The Garden Intrigue

Chapter 31

Emma would have laughed if it hadn’t been quite so absurd. And quite so awful. Georges’ Kentish contact would be receiving the very latest in theatrical equipment.

She hoped whoever it was had a masque to perform.

“Well, this was all very cunning of you,” she said, patting his arm. “But I’m afraid I must be getting on to the theatre. There’s so much to do, with the performance in less than an hour.”

In fact, there was very little for her to do. But Georges didn’t need to know that.

“I’ll be back for you,” he said, with a very credible smolder.

He really was a fine figure of a man, thought Emma objectively. Tall, broad, strong-featured. And completely lacking in any moral sense.

Did he mean to marry her to make her keep her silence? Probably not, decided Emma. It was more likely that he simply intended to dangle the prospect of his wonderful self before her, confident that his professions of devotion would keep her from running to the Emperor before he had departed with the plans. Amazing what people were willing to do for those plans. Mr. Fulton had no idea how popular his plans had made her, or what lengths men might be willing to go in order to obtain and keep them.

She could hear Augustus’s voice, forlorn in memory: Emma, I think I love you.

“Lovely,” said Emma. “I look forward to it.”

“My carriage leaves at eight,” Georges murmured. “The boat sails at dawn. So this must be…farewell.”

He made as if to embrace her, but Emma stepped back out of the way. “I’m sure you must have a number of arrangements to make,” she said politely. It was always easier to humor Georges than to argue with him. “I wouldn’t want to keep you. Not when our future depends on it.”

Georges gave a forced laugh. “That’s my practical Emma,” he said. If he meant it to be a compliment, it didn’t quite come out that way. “Best to keep one’s eye on the prize, yes?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Emma agreed. “You wouldn’t want to let it slip away.” Someone, somewhere, was bound to be in need of a wave machine. “Safe journey.”

Keeping his eyes on hers, Georges pressed a lingering kiss to his own palm and released it in her direction.

Emma waggled her fingers farewell.

With a final smolder, Georges flipped his coattails and slipped back around the house, presumably to collect the plans, harry his valet, pack his luggage, and disappear into the night. If his carriage left at eight o’clock, he only had an hour. The masque was scheduled to begin somewhere in the vicinity of seven thirty.

It wasn’t, reflected Emma, the journey Georges needed to worry about. It was the people on the other end. They weren’t going to be best pleased when he arrived bearing the designs for a piece of expensive theatrical equipment rather than a weapon of war. She doubted that “go away or I’ll make thunder noises at you” would go far on the field of battle.

Crosses, double crosses, and Georges outsmarted by himself. Emma would have gone so far as to call it poetic justice if poetry hadn’t been such a sensitive subject just then.

If Georges didn’t have the plans, did that mean Augustus did? And if he did, just what did he intend to do with them?

I think I love you, he whispered again.

Damn him, damn him, damn him. Emma reached for the back door of the theatre.

Someone touched her shoulder. Emma ground her teeth in irritation. Oh, for all that was holy! Hadn’t that tender parting scene been enough for Georges?

Shaking off the hand, Emma whirled around, barking, “What?”

“Emma,” said Augustus, and she felt the handle of the door bite into her back as she took a step back.

He looked much the same as always, hair unbound, shirt properly disordered, breeches just on the acceptable end of tight, but there was a seriousness about him that hadn’t been there before. Or, perhaps, it always had been, and she just hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t seen a lot of things.

“Would you like to explain what just happened in there?” he asked.

“No,” said Emma honestly. His nearness was more distracting than she would have liked to admit. She could feel the warmth of him, just a thin layer of clothing away. Even now, even after all that had happened, she wanted him, so badly. She wanted to twine her arms around his neck and slide her fingers into his hair and…

Flushing, Emma tucked her hands under her elbows, out of harm’s way.

“You lied for me,” he said.

“It wasn’t entirely a lie. I did stumble on the plans.”

“Less stumble, more sat,” said Augustus fondly. His glance was a caress.

Emma’s red cheeks turned redder. “Well, anyway,” she said meaninglessly, as she groped for her wits. Betrayal, she reminded herself. Intrigue. Plans. Georges. “Stumbling, sitting, either way, it was a form of the truth. I did come upon them unawares.” Very unawares. “And while I may not have the plans in my possession now, I will once you give them to me to give back to Mr. Fulton. Won’t I?”

Folding her arms across her chest, she raised her brows at him.

