It would serve him right if she conscripted him for a performance without telling him. After all, she just assumed he would want to.

She wouldn’t, she knew. But it was still a lovely thought.

“I can certainly ask him,” Emma said. “The worst he can do is say no.”

“How could anyone possibly flee our shores with such an opportunity to hold him?” There was a strangely sarcastic undertone to Mr. Whittlesby’s words. “Mr. Livingston’s accent will lend a charming verisimilitude to the roll.”

“Art imitating life imitating art? Or do I mean life imitating art imitating life?” Emma bent back over her notes. “Our American hero could be bringing a fleet filled with the bounty of the New World as a pledge to win the heroine’s hand.”

Mr. Whittlesby considered the idea. “Like Marlowe’s promises to his shepherdess? There will I make thee beds of roses / And a thousand fragrant posies, / A cap of flowers, and a kirtle / Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.”

Emma remembered the poem from long ago, from sunny afternoons in the apple tree and stolen moments with a book of poetry among the roses at Mme. Campan’s. Paul had read her Ronsard, but Marlowe she had read for herself.

She grinned at Whittlesby. “You forgot A belt of straw and ivy buds / With coral clasps and amber studs.”

For the first time, he looked at her, really looked at her. His eyes weren’t the simple brown Emma had thought; there was a darker circle around the iris, so deep it looked almost purple. His hair fell loose around his face, too long for fashion, with a natural curl any woman would envy.

He met her line and finished it. “And if these pleasures may thee move, / Come live with me and be my love.”

On the mantel, the clock chimed, three dulcet rings, one after the other.

The chimes struck the silence like a mallet against glass, making it shiver and break. Emma jumped up from her chair, wincing at the screeching noise it made as the legs scraped against wood.

Three? How was it three already?

She rustled through the debris on her desk, speaking and searching at the same time, avoiding Whittlesby’s eyes, brown and violet. “I’m afraid I have an engagement for which I’m already late.”

How did her desk manage to eat papers? After she had faithfully promised she would bring it…Of course, she had also faithfully promised she would be on time this time, and look where she still was.

Better to think of obligations and obligations unmet rather than shepherds and love.

She glanced fleetingly at Whittlesby. “Are you free tomorrow morning? And by morning, I mean afternoon.”

“I believe that can be arranged. After some consultation with the muses, that is.”

Ha! There it was. Emma snatched up the sheet of paper before it could get away again. Paul had insisted that inanimate objects couldn’t have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary.

“Well, as long as your muses don’t wake up too early, I’m sure we’ll all deal very well together.” Opening her reticule, Emma jammed the paper inside, trapping it by clicking the silver clasps shut. Rising from her chair, she held out a hand to Mr. Whittlesby, like a gentleman transacting business. That was what they were, after all, two partners embarked on a joint venture, as merchants might band together to back a ship or share a cargo. “Thank you, Mr. Whittlesby, for being so generous with your time. Tomorrow morning?”

His words were airy but his grip was firm. “I shall fly to you on the fleet feet of Hermes, Madame.”

“Won’t he want them back?” When he looked at her, she shook her head, making a rueful face. “Never mind. It made sense in my head. Many things do.”

Mr. Whittlesby stood aside to let her precede him through the door. “Shall I see you to your engagement?”

“Loath to leave my company?”

“I meant merely that we might speak more of the masque.”

Why did she always say these things? “I didn’t mean—”

He raised his voice, carrying on as though she hadn’t spoken. “We have sadly neglected the spectacle in favor of the substance. The mechanics,” he specified, when Emma looked at him blankly. “Honesty and art demand that I make full confession of my shortcomings. If spectacle there is to be, it must come from some other soul than me. These modern mechanics are beyond my ken.”

He was rhyming again. He hadn’t been before. For a little while, he had been speaking almost normally. He donned rhyme like armor, keeping her at bay. She could have told him he didn’t need to. She flirted without thinking. That was armor, too.

She knew better than to let herself be lulled by the shepherd’s song. “Come live with me and be my love.” She had believed those words once; she had followed them into an early marriage. With the arrogance of youth, she had ignored the nymph’s reply: “The flowers do fade, and wanton fields / To wayward winter reckoning yields; / A honey tongue, a heart of gall, / Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.”

