Bonaparte had left his study empty.

Amy allowed herself only a moment to gloat over her good fortune. With a quick glance either way to make sure no one else was about, she plunged into Bonaparte’s study.

Amy picked her way across the broken quills and balled-up bits of paper on the floor. She really mustn’t disturb anything; she must do nothing to arouse suspicion. And if he returned, she could legitimately claim to be lost and looking for Hortense. Who would ever suspect a bit of a girl in a yellow muslin dress? Amy practiced looking innocent and mildly daft as she made for the desk. Widen the eyes, drop the lower lip . . . and, if worse came to worst, cry. From that last interview, Amy had gleaned a crucial piece of intelligence; Bonaparte was a soft touch for crying women.

Ah, the desk! Amy briefly clasped her hands together to still their shaking, and then stooped over in earnest. In the center of the desk lay a piece of paper closely covered with writing, as well as an unintended design of ink dots splattered by the abandoned quill that lay next to it. Clearly, Bonaparte must have been working on this when his sister disturbed him.

Eagerly, Amy snatched it up and began to read. “Article 818. The husband may, without the concurrence of his wife, claim a distribution of objects movable or immovable fallen to her and which come into community . . .”

Oh, for goodness’ sake, what was this drivel? Not only did Amy disagree heartily with the sentiment—she defied any future husband to try to claim a distribution of her objects movable or otherwise without her concurrence—but it was utterly useless to her investigation. Unless Bonaparte’s secret plan for conquering England was to contract a marriage between the two countries and then claim that as husband, France was entitled to all of England’s objects, movable and immovable.

Not being an immovable object, Amy moved on, replacing the offending document in the center of the blotter, with the quill placed across it as though just dropped by Napoleon’s hand.

A sheaf of papers bristled under a fragment of classical pottery serving as a paperweight. At any other time, Amy would have been intrigued by the artifact; keen on her mission, she went straight for the documents, which were folded and roughly bound together with a piece of string. Carefully, Amy eased the letter on the top out of the pile. Ten thousand francs. Amy squinted at the spidery writing. Had she misread it? No. It was a bill from Josephine’s mantua-maker for a white lawn gown embroidered with gold thread. Amy yanked out the next paper from the pile, which turned out, unsurprisingly, to be an invoice for the matching slippers. Recklessly, Amy shook out all of the papers, and began to thumb through them. She flipped past bills for cashmere shawls, for diamond bracelets, for shipments of rose cuttings, for more pairs of slippers and gloves and fans than Amy could imagine using in a decade of continuous partygoing. There wasn’t a clandestine note or a suspicious purchase among the lot.

Wait! Unless . . . Could the documents be a code? Perhaps what was meant by slippers was really rifles—different colors could refer to different types! And rose cuttings could refer to cannon balls, or something of that ilk. Buoyed by her own cleverness, Amy snatched back up the documents she had dropped in disgust seconds before. Perhaps by looking at them more closely, she would find a key to the code.

On second glance, it became quite clear that the bills were indeed bills. The only thing revealed by looking at them more closely was that Amy’s imagination was more effective than her spying. And that Josephine, for all her charm, was a prodigious spendthrift, but that wasn’t anything everybody didn’t already know. The English papers delighted in carrying tales of Josephine’s extravagances and Bonaparte’s infuriated reaction. It was rumored—in the Spectator, not the Shropshire Intelligencer—that Josephine had already bankrupted the French treasury with her uncontrollable acquisitiveness.

Scowling, Amy bundled the folded papers back into their string. Marvelous. She had stumbled into Bonaparte’s abandoned study in the spying opportunity of a lifetime, and what did she discover? A packet of bills.

Amy rested her hands on her hips and glared at the desk. Really, there had to be something more informative among the clutter. A bird landed on the windowsill, puffed out its chest, and unleashed an operatic series of trills. Absently, Amy flapped a hand at it, hissing, “Shh!” Offended, the bird gave a few indignant hops, relieved himself on the windowsill, and flew squawking back into the garden to complain to his fellows.

