The Garden Intrigue

Chapter 10

“It was a recipe for cough syrup,” said Jane.

Augustus paused next to a statue that appeared to have misplaced its arms. They had met at the Musée Napoléon, the public art gallery housed in the former Louvre Palace. The vast marble halls provided an excellent place for an assignation. A series of antique statues, looted from Italy during Bonaparte’s last campaign, stood silent sentry to their conversation.

Jane’s chaperone, Miss Gwen, provided more practical protection. Ostensibly engaged in examining the art, she prowled in a continuous circle around them, poking at the statuary with her parasol, glowering at all comers, and generally providing distraction.

“Cough syrup,” said Augustus. “Cough syrup?”

His revelation that Emma Delagardie was smuggling documents to Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte hadn’t gone exactly as expected.

“Cough syrup,” confirmed Jane. “Made of wild cherry bark, lemon, and honey.”

Kitted out in bonnet, gloves, and pelisse, the Pink Carnation was the very image of a demure young lady scarcely out of the schoolroom, her hair swept back smoothly beneath her bonnet, her gloved hands devoid of rings or bracelets. The fichu at her throat hid the locket that she wore on a ribbon around her neck, but Augustus didn’t need to see it to know that it was there. No telltale signet rings for the Pink Carnation; her seal was inscribed in the back of her locket, a delicate tracery on a lady’s trinket.

Augustus admired her acumen, but omniscience was a bit much, even for the legendary Pink Carnation.

Cough syrup? How could she divine that simply from his description of a crumpled piece of paper?

“This is a new talent for you,” he teased, feeling like a lovelorn adolescent as he trotted along beside her. Next, he would be offering to help her carry her hymnal, or begging her to stand up with him at the next country assembly. Ridiculous enough in an adolescent, worse in a grown man. “Walking through locked doors, seeing through solid walls, reading closed correspondence. Am I to congratulate you on the acquisition of a crystal ball?”

All his sallies won him nothing more than a smile, and a perfunctory one at that. Augustus felt reprimanded, without being quite sure why.

“No such arts were required,” Jane said crisply. “I know because I saw it.”

Augustus frowned. “How?”

“Hortense and Emma and I meet weekly for coffee after Emma’s Friday salon.” When Augustus only stared at her, Jane added gently, “I was there. I saw Emma hand Hortense the papers. I saw the contents. It was a recipe for cough syrup, nothing more.”

“How do you know it was the same paper?”

“Emma had only the one in her reticule. There wasn’t room for more.” Jane was clearly prepared to leave it at that.

“Only one that you saw,” said Augustus. “There’s more than one way to transmit a message.”

The bodice was an old and time-honored means of transporting illicit correspondence.

Given the depth of Mme. Delagardie’s décolletage, it would have had to be a very short note. Her bodice hadn’t plunged to the magnificent depths of Napoleon’s sister Pauline, but it had been low enough and transparent enough to make the inclusion of a sizable epistle unlikely.

There were always garters.…

For some reason, it felt wrong to be contemplating Mme. Delagardie’s garters, at least in front of Jane. It shouldn’t have been. His interest in Mme. Delagardie’s garters, Augustus reminded himself, was purely professional. It wasn’t as though he were trying to imagine the contour of her thighs or the texture of her skin, the fine sheen of gold hair, or the slim curve of a calf. No. Not at all. It was entirely about papers, the conveying thereof.

Illicit papers.

Not illicit thoughts.

“There might have been another note,” Augustus said shortly. “It might have been a ruse.”

“Or simply cough syrup,” said Jane practically. “Louis-Charles has been plagued by a terrible cough all spring. Emma’s mother swears by a concoction of herbs and honey. Hortense asked Emma for the recipe. It was as simple as that.”

Simple, in Augustus’s experience, was a dangerous term. Look at Jane herself, the picture of innocent insipidity. The Ministry of Police had made that mistake; Augustus didn’t intend to.

“Things that seem simple often aren’t. The message might have been in code.”

“A new code based on housewifery?” Jane arched her brows. “The idea has merit. One might substitute troop movements for the annihilation of moths or an influx of bullion for boiling with honey.”

