The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Chapter Twenty

“My lord!” Amy hastily stepped back, this time banging into a bust of Brutus that wobbled ominously on its marble pedestal. Amy grabbed at Brutus before he could take a suicidal leap off his stand. “I didn’t . . . that is . . .”

“Had you known it was me you would have taken care to run into poor Brutus instead?” Lord Richard supplied with a smile of such conspiratorial goodwill that Amy nearly reeled back into poor Brutus once more.

“Something like that,” admitted Amy weakly. Clearly, she was still slightly dazed from her two collisions.

Amy felt behind her to make sure she wasn’t going to back into anything else. With Lord Richard in it, the anteroom shrank to nothingness. The tall figure in tight buff breeches and pale blue jacket filled Amy’s line of vision. A dusty ray of sunshine from the one window in the room caressed his head, encircling him with a sort of halo. Halo? Amy caught herself up short before she could descend any further into folly. A man who abandoned his country? Who caressed scantily clad women in the middle of a party? Lord Richard was the last man in the world to deserve a halo.

“You just missed Mme Leclerc,” blurted Amy.

“Pauline?” Lord Richard frowned in a way that could indicate either confusion or displeasure. “Was she looking for me?”

“Um . . .” Why on earth had she said that? Drat. Now if Lord Richard went and found Mme Leclerc she’d be sure to tell him that she had never even spoken to Amy, and Lord Richard would know Amy had made it up, and might even leap to the conclusion, the incorrect conclusion, that Amy cared the slightest little bit about his relationship with Mme Leclerc.

Amy evaded the danger of being caught out in a direct lie by pointing at the door and informing him, “She went that way.”

“Oh,” was Lord Richard’s lengthy response.

Amy waited for him to charge off past the statue of Brutus, through the gilded doors, in pursuit of She of the Diaphanous Dress and Nonexistent Bodice. And waited.

Lord Richard leaned lazily against the paneled wall as though he had no other purpose in the world but to stand in a little anteroom with Amy.

“Don’t you want to go that way?” Amy asked uncertainly.

Lord Richard considered for a moment. He shook his head. “Not really.”

Amy’s eyes searched Lord Richard’s handsome face. She would have thought that he would be in more of a hurry to run off after his paramour. On second thought, maybe that wasn’t all that surprising. Look how rapidly he had gone from flirting with Amy to dallying with Mme Leclerc. Just the way he had flitted off to join the French in Egypt when his very own country was at war with them. Faithless cad!

Amy’s feelings towards Pauline Leclerc rapidly spiraled from animosity to pity. That poor, gullible woman had clearly been as thoroughly taken in by the glib charm of the perfidious Lord Richard as had Amy herself. The woman might wear dresses with as much substance as cobwebs, and her intellectual capacities might be even flimsier, but, still, she deserved better than to be treated like that.

“Well, you really ought to,” said Amy hotly.

“Ought to what?”

“Go after Mme Leclerc.” Amy glowered at Richard.

Richard regarded Amy quizzically. “Is this an attempt to free yourself of my presence? You could just say so.”

“No!”

“No, you don’t want to be rid of my presence?”

“Urgh!” Amy emitted an inarticulate noise somewhat akin to a snort. Heaving a deep breath, she clarified, “Ridding myself of your presence was not my intention—”

“Delighted to hear it.”

“Rather,” Amy bit out, “I was hoping to induce you to behave with some consideration—”

“By leaving you alone as quickly as possible?”

“No!” Amy bounced up and down in a way that would have been the prelude to a temper tantrum had she been a decade younger.

As she was twenty, rather than ten, the effect was rather different. Richard’s lips twisted into a bemused smile as he watched her breasts jiggle below the scooped neck of her bodice.

“Would you like to repeat that?” he asked hopefully.

Amy scowled at him. “What about the word no do you find difficult to comprehend?”

“What in the blazes you mean by it,” Richard admitted honestly. “Let’s back up a step, shall we? You want me to go away. . . .”

“No.” Unfortunately, this time Amy didn’t jiggle. Instead, she held up both hands. “No. That’s not the point. You’re twisting my words again. Don’t interrupt me! What I’ve been trying to say is that the only decent thing to do is go after Mme Leclerc and make things right with her.”

