Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

She didn’t want it to be like this. She didn’t want to think of position and status and political advantage. Only of old friendship and good fellowship. Was that so much to ask?

“Madame Bonaparte wants the masque as a surprise for cousin Robert.” Emma looked at Jane over her fan. “I suppose that means that half of Paris already knows it, and the rest will be told by nightfall.”

“Three quarters,” corrected Jane, with a smile. “And everyone agog to know what the subject will be and who is to act which part.”

“Would you like to tell me?” Emma quipped. “I’m sure the rest of Paris will know before I do. Madame Bonaparte suggested a nautical theme, but other than that, there were no requirements, other than that there be a nice singing part for Hortense.”

“Is Monsieur Talma to help you?” The famous actor regularly directed plays for the theatre-mad Bonapartes in their private theatre at Malmaison.

“If I agree to do it.”

“Why not?” asked Jane.

Emma toyed with the edge of her fan. Nervous hands, her mother had called it, as if one could be scolded to serenity. “I don’t mind scribbling in my spare time, but it seems cruel to inflict it on a whole audience. Just look at Mr. Whittlesby!”

“But he brings amusement to so many,” said Jane blandly.

“Laughing with him or at him? Ha! My point.” Emma cast around for a change of subject before Jane pressed on about the masque—or about Mr. Whittlesby. Emma pointed with her fan. “Look. That man over there. Another of your admirers? He’s been staring at us for a good ten minutes.”

Seeing he had caught their attention, the man moved hesitantly forward. He was dressed correctly for evening, in breeches, silk stockings, and buckled shoes, but the clothes were all slightly wrong somehow, the coat last season’s cut, the shirt points too low, the cravat functionally but not elegantly tied.

He came to a stop before Emma and Jane, looking from one to the other. “If you’ll pardon the interruption…I was told I could find Madame Delagardie here?”

His French was heavily accented, so heavily accented as to be nearly incomprehensible. Another American. That explained that, then. Emma had become something of a first port of call for American expatriates in Paris, a convenient resource for the complicated manners and mores of the French capital. “Call on Madame Delagardie,” they told them back home. “She’ll arrange the introductions for you and point you to a tailor who won’t rob you blind.” And so she did and was glad to do it. She would have been glad of such guidance once.

Emma let the fronds of her fan tickle her chin as she looked up under her lashes at the newcomer. “Your quest has been successful, then. You’ve found her. Me,” she specified, just in case he hadn’t gotten it. Poor man, he was still looking all befuddled. Paris did that to some people.

This one seemed more than usually bewildered. Twin furrows formed between his wide-set blue eyes. “Emma?” he said. “Emma?”

“Do I know—?” The words died on Emma’s lips. Blue eyes. Very familiar blue eyes. Slim the shoulders, lighten the hair, take away a decade’s worth of lines from eyes and lips.…“Kort?”

“Emma?”

“Gracious heavens!” Rising on her tiptoes, Emma flung her arms around her cousin’s neck, enveloping him in silver spangles and causing a minor stir on the other side of the room. The rumors would be flying, but Emma didn’t care. “It’s you? It’s really you?”

Kort untangled himself, drawing away to arm’s length, clasping her hands lightly in his, his laughter making him look ten years younger again, a boy on a pier on the Hudson. “I was about to say the same to you! I’ve been prowling this mausoleum all evening trying to find you.” He shook his head, taking her in. “Emma. Little Emma.”

Emma smiled up at him. “I haven’t grown so very much. In fact, I’ve shrunk.” She turned one foot, displaying her flat-heeled slippers. The diamond rings on her toes sparkled. “The last time you saw me, I had some help from heels.”

Kort blinked, dazzled by diamonds. He shook his head again. “Emma…I would never have known you. I expected…”

“A thirteen-year-old in calico?” A slight shift in Jane’s stance caught Emma’s attention. “Good heavens, I am being rude! Forgive me, please. Jane, this is my very favorite cousin, Mr. Kortright Livingston. Kort, I have the honor to present you to the most beautiful woman in Paris, Miss Jane Wooliston.”

