The Garden Intrigue (43 page)

“But you paid it anyway,” she said.

She could see his Adam’s apple move up and down as he swallowed. “I had no choice. What would you have me do?”

You could have chosen me, she wanted to say, idiotically, illogically. You didn’t have to lie to me. You didn’t have to use me.

At least, she told herself, averting her eyes from the bed, at least she had found out before they brought matters to fruition. Better to know before she made herself truly vulnerable by going to bed with him.

Who was she fooling? Emma would have laughed if she could, but she was afraid the bitterness of it might burn her, bubbling up like acid, eating through her chest. She was already vulnerable. She might not have slept with him, but she had opened herself to him in every other way. She had confided in him, shared with him, trusted him.

How naïve she had been! And how very foolish she was. Even now, wanting to believe him, wanting to exonerate him.

All lies.

“Give me a chance to redeem myself,” he said hoarsely. “Please, Emma.”

Emma looked down at him. He was still seated on the edge of the bed, his hands pressing hard into the mattress on either side of him, leaving impressions like wounds, Fulton’s plans crumpled and abandoned on the coverlet behind him. Such flimsy things to cause so much bother.

“I won’t betray you,” she said. “But don’t expect me to talk to you.”

Her legs felt like lead as she turned and moved towards the door, concentrating on every step, every movement. Her body felt unfamiliar to her; the walls and floor were out of proportion; everything was awkward and strange.

The bed rustled. “Emma. Emma, wait.” She could hear the bed ropes creak as Augustus levered himself to his feet. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”

Emma didn’t turn around. “There’s nothing else you can possibly have to say to me.”

She twisted the knob of the door. The metal was warm beneath her fingers, worn smooth with use. Time did that, they said. It smoothed off rough edges and healed wounds. Or so they said. What they didn’t talk about were the scabs it left behind.

“Wait, please,” Augustus pleaded. “Just a moment. Is that too much to ask?”

Emma didn’t wait to see if he would follow. She pulled open the door of the room. The hallway was empty, the rooms lining it deserted as their occupants frolicked in the sunshine.

“Emma—” Augustus’s voice sounded very far away. He spoke in English in his urgency. “Emma, I think I might be in love with you.”

“Too late,” she said, and sent the door swinging shut behind her.

M
r. Whittlesby?” It took several moments for Augustus to realize that someone was speaking to him, and still more for the source of the voice to register. Jane’s serene smile was beginning to look a little ragged around the edges as she said, “You had promised me a word about my lines.”

“Of course, my pulchritudinous princess,” Augustus said mechanically. Emma was on the other side of the room, sharing a coffeepot with the soon to be former American envoy to France, the elder Mr. Livingston. She was not looking at Augustus. It had been nearly twenty hours since they had last spoken. Not that Augustus was counting. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

“One would never be able to tell,” murmured Jane.

“I beg your pardon.” Augustus fluttered his sleeves in the old style, but the move felt forced. “Affairs of verse have weighed heavily upon me.”

Affairs, but not affairs of verse.

Emma had kept her word; there had been no midnight raids on his bedroom by the Ministry of Police. She had kept her word in other ways as well. With the masque rapidly approaching, she had managed to ever so subtly pretend he didn’t exist. Oh, yes, she said the right things, made the right noises about being terribly excited about the performance and so very grateful to Mr. Whittlesby for his expert assistance with the script, but she said it in her society voice, glib and meaningless, as if he were merely the hired poet the world believed him to be.

There was only an hour left until the masque. The primary members of the cast, with the exception of Jane, had already made their way to the theatre, to be outfitted and assume their roles each in their own individual style. Miss Gwen had last been seen marauding somewhere out back, a ragtag band of pirates trailing along behind her. Bonaparte was in his council chamber, closeted with the cream of the Admiralty, while the remainder of the party, those involved in neither playacting nor policy, partook of coffee and cakes in the drawing room prior to the evening’s promised spectacle. There was to be an alfresco supper served after the performance, supper and a fireworks display reputedly a secret but already known to everyone.

The younger Mr. Livingston was already in the theatre, assuming his theatrical breeches, but the elder Mr. Livingston was partaking of coffee. Marston, Augustus noticed, was also hovering near, but never quite next to, Emma. Augustus scowled. It went unnoticed by either party. Emma had her gaze resolutely fixed on her cousin Robert, as he waxed lyrical about the benefits of the territory of Louisiana, the purchase he had negotiated with Bonaparte.