Richard blinked at Amy. “I didn’t realize things were wrong with her.”

Since it didn’t look like Amy was going to bounce anymore, Richard took a moment to actually try to figure out what in the devil she was talking about. This sudden fascination with Pauline made very little sense. Unless Pauline had come upon Amy and bent her ears with tales of unanswered letters of love? That wasn’t a terribly Pauline sort of thing to do. Pauline’s attitude towards love affairs, Richard thought approvingly, could only be called sporting. She gave the chase her all, accepted her defeats with good grace, and seldom whined.

“How can you be so callous?”

Richard looked down into Amy’s irate, flushed face, and enlightenment dawned.

“You don’t mean to say that you thought that Pauline and I—good gad, no!”

“What do you mean, ‘good gad, no!’ I saw the two of you together last night, in Mme Bonaparte’s salon. Do you deny it?”

For a moment, Richard struggled to recall what Amy could possibly be talking about. His encounter with Amy in her brother’s study later that evening had done much to drive any other recollections out of his head, and he had been to so many receptions at the Tuilleries over the years that one tended to blend into another. What could he have been doing with Pauline?

Oh. Pauline had had him backed into a corner. She had also, if memory served, ventured into regions generally reserved for behind closed doors. Richard hoped Amy hadn’t witnessed that. From the strength of Amy’s glare, Richard rather feared that she had. Of course, this all begged the question of how Amy had come to witness that unfortunate moment in the first place. It wasn’t as though he had been entwined with Pauline right in the middle of the room; they had been off in a far corner, well away from the throng of spectators clustering around Bonaparte and Miss Gwen. A group of which, Richard was quite sure, Amy had been a part. In which case, Amy must have followed him.

Richard beamed straight at Amy’s scowling face.

“See? You can’t deny it,” Amy said in a suffocated voice.

“Deny it?” Richard shrugged. “What man wouldn’t want to be seen with Pauline? She is, after all, an exceptionally beautiful woman, don’t you agree?”

Amy nodded woodenly.

“With exceptionally fine eyes,” he added devilishly. “The sort of eyes a man can lose himself in.”

Amy’s head jerked up and down by a fraction of an inch.

Richard lowered his voice and leaned forward conspiratorially. “And exceptionally little conversation.”

Amy gaped.

Moving back a step, Richard waved a nonchalant hand. “She has very little to say about the Rosetta Stone, and absolutely no interest in Homer.”

Amy leaned back against the wall, feeling completely thrown off balance. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember why she had brought up Mme Leclerc in the first place, and fervently wished she hadn’t.

“Amy,” said Richard softly, “there is not, nor was there ever, anything between me and Pauline.”

“Other than her dress,” muttered Amy.

She hadn’t meant the comment to be heard but Lord Richard’s hearing was unfairly sharp. He gasped with laughter. As he laughed, his green eyes crinkled at the corners, glinting with flecks of gold like leaves touched by the sun.

“While I must confess that the only person I was looking for was Bonaparte—”

“He also went that way,” interjected Amy.

“I am delighted to have stumbled across you,” Richard continued with a grin.

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Can’t you?” murmured Richard.

“You needed to discuss Homer with someone?” Amy suggested tartly, flinging out the first unromantic image that came to mind.

Only, unfortunately, once she had spoken, she couldn’t help but imagine sitting curled up next to Lord Richard in a large leather chair, in front of a flaming fire on a cold winter’s day, reading aloud the sonorous Greek phrases of the Odyssey to one another.

Amy mentally pushed the book aside and doused the fire, just as Lord Richard said, “Close enough. I was planning to send you a note, inviting you to come see my antiquities tomorrow.”

Something about the way Richard said “my antiquities,” as proud as a schoolboy with a particularly smashing toad to show off, made Amy want to smile despite herself. Only they weren’t really his antiquities, were they? They belonged to Bonaparte, who had collected them in the course of leading the armies of the Revolution. No right-minded Englishman would admit to having anything to do with those antiquities. And no right-minded Englishwoman would have anything to do with Lord Richard Selwick, Amy reminded herself sternly. Teasing green eyes or no.