Augustus sensed a certain amount of sarcasm there.

“How is that any more absurd than a code based on frivolities?” He saw Jane stiffen and hastily moved to turn the mockery on himself. “Better anything than poetry.”

The brim of her bonnet hid her face as she strolled past a row of statues, forcing him to trot along behind. “It would be a rather clever idea,” she said. “No one ever pays any attention to domestic affairs. I just don’t believe it to be applicable in this instance.”

Augustus swallowed a hasty “Why not?” stopping himself just before the words were uttered.

Mme. Delagardie was her friend, that was why not.

How long had it been since he had called someone friend without reservation or hidden intentions? Espionage was a damnable business, not least for the effect it wrought on one’s human relations, sapping trust, betraying confidences, turning friendship into a mockery and love to a ruse.

He thought of Horace de Lilly, so cavalierly spilling confidences. He had had no qualms about disabusing Horace, but what about Jane? He hated to tarnish whatever illusions she had managed to retain. This was a dirty business, no matter how one looked at it.

On the other hand, illusions could kill.

Gently, Augustus said, “Your loyalty does you credit.”

“It’s not loyalty, it’s common sense.” Jane cast him a look from beneath her bonnet, her gray eyes meeting his without fear or reservation. “Do you really believe I would allow personal affection to blind me to a danger?”

Augustus looked at Jane, her cool gray eyes at odds with the youthful smoothness of her skin, the pale pink flush of her cheeks.

Yes, he wanted to say. Yes, and it might not be a bad thing. There were times when it might be well to allow affection to supersede prudence, for emotion to trump logic. To entirely eschew human weakness was to become a thing apart. In short, Miss Gwen.

“No,” he said. “I don’t. At least,” he added hastily, “not in this instance. We are all of us prey to the human emotions.”

“That,” said Jane repressively, “sounds like the poet speaking.”

If it were the poet speaking, there would have been several more adverbs involved. “Not the poet,” said Augustus quietly. “The man.”

He needed only the littlest crook of the finger, the slightest softening of the lips. All he wanted was some indication, some sign that she had heard and understood, as a woman, not as an agent. It was a man who spoke to her, a man who had been too long alone, too long caught in this trap of his own devising, known to everyone, but known by no one, a stranger to his own mirror, a liar by his own pen. It would be nice to have just one person with whom one could be totally and entirely oneself, without subterfuge.

They could be ideally suited, if only she would just see it. She wouldn’t have to play the milksop for him any more than he would have to play the poet for her. They could speak in their own voices, share their worries, exchange strategies, turn to each other for comfort when a mission went awry.

Beneath that cool facade, his Pink Carnation had feelings like anyone else. She had to have.

Augustus glanced at Miss Gwen.

Well, like almost anyone else.

Jane turned away. Augustus found himself contemplating the nape of her neck. A very pleasing nape it was, pale and soft, feathered with silky strands of pale brown hair, but it was still a nape, first cousin to a back, and shorthand for dismissal.

“Men,” said Jane, “are fallible. We cannot afford to be.”

She had a point, as much as Augustus hated to admit it. They were agents first, individuals later. There was a time when Augustus had accepted that without question, without wanting to reverse that order. Now…now they had a job to do.

Fine. If she wanted to discuss business, they could discuss business. “In that case, there’s nothing for it but to face facts, even about those whom you call friend.”

“What facts do you have?” she asked.

Augustus glanced over his shoulder. Miss Gwen was still on sentry. Her presence was all that was required to keep the area clear.

He pretended interest in one of the paintings on the wall, although he couldn’t have said for sure whether it was secular or sacred, Italian or Dutch. “Diagrams,” he said. “Pictures of some sort of mechanism or device.”

“As in…” Jane let the words trail off. Neither of them were going to use the words in public, no matter how closely Miss Gwen stood guard.

“Yes. As in that device.” The one Horace de Lilly had come stampeding from Saint-Cloud to tell them about. “The diagram was on Delagardie’s desk. She disavowed it, but her handwriting was all over it. It was not,” he added, “a recipe for cough syrup.”

Jane appeared less perturbed than Augustus had expected. Her brow cleared. “Did the diagram involve a pair of canisters and a series of pipes?”

