“Richard!” On Hortense’s lips, the name was soft and exotic, Reeshard. She demanded of him in French, “When did you return?”

Richard bowed over Mme Bonaparte’s hand before kissing her daughter’s. “I returned Monday night.”

“And you have not called until now! Cad! Is he not a beast, Mama, to have deprived us of his company for so long? Eugene will be disappointed to have missed you—he is off at the theater tonight.”

Amy was about to back quietly away, when Hortense laid one gloved hand gently on Amy’s arm. “There is a lovely countrywoman of yours to whom I would like to introduce you!” Beaming, Hortense tilted her head in Amy’s direction, and drew Amy forward. Amy tried not to balk visibly under Lord Richard’s knowing eye. “Mlle Balcourt, I would like to you make zee acquaintance of Lord Reeshard Selweeck.”

“We’ve already met,” said Amy hastily.

“You ’ave?” Obviously intrigued, Hortense looked up inquiringly at Richard from under her eyelashes.

“Don’t matchmake, Hortense; it’s a beastly habit,” Richard advised in French. In English, he said to Amy, “If Hortense will spare you, I would like to introduce you to Vivant Denon, the director of the Egyptian expedition. Er—of the secondary part of the Egyptian expedition, that is. The scholarly bit.”

“I caught your meaning, my lord. You don’t have to belabor it.” Amy narrowed her eyes at Richard over the lace fringe of her fan. Fans were truly wonderfully useful items. Amy wished she could carry one all the time. “Why?”

“Amy!” Miss Gwen’s feathers shook reprovingly.

Richard ignored Amy’s rudeness. “Because I thought you would enjoy discussing the classics with him.”

“I would think my absurd efforts would have little to recommend them to scholars so widely traveled,” riposted Amy, snapping her fan closed.

Lord Richard’s green eyes glinted with amusement. “Oh, I wouldn’t say all of your ideas are absurd,” he said lightly. “Just some of them.”

“Josephine!” A stentorian bellow shook the candles in their sconces.

Unconsciously, Amy grabbed Richard’s arm, looking about anxiously for the source of the roar. About the room, people went on chatting as before.

“Steady there.” Richard patted the delicate hand clutching the material of his coat. “It’s just the First Consul.”

Snatching her hand away as though his coat were made of live coals, Amy snapped, “You would know.”

“Josephine!” The dreadful noise repeated itself, cutting off any further remarks. Out of an adjoining room charged a blur of red velvet, closely followed by the scurrying form of a young man. Amy sidestepped just in time, swaying on her slippers to avoid toppling into Lord Richard.

The red velvet came to an abrupt stop beside Mme Bonaparte’s chair. “Oh. Visitors.”

Once still, the red velvet resolved into a man of slightly less than medium height, clad in a long red velvet coat with breeches that must once have been white, but which now bore assorted stains that proclaimed as clearly as a menu what the wearer had eaten for supper.

“I do wish you wouldn’t shout so, Bonaparte.” Mme Bonaparte lifted one white hand and touched him gently on the cheek.

Bonaparte grabbed her hand and planted a resounding kiss on the palm. “How else am I to make myself heard?” Affectionately tweaking one of her curls, he demanded, “Well? Who is it tonight?”

“We have some visitors from England, sir,” his stepdaughter responded. “I should like to present . . .” Hortense began listing their names. Bonaparte stood, legs slightly apart, eyes hooded with apparent boredom, and one arm thrust into the opposite side of his jacket, as though in a sling.

Bonaparte inclined his head, looked down at his wife, and demanded, “Are we done yet?”

Thwap!

Everyone within earshot jumped at the sound of Miss Gwen’s reticule connecting with Bonaparte’s arm. “Sir! Take that hand out of your jacket! It is rude and it ruins your posture. A man of your diminutive stature needs to stand up straight.”

Something suspiciously like a chuckle emerged from Lord Richard’s lips, but when Amy glanced sharply up at him, his expression was studiedly bland.

A dangerous hush fell over the room. Flirtations in the far corners of the room were abandoned. Business deals were dropped. The non-English speakers among the assemblage tugged at the sleeves of those who had the language, and instant translations began to be whispered about the room—suitably embellished, of course.

“It’s an assassination attempt!” a woman next to Amy cried dramatically, swooning back into the arms of an officer who looked as though he didn’t quite know what to do with her, but would really be happiest just dropping her.