Jane bent her knees at just the right angle, only so far for a mister, and an American one. As far as Emma could tell, the English were born with protocol in their very bones.

“It is an honor, Mr. Livingston,” said Jane, slipping into English as the others had done. “With so many cousins, to be Madame Delagardie’s favorite must be a signal distinction indeed.”

“You are English, Miss Wooliston?” Kort said, looking at her quizzically. Technically, travel between England and France was prohibited. Jane was something of a special circumstance. Bonaparte admired beauty.

More important, Hortense had taken Jane under her wing. Bonaparte might not respect many peoples’ wishes, but his stepdaughter had a special place in his affections. Sometimes, Emma forgot that Jane hadn’t attended Madame Campan’s with them; she had fit so seamlessly into their fellowship.

“English by birth,” said Jane calmly. “Paris is my adopted home.”

“Miss Wooliston has cousins here,” Emma jumped in before the conversation could become awkward. Although some of Emma’s cousins had remained Tories, her branch of the family had supported the colonies’ split with Britain; even thirty years on, feelings towards the British could not be termed warm. Kort had always minded terribly that he had been born too late to take an active part in the Revolution. “You’ve met Monsieur de Balcourt, I think. Or if you haven’t, you will.” She wafted her fan around the music room, with its oversize sarcophagi and smirking sphinxes. “This is his home.”

Kort looked dubiously at a mummy case. “It’s all very…exotic.”

Emma remembered the family homestead on the Hudson, decorated in the last word of pre-Revolutionary style, all clean, classical lines and plain dark wood. Her mother didn’t go in for fads. Kort’s mother, her own mother’s second cousin, considered herself somewhat more stylish, cutting a dash in Albany, but even she would have seen nothing like this.

“It’s called Retour d’Egypte,” explained Emma, “in honor of the First Consul’s expedition to Egypt.”

“Hence the name,” contributed Jane blandly. “If you will excuse me, there’s a wounded soul I must soothe.”

Emma followed her gaze to the doorway. Whittlesby clasped his scroll to his heart, looking soulfully at Jane.

Was it silly that it stung, just a bit?

“Wounded soul, indeed!” Emma turned back to Jane, the silk of her skirt swirling around her legs with a very satisfying swish. “It was only a flesh wound.”

“You gouged his ego,” teased Jane.

“Yes, but I left his heart alone,” said Emma severely. “You’ll lead him on if you continue to encourage him so.”

Jane made a face. “That depends on whether you believe Petrarch really loved his Laura. I’m nothing more than a poetic object of expedience.”

Emma grinned. “A muse of convenience?”

“Every poet must have one,” said Jane. “Mr. Livingston.”

With a cordial nod to Emma’s cousin, she crossed the room to rejoin the poet, accepting the arm he held out to her.

Emma watched them as they made their way across the room. Jane was tall, but the poet was a head taller. He had to bend to speak to her, the linen of his shirt stretching across a back that was broader than it had any right to be. Hefting a quill must be better exercise than it seemed.

“What was that all about?” Kort asked.

Emma yanked her attention back to her cousin.

“Oh, nothing,” she said hastily. “Just a poet.”

“I know I can trust you, Miss Wooliston, to listen to my ode without the offense of unnecessary interruptions,” Augustus proclaimed loudly.

Jane slid her arm through his, giving him a warning look under cover of her fan as she strolled with him to French doors that stood slightly ajar to allow the cool night air to reach the overheated guests. “Do come out into the garden, Mr. Whittlesby,” she said. “The night is pleasant, and I find poetry is often enhanced by its surroundings.”

“Ah, Miss Wooliston!” Augustus gestured extravagantly with his free arm, making the fabric of his sleeve billow like a ship under full sail. “But what rose could possibly compare to you?”

He opened the door that led down from the drawing room into the internal courtyard, motioning Jane to precede him. In the center of the garden, there would be no fear of being overheard. The musicians playing in the ballroom and the accumulated chatter of several hundred party guests masked their voices more effectively than any attempt at subterfuge.

There was nothing like conducting clandestine business in plain sight.

“Their bloom will fade; yours, fair lady, is rendered immortal, impressed on parchment by the unflagging labors of my humble pen.”