A vague enough description, but…“Yes,” said Augustus cautiously. “Something like that.”

“A hydraulic pump.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What you saw was a variant on a hydraulic pump. Emma’s husband was experimenting with the ideas implemented by the Montgolfier brothers. That was what you saw.”

Augustus might have felt better if he’d had the slightest idea what she was talking about. Montgolfier who? Someone to do with hydraulic pumps, apparently. This was as bad as the time Jane had started trying to explain to him about dephlogisticated air. Augustus’s inclinations had always been more literary than scientific. Human nature fascinated him; mechanical devices left him cold.

“Unless I’m much mistaken,” said Augustus, “Paul Delagardie died four years ago. You can’t mean to tell me that he’s engineering from beyond the grave. Also,” he added, warming to his theme, “why was Madame Delagardie’s writing all over it?”

He half expected Jane to make an excuse about Emma using the spare sheet as scrap paper. Instead, she said, “There’s no great mystery to that. Emma continued her husband’s work at Carmagnac.”

If Jane had known that, why in the hell hadn’t she told him that before?

Augustus puffed his chest out, fighting to retain some dignity. “Why didn’t she just say so, then?”

Jane tugged lightly at one of her earrings. “In her own way, Emma is a very private person.”

Ostrich feathers and diamonds so often betokened a shy and retiring nature. “Of course, she is,” said Augustus. And Pauline Bonaparte was secretly a celibate.

“Don’t let yourself be taken in by appearances,” said Jane seriously.

Augustus stared at her in disbelief. He had managed to stay alive through three changes of government, maintaining his alias in the face of all provocation, warding off the dangers posed by double agents and false friends. Twelve years he had been in Paris, straight through the worst of the Terror, and she was advising him?

He had the greatest possible respect for her, but…no.

Augustus opened his mouth—although to say what, he wasn’t quite sure—but, once again, the Pink Carnation beat him to the punch, nodding in the direction of the door to the gallery, to a small woman in green and gold being escorted by a man in various shades of brown. The sunlight through the long windows cast rainbows off her heavy gold earrings and the scalloped edges of her fashionable overdress.

“Ah,” said Jane calmly. “There’s Emma now.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“Hardly,” said Jane. “I invited them.” Without allowing time for that to sink in, she added, “You did say you wanted to speak about Emma.”

About, not to. Prepositions had been invented for a reason. When he had called for this meeting, he had envisioned it going rather differently.

But then, thought Augustus wryly, he had envisioned this all rather differently. A tête-à-téte, perhaps some wine, confidences given and exchanged, meaningful looks across the bosom of the Venus de Milo.

Jane was right. He had been playing the poet too long.

“The cousin has a controlling interest in a munitions factory,” Augustus said deliberately.

Finally, he had told her something she didn’t already know. For the first time that afternoon, he had Jane’s full attention. But not for him. Never for him.

“They claim he’s here on family business,” said Augustus, speaking rapidly, keeping his voice low. “Georges Marston seems to believe it’s something else. So do others I’ve spoken to. They think family matters are a smoke screen for business of a more businesslike kind.”

“Bonaparte’s device?”

“Perhaps. It would explain the timing of its testing.”

Someone had taken Livingston to a barber in the past few days; his hair was no longer clubbed back but cut short, in the modern fashion, combed forward over his brow. The coat was still brown, but it had been augmented with a crisp cravat, and the man’s boots looked like they might have finally seen more than a dirty rag for polish.

“See what you can do with the cousin,” Augustus said roughly.

He would have preferred they play it the other way around. He could speak man-to-man with Livingston, Jane could take coffee with Delagardie.

It wouldn’t work.

Jane couldn’t be trusted to be objective when it came to her Emma. As for Livingston, Jane would be able to get a good deal more out of him than Augustus ever could. The thought of Jane working her wiles on another man, quiet, ladylike wiles though they might be, made Augustus’s gut churn, but there was nothing else for it.

He had been a professional for too long to allow his private emotions to compromise a mission.

No matter how much he disliked it.

“You take care of the cousin,” Augustus said brusquely. “I’ll keep an eye on your Emma.”