The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Chapter Fourteen

Good heavens, was that woman actually licking Lord Richard’s ear?

Transfixed, Amy backed up a couple of steps on her soft slippers. A candle sconce was placed just above their heads, so Amy could view the scene and its actors with hideous clarity. The woman wore a white lawn gown so diaphanous that the light went right through it, revealing the decided absence of any slip at all, wetted or otherwise. Her dark hair fell in smooth curls from a circlet of pearls high on top of her head, one particularly long curl calling attention to the fact that the woman’s dress had practically no bodice, unless one were willing to count a brief scrap of lace bristling two inches above the high waist. She was incredibly, undeniably beautiful.

Amy hated her on sight.

Edouard had pointed the woman out to her earlier. Amy racked her memory as the woman slid one hand into the shining golden waves of Richard’s hair. Pauline! That was it. Bonaparte’s younger sister, Pauline Leclerc. Her affairs were as legendary as her beauty, and she was said to have bedded half the men in Paris. Amy, of course, wasn’t supposed to know such things, but she had read the gossip sheets assiduously for years. When it came to the French, the English papers had few qualms about reporting scandal at its most scandalous, without even the protective veil of a euphemism.

Watching Pauline twine herself sensuously around Lord Richard like Laocoön and the snakes, Amy smoothed down the opaque material of her skirt, aware for the first time that her own frock had been designed by a rural modiste in Shropshire, working off fashion papers several months old. Amy’s hand went up to her own very modest scooped neckline, toying with the charm that hung in the hollow of her throat. Next to Pauline’s diamonds, the little gold locket on a silk ribbon around her neck must look a trumpery affair, a child’s trinket. Amy suddenly felt very young and very gauche, a little girl spying on an adult party.

Well, I wouldn’t want to be like that anyway, Amy told herself firmly. And it was just typical that Lord Richard would be dallying with such a crass strumpet! Two people with no morals. They served each other right.

But how could he?

“Amy.” Someone was plucking at her sleeve. “Amy.”

“Oh, Jane! I was looking for you. Did you see that?” Amy packed as much outrage as possible into a whisper as she pointed at the couple caught in the candlelight. Her very finger shook with indignation.

Jane looked from Richard and Pauline to Amy. Her cousin was biting her lower lip so hard it was a wonder she hadn’t drawn blood, and her arms were crossed firmly across her chest as though she were hugging herself for comfort.

“He doesn’t look like he’s enjoying her attentions,” observed Jane. “Amy, Edouard—”

“Then why doesn’t he just move?” hissed Amy.

“Perhaps because she has him backed against the wall? Amy, you must—”

“That’s no excuse!”

“Amy, Edouard is engaged in an extremely suspect conversation and I think you ought to go listen at once!” Jane whispered in one long breath, before her cousin could interrupt yet again.

“If he really didn’t—what?” Amy’s glower disappeared as she swirled to face Jane. “Wait, what?”

“Edouard and Marston,” Jane whispered urgently. “They slipped out while everyone was distracted by Miss Gwen.”

Amy’s entire body snapped to attention. “Well, what are you waiting for? Why are we wasting time talking about—ugh! Take me to them, Jane. We can’t waste a moment!” Amy dashed for the door.

Jane permitted herself only the very slightest rolling of the eyes before following her cousin.

Had Amy waited a moment longer, she would have seen Richard reach up to pluck the woman’s twining hand from his hair.

“You’re wasting your wiles on me, Pauline. I’m not interested.”

The First Consul’s sister pouted and reached her arms around Richard’s waist. “That is what you always say. Can’t I . . . persuade you to say something else?” One hand slipped into the waistband of his breeches.

“No,” said Richard bluntly.

Taking Pauline by the waist, he moved her aside and edged out of the corner she had backed him into. “Go and find someone more receptive to play with,” he advised amiably. Pauline wasn’t really a bad sort, and it was always mildly flattering to see someone so determined to have him in her bed. But Richard just wasn’t interested. Pauline had made the rounds of the court far too many times for his taste. Richard strode purposefully towards the doorway—he had seen Balcourt and Marston exit that way. The two of them were certainly up to something, and Richard wanted to know what.