“No, it’s not, it’s just Miss Gwen,” Amy tried to explain.

Meanwhile, Miss Gwen was advancing on Bonaparte, backing him up so that he was nearly sitting on Josephine’s lap. “While we are speaking, sir, this habit you have of barging into other people’s countries without invitation—it is most rude. I will not have it! You should apologize to the Italians and the Dutch at the first opportunity!”

“Mais zee Italians, zey invited me!” Bonaparte exclaimed indignantly.

Miss Gwen cast Bonaparte the severe look of a governess listening to substandard excuses from a wayward child. “That may well be,” she pronounced in a tone that implied she thought it highly unlikely. “But your behavior upon entering their country was inexcusable! If you were to be invited to someone’s home for a weekend, sirrah, would you reorganize their domestic arrangements and seize the artwork from their walls? Would you countenance any guest who behaved so? I thought not.”

Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England. “So much for the Peace of Amiens!” she started to whisper to Jane, but Jane was no longer beside her.

Amy wondered if Jane had wandered away while she was sparring with Lord Richard. She thought, vaguely, that Jane had still been about when Lord Richard had intruded onto the scene, but after that her attention had been so filled by the presence of Lord Richard that she couldn’t swear with any certainty to anything else at all. Amy slanted her eyes to the right, seeking a furtive glimpse of a strong arm in a superfine coat. Instead, Amy found herself eyeing a puffed sleeve. No longer furtive, Amy twisted to look at the spot that Lord Richard had been occupying beside her before the hullabaloo with Miss Gwen erupted.

Lord Richard Selwick had evaporated.

Amy tried to peer around the room, but the fascinated circle of bodies around Bonaparte and Miss Gwen was several people deep, and it seemed that Bonaparte had a penchant for employing very tall officers; Amy found herself staring straight into several gold-bedecked uniform coats. She would need a stepladder to see over them! Worming her way out of the crowd, Amy stepped on seven different toes, smelled fifteen different perfumes at close range, got tangled up with one ornamental sword, and almost tumbled over as she finally broke free.

Beyond the human wall, the rest of the room appeared deserted. To Amy’s right, a woman had a man backed into the corner and was running a finger suggestively down his cheek. Some people have no shame, thought Amy. On the other side of the room . . . Wait a minute! Amy’s eyes scooted back to the first corner.

That wasn’t..? Was it? It was!

Being caressed in plain view of anyone who cared to look, in Mme Bonaparte’s salon, was none other than that infamous turncoat, Lord Richard Selwick.

Chapter Fourteen

Good heavens, was that woman actually licking Lord Richard’s ear?

Transfixed, Amy backed up a couple of steps on her soft slippers. A candle sconce was placed just above their heads, so Amy could view the scene and its actors with hideous clarity. The woman wore a white lawn gown so diaphanous that the light went right through it, revealing the decided absence of any slip at all, wetted or otherwise. Her dark hair fell in smooth curls from a circlet of pearls high on top of her head, one particularly long curl calling attention to the fact that the woman’s dress had practically no bodice, unless one were willing to count a brief scrap of lace bristling two inches above the high waist. She was incredibly, undeniably beautiful.

Amy hated her on sight.

Edouard had pointed the woman out to her earlier. Amy racked her memory as the woman slid one hand into the shining golden waves of Richard’s hair. Pauline! That was it. Bonaparte’s younger sister, Pauline Leclerc. Her affairs were as legendary as her beauty, and she was said to have bedded half the men in Paris. Amy, of course, wasn’t supposed to know such things, but she had read the gossip sheets assiduously for years. When it came to the French, the English papers had few qualms about reporting scandal at its most scandalous, without even the protective veil of a euphemism.

Watching Pauline twine herself sensuously around Lord Richard like Laocoön and the snakes, Amy smoothed down the opaque material of her skirt, aware for the first time that her own frock had been designed by a rural modiste in Shropshire, working off fashion papers several months old. Amy’s hand went up to her own very modest scooped neckline, toying with the charm that hung in the hollow of her throat. Next to Pauline’s diamonds, the little gold locket on a silk ribbon around her neck must look a trumpery affair, a child’s trinket. Amy suddenly felt very young and very gauche, a little girl spying on an adult party.