Lauren Willig - Masque of the Black Tulip

"Laugh, will you?" he demanded, triumphantly sending the breeches flying, and pouncing on his wife. "We'll see about that."

Henrietta's laugh turned into a squeal of surprise as Miles pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh. His tongue moved higher, flicking between her legs, sending quivers of sensation jilting through her. Her skin felt too tight for her body, tension building in the core of her being. She suddenly desperately needed Miles's arms around her, his lips on hers.

She tugged on his hair, and he surged up along the mattress to join her, his hand moving to replace her mouth. Henrietta knew she was making little mewing noises, but she couldn't find it in her to care; she pressed herself against Miles's ringers.

"I don't think," Miles's voice came as though from a long way away, even though his mouth was right next to her ear, "I can wait any longer."

"Mmm," said Henrietta, which Miles correctly interpreted as license to proceed.

Slowly, he began to enter her. At least, he intended to go slowly, with proper deference to her virginal state. Instead, Henrietta twined her arms around his neck, making little panting noises as she moved anxiously against him, driven by the restless pressure building inside her. Murmuring her name, Miles plunged deeply into her, ripping through the thin barrier that barred his passage.

Henrietta let out an indignant gasp. Miles froze, suspended above her.

"Hen?" he rasped. "Are you all right?"

Henrietta considered. Miles's heart wrenched in a way that almost distracted him from the clamorous demands of certain parts of his anatomy as Henrietta's nose squinched and her lips quirked in a heart-stoppingly familiar expression. After an endless moment — as Miles's arms began to quiver with the agony of holding still — she gave a little nod.

She moved experimentally against him, arching her hips the tiniest bit.

"I think so."

"Are you sure?" gasped Miles, even though he wasn't at all sure what he would do if the answer were no. Jump out the window, most likely. He was spared that fate by Henrietta tightening her legs around him in a way that left no doubt as to her intentions. She strained against him, nodding as emphatically as she could, because little jolts of pleasure made speech a perilous prospect at best. She could feel him beginning to move, rilling her, his shoulders warm and familiar beneath her hands, the fine hairs on his chest teasing her already sensitive nipples.

Henrietta clung to sanity, fighting the waves of sensation threatening to sweep over her.

"Miles?" she said uneasily.

"Still here," he murmured into her ear, his hands moving tenderly over her waist, her hips, stroking, coaxing. Using his hands to gather her closer, he drove deeper and deeper into her, pressing to the very core of her being. "Always."

Henrietta cried out in surprise as pleasure scintillated through her, like a thousand champagne bubbles glistening by candlelight, oscillating and bursting in a golden glow. As she convulsed around him, Miles groaned and surrendered to his own release. Together, they collapsed back against the dusty counterpane in a state of satiated somnolence.

Miles rolled to his side, taking Henrietta with him. She sighed contentedly, fitting herself against his side, one leg thrown over his, and her head tucked in the crook of his neck. Miles rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, enjoying the scent of her hair, the feel of her sweaty skin against his, the pressure of her breast against his side. He ran one hand down the tangled length of her hair, enjoying the silky feel of it beneath his palm. Henrietta gave an irritated wriggle as his finger snagged on a knot, but didn't say anything.

"Hen?" Miles poked her. "Are you alive?"

"Mmm," murmured Henrietta.

"That's all you have to say?" protested Miles.

"Mmm," repeated Henrietta, and nesded deeper into the crook of Miles's shoulder.

Miles grinned. "Eighteen years, and I've finally rendered you speechless."

Henrietta shifted slightly. "Mrr-grr-grr," she mumbled into Miles's shoulder.

"What was that?"

Henrietta tilted her head back. "Wonderful," she sighed. "Splendid. Superlative. Superb."

"Couldn't resist, could you?"

"Blissful, ecstatic, euphoric, brilliant…"

"Enough!" exclaimed Miles, rolling her over onto her back.

Henrietta had a decidedly wicked glint in her eye. "Marvelous," she said deliberately, "magnificent, glorious…"

"Right," said Miles. "You leave me no choice."

By the time the first rays of dawn began to peek through the bed curtains, Henrietta was forced to agree that there were moments for which even adjectives were entirely inadequate.

