected of a son of Caroline.

Fulton dismissed that. “Yes, but this isn’t a steamship. It’s a—well, it is what it is.” His face set in hard lines. “I’ve had enough of France anyway. I had a much better time of it in England. They, at least, knew how to appreciate the power of innovation. They didn’t string a man along from committee to committee and then tell him he has to add an extra torpedo.”

“I can see how that might be rather wearying.” Emma had no idea what he was on about, but the venting seemed to be doing him good.

“If Bonaparte doesn’t like my
Nautilus
as it is, I’m sure I can find someone else who will.”

“Of course,” said Emma soothingly. “I’m sure it’s a brilliant machine. But what is it?”

“It’s a submarine,” he said abruptly, and pushed open the door of the theatre. “A ship that sails under the water.”

W
asn’t the point of ships to stay above the water? A little thing about not drowning? Emma shook that aside. “Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll be able to reach some accommodation with the Emperor.”

“Or not,” said Fulton. He straightened his shoulders and ostentatiously examined his surroundings, deliberately putting an end to the discussion. “Now, where have you put the wave machine?”

“It’s back here,” said Emma, leading him down the aisle between the seats. On the stage, a number of men in tights and red bandannas cowered in various stages of abject subjection as their fearless leader exhorted them on to bigger and better piracy.

“Remember!” shouted Miss Gwen. “Always pillage
before
you burn! Desmoulins, that means you!”

Desmoulins toyed with his gold earring. “I just thought…”

“Don’t!” Miss Gwen snapped. “Less thinking, more plundering!”

“She does know that it’s all make-believe, doesn’t she?” whispered Fulton to Emma.

Emma looked at Miss Gwen decked out in a tunic-type costume, complete with purple sash and what Emma was fairly sure was a real rather than a pasteboard cutlass. The cutlass blade flashed dangerously close to the ropes holding up the scenery for Act II.

“I do hope so,” Emma said. She led Mr. Fulton through the door at the side of the stage, where a confusion of props littered two long tables, none of them in their proper places. The wave machine was still in pieces on the floor, although someone had moved the pieces to one side, jumbling them any which way in the process. “There’s your machine, all in bits still, I’m afraid.”

“I have the plans in my room,” said Mr. Fulton. He began rolling up his sleeves. “But I believe I can manage this from memory.”

“You’re very kind,” said Emma, and stepped back to let him pass.

The room looked very different in daylight. Dust motes danced in the sleepy sunlight, giving the space a hazy air. Last night, it had seemed endless, an Aladdin’s cave of treasures, filled with dark alleys and treacherous corners, a mysterious and slightly dangerous place. Now it was simply itself, a reasonably large storage room, blocked off into bits by tottering piles of old scenery.

In the corner, Mr. Fulton began sorting busily through bits and pieces of machinery, muttering to himself and wiping off stray parts on the tail of his coat. Emma left him to it and wandered in the direction of the painted backdrop of Venice behind which she and Augustus had sat last night. She felt uneasy and slightly sick, the way she had when that first letter had arrived from her parents after the elopement, knowing that steps had been taken that couldn’t be untaken, that there was no way to smooth everything over and make it all pleasant again.

What was said couldn’t be unsaid.

“Emma?”

Venice undulated, the houses collapsing in on themselves.

As Emma caught her breath, Jane ducked neatly beneath the canvas, Venice bunched up in one hand, a script in the other.

“You scared me,” Emma said. “I didn’t realize anyone was there.”

Jane indicated her script. “I was going over my lines while Miss Gwen puts her pirates through their paces. It’s much quieter in here than out there.”

Emma couldn’t argue with the wisdom of that. Through the partition, she could hear Miss Gwen’s voice, raised in harangue. Behind Jane, she could see the rowboat she and Augustus had shared last night, mundane now in the afternoon light, nothing but a rowboat.

Jane let Venice fall. It swung back into place, shrouding the boat once again in obscurity. The Campanile looked down its bell tower at Emma.

“Is something wrong?”

Emma made a face. “I had a row with Mr. Whittlesby.”

“About the masque?”

“What else?”

“He can be rather flighty, can’t he?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Not in so many words, at any rate. She thought back over their long association. “We met nearly every day for over a month and he was never once late. Not once.”

In fact, for a man who couldn’t be trusted to wear a waistcoat, he had been remarkably reliable. Reliable, patient, hardworking.…Oh, for heaven’s sake, Emma told herself. Enough. Just because she was feeling guilty was no reason to canonize the man.

“The poetry does get to one after a while,” said Jane in commiserating tones. “All that rhyme and metaphor and so forth. You’ve been very good to put up with him for as long as you have.”

Put up with him? She and Jane had happily mocked Augustus before, laughing over his exaggerated rhymes, his melodramatic airs. But he hadn’t been Augustus then. He had been Mr. Whittlesby. And it seemed, somehow, unkind for Jane to be standing there, serene in white muslin, casting
judgment on Augustus when she had so recently crushed his hopes. Callous, even. Emma hadn’t thought her friend could be callous.

Emma wordlessly shook her head.