“That will not be possible,” she said coldly.

Lord Richard’s eyes lingered knowingly on her face. “No blood guilt can pass to you from a few harmless objects.”

Amy lifted her nose in the air as though she hadn’t the slightest notion of what he was talking about.

“Think of it,” he continued softly. “These statues and jewels and fragile bits of humanity were buried deep in the earth centuries before the world ever heard of Bonaparte. Think of it. The relics of a civilization that was old while France was still covered in forest and London a mere gathering of mud huts.”

His words cast a spell in the midafternoon quiet of the room, evoking images of shimmering sands and scurrying men in white robes and black-haired women keening their grief in elaborate burial chambers.

“Tomorrow afternoon, then. Your cousin and chaperone are, of course, included in the invitation.” He grinned. “Miss Gwen might like a mummy case for use in her horrid novel.”

“I haven’t accepted!”

“But you want to.”

Drat. The insufferable man was absolutely right; no matter her feelings for him, she longed to see hieroglyphs carved into stone and ornaments that might once have dazzled the eyes of Mark Antony. Miss Gwen wasn’t the only one with an interest in mummy cases.

“Why hesitate?” Lord Richard pressed his advantage. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

“Of what?”

“Of ancient curses? Of enjoying my company?”

Since that was precisely what terrified Amy, she bristled indignantly. “Of course not! Tomorrow afternoon, you said?”

“Two o’clock, perhaps? The artifacts are lodged in a wing of the Tuilleries, until we move them into the Louvre. Ask any sentry to show you the way,” Lord Richard directed, with a smile that struck Amy as uncomfortably close to a smirk.

Too late, Amy realized how neatly she had been seduced and goaded into accepting.

“You don’t have any apples to offer while you’re at it, do you?” she asked sourly.

“Satan tempting Eve in the garden? Not a terribly flattering role for me, is it? And you’re overdressed for the part.”

Amy’s blush rivaled the hue of the dangerous fruit they had been discussing. Somehow, Lord Richard’s frankly admiring gaze made the yellow muslin of her gown feel as insubstantial as a string of fig leaves. Amy covered her confusion by saying quickly, “Might I ask a favor, my lord?”

“A phoenix feather from the farthest deserts of Arabia? The head of a dragon on a bejeweled platter?”

“Nothing quite that complicated,” replied Amy, marveling once again at the chameleon quality of the man beside her. How could anyone be so utterly infuriating at one moment and equally charming the next? Untrustworthy, she reminded herself. Mercurial. Changeable. “A dragon’s head wouldn’t be much use to me just now, unless it could offer me directions.”

Richard crooked an arm. “Tell me where you need to be, and I’ll escort you.”

Amy tentatively rested her hand on the soft blue fabric of his coat. “That’s quite a generous offer when you don’t know where I’m going.”

“Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end?” suggested Richard with a lazy grin.

“Methinks it is no journey?” Amy matched the quotation triumphantly, and was rewarded by the admiring light that flamed in Lord Richard’s eyes. “No, not nearly that far—at least, I hope not. This palace does seem large enough to house a couple of continents. I was looking for Hortense Bonaparte’s chambers.”

The statement was close enough to the truth, and Lord Richard accepted it without a murmur of disbelief. “You’re in the right place,” he informed her, steering her back into Bonaparte’s study, “just a flight below where you ought to be. That little staircase will take you right up to Josephine’s chambers, and Hortense’s are next door.”

“Thank you.” Amy lifted one foot to the first step.

“Think nothing of it.” Lord Richard leaned an arm on the newel of the stair. Even with Amy a step up, he still smiled down at her. “It wasn’t much of a journey. I owe you nine leagues at least.”

“Bring me a phoenix feather, and we’ll cancel the debt. Good day, my lord, and thank you for the directions.” Amy lifted her skirt and ascended another step.

“You’ll have to accept a mummy case or two instead.” Lord Richard’s voice arrested Amy midstep. Letting fall her skirt, she turned, only to discover that his smile was even more devastating when faced eye to eye. Or lip to lip, as the case might be. Amy swallowed hard.

“Why were you so eager for me to visit?” she asked suspiciously.

