The Garden Intrigue

Chapter 16

Idolization, indeed!

Augustus let the theatre door slam shut behind him, the crack of wood against wood a satisfying echo of his feelings.

After all these weeks, he had thought Emma, of all people, would know better.

Certainly, he played the besotted poet in public, but that was just an act, like the adverbs and the alliteration. The verbiage was mere costuming, no more a part of him than the billowing shirt he affected in public. His real feelings for Jane weren’t composed of such airy nothings; they were based on a firm foundation of mutual respect, interests, and understanding. He knew Jane for what she was, just as she knew him. Between them, there were no pretenses, no roles, no acts.

He wasn’t trying to make Jane into his Cytherea; the very idea was absurd. Cytherea was the role she played in public, the princess in the tower, accepting the homage of admirers from twenty feet up, encased in a tower to protect her from elements beyond her control. If anything, he sought to liberate her from the tower, to bring her down to earth and into his arms, in a safe, protected space where they could both be what they were without the threat of prying eyes or tattling tongues.

Emma might not know the whole of it—the whole double-identity bit did make for rather a large gap—but she ought to know him better than that by now. After three weeks of working in such proximity, he had thought they had built up an understanding of sorts, even a friendship. They were frank with each other. He was blunt with her in a way he was with no one but Jane.

No. If he was being honest with himself, he was blunt with Emma in a way he wasn’t with Jane. With Jane, his tongue was curbed by the vast respect he bore her, his manner softened by admiration, their interactions tinged—although not tainted!—by the echoes of their respective roles. They never knew when someone might be listening. He played the besotted poet in private as in public, half in mockery, half in earnest.

With Emma, there was no need for any of that. He could be curt, he could be blunt, he could even be crude.

That, Augustus told himself, was precisely why her absurd accusations ate at him so. There was no truth to them, of course.

Idolization, ha!

Augustus cut around the side of the theatre, toward the confusion of gardens that stretched out behind the house. Mme. Bonaparte had designed her grounds in the English manner, carefully cultivated to maintain the illusion of natural serendipity, with irregular paths circling among copses of trees, meandering over rustic bridges, wending their way past bits of artfully artless statuary, planted to look like the decaying relics of a prior civilization.

Surely, somewhere in the grounds, there must be the equivalent of a garden shed. A gardener would have served equally well, but, like the shoemaker’s elves, they had done their work in the morning while the house lay sleeping, scurrying out of sight by day so that the inhabitants of the house might enjoy their illusion of lonesome wilderness unimpeded by reminders of the effort that went into maintaining it.

Augustus struck out along the path to the left, past the tree Bonaparte had planted to commemorate his victory at Marengo. That information came courtesy of Emma, who had taken him on a cursory tour upon their arrival, pointing out such personal landmarks as the Best Place to Read, the Best Place to Play Prisoner’s Base, and All Those New Bits That Weren’t There Before.

He probably ought to have asked her where to go to find garden implements, Augustus acknowledged to himself. On the other hand, that would have ruined his exit. It was very hard to storm out and then turn meekly back around and ask for directions. It sapped all the moral force from the departure.

He would, Augustus decided generously, freely acknowledge Emma to be the authority on the estate of Malmaison and its grounds. When it came to Jane, however, she was wrong, quite wrong, and he would prove it to her.

Eventually.

The path he had chosen looped and then looped again, bringing him along the banks of a river too perfect to be entirely natural. Above the trees, the sun was beginning to set, reflecting red-gold streaks in the clear water below. Beneath the trees, though, it was already dusk. Weeping willows bent their fronds towards the banks, and swans drifted in the chill of the waters. The scene was almost eerie in its beauty, a wistful, haunted place.

Against the fronds of the willows, the woman drifting towards the bridge seemed almost a specter herself, her long gown a whisper of white in the shadow of the trees. She stepped up onto the blue-painted bridge, and the last rays of the setting sun lit upon her, embracing her with the ardor of a lover.

Augustus felt his heart leap with an answering fire.

“Well met by sunset, fair Miss Wooliston!” he called out. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”

Was there ever such a proof of fate as this? A bridge in sunset, a romantic copse of woods…the lady of his heart.

“Mr. Whittlesby!” Jane caught at the rustic railing as he bounded towards her, making the planks of the bridge tremble with his enthusiasm. Her eyes were bright with welcome—or perhaps merely the reflection of the setting sun. “Has there been some new development?”

“Other than my getting lost in the woods? No.” Augustus thought about Dante in the middle of his life, lost in a dark wood. Then he found Beatrice, a shining figure in white, who led him forth to paradise.

Admittedly, Jane’s white muslin gown was hardly the stuff of the heavenly spheres, and Augustus doubted even the most fashionable angels sported white gloves and wide-brimmed bonnets, but he liked the metaphorical resonance of it, all the same.