For a moment, Jane was silent too. She said, with unaccustomed hesitation, “Was it anything to do with me?”

“Why should it be about you? You don’t want him anyway.”

The horrible words came out before she could stop them. Emma pressed a hand to her lips. She could feel her fingers trembling.

“Emma?” said Jane. She didn’t stare—Jane would never do anything so graceless as stare—but her attention fixed on Emma with a great deal of concern. “What is this?”

Oh, what was the use?

“I know about yesterday,” Emma said despairingly. “I know about the two of you.”

“About the two of—” For a moment, Jane looked as near to perturbed as Emma had ever seen her. “About what?”

“Your conversation,” said Emma, which was just another way of saying the same thing without saying anything at all. “Augustus told me he had—”

“He had what?” Jane’s face was entirely remote. She might have been a stranger, rather than the woman with whom Emma had gossiped and laughed and compared bonnets.

“You knew how he felt about you,” said Emma wretchedly. “Couldn’t you have been a little kinder about it? Not that it’s all your fault. I didn’t mean to imply that. I know we all made fun—and he did make such a show of it—but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t real emotion there. Of some sort.”

Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t Jane’s reaction. Jane’s face relaxed. She seemed almost amused. “Is that all this is about?”

“All?” Emma’s voice was sharper than she had intended. “I know this may seem comical to you, but you didn’t see him last night, Jane. He was hurt, genuinely hurt.”

“Hmm,” said Jane. “I’m sure he’ll get over it. A few cantos, and he’ll feel quite the thing again.”

Emma bristled. It didn’t matter that she had said much the same thing, and crueler. She wasn’t the one he had been in love with.

“One doesn’t just get over a broken heart.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Jane simply. “Matters of the heart aren’t my area of expertise.”

For a moment, Emma was distracted from the question of Augustus. She looked at her friend, so sought after, so feted, and yet, in her own way, so very alone.

“Don’t you miss it?” Emma said. “Being in love is—” How to explain it? Terrible and wonderful all at once. Messy, unpredictable, occasionally dreadful, and yet so incredibly vital.

Jane brushed the question aside. “Whatever it is that Mr. Whittlesby might have wanted or needed of me,” she said matter-of-factly, “I doubt love was at the heart of it.”

Memories of breath against her cheek, hands in her hair, lips against her neck, two feet away and a century removed.

“You don’t mean to imply—not Augustus!”

It took Jane a moment to catch Emma’s meaning. When she did, her eyebrows shot up so high, they nearly touched her hairline. “Heavens, no! Mr. Whittlesby is no Marston.” Completely oblivious to any implications that might have for Emma, she went blithely on. “I simply meant that Mr. Whittlesby’s interest in me is primarily”—she considered for a moment before settling on the appropriate word—“professional.”

“Professional?”

“His poetry,” Jane specified, in case Emma needed specification. “Every poet needs a muse.”

“That doesn’t mean he might not fancy himself in love with his muse,” said Emma. She felt, suddenly, very weary.

What a tangle. Jane couldn’t help not being in love with Augustus any
more than he could have helped fancying himself in love with Jane, or Emma could have helped—

No. Emma pushed the thought from her mind. What was the use of adding another hopeless passion to the pile?

“Nonsense,” said Jane firmly, so firmly that Emma wondered, fleetingly, whether Jane really had been quite so unaware of Augustus’s intentions. “If it is a fancy, it’s a passing one. I imagine sculptors fancy themselves in love with their statues, but that doesn’t mean they expect the marble to reciprocate.”

“But you’re not marble,” said Emma. “And neither is he.”

“Why this sudden interest in Mr. Whittlesby’s emotions?” Jane’s voice changed as she looked at Emma’s face. “You’re not— Emma?”

Emma pressed her lips together, not trusting herself to say anything. “We’re friends,” she said. “We had a row.”

“You always said it was only the breeches,” Jane said softly. “Pure aesthetics, you said.”

“That was before I knew him,” said Emma, in a very small voice.

Jane set down her script very carefully, tapping the pages into order. “Are you sure you know him now?”

“What do you mean?’

Jane didn’t meet Emma’s eyes. “I mean,” she said carefully, “that Mr. Whittlesby is a very attractive man. And he can be a very charming one. But he isn’t…”

“Isn’t what?”

“Exactly steady,” said Jane, with the air of one navigating choppy waters. She reached out a hand to touch Emma’s sleeve. “There are better places to trust your heart.”

Emma twitched away. “I thought matters of the heart weren’t your expertise.”

“No, but I do know Mr. Whittlesby,” said Jane.

“Do you?” Emma thought of all the times she had seen Augustus kneeling in tableau at Jane’s feet, all the verse he had addressed to her, all the
overblown sentiments, and, far worse, the private looks of longing. Something dark and nasty unfurled in her chest. “Or are you just afraid to lose your acolyte?”

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed,” Jane said reasonably. “Mr. Whittlesby is all very well for a—a drawing room flirtation, but he’s not settling-down material. He’s a poet.”

“You say
poet
as though it were akin to pirate! It’s not a crime against society to write poetry.”

“That depends on the poetry,” snapped Miss Gwen, coming up behind them.