“Because,” Richard said quite simply, “I like you.”

And then he smiled and bowed as if his last statement hadn’t made Amy’s jaw drop till it practically hit the bottom stair, and, with a bland, “Good day, Miss Balcourt,” took his leave before Amy could retrieve her jaw and her faculties of speech.

“And good day to you too,” she muttered as she flounced up the stairs. “ ‘Because I like you.’ What on earth is that supposed to mean? And why do I care? I don’t care. Of course I don’t care. What difference does it make if Richard Selwick likes me or not? None. None at all. Of course it makes no difference.”

Amy stopped short on the upper landing and lifted her chin. “I have more important things to worry about.”

Amy collared one of the young pages who seemed to do nothing but loiter about the corridors waiting to carry messages, clandestine or otherwise.

Which was why, when Amy hissed, “Can you take a message for me?” the page gave her a look that questioned her mental capacities.

“Yes, miss.”

“Can you keep it secret?”

Another look, this time compounded with wounded dignity. Amy was sinking in the page’s estimation by the moment. “Of course, miss.”

“Oh, good!” Leaning forward, Amy whispered, “Tell him I must see him urgently. Don’t forget! Urgently. Because I have something terribly important I have to tell him, and he’ll know what it is, after our conversation last night. I’ll meet him at the Luxembourg Gardens at midnight. And don’t forget—urgently!”

The page looked understandably confused. “Tell who, miss?”

Amy refrained from banging her hand against her head in extreme self-disgust. Just because she had let Lord Richard rattle her. . .

“Georges Marston,” she said, pressing a coin from her reticule into the boy’s hand. “Make sure to deliver my message solely to the ears of Georges Marston. And don’t forget—”

“I know,” said the boy, with the world-weary air of one who had heard it all before. “Urgently.”

Richard allowed himself a moment to watch the delightful sway of Amy’s hips as she ascended the stairs towards Hortense’s apartments. It was, he assured himself, a permissible luxury. Bounding up the stairs after her, flinging her over his shoulder, and bearing her off to the nearest empty chamber was not. Pity, that.

Shaking his head, Richard wandered back out of Bonaparte’s study and through the anteroom, which suddenly seemed much darker without the cheerful yellow of Amy’s dress. He wondered if she was as beset by memories of their kiss last night as he was.

It was ludicrous! He had kissed hundreds of women in his time. Actually . . . Richard did a quick calculation, casting his mind back over his teenage career as a rakehell. Well, maybe only dozens. At any rate, not one of them had plagued him nearly as much as Amy. None of them had kept him awake for the rest of the night in a state of uncomfortable desire, wondering whether such an opportunity would arise again.

Usually Richard made his own opportunities.

Back in his rakehell days, all it had taken had been a smile across a ballroom, a nod of the head towards a garden, a note passed surreptitiously from gloved hand to gloved hand. So easy. But then had come Deirdre and her betrayal, and Richard had become adept at sending opportunity scurrying away. And now . . . Richard frowned at a bird chirping with excessive force in the open window of an empty salon.

He could easily arrange another assignation with Amy. Ah, but only if he were willing to do so as the Purple Gentian. Therein lay the rub. The Purple Gentian and Lord Richard Selwick unanimously concurred that Amy was to have nothing more to do with the former. Just look at last night. She had curtailed his inspection of Balcourt’s study, just as he had gotten to the good part, the mysterious cache of papers in the globe. True, for all he knew the globe might contain nothing more exciting than Balcourt’s billetsdoux. Or it might contain papers vital to the defense of England. As if that weren’t enough, he had entirely missed whatever had been going on in the courtyard. He had arrived just in time to see villainous-looking rascals trailing out into the night, and to hear Balcourt bidding Marston an uninformative farewell.

He probably should have tailed Marston home. Richard excised the probably. No doubt about it, the responsible thing to do, the Purple Gentian thing to do, was to follow Marston. Instead, the Purple Gentian had lurked in the bushes outside the Hotel de Balcourt, making sure that one Miss Amy Balcourt made it safely inside.

