Last night grenadiers standing stiffly at attention (at least Bonaparte made no attempt to hide the source of his power!) had lined the staircase like human signposts. At the top of the landing they had followed the sound of martial music through a series of antechambers lit with candle sconces draped in gauze. By the time they were three rooms away, the hubbub of the Yellow Salon had been an unmistakable guide.

It wasn’t as though the palace was deserted. As Amy wandered down the corridors looking for suspicious activities, she passed servants lugging pails of water, soldiers leaving their shifts, and a pale young man in an ill-fitting frock coat with ink-stained fingers, who Amy surmised was most likely someone’s secretary.

Amy was contemplating following the secretary (after all, he might be on his way to a highly secret meeting), when her attention was arrested by a familiar puce frock coat in the next room. It was undeniably her brother—no one else would wear gold lace in that quantity at collar and cuffs—but his voice held a very uncharacteristic air of authority as he held forth in a rapid whisper.

Amy strained for a glimpse of his companion. Her pulse raced at the prospect of encountering the Purple Gentian again, and she leaned further forward around the doorframe. Why did Edouard have to wear coats with such ridiculously padded shoulders? All she could make out was a hand and a bit of black sleeve; Amy doubted even the most dedicated spy would be able to identify someone from a hand glimpsed from several yards away. Even that unhelpful appendage was soon blocked by a waterfall of gold lace, as Edouard pressed something into the stranger’s hand. Edouard’s garish cuffs hindered Amy’s view, but it looked like paper. A note of some kind?

Amy edged forward, right into the doorknob.

She bit down on her inadvertent gasp of pain and annoyance, but the soft exhalation of air was enough to alert Edouard’s companion, who grabbed at Edouard’s arm, said something in a rapid whisper, and propelled him through the door on the opposite side of the room. Edouard scurried out without so much as glancing back.

But his companion did.

As Edouard’s companion swerved to yank the door shut behind him, his face came briefly into view before the oaken barrier slammed into place. Amy only saw his face for a moment, but that moment was enough. It was a face she recognized, but not the face of Georges Marston. It was a narrow, dark face, undistinguished in every way—except for the long, newly healed scab that slashed across his left temple.

“Drat!”

Amy raced across the room and peered through the door, but it was no use; her brother and his companion had already disappeared from sight.

How ever was she going to explain to Jane that she had lost her wounded man for a second time?

Chapter Nineteen

It was in considerably reduced spirits that Amy returned to her exploration of the Tuilleries. At first, she peered beneath tables and behind chairs in search of a familiar flash of puce and gold, but Edouard and his companion had disappeared with a speed of which Amy would never have believed her brother capable. He had whisked his padded shoulders and lacy ruffles out of her path faster than the Purple Gentian leaping through a study window.

Ought she, Amy wondered, to broach the topic with Edouard on the way home? Should she simply tell him she knew him to be in league with the Purple Gentian and demand to be allowed to participate? It would certainly save her much time spent skulking about, and give Edouard an opportunity to drop his foppish front in his own home. On the other hand, Edouard might tell her, as he frequently had when they were small children, to mind her own business. In fact, it seemed more than likely that was just what Edouard would do. He had never been amenable to sharing.

All things considered, Amy concluded, she was probably best off maintaining an air of ignorance—and spying on her brother whenever the opportunity arose. She would have to consult with Jane. . . .

“DISGRACE!” someone bellowed.

Amy stopped abruptly, shocked out of her reverie. Good heavens, that wasn’t directed at her, was it? She took a quick look around. No. She was alone in yet another of the little antechambers that separated the grander areas of the palace. The noise had emerged from the door towards which she had been thoughtlessly wandering, a door that stood slightly ajar, as though someone had just entered.

“YOU ARE A DISGRACE!” the bellower repeated, with, if possible, an increase in volume.

Amy was considering edging her way back out of the anteroom, when another much softer voice interposed, “But, Napoleon, I—”

Amy’s breath caught in her throat. While not exactly a meeting with Fouché, the conversation held promise for the eavesdropper. Perhaps a scandal that she could convey back to the English news sheets? Lifting her muslin skirts in both hands, she tiptoed her way into the space between the door and the wall.