Augustus didn’t take the bait. “That’s not the point. The point is that you lied for me.”

That was a poet for you, parsing every word. Emma glowered at him. “It would have put a damper on the performance if we had had to pause to guillotine you.”

“Emma.” He planted his hands on the doorframe to either side of her. They were in trouble, thought Emma vaguely, should someone try to come out. She was pinned to the door like someone’s archery target. “Emma, I have something to tell you.”

He looked so earnest. But hadn’t she seen that before? He did earnest quite well. “What might it be this time? Do you have nine wives in the attic? A taste for women’s undergarments?” Emma made to duck under his arm. “Forgive me if I have very little interest in hearing.”

Augustus blocked her by the simple expedient of lowering his arm. Trapped. She was trapped. “Emma, Mr. Fulton is coming back to England with me.”

Emma stopped wiggling. “What?”

Augustus dropped his arms. “I spoke to him a few moments ago. He’s not happy with the reception of his submarine. He believes it would fare better in England.”

Emma slowly assimilated the new information. “So you’re not only stealing the plans, you’re stealing the man.”

“Hardly stealing when he comes willingly,” said Augustus reasonably. Why did he have to be reasonable? Emma was feeling anything but. He had this all turned around, so that, somehow, he was in the right. It made no sense. “There’s something else.”

“Are you taking cousin Robert, too?” asked Emma crankily. “Perhaps England could use a lightly used envoy.”

“Now you’re being silly.” She was being silly? Emma would have expressed her indignation had she the breath to do so—and if Augustus hadn’t surprised her by suddenly making a grab at her hands. “Come with me, Emma. Come to England with me.”

Emma wasn’t quite sure she had heard him right. “England? Me?”

Augustus looked at her tenderly. “England. You.”

No. This wasn’t right. Not any of it. Emma snatched her hands away, her mind a muddle of plans and deceptions and unlikely seductions.

“Why? So I won’t reveal your secret?”

Augustus didn’t seem offended or alarmed by the question. He shook his head. “As soon as I leave France with Mr. Fulton, my identity is already compromised. I’m not coming back to France, Emma. This is it for me. I’m going back to England and starting over. Just as you said I should.” He looked down at her, his eyes locking with hers. “But I can’t do it without you.”

Emma cleared her throat as best she could. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do,” said Augustus. She could feel the panels of the door hard against her back, blocking her egress. “You just don’t want to. And I can’t blame you for it. I understand why you’re angry with me. If circumstances were different, I could make it up to you in a million different ways. I could woo you slowly, token by token. I could find ways to make you trust me again, hour by hour and day by day. But we don’t have that kind of time.”

Emma said the only thing she could think of to say. “When do you leave?”

“As soon as I make the arrangements. Three days at the outside. Fewer, if anything goes wrong.”

“That soon.” It wasn’t enough time. She needed time to think, to make sense of it all.

Augustus’s hands settled on her shoulders, massaging the tense muscles at the base of her neck. “Come with me, Emma.”

Come live with me and be my love / And we shall all the pleasures prove. They had discussed that poem together, a very long time ago, all the shepherd’s seductive promises to his love.

“There’ll be a reward for this,” Augustus was saying. “Not a large one, but enough to set up that journal I’ve always wanted, maybe make a run for Parliament. There’ll be no more deceptions, no subterfuge, no playacting.” He looked down with a rueful grin. “No more shirts like these.”

He looked so much younger when he smiled like that. So much younger and more carefree, as though he were already sloughing off the weight of carting around a second identity, so much more wearing than a waistcoat.

Emma’s throat was tight. “And will you make me beds of roses and a thousand fragrant posies?”

Augustus’s expression softened. “A cap of flowers and a kirtle, embroidered all with fragrant myrtle, and silver dishes for thy meat, as fragrant as the gods do eat. Well, maybe not that,” he amended. “English cuisine isn’t known for its Lucullan qualities. But the flowers are lovely in the meadows in springtime, as lovely as the poet claims. I’ll make you crowns of daisy chains and beds of violets.”

“What about the frosts?” asked Emma. “It can’t be always summer.”

“Even better,” said Augustus. “There’ll be sleighing and skating and hot chocolate on cold days, with the steam rising to make patterns in the cold air. We can go down to the Thames and watch the apprentices skid on the frozen river or go out to the countryside and cut holly for the color of the berries. Or we can stay warm inside, with no place better to be than with each other. Outside, the winds will batter and blow, but we’ll have long nights in front of the fire, as the sparks fly and crackle, and crisp mornings buried beneath the quilts.”