Richard grinned in recollection. Hell, it had been worth the missed intelligence just to watch Amy desperately trying to haul herself over that windowsill. She’d plant her elbows on the edge, screw up her face, wiggle in an exceedingly appealing way, and plop back down. Richard had admired her tenacity and her derriere.

One night’s work—Richard sternly pulled his mind back to the matter at hand. One night’s work could be accounted lost with good grace. To lose another night’s work verged on irresponsibility. Besides, Amy wouldn’t be Amy if she didn’t keep pestering him for his identity and a place in the League. Sooner or later, under the influence of her lips and arms and . . . anyway, sooner or later, he was bound to weaken on one or the other, and either would be disaster. Thus his resolution, as he trudged back home last night through the dark and smelly streets of Paris, that the Purple Gentian was to avoid Miss Amy Balcourt as though she were Delaroche himself.

Lord Richard Selwick, on the other hand, was quite free to call on Miss Balcourt.

After all, Richard reasoned with himself, as long as he confined his calls to nonspying hours, his relationship with Amy could be kept separate from his work.

He just had to charm Amy into liking him. It shouldn’t be too hard. She might have kissed the Purple Gentian last night, but it was clearly Richard she was thinking about. Of course, it would be even better if it were Richard she was thinking about and kissing.

All he had to do was dispel her lingering anxieties about his character. Hmm. Richard paused next to a painting by David. That might be too difficult a feat without revealing his secret identity. Too much effort. No, he decided. Far better to seduce Amy out of her scruples.

Ah, now there was a plan worthy of the master strategist who had saved scads of French noblemen from the guillotine.

With that out of the way, Richard could once more concentrate on sallying forth and doing his bit to defend England against old Boney by drinking French brandy and winning at cards.

Richard dropped in on a record-breaking four salons and card parties between eight and eleven o’clock. At one, he eavesdropped on conversations under the cover of music; at another, he elicited information over cards; at yet another, he rifled through his host’s desk while a poet declaimed in a room across the hall. It would have been five parties had he not spotted Pauline Leclerc as he entered the fifth salon. Grabbing his hat and gloves back from the astonished maid, he had barely escaped with his trousers intact.

Robbins dropped Richard off beneath the portico of Mme Rochefort’s town house, Richard’s final destination, just after eleven. “Don’t bother coming back for me,” Richard told his coachman, as he swung out of the chaise. “I’ll find my own way back.”

“You’re quite sure, my lord?” Robbins believed the population of Paris to be comprised entirely of footpads and assassins, all just waiting to leap out at his young master from dark alleyways.

“Quite sure. Get some rest.”

“Aye, my lord.”

As his carriage pulled away, Richard settled his hat more firmly on his head, gave his gloves one last tug, pasted on a social smile, and ascended the steps to the front door. He was let in by a maid, who took his hat and cloak and pointed him upstairs. Richard made his way up the marble staircase, skirting around a young dandy clinging to the bannister, who was already clearly the worse for drink. Richard feared for the next guest to pass below the staircase.

Reaching the landing, Richard considered his options. To his right, food had already been laid out in the supper-room, and a cadre of devoted gallants were making up plates for their beloveds of the moment.

Richard spotted his hostess in the crush, and nodded to her. Mme Rochefort waved her fan at him with more enthusiasm than decorum, a description that suited the majority of the guests rather well. Mme Rochefort’s parties teemed with young adventurers, aging flirts, and hardened roués, all barely clinging to the fringes of society. Mme Rochefort herself fell into the second category; a former crony of Josephine’s, she had been banished from the Tuilleries when Bonaparte had decided to become respectable.

Down the hall, the crowd in the card room was thinner than usual. Therese Tallien, another former friend of the First Consul’s wife, was playing a rubber of whist with a brightly dressed dandy, a heavy-lidded young officer, and Desiree Hamelin, who was chiefly famed for having walked topless all the way from the Place Royale to the Luxembourg Palace in the harum-scarum days of the Directorate.

Richard wandered through the room, murmuring polite inconsequentialities to acquaintances, and declining the offer of a rubber of whist from Mme Tallien. Under fashionably languid lids, Richard’s green eyes darted ahead of him across the room. Paul Barras, a former head of state (and, it was rumored, former lover of Josephine), sat over solitaire at a table near the door. He would be no use. Richard likewise dismissed a gaggle of giggling women in hideous striped turbans. Ah, but there, by the fireplace . . .