“But you are such a challenge!” Pauline called after him.

“And you are too bloody persistent,” muttered Richard, as he smiled and waggled his fingers. Pauline, already off in search of more accommodating company, failed to hear. Which was probably for the best, since the last thing Richard wanted to do was irritate Bonaparte’s favorite sister badly enough to cause a rift with her brother. Hell, even if Pauline did appeal to him, the force of her charms would undoubtedly be outweighed by the risk of Bonaparte’s displeasure.

How long ago had Balcourt left the salon? Five minutes? Ten? It was hard to tell time when one was pressed up against the wall and being forcibly caressed. Unfortunately, it was more than enough time for Balcourt and Marston to have effectively disappeared. The problem with the Tuilleries was that the deuced rooms were still all en filade, one room opening out onto another. Hallways, decided Richard, were architecture’s gift to espionage. You could actually wander down a hallway, listening at door after door, instead of having to walk through rooms hoping you had taken the right direction, and hoping you didn’t accidentally walk in on the very conversation you had hoped to spy on.

Pacing irritably through a deserted salon, Richard slowed as he came to the next door. He eased it open a crack, peeking through the narrow gap. No sound of voices, but that didn’t necessarily mean no one was there. No scent of that obnoxiously strong cologne Balcourt favored. Richard took that as a more reliable guide and flung the door the rest of the way open.

Ah, the door at the far end of the room was ajar! Of course, it could have been left ajar by a servant, or a guest seeking the water closet, or any other number of innocent persons unrelated to Balcourt or Marston, but it was the closest thing to a lead Richard had. He tiptoed his way silently through the long gallery, past rows of armless deities, and peered through the crack in the door. . . .

Only to encounter a nicely rounded female backside draped in white satin.

Once Richard’s eyes fixed upon that object, it would have been hard for a disinterested observer—had there been one—to determine whether he was so much peering as leering through the crack in the door. There was no doubt to whom the nether regions in question belonged. The thin fabric molded itself obligingly to Amy’s body as she leaned over, her ear against the keyhole of the door on the other side of the narrow room.

Her ear against the keyhole?

What was Amy doing with her ear against the keyhole? Never mind that the activity showed off certain parts of her anatomy to good effect. . . . Richard plucked his mind out of the gutter and coerced it back into reasonable patterns of thought.

Not only was her derriere distracting, but, by Jove, she had stolen his spot! He should have been the one in that antechamber. He should have been the one with his ear pressed against the door. Blast it all, what business did a mere chit of a girl from the country have usurping his keyhole?

Richard’s lips thinned into a grim line.

Utterly unaware that she was causing such consternation, Amy pressed her ear against the convenient gap afforded by a keyhole. Thank goodness these locks had been designed for large keys! Amy could hear every word said, unmuffled by the wood of the door. Unfortunately, not terribly much had been said so far. Edouard had babbled—there was really no other word for it—on and on about the high favor in which he was held by the consular family. Amy rolled her eyes and made faces indicating boredom and disgust at Jane.

Had Edouard dragged Marston off in private just so he could gloat at him? Yet Jane had been so sure their conversation was suspect, and Jane wasn’t one to succumb to fancy. . . . Amy’s neck was beginning to ache from tilting her head at an unnatural angle and the ornate brass ornamentation of the keyhole pricked against her ear. Had it not been for that wounded man in the ballroom, Amy would have been convinced that her brother was merely one of the more boring men in creation and left it at that. But there was that wounded man. . . . Maybe Edouard was speaking in code? No. The sound of booted feet pacing impatiently up and down the parquet floor in the next room seemed to indicate that Marston found Edouard’s monologue equally irritating. That, Amy decided, indicated a certain amount of good sense on Marston’s part.

Of all the men she had met that evening, Marston was the most likely candidate to be the Purple Gentian.

The steady rhythm of Marston’s steps came to an abrupt stop. So did Edouard’s monologue.