Amy returned to rifling halfheartedly through Bonaparte’s desk. Perhaps the Purple Gentian had been right to call her naïve last night. It had certainly been naïve of her to believe that a man clever enough to take over the rule of a turbulent country, cutting out numerous competitors at home, and conquering a slew of countries abroad along the way, would be dim enough to leave his plans for the invasion of England in plain sight upon his desk.

All right then, if Bonaparte’s secret papers weren’t in plain sight upon his desk, she would just have to figure out where they were. By the time she emerged from this room, she would have something to report to the Gentian, something that would make his eyes widen with admiration and his jaw drop. “Amy, you astound me,” he would say, and she would simply raise an eyebrow—well, both eyebrows, since she couldn’t manage just the one—and murmur, “You doubted me?”

Amy’s gaze drifted up around the walls, searching for secret caches. That painting on the far wall could conceal a safe of some kind. And over there, by the window, that long, dark line might be a relic of another inkpot that had perished for its country, or it might indicate a break of some kind in the wallpaper. Amy planted both her hands on the desk and leaned forward for a better look.

“Ouch!” Lesson one of spying: Never plant your hands anywhere without first checking to make sure you won’t be maimed. Amy absently sucked on a cut on her index finger, and searched for the weapon of destruction. She wouldn’t put it past the tyrant to have strewn poisoned tacks on his desk, or . . . Oh, it was a paper cut.

The sharp edge that had sliced her finger poked out from underneath the blotter. Grabbing the edge with her uninjured left hand, Amy yanked it free. Probably another bill, she thought irately. The series of numbers marching across the page gave credence to that theory, but the signature at the bottom said Joseph Fouché. Fouché had sent Bonaparte calculations for the cost of the Army for the Invasion of England.

Amy’s first impulse was to stuff the paper into her bodice and flee. She went so far as to poise the paper over her neckline, but common sense prevailed. Not only would it create quite a lump under the thin fabric of her dress, but Bonaparte was sure to notice its absence. She would just have to memorize it. Two thousand four hundred ships, Amy repeated to herself, and one hundred and seventy-five thousand men. Amy felt a swell of indignation that had nothing to do with proving herself to the Purple Gentian or the ills done the monarchy. Her overactive imagination had presented her with an image of one hundred and seventy-five thousand Frenchmen marching grimly through Uncle Bertrand’s peaceful meadows, trampling his fields and kicking his sheep.

“Not while I’m around to stop it,” Amy muttered, and read on.

The treasury, Fouché wrote, could not support such an expense. No wonder, thought Amy, glancing at the pile of bills she had plunked back down on the desk in irritation moments before. The next time Amy saw Mme Bonaparte, she would be sure to bring her attention to the necessity of owning at least three diamond tiaras.

Unfortunately, Fouché had secured funds from the Swiss. Amy scowled at the letter. Secured, indeed! Extorted would doubtless be the better word. The money, in gold, was to be transported by coach from Switzerland to Paris on the evening of April thirtieth, and thence to what Fouché referred to as “a safe place.”

“That’s what he thinks.” Amy regarded the scrap of paper with the smug sort of smile usually reserved by felines for canaries.

The last day of April. That gave her a week and a half to figure out how to intercept the money. Plenty of time, thought Amy blithely. First, she would notify the Purple Gentian, who, of course, would be so impressed that he would henceforth include her in all his counsels. Together, they could create a daring plan to make off with the money. Without money, Bonaparte’s invasion of England would be thwarted. The discontented masses would rise against him. And the monarchy would be restored. Amy grinned as she stuck the letter carefully back under the blotter. Not bad work for a girl fresh from Shropshire.

Amy strode hurriedly out of the study. Before she continued on to Hortense, she would have to send a note to the Gentian, telling him to meet her . . . where? Perhaps in the Luxembourg gardens. She could find a page to—

Ooof! Amy collided at high speed with someone entering the anteroom from the other direction. Her head was still spinning as a pair of capable hands righted her, and a warm chuckle sounded somewhere above her ear. “What an original way to make your presence felt!”

Chapter Twenty

“My lord!” Amy hastily stepped back, this time banging into a bust of Brutus that wobbled ominously on its marble pedestal. Amy grabbed at Brutus before he could take a suicidal leap off his stand. “I didn’t . . . that is . . .”