Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

“You should talk,” retorted Augustus. “Is there any ballroom that’s safe from you? When was the last time you refused an invitation? Or a glass of champagne?”

Emma’s voice rose. “Do you think I enjoy this—limbo? I was married. If Paul hadn’t died, I would still be married. I would have a nursery and children and something more to think about than the next dress and the next ball. But Paul died.”

Augustus was caught up short by the raw pain in her voice. This was an Emma he had never seen before.

He had never thought that she might have loved her Paul, not like that. She had been fond enough of him, she had made that much clear; she had missed him, that was fair enough; but with all the ups and downs and gossip and scandal, Augustus had just assumed, as everyone else had, that it couldn’t have been a terribly deep emotion. As she had said herself, she had been young.

He was an ass. A complete and utter ass.

He was also, alarmingly, bitterly jealous of a dead man.

Emma’s fingers twisted together, like snakes in a Greek sculpture. Her words tumbled out, one after the other. “He couldn’t help dying and I couldn’t stop it. Neither of us had that choice or that chance. But you do. You have every chance in the world and you chose to be what you are.”

Augustus’s lips moved with difficulty. “What am I?”

He could see Emma’s throat move as she swallowed. “A fainéant. A do-nothing.” She blinked away tears, tossing her head defiantly back. “Do you know what I think?”

Augustus had the uncomfortable feeling that he was going to.

“I think you wanted Jane because you knew she would never have you.” Her eyes glittered with a strange, fierce light. “I think you wanted her because she was safe. Cytherea is only Cytherea because she doesn’t leave the tower.”

“I—” Augustus couldn’t think of anything to say.

He didn’t have to.

The door to the summerhouse rocketed open, hinges screeching. A man stormed onto the stairs, red-faced with heat and anger.

“Can a man get no work done?” raged the Emperor.

Augustus and Emma froze in the face of imperial wrath, arrested mid-argument.

Had they been speaking that loudly? From the expressions of amusement and derision, Augustus could only assume they must have been.

It wasn’t just Bonaparte on the steps but the entire flower of France’s navy ranged behind him, staring over his shoulder in varying degrees of annoyance, curiosity, and yawning indifference. Even the bees on the roses seemed to have stopped their buzzing to pause and stare.

Augustus had forgotten, at some point in their discussion, that Bonaparte was just a window away. He had forgotten about everything except Emma and the words pouring from her lips. They buffeted him like the wind and waves of Mr. Fulton’s machine, sending him racketing about as helplessly as Americanus in his ill-fated barque, his mast broken, his defenses down. He felt like a necromancer who had summoned a storm only to find it turned against him, scourged with lightning, deafened by thunder.

Metaphor again, always metaphor. If he clung to metaphor, he wouldn’t have to think about the meat of it, what Emma had actually told him.

She wasn’t the only one who knew how to hide.

Next to him, Emma sank into a deep and hasty curtsy. Augustus could see only the very top of her head, gilded by sunlight. “I beg pardon, sire. We were just…talking. About the masque.”

“Practicing the love scenes, were they?” murmured one officer to another.

Augustus could see the tips of Emma’s ears go red. It was the only bit of her he could make out. It made him feel like the worst sort of cad. Exposing himself to scorn and derision—well, he was used to that. To expose her to the amusement and censure of Bonaparte’s entourage, that was another matter entirely.

Bonaparte made a grunting noise. “The production had better be worth the trouble.”

Trying to draw attention from Emma to himself, Augustus said loudly, “We strive to amuse, sire. We trust the mellifluous meditations of our meandering marauders shall be to your certain satisfaction.”

“Yes, yes,” said Bonaparte impatiently. “Next time, confine your scenes to the theatre.”

“Sire,” said Emma, and bowed her head still farther.

“Enough, Madame Delagardie, enough.” The Emperor was inclined to be benevolent. Chucking her under the chin, he raised her to her feet. He wasn’t a large man, but she looked very small in his grasp. A moment ago, Augustus would have sworn she was the size of the Athena Nike, able to overleap buildings and shake the foundations of empires with the volume of her voice. “There’s no need for that. We were done here anyway. Weren’t we, gentlemen?”

