Miss Gwen sniffed. “Young man, I live in the countryside, not the wilds of America. We are not entirely cut off from the civilized world.”

“My apologies.”

“When I made my debut, I knew my peerage better than any girl in London. I could identify the crest on a carriage from five streets away. The Uppington estates are adjoined by those of the Blakeneys, are they not?”

“Does that mean you know the Scarlet Pimpernel?” Amy asked breathlessly.

Lord Richard’s face stilled into a mask as imperturbable as that of the carving of the pharaoh on the stela. Amy blinked. She must have imagined the expression. Lord Richard was smiling, all affability, at Miss Gwen as he replied, “Yes, I spent much of my youth raiding the Blakeney kitchens. Would you like to see a mummy?” he added. “It might prove a useful device in your novel.”

Richard took Miss Gwen’s bony arm, and steered her down the center of the room, away from Amy.

Amy hurried after them. “What is the Scarlet Pimpernel like?”

“Percy is a splendid chap,” Richard said warmly. “He never even scolded me for picking all of the plums out of his plum pudding.”

Amy smiled. Richard smiled back. They smiled together. It was quite definitely a moment.

It was, alas, only a momentary moment. Miss Gwen spoiled it by banging her parasol against the flagstones of the floor. Richard supposed he should be grateful that it had been the floor, rather than his toe.

“We have trespassed on your hospitality long enough.” Miss Gwen shook off Richard’s arm, and grabbed Amy’s. “I have learned all I desired . . . about Egyptian antiquities. Come along, Jane, Amy. Don’t dawdle. I’m sure Lord Richard has much to do.”

“I’ll see you to your coach,” Richard offered, as Miss Gwen chivied her charges forward with the tip of her parasol.

This Miss Gwen graciously permitted. Richard regaled Amy with tales of his childhood exploits and Percy’s benevolence all the way through the palace. Amy, enthralled, didn’t seem to notice that all of his stories stopped at least a year before Sir Percy became the Scarlet Pimpernel. She countered with her own tales of training to be a member of the Pimpernel’s band, all of the midnight escapes from the nursery, and costumes filched from the scullery or her uncle’s wardrobe.

“Don’t forget the time you tried to train the sheep to stampede at the sound of a whistle,” chimed in Jane.

Lord Richard arched a quizzical eyebrow at Amy.

“I thought they might be useful in an attack,” Amy protested, lips twitching with suppressed laughter. “After all, we didn’t have any cavalry at hand, so I had to make do with what we had.”

“Tell me,” he said, lowering his voice in a tone of mock confidentiality, “did you actually try to ride the sheep?”

Amy flushed, looking, one might say, somewhat sheepish.

“Waving a wooden sword and shouting battle cries,” confirmed Jane.

“I was only eight,” Amy defended herself.

“Yes, but you were twelve when you set your hair on fire.”

“Let me guess,” Lord Richard ventured, grinning at Amy. “You were experimenting with gunpowder to blow up the Bastille.”

“Actually,” Amy corrected him loftily, “I was applying ashes to my hair to see if they would make me look convincingly aged and gray-haired. The only problem was that I didn’t stamp out all of the embers quite thoroughly enough. Uncle Bertrand wouldn’t let me have any gunpowder,” she added wistfully as they stepped outside.

Lord Richard flung back his head and guffawed. The courtyard of the Tuilleries rang with his laughter as he escorted the three ladies to Edouard’s carriage. He made his bows to Miss Gwen and Jane, handing them into the carriage. Finally, Amy stood alone before the open door.

His voice lowered to an intimate murmur that made the skin on Amy’s arms prickle, and ought to have caused her chaperone to drag her away at once. “Stay away from gunpowder,” he cautioned, bowing over Amy’s hand. With a quick, mischievous glance into the carriage to make sure Miss Gwen was occupied in conversation with Jane, Lord Richard flipped Amy’s hand over, and pressed a lingering kiss on the sensitive skin of her palm.

Amy’s shocked gaze flew from her palm to Lord Richard’s laughing eyes. She stared at him, her confusion palpable on her face. In the fraught moment before she turned to climb up into the carriage, he ran his thumb in an intimate caress over her palm. And then he winked.