“These are hardly woods,” Jane said practically, surveying the carefully landscaped disorder. Beneath their bridge, the swans billed the water, calling to one another in their strange, cracked voices, so at odds with their graceful facade. “If you want woods, you keep following the path to the left. This is just a wilderness.”

“Is there a difference between the two?” Augustus asked, not because he wanted to know but just to keep her talking, to savor the image of a beautiful woman in a white gown against a frame of weeping willows.

“The one is designed to look wild, the other actually is.”

Leaning his elbows against the rail next to her, Augustus gazed out across the brilliantly tinted waters. “So we ape nature with art and, in doing so, lose the best of both,” he murmured, “just as we play at love and lose the heart of it.”

Jane gave him a sideways look. “I am glad you wandered along,” she said, pushing away from the railing. “I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”

“I, too.” Augustus gazed at her, trying to think how to begin. Not poetical? Emma had no idea what she was talking about. He blurted, “Have you noticed the sunset?”

“The sunset?” Jane looked more than a little perplexed. “Is that a code?”

“Of a sort,” Augustus hedged. Bracing one hand against the rail, he fell back on the words of a better poet than he. “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night / Become the touches of sweet harmony.”

He looked meaningfully at Jane.

“You should put that in the masque,” she said blandly. “It might work quite nicely for Americanus.”

Had she not recognized it for what it was? He couldn’t tell whether she was serious or not. Sometimes, Jane’s humor eluded him.

“Jane—” There was no poetic way to say it. The words were wrenched out of him. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m sick of masks.”

Jane pursed her lips judiciously. “I understand your feelings, but it is only a week more and then you’ll be done with it. Except for the commemorative volume, of course.” She arched a brow, waiting for a response. When none was forthcoming, she said kindly, “Given the time constraints, your masque isn’t half bad.”

“No. It’s fully bad,” said Augustus bluntly. “But that’s not the point. The point is—”

“That it got you to Malmaison.” Jane nodded approvingly. “If there’s any truth to your source’s claims, you should be able to verify it.”

“It got us to Malmaison,” Augustus corrected. He added, more quietly, “I hadn’t realized how beautiful it is here.”

Emma hadn’t exaggerated. It was a landscape made for lovers, all full of secluded alcoves and picturesque vistas. Even the sun was complicit, lighting the sky with the sort of sunset one never saw in Paris.

“Yes, as to that.” Jane held up a hand to shield her eyes against the last glare of the sun, frowning against the purple and red magnificence of the sky, the brilliant glitter of the water. “It isn’t the way I would have planned it.”

“The gardens?” He could see where Jane was more of a formal parterre sort of person, but there was something about the wildness of the landscape that called to him.

Jane shook her head. “Our mutual presence at Malmaison.”

“What do you mean?” Augustus recalled their prior conversation in the Balcourt garden. They spent a great deal of time in gardens, he and Jane. At the time, she had been concerned about appearances. “Are you worried about arousing suspicion? There should be no fear of that. Bonaparte’s daughter herself mandated your inclusion, not I.”

“Hortense didn’t do us any favors.” Clasping her hands behind her back, Jane glanced back towards the house, faintly visible between the fronds of the willow trees. “The party is small enough that one could effectively conduct surveillance on one’s own. There’s no need for both of us here.”

“Maybe it’s not about need,” said Augustus desperately. “Maybe it’s just about…nice. It’s nice to be here together. In the gardens. In the sunset.”

Jane shook her head. “We could be much more effective apart.”

“Effective,” Augustus repeated.

The sunset wasn’t effective; the swans on the lake weren’t, either. They were because they were, because they were beautiful, because they moved a man’s soul.

He could hear Emma’s voice in his head, saying apologetically, She’s not like that. She’s not…poetical.

Hush, he told her. Hush. I will not hear you.

The phantom Emma put her tongue out at him.

He looked at Jane, framed by weeping willows, silhouetted against the water, an objet d’art in her own right. He could imagine her with her pale brown hair streaming down her back, straight and shining as water, darker than honey, lighter than oak, defying definition, always slipping just out of reach. She was like a moonbeam, a faint gleam of light across the sky, making the throat grow dry and the heart constrict, beautiful to contemplate, impossible to hold.

No. It wasn’t right. He wouldn’t give up this easily.

Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, she was clever. Yes—he would admit it—she might be more than a little reserved. But there was more there. He had seen it. He had seen it in the quirk of her lip, the glint in her eye, the suppressed amusement that seemed, on more than one occasion, to be for him and him alone. They had worked together for more than a year now, and he had been sure, more than once, that he had sensed something more than a professional interest.

She was so used to his flummery by now that she probably thought it was nothing more than that, just another verse in an old poem.

“Is there nothing more to which to aspire than to efficacy?” he demanded. “What about—”

He was going to say love. He meant to say love. But his tongue refused to form the word.

