Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

“Only a glass, not a bottle?”

“It’s only a model,” Fulton hastened to explain. “The impact of an entire bottle of champagne would likely sink it before it ever got under way!”

Bonaparte looked at him from under beetled brows. “I hope your other projects are more hardy, Mr. Fulton.”

Other projects?

The Emperor poured the champagne over the ship, and the audience mustered a polite cheer as Mr. Fulton bent over his creation, coaxing it into motion. There was handshaking and backslapping and congratulatory noises made as those more politic rose to congratulate the Livingstons on their ambitious venture.

Someone joggled Augustus’s elbow, making him spill his punch. “It’s a sensible match,” said a voice in Augustus’s ear.

“Pardon?” His mind elsewhere, Augustus looked vaguely around him. His gaze settled on Horace de Lilly, decked out in a rose satin waistcoat with jade buttons. His fair-skinned face was pink with the heat of the day and, perhaps, from the glass he held in his hand.

“Madame Delagardie and Mr. Livingston.” De Lilly nodded towards the tent. Under the ruched canopy, Kortright Livingston was smiling down at an animated Emma. “Don’t you agree?”

She had gone up to congratulate him, of course, just like the others. “Emma and—”

Horace de Lilly rummaged around in his sleeve, producing a monogrammed handkerchief. “Didn’t you know? I would have thought you would, with your spending so much time together over the masque. The rumor is that they were childhood sweethearts. I hear the cousin has a good estate in—well, wherever it is that they’re from.”

“New York,” said Augustus flatly. Emma had never said anything about being childhood sweethearts, never intimated that her cousin was anything more to her than a cousin. Other than the obvious joy with which she had greeted him. And the enthusiasm with which she was speaking to him now, her hand familiarly on his arm. “What makes you think—”

“Why else would she turn down a position at court?” De Lilly dropped his voice, leaning avidly forward. “Do you have it yet? The device?”

Augustus held up a hand to silence him. “She turned down a position at court?”

De Lilly shrugged. “So my mother says. Madame Bonaparte asked her last night and Madame Delagardie said no. There is,” said the Royalist agent, “no conceivable reason for it unless she intends to leave the country. Why else refuse the font from which favor flows?”

A curious sentiment from a man pledged to bring down the regime. Or, perhaps, not so curious after all, decided Augustus, watching Emma sparkling up at her cousin. De Lilly, after all, was engaged in a variant of the same scheme, working to restore a monarch in the hopes that said monarch would be sufficiently pleased with his efforts to return the family estates and provide him a place at court. Emperor or king, the basic principle was the same. De Lilly wasn’t in it for political philosophy.

“No one turns down that sort of opportunity,” said de Lilly decidedly. “It must be the cousin. Just look at them.”

Augustus did and wished he hadn’t. Standing on her tiptoes, Emma brushed her lips across her cousin’s cheek. Kortright Livingston’s arm folded protectively around her waist as he bent his head for her convenience. There was a comfort to them, the comfort of old and easy acquaintance.

And something more?

“Don’t they make a handsome pair?” said de Lilly blithely.

“Congratulations, Kort.” Emma stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss against her cousin’s cheek. “You must be very proud.”

He squeezed her waist in a perfunctory half hug. “Proud and privileged. Just think, Emma. No more relying on winds or tides. We’ll open up the whole country for commerce! And I get to be part of it.”

Kort’s enthusiasm reminded Emma of summers long ago, of a fair-haired boy squatting over a fallen birds’ nest, marveling over its construction. He was more in his element here than he had been in the salons of Paris or treading the boards in Bonaparte’s theatre. This was Kort as she knew and remembered him, not the uncomfortable, stilted man of the past month.

Some people, reflected Emma, just weren’t meant for the Old World. It wasn’t good or bad; it just was. She had taken immediately to the more leisured pace of life, to the endless and pointless arguments of the salons, the debate for the sake of debate, the idea of life lived as art for its own sake, with no need to actually go about producing anything at the end of it. Kort hadn’t.

“What if you run out of rivers?” she teased.