“I had thought to ask Mr. Fulton for help,” Emma said quickly. “The inventor. He created the panorama a few years ago. You must have seen it. Everyone did.”

“Saw it? I wrote a poem about it! ‘An Ode to the Experience of Art in the Round.’ It was much admired in certain circles.”

“I’m sure it was.” With relief, Emma seized on the excuse offered her by the presence of her sedan chair in the courtyard, the bearers ready and waiting. There were still places in Paris where it was easier to take a chair than a carriage. “We do have much to discuss, but, as you see, my chair is already waiting.”

With the ease of long practice, she climbed into her own personal chair, reciting an address to the chairman as she did. She felt the familiar lurch of the chair as they rose to their feet.

Mr. Whittlesby’s face appeared in the chair window. “You go to Madame Hortense?” he asked.

“Yes, to tell her the good news about the masque.” Emma patted her reticule. Paper crinkled beneath her fingers. “And to bring her this.”

Emma nodded to the chairmen and they set the chair into motion, stepping in perfect pace on the uneven cobbles.

“Until tomorrow, Mr. Whittlesby!” she called out through the window.

From the corner of her eye, she could see him standing there still, his open shirt inadequate protection against the chill of an unseasonably cool May day.

When Emma was shown into Hortense’s boudoir, the others were already deep in conversation, a china pot of coffee on the table between them, two cups half full and a third glaringly empty.

Jane Wooliston smiled at Emma over her coffee cup. “Only fifteen minutes late this time. You’re improving.”

Hortense Bonaparte made a face at Jane. “Don’t be unkind!” Rising, she embraced Emma, the differences in their height reversed from when they had first known each other, when Hortense was eleven and Emma fourteen. Now Hortense was the taller of the two, a grown woman and a mother. But she still had the same sweet nature that had endeared her to everyone at Mme. Campan’s. “I’m sure there was an extenuating circumstance. Such as…”

“A stampede of bears across the Champs-Élysées?” suggested Jane. “Typhoons? Hurricanes?”

Emma plumped down with a thump on the yellow silk settee. “A hurricane, indeed! Hurricane Augustus, you mean. Someone”—she looked hard at Jane—“unleashed a poet on me.”

“ ‘Unleashed’ is such a strong term,” said Jane.

“No one ever tells me anything,” complained Hortense, to no one in particular.

It was meant jokingly, but Emma felt a twinge of guilt all the same. If she thought her own position was fraught, Hortense’s was far worse. Bad enough being the First Consul’s stepdaughter, but she was made doubly a Bonaparte by her marriage to Napoleon’s younger brother, Louis. As the family rose in prominence, those who surrounded them were increasingly likely to be toadies, informers, or both. There were few these days whom Hortense could call friend and believe it.

Emma angled herself towards Hortense. “Trust me, you aren’t missing much of anything. You know Augustus Whittlesby, don’t you?”

“The poet?” Hortense perked up. She turned to Jane. “Isn’t he in love with you?”

“Perpetually,” said Emma, before Jane could jump in.

“Poetically,” countered Jane repressively. “It isn’t at all the same thing.”

“Yes, yes, we’ve had this discussion,” said Emma. And Augustus Whittlesby had been so very terrified when he had thought she might be flirting with him. Emma pushed that thought away; it wasn’t a particularly flattering recollection. “What did you tell him about me?” she demanded. “You didn’t say anything about my predilection for his pantaloons, did you?”

“Oh, my,” said Jane, raising one brow. “One afternoon in his company and you’re already away with the alliteration.”

“Don’t change the subject,” said Emma severely. “The poor man is terrified that I intend to seduce him.”

“Do you?” asked Hortense with interest. The intense scrutiny of a jealous husband left her little opportunity to seduce anyone, but she took a generous interest in her friends.

“No! Absolutely not. I’m just using him for his help with my masque.” She wasn’t quite sure when, but somehow, it had become her masque, hers, quite hers. Maybe it had something to do with the pirates.

“So you are writing it!” Hortense put down her cup with a delicate clink. “Maman will be so pleased. She was terrified she might have to ask Caroline to help instead, and you know how Caroline is.” She made an admirable effort to sound cheerful, but there was no mistaking the strain beneath it.