“Marston, old chap,” Richard drawled. “Not having much luck at cards tonight, I see! Murat.” Richard nodded to the Consul’s brother-in-law, who was listing in his chair at an angle that declared that the snifter of brandy before him was by no means his first.

Marston kicked a chair at Richard. “Care to try your luck, Selwick?”

“Jolly good of you.” Richard dropped lazily into the little gilded chair.

Marston rose and stretched, swaying only a bit in the process. “Think nothing of it. I’m off as soon as I win some of my blunt back from Murat here. Got an assignation with a hot piece of baggage.”

Richard yanked his chair up to the table. “How much does she cost?”

Marston guffawed, baring large white teeth. “This one’s free. Makes a nice change, eh?”

Richard politely bared his teeth in response, but since his interest in Marston’s romantic affairs was about on a par with his desire to learn about the finer points of taxonomy, he quickly turned the topic of conversation to a more promising avenue.

“Any chance you’re thinking of selling that curricle of yours?”

“What! Sell the Chariot of Love? It would send the ladies of Paris into mourning.”

“And their cuckolded husbands would throw a fête.”

Marston smiled smugly. “Tonight’s lucky lady doesn’t have a husband. Just a—”

“I ask,” Richard interrupted, before Marston could embark again on his tedious tale of seduction and satiation, “because I have a friend who’s looking for a carriage, and I know he admires yours.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Marston stretched out his legs. Richard wondered how they managed to support the weight of such a massive ego on a daily basis.

Concealing his distaste, Richard continued smoothly, “I’ve advised Geoff that a closed carriage would be far more useful. What do you think?”

Marston snorted. “If you’re an old lady! Women go mad for a nice little curricle. I can tell you about the time—”

“Curricles are very well for a spin about the park, but what about longer trips, or conveying packages? There’s simply not enough privacy or room. Are you dealing, Murat?”

“I’ll deal.” Marston grabbed the deck of cards before his friend could respond, and began shuffling with the ease of a practiced gamester. “What’s your game, Selwick? Commerce? Euchre? Vingt-et-un?”

“Whatever you were playing. So you’d recommend the curricle, would you? What about midnight assignations and that sort of thing?”

Marston flipped three cards Richard’s way. “It’s easy enough to hire a coach.”

“Do you have any recommendations?”

“There’s a little man in the rue St. Jacques,” Marston said easily, kicking back and looking at his cards. “Has a plain carriage and doesn’t ask too many questions, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ll remember that,” replied Richard, with an amused smile. A little man on the rue St. Jacques . . . He would send Geoff down tomorrow to make inquiries. Richard mentally ticked off item one on his list. “How far does he let you take it?”

“I’ve been as far as Calais and back.” Marston frowned and dealt himself another card.

“Did you have family visiting from England?” Richard inquired pleasantly.

“No, I—” Marston’s mouth snapped abruptly shut.

Richard laughed the knowing laugh of the urbane man about town. “Say no more! Say no more!” he protested, holding out a hand. “The lady’s reputation must be protected. I understand. Pass the decanter, would you?”

Visibly relaxing, Marston shoved the crystal decanter across the green baize tabletop. Richard raised it in a comradely gesture before pulling out the stopper and pouring some of the amber contents into a glass. Damn. Marston wasn’t quite inebriated enough; if Richard probed further on that score, he would grow suspicious.

“To nameless ladies!” Richard pronounced, hoisting his brandy balloon aloft.

“I’ll drink to that!” Marston downed the contents of his glass and reached across Richard for the decanter.

“Namelesh ladiesh,” slurred Murat from his corner.

Now there was a man who was drunk enough to be of use.

“You’ve been at peace too long, Murat,” Richard said cheerfully. “It’s weakened your head for drink! Better work on that or they’ll take away your commission.”

“Him?” Marston jabbed a finger at his friend, who was listing like a frigate after a bad storm. “There’s some perks to being the First Consul’s brother-in-law, eh, Murat? Even if you do have to put up with Caroline!”