“—poetry?” he finished lamely.

Jane clapped a hand to her bosom, fluttering her lashes coquettishly. “Why, Mr. Whittlesby! As always, you flatter me.” Her voice dropped. “Where is he?”

Augustus’s gaze immediately skittered to the side, scanning for intruders. “Who?”

Jane slowly straightened, giving him a perplexed look. “You went into role. I assumed there was someone there.”

“I see,” he said slowly.

And he did see. He had been right. He couldn’t hide behind flowery language; she would only read it as part of the masquerade, never realizing that below his silly shirt beat a heart that beat only for her. Well, partly for her.

“What if it wasn’t an act? What if I meant it?”

Jane narrowed her eyes at him. She didn’t look alarmed so much as bemused. “Really, what has got into you this evening?”

It wasn’t so much what had got into him as what had got away. He felt like he was clinging to the edge of a waterfall, trying, desperately, to push the water back.

“It’s not this evening,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming. It cannot come as a surprise to you to know that I have the deepest respect and admiration for you.”

“Thank you. The praise of an agent of your caliber is always a mark of honor.”

Agent. The word settled on his chest like the slabs once used to crush condemned men, one stone at a time.

“I don’t speak just as an agent,” he said, fighting against a growing sense of doom. “I know the circumstances are inconvenient. The circumstances are always inconvenient. But if you found yourself moved…”

Jane’s spine stiffened until she stood as upright as Miss Gwen. “We have a job to do, Mr. Whittlesby,” she said crisply. “An important job.”

“I know that,” he said. “Don’t you think I know that? I’ve been doing this since you were in pinafores. But there’s a time for work and a time for—”

She turned her back on him, stepping rapidly away from the rail. “I made some inquiries about Mr. Livingston,” she said quickly. “And about his financial interests. You were right.”

“I was?” Augustus felt slow and stupid. His mouth formed the words without connection to his brain.

She stayed a careful arm’s length away. Her voice had the determined cheerfulness of someone delegated to convey bad news. Cheerful voice, watchful eyes. “Your suspicions seem to have some basis in fact. I ought to have trusted your instincts on this.”

On this. Only this.

Jane’s mouth continued to move, conveying information that fell around him like leaves in autumn, dry and dead and brown, tainted with the scent of decay. Munitions manufactory, he heard, and controlling interest, and business concerns, but the rest ebbed and flowed against his ears with no discernible effect. The sky was darkening all around them. Behind Jane, the pale circle of the moon rose above the trees, crowning her head like a saint’s on a painted panel.

He had got it wrong. Jane wasn’t Cytherea, goddess of love and beauty; she was Cynthia, goddess of the moon, chaste and untouchable. The tower wasn’t his invention; it was her choice.

Or, maybe, she just didn’t want him.

Metaphor was no consolation. He could pile up classical allusions, one on top of the other, but none could hide the simple fact that Jane had known what he was saying and had deliberately ducked and dodged. She didn’t want his declarations of love.

She’s not like that, said Emma. I don’t want you hurt.

He could smell the sickly sweet scent of Emma’s pity clinging to his skin like rot. She had known and he hadn’t. She had known exactly what was going to happen. Had she and Jane discussed it over their coffees with Hortense Bonaparte? Had they laughed over his ridiculous pretensions?

No, they wouldn’t have laughed. Jane would have simply deflected all questions with a smile and a change of subject.

Jane had paused in whatever she was saying. She was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to reply.

“I’m sorry,” said Augustus roughly. “Can you repeat that? I’m afraid I missed the end of it.”

She smiled approvingly, thanking him for what he hadn’t said. “Mr. Livingston’s primary interest seems to be the munitions factory, but, as far as I’ve been able to tell, he hasn’t conducted any business on its behalf during this visit. Instead, there’s talk of a new business venture.”

Augustus forced himself to frame the right words. He felt like one of those chickens that continued to careen around the barnyard long after the fatal blow had been administered, too stupid to realize it was dead. “What sort of business venture?”

“That’s still unclear. It appears to involve Mr. Fulton.”

“Fulton?” The name drifted towards him from a very long way away, like flotsam on the river. “The inventor?”

“The very one.” Jane’s gaze sharpened on Augustus. “Do you know anything?”

“Madame Delagardie commissioned Fulton to make a wave machine for the masque.”

Like a swimmer breaking the surface of the water, dragging in his first, gasping breath, Augustus felt his fogged brain begin to clear. There was something there…some connection.

“Wait,” he said sharply.

De Lilly had sworn the device, whatever it was, was to be tested at Malmaison this weekend. Emma had been commissioned to produce not a play but a masque, a theatrical form notorious for its reliance on mechanical effects.

What better way to hide an incriminating device than among others? In a theatre? The backstage was clogged with ropes and pulleys and all manner of strange contrivances.