Emma could picture it, their own little refuge against a cold world, with firelight brightening the windows against the winter dusk. A sofa—not a spindly, narrow French construction, but something comfortable and deep—and a good fire in a proper hearth, sending slicks of warm light pooling along the surfaces of the furniture and reflecting off the panes off the windows. The winds would batter, but inside they would warm, curled up together on the couch, his papers on one side, her books on the other.

It wasn’t the shepherd’s promise of endless summer or Americanus’s pledge of boundless plenty. But Emma found it all the more seductive for all that.

“A new life in an old world,” said Emma, testing the concept.

“It’s a new life for me, too,” said Augustus. “It’s been a good decade since I’ve been back. We’ll learn it together, the two of us, our own demi-paradise.”

He was switching poets on her, from Marlowe to Shakespeare. But it wasn’t either of them who spoke to Emma. It was another one of those Elizabeth courtiers, whichever of them it was who had written the nymph’s reply to the shepherd.

If all the world and love were young and truth on every shepherd’s tongue, these pretty pleasures might me move to live with thee and be thy love.…

If. It was a horrible and powerful if. She had felt that way nine years ago, with Paul, when the world and love were young, and look how wrong she’d got it then. The first hint of frost, and all his pretty flowers, all his vows and protestations had withered, and her love along with them. She was older now, and hardier, and there was no telling whether this might not be a sturdier plant, a tree rather than a shrub, but how could she possibly know? Especially with so little time?

No matter how honorable Augustus’s intentions might be at this particular moment, there were no guarantees.

It had hurt enough last time, watching love crumble to dust, picking up the pieces of her life and trying to go on, and that had been with the love and support of her old schoolfellows. She wasn’t sure she could do it again.

No matter how tempting.

“I…can’t,” Emma said, and watched Augustus’s face fall.

“Can’t?” he said carefully. “Or won’t?”

“What difference does it make?” asked Emma despairingly. “Can’t, won’t. I am willing to believe”—Emma glanced down at his waistcoat, fighting with the words—“that you might actually care for me. That you might even think you love me.” She hurried on before he could interject. “But how can I know? What if this is only another matter of policy, too deep for me to understand?”

Augustus tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “What policy would be served by taking you with me?”

“That’s just the problem,” said Emma. “I don’t know. I know nothing of this whole world of yours. I can’t imagine the rules by which you play, or the goals for which you scheme. It’s all foreign to me. Until yesterday, I had no idea any of this even existed. It’s all unfathomable.”

“You don’t have to fathom it,” said Augustus determinedly. “I’m getting out. There’ll be no more of this. No more lies. We’ll even make peace with my father. He’s a clergyman, you know. You can’t get much more straight and narrow than that.”

“So you say,” said Emma. “But how do I know what’s truth and what’s lies? How do I know even that?”

“Those are strong words,” he said slowly.

Emma tilted her head up to him. Tears blurred her vision, presenting him to her as through a glass darkly, the outlines and details vague and uncertain. “What you ask of me is no small thing.”

“Trust,” he said.

Emma nodded wordlessly. She didn’t need to enumerate his deceptions. They stood between them like a palpable thing.

“I have never,” he said, his voice low, “lied to you in anything to do with you. Nor about how I feel for you. The pretext might have been a lie, but the substance never was.”

“Say I believe you,” she said, and her voice wobbled. She forced herself to rush onward before she lost her ability to speak entirely. “Say I believe that you mean it, that you believe it to be true, what if you wake up two months from now to find you mistook your feelings? It’s happened before.”

With Jane. She didn’t say it and neither did he. She didn’t need to. He knew exactly what she meant.

“It is,” she said, “a great deal you ask of me.”

“What assurances can I give you?” His eyes searched her face. “What can I say to you that will make you believe?”

Emma bit down on her lower lip, caught in a struggle between common sense and desire. Nothing, her mind declared, there was nothing Augustus Whittlesby could say that could reassure her. How could there be? He was a proven liar, a deceiver by trade.

And yet.…Foolish as it was, stupid as she knew it to be, deep down, she believed him.

Did she believe him enough to stake her future on it? Emma’s teeth worried at her lower lip as she stared at him, torn, a storm of contradictory arguments whipping her now this way, now that.