Blast it all, no one was that fascinated by the Mississippi River.

Jane shook out her script, wafting it underneath Augustus’s nose. “It’s this rhyme,” she said loudly. “It doesn’t quite scan.” In a softer voice, she added, “I have promising tidings.”

“Of what?” murmured Augustus, rubbing his nose. “My dear lady, you
have got the pronunciation wrong. If you simply change the stress on the last vowel, you will find it rhymes perfectly well.”

“How inventive!” exclaimed Jane, then dropped her voice. “Our inventor. He is, it seems, dangerously disaffected with the current regime.” And then, more loudly, “But doesn’t that change the meaning of the word?”

“Oh, fair one, have you not heard of the term poetic license?” Augustus bent his head over the script. Good God, they had written drivel, he and Emma. But what fun they had had doing it. Those long afternoons in her book room, laughing over a particularly ridiculous turn of phrase…Augustus yanked himself back to the present. “Will he defect?”

“I grant you no license, Mr. Whittlesby, poetic or otherwise, save those accorded by good manners,” said Jane severely. “All it will take is a word in his ear. I heard him speaking to Emma yesterday.”

Emma. Automatically, Augustus’s eyes sought her out. She was still seated by the elder Mr. Livingston, partaking of coffee from one of Mme. Bonaparte’s delicate china cups. She wore one of her extravagant costumes, white satin decorated with silver flowers embroidered around glittering diamond centers, but, for once, her demeanor failed to echo the sparkle of her costume. There was an unaccustomed fragility about her, in the delicate bones of her shoulders, in the hollows below her cheekbones.

“Yesterday,” Augustus repeated. “Yesterday?”

“Yes, in the theatre,” said Jane, frowning at him. Inattention was not acceptable. Jane preferred to say her piece only once. “He reiterated his concerns to Mr. Livingston this morning.”

Yesterday. Augustus remembered Fulton’s mutinous expression as he stormed out of the summerhouse. If he hadn’t been so rattled by Emma, if he had stopped to consider the ramifications of that then…

“Livingston,” added Jane, “counseled caution, at least until his official term as envoy is done. Mr. Fulton seemed disinclined to heed him.”

If he had had his wits about him, would there have been any need to steal the plans?

If he had spoken to Mr. Fulton then—subtly, cleverly—there would have been no need to steal the plans. There would have been no need to puzzle over them. There would have been no need to hide them beneath his coverlet. If the infernal plans hadn’t been beneath his coverlet…

Emma would have needed to be told sooner or later, Augustus argued with himself. Given his imminent departure for England, the operative word was “sooner.”

But did it have to be just then?

His body was firmly of the opinion that it had been very poor timing, indeed.

“I infer that,” said Jane, “from the fact the Mr. Fulton was already packing his baggage, even though the party does not end until tomorrow. When I saw him, he was tearing apart the summerhouse, looking for his plans.”

Augustus straightened. “Looking for his plans?”

Jane regarded him levelly. “They seem to have gone missing.”

The careful construction wasn’t wasted on Augustus. He had just been scolded, in the most imperceptible of fashions.

“No, they haven’t,” Augustus said grimly. They would have to find Fulton, find him and bring him over before he could make a scene. “But if you think he can be—”

“Insupportable!” The door to the drawing room banged open. “Utterly insupportable!”

Mr. Fulton was far from his usual dapper self. His curly hair was in disarray, his jacket misbuttoned.

“You were saying?” murmured Jane.

“Damn,” muttered Augustus.

Fulton made a beeline for the older Mr. Livingston. “I wish to make a formal complaint,” he announced.

With his jowls jowly and his coat pleasantly creased, Livingston looked like an affable country squire, but the warning look he gave Fulton belied his easygoing air. “Let’s just discuss this ourselves, shall we?” he said comfortingly. “Have a cup of coffee, Robert. Or would you prefer chocolate?”

“I don’t want coffee, or chocolate. My plans.” The word came out as a lament, Hecuba crying for Troy. “My plans. They’re gone.”

Emma sat silently, her head down over her coffee cup, her face hidden. Horace de Lilly paused in his game of cards. Marston drifted closer.

