Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

Emma wondered when the world had gone mad. Had it always been this way, and she just hadn’t noticed? “I don’t understand.”

“Come now, Emma,” Georges said exuberantly. “You can drop the act now. I know why you did it. And you won’t regret it. Once I sell them, you’ll be set up like a queen—no! Like an empress. Not this empress,” he amended. He gave a derisive laugh. “She’s not going to last long.”

Emma gaped at him. Georges, being Georges, took it for admiration.

Leaving aside the obvious insult to Mme. Bonaparte…“Just what are you talking about?” Emma demanded.

“The plans!” said Georges. “The plans! Tucked safe away in my—well, you don’t need to know that.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Least said, soonest mended.”

The more he said, the less sense it made. “You have the plans.”

“I got them last night. From Fulton’s room. He didn’t even bother to hide them.” Georges’ voice was rich with contempt for people too stupid to know when they might be burgled. “They were right there in the open.”

Emma’s mind raced over the possibilities. It wasn’t entirely impossible. What if Augustus, struck by a fit of remorse—a not entirely displeasing prospect—had replaced the plans in Fulton’s room after she had left him? What if that had been his way of trying to earn back her good judgment? Or, said the more cynical part of her mind, simply a means of protecting himself in the event that she broke her word and set the authorities on him. It would be very hard to prove anything without the files actually in his room.

The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. In which case—if she could have, Emma would have banged her head against the side of the building—by oh so nobly and foolishly protecting Augustus, she had, in actuality, been protecting Georges.

Who said there was no justice in this world? She had just been served it, twice over, with a garnish of sour grapes.

“I have a buyer all set up,” Georges was saying smugly. “My contact in Kent. Usually, I would send a courier, but with a package this important, I plan to escort it personally. Along with a few cases of third-rate brandy. They’ll drink anything, those English, if you tell them it’s French, and pay through their teeth for the privilege.”

He grinned wolfishly at his own cleverness.

“You’re selling Mr. Fulton’s plans to the English?”

“Not so loud! Who else did you think would pay so well? I offered it to the Austrians, but they had no interest,” he added.

Emma could see where they wouldn’t, being largely landlocked.

There appeared to be one obvious issue. “Isn’t that treason?’

“Treason is such a nasty word. Good business is what I call it. Besides, it would never have worked anyway, that machine. I’m doing the Emperor a favor by seeing it diverted. He should be paying me to rid him of it.”

Mr. Fulton was many things, but he wasn’t a hopeless dreamer. If he said something worked, it generally did.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Emma cautiously.

“It’s meant to be a ship that sails under the water.” Marston’s expression showed just what he thought of that crazy idea. “But these plans I found, they don’t look like any type of ship I’ve ever seen.”

Emma remembered the plans she had seen in Augustus’s bed. She would have a very hard time forgetting them. There had been a long, tubular structure, certainly not her image of a sailing vessel, but anyone with some imagination and some experience of the sea could imagine how it might be intended to work. And Georges, for his sins—especially for those sins enjoyed in the company of Bonaparte’s brother-in-law—was in charge of a regiment at Boulogne, overseeing Bonaparte’s prized new naval base.

“It was all little pieces,” he complained. “A box and a drum and a pistol. Is the drum meant to float? At that rate, we can just close a man in a crate, hand him a pistol, drop him in the Seine, and see what happens.”

“It would have to be a waterproofed crate,” said Emma, but her mind was busily turning over the elements Georges had just described.

A box, a drum, a pistol. Lots of little pieces.

Georges had stolen the plans for the wave machine.

Emma would have laughed if it hadn’t been quite so absurd. And quite so awful. Georges’ Kentish contact would be receiving the very latest in theatrical equipment.

She hoped whoever it was had a masque to perform.

“Well, this was all very cunning of you,” she said, patting his arm. “But I’m afraid I must be getting on to the theatre. There’s so much to do, with the performance in less than an hour.”

In fact, there was very little for her to do. But Georges didn’t need to know that.