“Enough pleasantries. Have you squealed, Balcourt?”

Edouard’s voice was oddly muffled as he gasped, “No! How could you think—no, never!”

“Good.” The word was nearly obscured by a thud, as though someone had dropped something heavy.

The Purple Gentian. He must be the Purple Gentian. Amy was too excited for complete sentences; her thoughts exploded in ragged fragments.

“Tonight then?” Edouard asked breathlessly.

Tonight! Tonight! Amy mouthed excitedly to Jane. But where? She pressed her ear harder to the crack in the door.

“Might as well,” drawled Marston. “No sense waiting.”

“You could drive back with us and we could say we were retiring to my study for some port and cards and—”

“I know where to find you, Balcourt.”

“Um, right.” Edouard subsided.

“Though I must say”—Amy heard the boots begin to click again—“I wouldn’t mind sharing a carriage with that sister of yours.”

What?

Oh, blast, the footsteps were rapidly nearing the door. There was no time to dwell on that last, highly interesting comment, or await its sequel. Amy abandoned her keyhole and made anxious waving motions at Jane. The two of them scurried for cover behind a pair of rickety gilded chairs. Amy felt a bit like a child trying to hide behind its own hands. If the men brought a candle with them, the chairs would do little to hide them. Amy squeezed back more firmly into her corner. If caught, they would just have to brazen it out. They could say that they’d gone looking for Edouard because Miss Gwen was making a scene—that would distract Edouard in a hurry!—and if he asked what they were doing crawling about on the floor, well, Amy could always pretend she’d lost a hairpin. It would never occur to Edouard that she’d been wearing her hair down. And if that didn’t work, for plan B. . .

The door swung open, nearly careening into Amy’s chair. Amy just managed to keep herself from flinching.

“Sir!” Edouard was proclaiming in his most pompous tones. Even in the dark, he looked like a halibut. “That is my sister you are discussing!”

Marston crossed the antechamber in three long strides, Edouard puffing behind. “Your point?” And the door slammed behind the two men. Clip-clap, shuffle, shuffle . . . Marston’s decisive tread and Edouard’s shuffling gait receded along the marble gallery.

Jane’s head poked out, turtlelike, from behind the back of her chair. “Amy,” she whispered, “I don’t like that man.”

“Shhhhh!” Amy hissed. “Wait till we know they’re gone!”

“Unless they tiptoed back, I think we’re safe.”

Amy bounced up, and gave an extra little hop of glee, just for good measure. “Isn’t this exciting, Jane! What absolute luck! And if you hadn’t followed Edouard, we’d never have—”

Jane was clearly not listening, because she broke in with a worried, “That Mr. Marston is no gentleman.”

Amy glanced up from brushing dark smudges of dust off the satin of her dress. White was no color for a spy. “But, Jane, he must be the Purple Gentian! Who else could it be?”

“That doesn’t make him a gentleman. Besides, we don’t know he’s the Purple Gentian, Amy.” Amy didn’t need to see her cousin’s face to know what sort of look she was being given.

“Oh, Jane.” Before she gave way to pique, Amy recalled that her cousin hadn’t had the benefit of the keyhole. In tones that rapidly escalated from a whisper, she hastily repeated the conversation she had overheard. As Edouard had slammed the door to the marble gallery behind him, neither Amy nor Jane noticed an ear being pressed to the keyhole. Neither saw a pair of green eyes glitter like a panther on the prowl at the words “study,” and “tonight.”

Neither heard the sound of muffled footsteps easing down the marble gallery as Richard slipped away to plan a midnight raid on Balcourt’s study.

“So you see, Jane,” Amy finished, curls bouncing as she pirouetted around the small room, “I’ll just hide in Edouard’s study and eavesdrop on their conversation. Obviously, they couldn’t talk here with all of these revolutionaries about, but tonight . . .”

She had to make sure she got to Edouard’s study before he did.

“We’re so close, Jane!” she crowed. “I can’t believe we’ve already found the Purple Gentian!”

“Nor can I,” commented Jane uneasily.