Kort grinned at her. “Then we’ll dig canals. Where’s your Yankee initiative, Madame Delagardie?”

“Left at the altar with my old name,” quipped Emma. “I’m a slow study these days.”

“Not if what I’ve heard about Carmagnac is true.” The name sounded strange coming from Kort. Kort and Carmagnac? The two just didn’t go together.

Emma rolled her eyes. “Mr. Fulton has been telling tales out of school.”

Kort wasn’t ready to let it go. “He told me that you had kept up your husband’s plans and improved on them. He’s not a man easily impressed.”

“He means I took his suggestions,” said Emma wryly. “Isn’t that enough to convince most people of one’s intelligence?”

Flying high on champagne and success, Kort caught her hand. “Come back with me, Emma. There’s so much to be done at home, so much you could do.”

Emma looked down at their joined hands. She had convinced Kort to invest in new gloves. They were tan, elegantly cut and stiff with newness. It might have been that that accounted for the awkwardness of his touch, but she thought not.

Emma gently freed her hand. “Why did you come to France, Kort? Was it because of the steamship?”

He nodded, a reminiscent expression on his face. “Uncle Robert wrote me about it. He thought it would be just the venture for me and he was right.” The very thought of it made him glow with industrial fervor. Belatedly remembering Emma’s presence, he added, “And your mother was delighted that I could come and badger you in person. She gave me very specific instructions.”

Emma didn’t doubt it. “How specific?”

Kort suddenly discovered an interest in the flattened grass on the verge of the river. A little farther along, Mr. Fulton was bending over his model, feeding small pieces of coal into a miniature furnace. “Pretty much what you would expect.”

“Which might be?” Emma prompted.

Mr. Fulton’s steamship let out a long, stammering, huffing noise. A few yards away, a duck turned up its tail feathers in indignation.

Kort’s eyes followed the duck as it flounced up the bank. One of the children was throwing cake crumbs at it. “She urged me to do whatever it would take to convince you to come back with me.”

“Up to and including proposals of marriage?”

She knew she had hit home when she saw her cousin wince. “Proposal. One proposal.”

She gave him credit for not pretending he didn’t know what she meant. He had never been able to tell a lie, not even when it would have saved them all from being sent to their rooms without supper.

“Quite a sacrifice to make for the family,” she said neutrally. “I hope you told my mother that familial devotion goes only so far.”

“Familial devotion, yes.” Kort didn’t meet her eye. Something in his voice made Emma look up. He was staring at the river still, his face in profile, his expression abstracted. His hands flexed at his sides. Clearing his throat, his eyes fixed on the river, he said awkwardly, “Have you ever thought that it might not be such a bad idea?”

Had she? At twelve, she had thought it was an excellent idea. But that was over half a lifetime ago and half a world away.

“You don’t really mean that,” she said. She poked him in the arm. “Kort? Hello?”

He focused on her with difficulty, blinking as though coming back from somewhere very far away. His Adam’s apple moved up and down in his throat. “I do, actually.” He looked down at her, his face serious. “There have been worse matches.”

“Yes, the Prince of Wales and Caroline of Brunswick, or Henry VIII and just about anyone,” said Emma spiritedly. “I’m flattered, Kort, really I am.”

Kort pressed his eyes closed. “I deserved that, didn’t I? I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

Emma looked at her cousin’s troubled face. It was not that of a man about to propose to the woman he loved. It was that of a man set to do his duty, no matter how unpleasant that duty might be.

He had said exactly what he meant. It was expedient and it could be worse. That was Kort for you, always honest to a fault, even with himself. It was a rare but not necessarily comfortable commodity.

“Do you know,” said Emma thoughtfully, “I rather think you did.”

Kort ignored her. “It would be a sensible match,” he said, almost as much for himself as for her. “We’ve both had losses. We would be kind to each other.”

It was a very odd way of framing the sentiment. In fact, it was a very odd proposal. Not that Emma had received that many, but she couldn’t imagine that any of her favorite plays or novels would ever have included such an avowal as this one.

Emma voiced the truth her twelve-year-old self had had such trouble stomaching. “You really loved Sarah, didn’t you?”