“The theatre,” he said. “They’re hiding it in the theatre.”

Jane was instantly alert. “Are you sure?”

“No,” he said bluntly. “But I can find out. Do you know where I can find a crowbar?”

“The tools are over there.” Jane indicated a small building half hidden by a stand of trees.

Naturally. Naturally, Jane would know exactly where the tools were kept, even though this was her first visit to Malmaison, as it was his.

He used to find her omniscience endearing; right now, it struck him as more than a little eerie.

There was something chilling about that sort of superhuman competence.

He wasn’t being fair, he knew. His colleague looked entirely the same as she had half an hour ago, the same dress, the same Kashmir shawl, the same smooth wings of hair disappearing beneath the brim of her bonnet, but he couldn’t see her in the same way. The eyes that had been coolly amused were just cool, the lips that he had praised for their firmness were firmly closed against him. Her poise, her posture, the pearly tint of her skin, all seemed as off-putting as they had once been engaging.

“You should be able to persuade one of the gardeners to assist you,” she said.

“I’m sure I can contrive to manage,” said Augustus. His voice sounded strange and flat to his ears.

The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the wind had risen. Through the shaking branches, he could see the windows of the great house blaze into light, one by one, as the servants lit the lamps, throwing the dark outside into even greater relief. The theatre was invisible from where they stood, hidden on the far side of the house.

Augustus wondered if Emma had given up and gone away or found someone else to open her box for her.

How long had they been standing on the bridge? It might have been anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour. It felt like years.

He wasn’t sure which would be worse, to creep in through the dark like a thief, hiding his chagrin in the shadows, or to find Emma still there, pity and understanding written all over her face.

Jane had said it. They had a job to do. It didn’t matter what Emma thought of him. He just needed the contents of that thrice-damned crate.

“I should be getting back,” he said brusquely.

Jane put out a hand to stop him as he strode across the bridge. He didn’t stop, but he slowed, looking back over his shoulder. She was a pale blur in the shadow of the trees, insubstantial in the twilight.

A poet’s dream, nothing more.

“I just want you to know,” she said, and her voice sounded less certain than he had ever heard it. For a moment, in the wavering dusk, she sounded almost her age. “I do have the highest esteem for you as a colleague.”

He hadn’t thought he could feel any worse than he already did, but there it was.

“Thank you,” said Augustus shortly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a box to break.”

Jane didn’t ask what he was talking about. He didn’t volunteer. Why bother? She probably knew already.

With exquisite pain, he recalled other conversations, other meetings, all those times he thought he was subtly paying homage. All those times he thought Jane was, in her own quiet way, sending his coded confirmation.

Instead, all the while, she had just been doing her best to keep him from declaring himself.

Had she realized? Had she known before? It must have been fairly obvious if Emma felt the need to comment on it.

I don’t want you hurt.

Too late.

The theatre was dark. Augustus pushed open the door, his eyes adjusting with little difficulty from the window-lit dusk to the gloom of the interior. Outside, he could hear the crickets chirping and the odd hoot of an owl anticipating his evening’s forays. Inside, all was still, rank upon rank of seats facing blankly forward, a phantom audience for a phantom show.

The theatre wasn’t entirely empty. A narrow sliver of light fell across the stage, emanating from somewhere in the wings.

Augustus made his way quietly down the aisle between the seats, carpet muffling his steps, shadows masking his movements. The light broadened as he approached, angling into a doorway. He paused in the doorway, taking in the scene.

The crate was open. The lid was propped up against one side. Straw littered the floor. Three lanterns had been lit, set out in a semicircle on the floor. There were bits of metal and tubing scattered about, like a child’s toys left out after play.

In the middle of it sat Emma, her legs tucked up underneath her as she consulted a grimy scrap of paper, muttering to herself as she reached for a piece of metal tubing, thought better of it, and put it back again.

“But if that goes here…”

She had shoved her hair back behind her ears, heedless of the fashionable bandeau that was supposed to be serving that function, causing chunks of hair to bump up at odd angles. There was a smudge of dirt or grease on one cheek and straw clinging to her dress.

“Right,” she said to herself. “It must be that other tube.…”

She scooted herself forward, adding more straw to the collection on her hem, jiggered herself up on her knees, and leaned all the way over, stretching out as far as she could to reach an errant piece of tubing that had strayed to the end of the circle. Her fingers wriggled towards the tube.

And there she froze.

She was, Augustus realized, staring at his boots. Her gaze traveled up past the tassels of his boots, to his thighs, and up to his shirt.

“Oh,” she said, and did a very quick scramble back, hand by hand, to her original position, popping up flushed and disheveled in something closer to a sitting position. “Hello! You’ve come back.”

Augustus kicked the door shut behind him. “You were right,” he said.