The Garden Intrigue (42 page)

“Yes?” It was still stifling hot in the room, but Emma felt cold, cold and alarmed without being quite sure why. She looked up at him hopefully, far too conscious of her own disarray, of the sudden removal from intimacy to distance. “Whatever it is, surely it can’t be all that bad.”

“Mmph,” said Augustus enigmatically.

Emma heard paper crinkle and realized she was crushing Mr. Fulton’s plans between her fingers.

“You’re beginning to scare me,” she said, only half jokingly.

“What I have to tell you,” Augustus said, “places the power of life or death in your hands. Not only my life,” he added, “but those of others as well.”

The words ought to have sounded melodramatic. They didn’t. He spoke them in a simple, matter-of-fact tone that sent a chill down Emma’s spine.

Pressing her lips together, she nodded to show that she understood, even though she didn’t understand, not one bit.

Augustus looked at the documents in Emma’s lap. “Those papers didn’t get there by accident. I put them there.”

“But why?” she asked.

Augustus took a deep breath and lifted his eyes to hers. “Because I am—and have been for some time—an agent for the English government.”

“An agent,” Emma repeated. Her mind scrabbled uselessly with the word. She had an agent. He managed her property for her. Somehow, she didn’t think that was the sort of agent to which Augustus referred, not given the way he was looking at her, as though he had just dragged his guts
out to be pecked by particularly vicious vultures. Not just an agent. An agent for the English government. Under ordinary circumstances, that might mean any number of things. But not now, not in a time of war, with all official diplomatic and commercial communication between the two countries forbidden. “You mean a spy?”

“I prefer master of inquiries,” said Augustus.

Emma gaped at him. There he sat, his long hair curling around his face, the neck of his shirt untied where she had untied it, looking so normal, so familiar, and yet so ineffably different. It was something in his expression that had changed, something in the way he held himself.

“You’re not—this is not—” Emma floundered. “You mean it.”

“Every word,” he said.

“But—” How could that be? He was a fixture of the Parisian scene. He had been here a good ten years or more. Did that mean for ten years, he—Emma’s mind shied away from the thought. “Then, your poetry…”

“A front,” he said quietly. “And a code.”

Through a glass, darkly, she could remember standing with him in Bonaparte’s new gallery in the Louvre Palace. She could hear her own voice, in echo, saying,
It’s all an act, isn’t it? You’re much more sensible than you sound
. He had been taken aback, but only for a moment, before he had answered, oh so glibly, that patrons prefer their poets poetical. And she had believed him.

“That’s why you sound one way in public and another in private. It’s not just because your patrons expect a poet to sound poetical.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

“When I realized that you weren’t what you claimed to be, weren’t you afraid I might find you out?”

Augustus studied her face for a moment. “No,” he said gently.

The word hit Emma like a slap across the face.

“No?” she echoed, knowing that in it was encapsulated a worse insult than she could immediately comprehend. She forced out a laugh. “No, of course not. Why would I? Not silly Madame Delagardie? You must have thought me such a fool.”

“I don’t think you a fool.”

Didn’t he? Emma pressed back against the wall, the thin pillow bunched against her back. He had known she would never figure it out on her own. And she hadn’t. She wouldn’t have. Not even now. He might have given her a ridiculous story about the plans—no idea how they got there, part of a prank, insulation for the cold nights—she would have believed any of it, just as she had believed him before. Emma wrapped her arms around herself to stop herself from shaking.

“Why are you telling me this now?” she asked shrilly.

“Because we promised each other honesty,” Augustus said simply.

Honesty? Emma stared at him, at his familiar-strange face, at the deep brown eyes regarding her so steadily and so sadly, and felt a burning rage boil up inside her. He had lied to her. He had lied to her about everything and he dared to speak to her about honesty?

Nothing, nothing at all was as she had thought it to be. Her life, her life as she had known and experienced it, wasn’t what she had believed it to be. It was all upside down and inside out and all because this man, this treacherous, lying, treacherous—she had already used “treacherous,” hadn’t she? It didn’t matter. The outcome was the same, whatever she called it. She had been deliberately deceived, deceived and misled.