“I call this a travesty,” said Fulton, refusing the chair Livingston offered him. “Our negotiations may have come to a standstill, but simply to appropriate the fruits of a man’s labor— Not that it should surprise anyone! The very art on the walls—”

Livingston neatly cut him off before he could say anything that might cause an international incident. “Are you sure they’re gone, Robert?” he said soothingly. “Might you not have misplaced them?”

“No,” said Fulton firmly. “I know where they were and they’re not there anymore.”

Emma lifted her head. “I have them,” she said flatly.

Both men turned to look at her in surprise.

“You?” said Mr. Livingston.

Emma set down her coffee cup with a distinct clink. She had missed the center of the saucer. Augustus could hear it rattling as it rocked back and forth.

“Yes,” she said.

Having made her decision, she wasn’t going to do it by halves. Her back straightened and her eyes fixed on her cousin, wide and blue and guileless. She didn’t look at Augustus, but Augustus knew she was aware of him, as he was of her.

As Augustus watched, she went on, “I am so sorry, cousin Robert, Mr. Fulton. You must have left them backstage when you helped me with the wave machine. I stumbled upon them and put them away for you.” She made a self-deprecating face. “And then I forgot to give them to you. I feel so terribly foolish.”

It wasn’t a brilliant performance. She was too stiff, too self-conscious, but Livingston and Fulton were too caught up in their relief over the safe return of the plans to notice. Did anyone else? Jane, certainly. Her eyes
flickered from Augustus to Emma and back again, her expression assessing. But other than she…No. Augustus didn’t think so. They were safe. Because of Emma.

“In that case…” said Mr. Livingston, obviously relieved. It was no small thing to have to accuse an emperor of appropriating other peoples’ property, even if he had and did. “Crisis averted, I believe, Robert?”

“Hardly a crisis.” Slightly red about the ears, Mr. Fulton tucked his chin into his cravat. “I shouldn’t have reacted so strongly. But it is a relief to know they haven’t gone astray. I spent a great deal of time on that project.”

“I could get them for you now if you like.…” Emma pushed back her chair and made as though to rise.

Mr. Fulton put out a hand to forestall her. “There’s no urgency. I know you have a great deal to do in the theatre before tonight.”

“Don’t you mean
you
have a great deal to do in the theatre tonight?” Emma teased. “I’m relying on you to run that brilliant mechanism for me, Mr. Fulton. I shall just sit in the audience and applaud wildly at every clap of thunder.”

“And drown out my thunder, clap by clap?” protested Mr. Fulton. As an attempt at banter, it was weak. Mr. Fulton’s mind was clearly elsewhere.

“Yes,” murmured Augustus to Jane, intuiting her unspoken question. “I’ll speak to him.”

“Good,” said Jane.

“Thank you for retrieving my documents,” Mr. Fulton was saying to Emma. “I really should be—” He wafted vaguely at the door, the one that led through the billiard room to the entrance hall.

“Yes, and so should I,” agreed Emma, standing. “I have actors to herd. They’re worse than cats.”

“We look forward to the fruits of your labors,” said Mr. Livingston kindly.

“Don’t look forward too much,” warned Emma.

With that parting sally, she set off in the opposite direction, towards the long gallery and the side door that opened to the theatre. Augustus looked
from Fulton to Emma and back again—Fulton moving one way, Emma the other.

Drawing a deep breath, he moved to follow Fulton.

E
mma managed to make it across the drawing room into the gallery before tripping over her own feet.

Everything felt strangely out of shape, her perspective skewed, her own perceptions no longer to be trusted. The edges of objects softened and twisted; shadows masqueraded as substance, and substance as shadow; and there was no way of being sure that anyone was what he or she seemed.

She wasn’t even sure about herself.

Why had she done that just now? She might have kept her head down and let events play themselves out. They probably wouldn’t have traced the plans to Augustus. Mr. Fulton was an inventor and everyone knew that inventors were crazy anyway, nearly as crazy as poets. She had done her bit—and more!—in the name of their former friendship by the simple act of not betraying him. He, after all, had betrayed her. He had betrayed her and he had used her—or was it the other way around? Not that it mattered. She had been over it from every angle, tossing and thrashing in her bed, knowing that no amount of champagne would ever put her to sleep this time.