“Thash ri’,” agreed Murat. “Have to put up wi’ Caroline. More brandy?”

Richard helpfully leaned across the table and refilled Murat’s glass. “Caroline giving you a hard time?”

“Thash a’ri’.” Murat gestured expansively, sending half the contents of his glass sloshing down Mme Rochefort’s rose silk moire walls. “Goin’ away shoon.”

Two glasses of brandy and several slurred sibilants later, Richard had managed to determine that Murat, if he was to be believed, had been promised a high position in the army for the invasion of England. Caroline, Murat said, had bullied her brother into it, which Richard could well believe. Caroline possessed the face of an angel and the ruthless ambition of, well, her brother Napoleon. Her brother Napoleon crossed with Lucrezia Borgia on a bad day. Richard felt mildly sorry for poor Murat.

His sympathy, however, dwindled as Murat continued to babble around the topic. It took nearly half an hour to ascertain that Murat didn’t actually know when the expedition for England was to leave, just that it was to be soon. Soon being anywhere from two months to a year. Some help that. Napoleon was waiting for something. Caroline had yelled at Napoleon and he had protested that he couldn’t do anything until the arrival of—

Richard hastily scraped his chair back as Murat was ill all over Mme Rochefort’s prized Persian rug.

These were the moments, Richard reflected bitterly, as Marston handed his friend a handkerchief and a servant came scurrying with rags and water, when he envied Miles his nice, quiet desk job at the War Office. His nice, quiet, odorless desk job at the War Office.

“Be ri’ back,” Murat announced, reeling off, hopefully to find a change of linen.

“Another glass of brandy and you’ll be right as rain!” Marston shouted after him.

“Perhaps we might relocate to another table?” Richard suggested, his nose twitching.

“All right with me.” Marston shrugged. “I’m leaving in ten minutes. The girl will be waiting for me at midnight. I might keep her waiting a few minutes—the suspense always makes ’em more eager—”

“How about this table?” Richard had no desire to hear any more of Marston’s romantic advice. Before Marston could continue with his plans for the evening, Richard hastily complimented his jacket.

“I’ll give you the name of my tailor,” Marston offered generously.

Richard would rather face a firing squad than wear a peacock-blue frock coat with gold facings and cameo buttons, but the offer gave him just the opportunity he had desired.

“You’re pretty chummy with Balcourt, aren’t you? Couldn’t you persuade him to patronize a different tailor? One who isn’t color-blind? It’s deuced hard on the eyes for the rest of us.”

“Nature didn’t give him much to work with.” Marston snagged the brandy bottle and glasses from their old table, just as Murat wove his way back, minus his soiled cravat and waistcoat.

Richard feigned confusion. “I had thought you were friends.”

Marston shrugged, evading the implied question. “Who would’ve thought the man would have such a toothsome sister?”

Richard fought back the urge to stop Marston’s words with a fist. Richard had, admittedly, entertained much the same thought himself, but the gleam in Marston’s eye brought out hitherto unsuspected proclivities towards violence.

“The cousin is reputed to be the beauty of the family,” Richard threw Jane to the wolves without a qualm.

“Not my type. I like ’em little and cuddly, not cold and statuesque. Maybe you scholars lust after statues, but not me, no.”

So, he was lusting after Amy, was he? Richard rather hoped that Marston was involved in shady business on behalf of Bonaparte, just so Richard would have official reason to thrash him.

Meanwhile, Marston had begun enumerating those attributes of Amy which he had noted the night before, none of which happened to be above her face. Richard considered accidentally hurling the leaded crystal decanter at Marston’s head. Common sense intervened; he still had little idea as to Marston’s true connection with Balcourt, and would be decidedly less likely to find out if he bludgeoned Marston senseless.

Holding up a hand, Richard protested, “Enough! You don’t want to make the lady you’re meeting tonight jealous.”

“No danger of that!” Slapping his brandy balloon onto the table, Marston doubled over with laughter at a private joke. “Make her jealous! Ha! No danger of that at all!”

“Why not?”

Marston grinned wolfishly at Richard. “Because tonight’s lucky lady is Amy Balcourt.”