Seen through this new lens, seemingly innocuous events took on a sinister hue. She remembered Augustus, uninvited, offering his services with the masque. Augustus, again uninvited, invading her salon. Augustus, always attentive, always solicitous, hinting that their best work would be done if he was to accompany her to this salon or that party.

“You were the one who sought me out about the masque,” she said, her voice shaking. “Not the other way around. You were the one who insisted we needed to work together. Why?”

He didn’t even try to deny it. “I had been told that Bonaparte had a new weapon he was testing. Here. This weekend.”

“I see,” said Emma, and for the first time she finally did. “You needed me to get to Malmaison.”

Augustus nodded.

Emma’s voice went up. “All of this”—the weeks of work, the cozy téte-à-tétes in her study, his supposed concern for her health and well-being—“you did all of this for an invitation to Malmaison.”

“Not all,” said Augustus, and his voice was so low she could hardly hear it.

“You used me,” Emma said wonderingly. “You used me and I didn’t even know it.” It would be amusing if it weren’t so awful, so awful and so painful. She lifted her chin and said, conversationally, “You’re much better at it than Georges.”

Augustus flinched. “It’s not like that, Emma. I promise—”

“
Don’t
.” Her voice crackled through the room, surprising them both. Emma pressed her hands together, so hard she could feel her knuckles crack. “Don’t promise me anything. I don’t want promises. Not from you.”

Augustus leaned forward. “You have every right to be angry. But at least hear me out. There were reasons—”

She held up a hand to forestall him, her mind working furiously. “You wanted Mr. Fulton’s plans. You knew they would be in the summerhouse. That’s why you wanted to talk to me today, wasn’t it? Not because you were worried I might be marrying Kort. You just needed me to get to the summerhouse.”

The guilt on his face was all the answer she needed.

Emma felt tears stinging her eyes and blinked them fiercely away. She wouldn’t cry for him. He wasn’t worth crying for.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“That was part of the reason.” There were lines on Augustus’s face that hadn’t been there before. “I shouldn’t have involved you. I know that. At the beginning, yes. That was different. But now, once I—” He broke off, seemingly at a loss. “I shouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t fair to you. It wasn’t fair to us.”

Us? What us? There was no us. “I wouldn’t have wanted our friendship to get in the way of your plans,” said Emma politely.

“It’s not—” Augustus pressed his palms against his eyes. She had him on the defensive now. Shouldn’t that make her feel better? There was a lump in Emma’s throat that wouldn’t go away when she swallowed. Augustus drew in a deep breath. “Today at the summerhouse, you had me turned so topsy-turvy that I completely forgot why I was meant to be there. I forgot the plans. I forgot everything but you.”

Emma drew her legs up under her. “How very inconvenient for you.”

“I didn’t want to deceive you,” he said. “Trust me that far, at least. There were things I couldn’t tell you, things I wasn’t allowed to tell you. But everything else—everything we’ve done together, everything I’ve said to you—Emma, that much is real.”

“Everything we’ve done together?” Emma hugged her knees. “You mean when you were pretending to be a poet in need of employment? When you were lying to me about your motives? When you were using me to get into Malmaison?”

“It’s not like that,” Augustus said. He dashed his hair out of his eyes. “I mean, it was like that. In the beginning. But not since I’ve got to know you. Not since you’ve come to mean so much to me.”

Emma lifted her chin, contempt dripping from her voice, as much for herself as for him. “You don’t need to lie to me. I’ll keep your secret for you.”

Augustus blinked as though she had slapped him. “This isn’t about that. I wouldn’t—”

He caught himself, by which Emma inferred that, indeed, he would, and probably had. The thought made her feel vaguely queasy. How many other women had he romanced for the sake of the information they might bring him? How many lonely widows had he kissed into adoring silence?

“Everything I said about you is true. Our time together, in your book room—working together—I’ve never felt— Oh, Christ. I’m making a muck of this.”

Augustus leaned forward, his eyes earnest on her face.

A lie, Emma reminded herself, just like everything else. Men could lie with their eyes as well as their lips, and Augustus was an expert at both.

“You feel like home to me,” he said. “I’ve never been happier than I’ve been with you. You have a way of making everything—well, better. Brighter.”