Augustus took pity on her confusion. He touched his knuckle gently to her cheek, a gesture that almost undid her.

“After the masque,” he said. “We’ll talk after the masque.”

After the masque. Everything had been about the masque, until the masque, plans for the masque, and now the masque was upon them, and Emma felt as though she had reached the very end of the earth, the bit guarded by sea monsters, where the land ended in an abrupt drop.

“Will it make a difference?” she asked.

“That,” said Augustus, “is up to you.”

He stepped back, honoring their bargain, leaving her free to go.

His every instinct clamored to him to stop. Fool, he called himself. Fool, to embrace a belated and costly honor. How much more effective it would be to embrace away her indecision. He could quell her misgivings with caresses and stop her doubts with kisses. She wanted to be persuaded, his lesser self argued. She was practically begging for it. Why not take the decision out of her hands? It would be a kindness.

“Enjoy the performance,” he said, and reached past her to push open the back door of the theatre for her.

“Our performance,” Emma said, her voice low. Ducking her head, she hurried past him into the theatre.

Their performance. No matter what, they would always have that. Augustus stared at the closed door. Three acts of mediocre verse and a month of memories.

Damn.

Augustus kicked the wall of the theatre and succeeded only in stubbing his toe. They had made it so much easier for Americanus, he and Emma. All Americanus had to do was rescue his lady from a band of rascally pirates. It wasn’t his persuasions that won her from her tower, but a chance abduction.

Augustus doubted that a band of pirates was going to come marauding through Malmaison just for his convenience.

In this version, he couldn’t prove his devotion with pretty speeches or daring feats of rescue. Instead, he had no choice but to wait for his Cytherea to come to him, flawed and false though she knew him to be. He had to trust to the strength of the strange rapport between them to overcome all the objections of reason and all the fears that came with making oneself vulnerable to another. No tricks, no gimmicks, no deceptions. All he could was hope that love would prove stronger than reason.

It was not a very comforting thought.

“Mr. Whittlesby!” Someone was bouncing towards him around the side of the theatre. It was Horace de Lilly, pink of face and green of waistcoat, looking disgustingly healthy and happy and far too eager to see Augustus. “What luck! I was hoping to have a chance to speak to you.”

“Now is really not the time,” said Augustus quellingly.

The last thing he needed right now was another round of “I want to be just like you when I grow up.” Hell, he didn’t want to be just like him when he grew up. Horace de Lilly could just find another agent to idolize. He was done.

Horace, unfortunately, wasn’t. He bounced to a stop in front of Augustus, quivering with excitement. “You’ve done it! You’ve done it, haven’t you?”

“Shouldn’t you be reserving your seat for the masque?” Augustus said shortly. “I hear it’s to be the theatrical event of the summer.”

Horace wasn’t to be deterred. His boyish face shone with excitement. “You have them, don’t you? The plans? I knew you would do it!”

“Your confidence overwhelms me,” said Augustus. “Not now.”

Of all the ill-chosen agents, de Lilly was about as subtle as a cartload of monkeys. The concept of “not in public” appeared to have passed him by. At least after this week, he would no longer be Augustus’s problem.

But he would still be someone else’s.

Augustus took a deep breath. “A word of advice, de Lilly. Curb your enthusiasm. I know you’re terribly excited about the poetry you commissioned from me,” he placed heavy emphasis on the words, “but unless you want to tip your lady off to your purpose, I would advise a modicum of discretion. Hell hath no fury.” Like an Emperor betrayed.

De Lilly’s brow wrinkled. “Er, right. But you do have the, um, poetry? Where is it? Was it what we thought it was? Can I do anything to help?”

Augustus kept a careful rein on his temper. “If you want to make yourself useful, look into fast carriages. I look to leave in three days’ time.”

In fact, he looked to leave in one. It didn’t matter whether de Lilly’s erratic behavior was simply youth or something else; either way, he was a danger. Better to send him off on a useless errand, believing himself to have time to spare. If he were a double agent, he would wait to pounce until the last minute. They generally did. If he weren’t, his energies would be safely and uselessly expended examining horseflesh and racing curricles. Either way, by the time de Lilly moved, Augustus would be gone.

With or without Emma.

That was all he had. One day. One day to convince Emma of his good intentions and persuade her to leave behind everything she knew for an uncertain future in an unfamiliar country, all for love of him.

Put that way, it sounded pretty damn improbable. Improbable? Try impossible.

From inside the theatre, thunder rumbled.