“Leclerc only dead for a year!”

Leclerc . . . The name might mean little in terms of international espionage, but Amy pressed her ear against the hinges of the door hard enough to leave a permanent dent. The last time she had spotted Pauline Bonaparte Leclerc, the shameless woman had had her tongue in Lord Richard Selwick’s ear. Her interest, Amy assured herself, was purely professional, not personal. Lord Richard’s amours meant nothing to her, nothing at all. It was just that . . . that . . . any scandal that might be damaging to the Bonaparte clan could be helpful to her cause, she rationalized triumphantly.

Through the gap in the door, Amy could hear the clomping of boots on the parquet floor as Bonaparte raged about the room. “You’re out of mourning already!”

“But, Napoleon, I did cut off all my hair and place it in his coffin.”

“Hair, ha!” The smack of a palm hitting wood. “Hair grows back! It already has! And you! Chasing anything in trousers!”

Amy waited eagerly for a reference to Lord Richard and that scandalous scene in the salon.

“My Assistant Minister of Police complained that you pinched him in an inappropriate place! Again!”

“Oh, but, Napoleon, it wasn’t an inappropriate place,” Pauline reassured him eagerly. “It was in my sitting room.”

Amy eyed the wood of the door with incredulous disgust. Either Pauline Leclerc was one of the most truly addlepated people she had ever encountered (and there was stiff competition for that title, with Derek on that list, not to mention her cousin Agnes), or she was wickedly clever. Amy preferred the first option.

Bonaparte spoke in the simple monosyllables of someone who had also chosen the first option. “What was he doing there?”

“I had to have someone check for spies,” Pauline answered innocently.

Crash! Bonaparte had hurled something against the wall. Amy squinted against the hinges. Ah, an inkwell, judging from the large black splotch adorning the wallpaper.

“Don’t be angry with me, Napoleon,” Pauline wheedled. “It’s just that I am so bored. . . .”

“Bored? Bored? Find a hobby! Go shopping!”

“You can’t begrudge me my innocent little amusements. . . .”

“Your innocent amusements are an international scandal! What do I have to do? Send you to a nunnery?”

An excellent solution! Amy would have seconded the idea had she been a legitimate part of the conversation, rather than an eavesdropper.

“How can you”—sniff—“be so unkind? All I want”—sniff—“is a little happiness.”

“All I want is my family not to embarrass me!”

“This is Josephine’s doing, isn’t it? She’s poisoned your mind against me!”

Amy had been decidedly right in liking the First Consul’s wife. Josephine was clearly a woman of good taste and sound judgment—except in marrying Bonaparte.

To his credit, the First Consul rose to his wife’s defense, or rather, roared in his wife’s defense, “Hold your tongue!”

“If that’s what you want, I’ll just leave. You’ll never have to see me again.” The sound of chair legs scraping against wood was followed by Pauline sobbing her way out of the room. Amy cringed back against the wall, fearing both disclosure and the impact of the door, but Pauline slipped easily through the gap—nobody in the throes of distress should be that graceful, thought Amy critically—bawling into her handkerchief all the while.

“Pauline! Don’t cry, damn you! Pauline!” Bonaparte charged out of the room after his sister.

The door slammed open. Fortunately, Bonaparte’s shouts drowned out Amy’s involuntary oomph as the heavy wood whacked all of the air out of her lungs.

When the little black spots in front of Amy’s eyes had faded away—except for the legitimate little spots of dust motes dancing in a beam of sunshine—she slipped cautiously out from behind the door. “I feel like a dress that was put in a clothespress,” she muttered to herself.

Once Amy had flexed her shoulders and shaken out her arms, and felt more like herself and rather less like a piece of recently ironed fabric, she tiptoed around to peek into the room that Bonaparte and his sister had so recently vacated. After all, there was only so much one could see through the inch-wide gap between the door and the wall.

Amy’s eye took in, one by one, a wall with a large ink splotch, an iron staircase that looked a bit like an ink splotch itself against the pale wall, and a carpet marred by yet more ink splotches. By far the most interesting feature of the room was a desk, piled with stacks of papers, and surrounded by enough broken quills to re-feather a plump goose.