He told her to stay away from gunpowder?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Amy stumbled into the carriage in an extreme state of confusion. Confusion seemed to be her normal state, nowadays. Amy tried to remember what it felt like to feel sure of herself and her plans and her opinions and the people around her, and failed miserably. First, there had been the Purple Gentian, who had baffled her by seeming to care for her, then repudiating her. And now Lord Richard! Lord Richard who, whenever she thought she had him pegged—as a charming antiquarian, as an evil abettor of the French, as the lover of Pauline Leclerc—did something to confuse her. How could he speak so warmly of Sir Percy, and yet himself have aided the French? How could he bedevil her one moment and charm her the next?

Maybe, thought Amy, her hands pressed tightly together in her lap, she was just too easily charmed. It said something rather unpleasant about the shallowness of her own character that she could fancy herself in love with the Purple Gentian one day and be fascinated by Lord Richard the next. Oh, but she had been so sure of her feelings for the Gentian! And of his for her. His promise of a necklace of stars had seemed to be a sort of divine seal of approval, marking him out as her official, one and only true love.

The phrase fluttered in circles around her head. Something about it nagged at her memory. A necklace of stars . . . a necklace of stars. But she had never told the Purple Gentian about her father’s promise; she had never even told him about her parents’ death. Only one person in France knew about her childhood memory. One person who had grown up next door to Percy Blakeney, who had been in Egypt when Bonaparte’s fleet was destroyed. One person who had been sporting tight tan trousers the previous afternoon. One person who always wore citrus-scented cologne.

“That cad!” Amy breathed.

Jane broke off midsentence in her conversation with Miss Gwen and touched Amy’s hand. “Are you feeling quite all right?”

Oblivious to Jane, to Miss Gwen, to discretion, Amy jerked her hand away and slammed it back down against the seat. “That utter sniveling, lying cad!”

“Um, Amy? Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?” Jane was hovering from a safe distance, lest Amy strike out again. Amy could have told her she was safe—the only person Amy wanted to hit, again and again and again, was several yards back in the Tuilleries—but at the moment, Amy wasn’t capable of uttering anything quite that coherent.

“Cad . . . disgusting . . . urgh!” she muttered.

Amy’s arms flailed wildly. Jane scooted a little farther back on the seat and looked anxiously at Miss Gwen. “Should we . . . ?”

Miss Gwen, however, was smiling quite unconcernedly, if slightly maliciously, at Amy. “You certainly took your time figuring it out.”

“You knew?” Amy’s eyebrows flew up till they nearly reached her hairline. “All this time, you knew? And you didn’t tell me?”

Jane looked brightly from Amy’s agitated face to Miss Gwen’s smug one. “Oh, are you talking about Lord Richard being the Purple Gentian?”

“Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!” Amy flung herself face-first into the seat cushions.

“If it makes you feel better, I only figured it out this morning,” said Jane apologetically, wrenching a corner of her skirt out from under Amy’s head.

“Wonderful,” sputtered Amy, lifting a flushed face from the bench, “just wonderful. Everyone knew except me.”

“The First Consul doesn’t know yet,” volunteered Jane. “Nor does the Ministry of Safety.”

“Yes, but they haven’t been kissing him!” cried Amy heedlessly.

“I take that to mean that you have?” Miss Gwen’s beady eyes fixed on Amy like a vulture sighting prey.

“Um . . .”

“I will refrain from comment on your reckless disregard for your reputation,” Miss Gwen’s voice scraped across Amy’s raw nerves like talons clawing flesh. “Your morals I leave to your conscience. Since what is done cannot be undone, it remains only to take what little good one can from this unfortunate episode.”

“You mean that now I’ve learned my lesson and know never to kiss anyone ever again?”

Miss Gwen impaled Amy on a look of utter contempt. “Lesson, indeed! Kindly contrive not to be more absurd than the good Lord made you. No. I require a full description of the kiss or kisses for incorporation into my novel.”

The world and everyone in it had gone mad. That was the only explanation that Amy could come up with. Lord Richard Selwick, Bonaparte’s antiquarian, was the Purple Gentian. Miss Gwen, rather than scolding her for improper behavior, wanted to use it in her novel. What next?

Bewilderment momentarily distracted her from Lord Richard’s deception. But only for a moment. “How could he be so cruel?” she whispered, her eyes clouded.

“Why don’t you go to him and tell him you know who he is?” suggested Jane.

Amy shook her head so vehemently that her loose curls whipped across the end of Jane’s nose. “You don’t understand, Jane. I want to make him suffer.”

Miss Gwen emitted a cracking noise that might have been a laugh. “Ah. Young love.”