There was a decided note of challenge in his voice.

Admiral Villeneuve opened his mouth and then closed it again.

Robert Fulton stepped forward, holding himself stiffly. “I do not imagine we can have anything more to say.”

“Come back to me when you have made the changes,” said the Emperor dismissively. He turned to Villeneuve, turning his back on Fulton. “Where did you leave the other plan?”

“In the council room, sire.”

“What are we waiting for? Come!” With a wave of his hand, Bonaparte motioned his minions onward. They surged forward, making for the house, leaving Emma, Augustus, and Fulton in their wake, the summerhouse abandoned but for the detritus of paper and one red jacket that someone had tossed carelessly across the back of a chair and forgotten in the race to the house. Mr. Fulton’s portfolio was sprawled open on the table.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, the bit that sounded strangely like Miss Gwen, Augustus dimly remembered that this was what he was here for, that he was meant to discover what Mr. Fulton had devised and how Bonaparte meant to deploy it.

Right now, though, all that felt curiously insubstantial. Emma’s words still rang in his ears. He had been in the midst of a cannon fusillade once, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had felt something like this, the explosion followed by a painful, ringing silence, with the black soot griming his face and clouding his eyes. He had felt it then, too, this curious stillness. The senses faltered before the enormity of the bombardment.

Augustus opened his mouth to speak, but the words clogged in his throat. For once in his life, he had no idea what to say.

A fainéant, she had called him. A do-nothing.

Emma’s back was to him, the line of her spine showing clearly through the thin fabric of her dress.

If Paul hadn’t died, I would still be married.

Was that what she agonized over, behind that fake, bright smile? Did she pretend that Paul was still alive, that they had a nursery of children together at that estate of his, the one with the drainage issues? Was it Paul she still dreamed of at night, Paul whose name she murmured in her sleep?

Augustus felt as though the world had just been picked up and dropped again, all his certitudes and convictions lying in pieces around him. All these weeks of working together, laughing together, being together, and he had never suspected, never even imagined. Emma was what she was, the widow Delagardie, so long a widow that her widowhood was a fact rather than an event. It had never occurred to him that to her, the late Delagardie was more than the precondition to her widowhood, or that she might, despite the time, despite the rumors, despite it all, still mourn him.

Should he offer sympathy? It was a bit late for that, and the stiff line of Emma’s back denied it.

Besides, why would she want the sympathy of one such as he, a fainéant, a do-nothing? Augustus tried to muster anger and failed. Indignation sparked briefly and sputtered out again. It had been easy to be angry yesterday, over Jane. But this? He was too dazed for anger.

I think you wanted her because she was safe, she had said. Cytherea is only Cytherea because she doesn’t leave the tower.

There was a sick feeling at the pit of Augustus’s stomach. What if yesterday had resolved itself differently? What if Jane had turned around and told him she shared his feelings and loved him in return? Would he had held out his arms to her?

Or would he have fled in the opposite direction?

“Months of work!” Augustus jumped as Mr. Fulton whacked the side of the summerhouse with an openhanded slap. Mr. Fulton was having no trouble mustering all the rage that Augustus lacked. “A full-size model…a full trial…and he…”

Ignoring Augustus, Emma went to the inventor, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Mr. Fulton?”

Mr. Fulton was too busy with his own grievances to notice her flushed cheeks or strained voice. “Perfect, just perfect,” he said bitterly. “Changes, he says! And yet he still wants it by July!”

They had both forgotten Augustus was there. At least, Mr. Fulton had forgotten. Emma was quite studiously pretending Augustus didn’t exist.

“Oh, dear,” she said, in her soothing voice. Augustus knew that voice; it was the one that went with the head tilt and the arm pat. Emma had sympathy down to an art. “How trying for you.”

With an effort, Fulton got hold of his emotions. “I’m sorry, Madame Delagardie. You can’t want to hear this. You said you needed help with the wave machine?”