“I’ll be back for you,” he said, with a very credible smolder.

He really was a fine figure of a man, thought Emma objectively. Tall, broad, strong-featured. And completely lacking in any moral sense.

Did he mean to marry her to make her keep her silence? Probably not, decided Emma. It was more likely that he simply intended to dangle the prospect of his wonderful self before her, confident that his professions of devotion would keep her from running to the Emperor before he had departed with the plans. Amazing what people were willing to do for those plans. Mr. Fulton had no idea how popular his plans had made her, or what lengths men might be willing to go in order to obtain and keep them.

She could hear Augustus’s voice, forlorn in memory: Emma, I think I love you.

“Lovely,” said Emma. “I look forward to it.”

“My carriage leaves at eight,” Georges murmured. “The boat sails at dawn. So this must be…farewell.”

He made as if to embrace her, but Emma stepped back out of the way. “I’m sure you must have a number of arrangements to make,” she said politely. It was always easier to humor Georges than to argue with him. “I wouldn’t want to keep you. Not when our future depends on it.”

Georges gave a forced laugh. “That’s my practical Emma,” he said. If he meant it to be a compliment, it didn’t quite come out that way. “Best to keep one’s eye on the prize, yes?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Emma agreed. “You wouldn’t want to let it slip away.” Someone, somewhere, was bound to be in need of a wave machine. “Safe journey.”

Keeping his eyes on hers, Georges pressed a lingering kiss to his own palm and released it in her direction.

Emma waggled her fingers farewell.

With a final smolder, Georges flipped his coattails and slipped back around the house, presumably to collect the plans, harry his valet, pack his luggage, and disappear into the night. If his carriage left at eight o’clock, he only had an hour. The masque was scheduled to begin somewhere in the vicinity of seven thirty.

It wasn’t, reflected Emma, the journey Georges needed to worry about. It was the people on the other end. They weren’t going to be best pleased when he arrived bearing the designs for a piece of expensive theatrical equipment rather than a weapon of war. She doubted that “go away or I’ll make thunder noises at you” would go far on the field of battle.

Crosses, double crosses, and Georges outsmarted by himself. Emma would have gone so far as to call it poetic justice if poetry hadn’t been such a sensitive subject just then.

If Georges didn’t have the plans, did that mean Augustus did? And if he did, just what did he intend to do with them?

I think I love you, he whispered again.

Damn him, damn him, damn him. Emma reached for the back door of the theatre.

Someone touched her shoulder. Emma ground her teeth in irritation. Oh, for all that was holy! Hadn’t that tender parting scene been enough for Georges?

Shaking off the hand, Emma whirled around, barking, “What?”

“Emma,” said Augustus, and she felt the handle of the door bite into her back as she took a step back.

He looked much the same as always, hair unbound, shirt properly disordered, breeches just on the acceptable end of tight, but there was a seriousness about him that hadn’t been there before. Or, perhaps, it always had been, and she just hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t seen a lot of things.

“Would you like to explain what just happened in there?” he asked.

“No,” said Emma honestly. His nearness was more distracting than she would have liked to admit. She could feel the warmth of him, just a thin layer of clothing away. Even now, even after all that had happened, she wanted him, so badly. She wanted to twine her arms around his neck and slide her fingers into his hair and…

Flushing, Emma tucked her hands under her elbows, out of harm’s way.

“You lied for me,” he said.

“It wasn’t entirely a lie. I did stumble on the plans.”

“Less stumble, more sat,” said Augustus fondly. His glance was a caress.

Emma’s red cheeks turned redder. “Well, anyway,” she said meaninglessly, as she groped for her wits. Betrayal, she reminded herself. Intrigue. Plans. Georges. “Stumbling, sitting, either way, it was a form of the truth. I did come upon them unawares.” Very unawares. “And while I may not have the plans in my possession now, I will once you give them to me to give back to Mr. Fulton. Won’t I?”

Folding her arms across her chest, she raised her brows at him.