Even the gauze draped over the candle flames could not dim the glitter of diamonds threaded through ladies' curls and broad shoulders laden with epaulettes in the Yellow Salon of the Tuileries Palace. Dowagers chattered, military men guffawed, and fans spoke their own whispery language in secluded corners of the room. The usual swarm of dandies, beauties, and Bonapartes clustered at Josephine Bonaparte's Thursday night salon, appraising one another's clothes and exchanging the latest on-dits.

Among the throng moved the Pink Carnation, gliding seamlessly between groups, picking up and storing information with all the industry of an ant at a picnic. Jane had left off her black breeches. She had left off her white cap and itchy hair dye. And she had made sure to leave off the odiferous shawl that accompanied her guise as fishmonger's wife.

Tonight she wore a disguise of quite a different sort: She came as herself.

Her dress was both modest and modish. Amid garish diamonds and a veritable portrait gallery of cameos worn at the fingers, the neck, the ears, even the toes, Jane's only ornament was a modest enameled locket, bearing the picture of a small, pink flower. Flowers, after all, were an eminently appropriate ornament for a young girl.

Who would possibly suspect Miss Jane Wooliston, cousin to Edouard Balcourt — why, that was he over there, my dear; yes, the puffy-faced man in the puce cravat, such a toady to the First Consul, but then, really, who wasn't nowadays? — of posing the slightest danger to the French Republic? She was, agreed the dowagers, a most pretty, mannered girl. She knew when to speak and when to be silent, showed a most pleasing deference to her elders, and her manner in dealing with the masculine gender combined a quiet wit with an absolute lack of flirtatious contrivances. So unlike those fast young things one saw nowadays! This last was usually said with a glare in the direction of Bonaparte's sisters, Pauline and Caroline, of whom "fast" was the least of what was whispered from fan to fan.

The old ladies approved of her, and gossiped in her presence without reserve. The young dandies liked her for quite another reason; among a people so susceptible to physical beauty, at a time so much in the sway of the ideals of classical antiquity, Jane's beautifully boned face and aloof mien put them in mind of Roman carvings and they regarded Jane much as they would a particularly fine piece of statuary, beautiful to look upon and largely deaf. Jane had picked up quite a number of useful tidbits of information that way.

Just now, however, Jane was making a masterful effort to evade the garrulous matrons, love-struck young bucks, and budding poets she had so successfully cultivated. Her one interest was to leave the salon as rapidly — and as discreedy — as possible. Her lips remained curved in a guileless smile as her brain rapidly assimilated the information she had just acquired, information so unexpected, so alarming, as to be scarcely credible.

But there could be no doubt. All the pieces fell evenly into place, like the fragments of a Roman mosaic reconstituted into a vivid tableau. In this instance, the picture was as unpleasant as it was shocking. They had, all of them, been looking in entirely the wrong direction. In the meantime, the deadliest spy in London, the one person who above all ought to have been observed and curtailed, roamed free.

Henrietta must be warned. At once.

Jane smiled sweetly at Captain Desmoreau, who showed a stubborn refusal to leave her side, and told him she was really quite perishing of thirst. Would he be so kind… ?

He would. Desmoreau set off into the throng. Rising, Jane wended — , her way past a cluster of dowagers merrily ripping apart reputations like so much disorderly tatting, past the gloomy Louis Bonaparte, complaining about his myriad phantom illnesses, past the admiring circle who thronged Bonaparte's wife, Josephine, her step steady, her expression serene, a Galatea with no other purpose but to adorn a pedestal at the Bonapartes' court.

The door was in sight. Four more paces, and she could escape into the hallways, and thence to her cousin's house, to pack for a hasty journal for England. This was not a task Jane cared to entrust to another. Couriers had an unfortunate habit of disappearing en route. Three paces. Jane's mind was already leaping ahead. She would ride dressed in male clothes; it would be faster than taking the coach and cause less comment. She would have Miss Gwen put it about that she had taken sick and was keeping to her bed. Something nasty, something contagious, something that would ward off well-wishers. Two paces. She would cross at Honfleur rather than Calais; the port was less closely watched, and she had a fisherman in her pay, on the condition that his boat be at her disposal whenever she should need it. One pace left…