“But not bright enough to see through you,” Emma said brittlely.

Fulton’s plans lay discarded on the coverlet, reminding her forcibly of her almost-lover’s real objectives. Not love, but politics and policy and the great games of nations.

“Emma,” he said, and the sound of her name on his lips made something curl up and whimper inside her. “No matter what else, I think you’re wonderful.”

With that and ten sous, she could buy a ride down the Seine.

“Georges thinks I’m wonderful, too,” said Emma woodenly. “When he wants something from me.”

Augustus drew back. “Don’t compare me to Marston.”

“Why not?” asked Emma harshly. “I fail to see any difference.”

Why was she even still here? Eve must have been equally intrigued by that blasted serpent. And Augustus—Augustus didn’t even have an apple to offer her. Only his regard, and now she knew what that was worth.

She scrambled off the bed, being careful to steer clear of Augustus in the process. The sight of the tousled sheets made her feel obscurely soiled. Used. Did he really think she would believe him, after that? Did he think she was that gullible, that easily led? That starved for the pretense of affection?

The answer to all of which, of course, was yes.

Folding her arms across her chest, Emma looked down at him. “These plans of yours might be quite important, indeed, for both of you to think I’m wonderful in one week.”

Augustus’s head lifted, suddenly alert. “Marston knows about the plans?”

“Oh, yes,” said Emma airily, shaking out her dress with more than necessary force. “He wants them, too. He told me it’s so he can fund our future together. I seem to be very much in demand these days. Such a pity it’s all about Mr. Fulton’s submarine.”

“His what?”

Somehow, that was the last straw. Emma suppressed a wild urge to laugh. “You didn’t even know. All this and you didn’t even know what it was for.” He looked at her and she said, “It’s a submarine. A boat that sails under the water.”

There. She hoped he was happy.

No, actually, she hoped he was very unhappy.

He didn’t look it, though. He was a million miles away, his eyes unfocused, his mind turning. “A boat that sails under the water,” he repeated.

She should have been immune to betrayal by now, but something about it made her stomach twist. She didn’t exist for him anymore, she could tell. His mind was entirely on the information, the information he had bought of her so carelessly and so cruelly.

He slapped the coverlet with the flat of his hand. “That’s what it is. That’s how they were planning to get rid of the ships guarding the Channel. They send a boat under the water, where no one can see it. It’s brilliant.”

Emma pasted on her most brittle social smile. “So delighted to have been of assistance. Good day.”

“Wait!” Augustus grabbed for her hand. Emma jerked out of reach. “Emma, please, try to understand. This is larger than you or me.”

Yes, she imagined the completed submarine probably was.

“There are lives at stake,” he said. “You know Bonaparte. You’ve seen where his ambition has led him. He won’t stop. He’s marched over half of Europe, laying it to waste. He’s looted Italy for its treasures. He’s made himself Emperor. England is the last defense against his ambitions.”

His words brought with them an unsettling echo of her conversation with Hortense. It caught Emma off guard, it made her doubt—but just for a moment.

She looked at him coldly. “What do I care for England?”

“If England falls,” said Augustus, catching her gaze and holding it, “what next? How would you feel to see your own New York overrun by
French soldiers, your family tossed from their home, your property confiscated, and your government reordered? Bonaparte must be stopped.”

He spoke with such absolute confidence that, for a moment, Emma could almost see it. She could see Bonaparte on the patio of Belvedere, the Consular guard lolling about the cookhouse, Caroline greedily sorting through her mother’s jewelry, lifting grandmother’s brooch to watch it sparkle in the sunlight, then tossing it aside as a trumpery thing, hardly worth looting.

Absurd, of course. Bonaparte was a friend to America. At least, for the moment. Emma felt a vague and unjustifiable sense of unease. But that was just what Augustus wanted, wasn’t it? To shift the blame onto someone else.

“Because the cause is honorable,” said Emma slowly, “or because you believe it to be so, does that mean the means are justified?”

Augustus lifted his eyes to hers. “I thought so once. Sometimes, though, the cost is just too high.”

Emma’s eyes slid past him, to the tousled bed, where, only half an hour before, they had dropped, entangled.