The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Chapter Six

The unexpected sound of a voice behind her, too close behind her, nearly sent Amy catapulting over the railing. Her parents’ shades vanished abruptly into the silvery night. The spell was broken.

Clutching the wood for support, she snapped, not looking around, “And you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!”

“And you shouldn’t lean on the railing like that,” the infuriatingly unflustered voice behind her went on. “These ships are seldom in good repair.”

“I’m perfectly—agh!” Amy staggered back as the rail obligingly wobbled.

“Safe?” he finished for her. “I think not.”

Amy shook off the hand he had put out to steady her. “I thank you for your warning, but I am quite all right.”

Richard followed her as she turned her back on him and walked across the deck in search of silence and a more stable piece of railing. Despite his earlier pique, he had to repress a chuckle as he watched her plant her elbows on the wooden plank, as if defying it to wobble.

“You’ll get splinters,” he warned.

Amy ignored him. Poised on the prow of the ship, shoulders back, chin set, she looked like a particularly fierce figurehead. She was obviously trying quite, quite hard to ignore him. Well, let her try. Richard stared at her unabashedly, watching the way the moonlight made her skin glow white against her dark hair. When he had first ascended to the deck, with her face tilted to the night sky, she had looked like Joan of Arc having visions.

Shaking his head, Richard recalled his original objective. “Come inside,” he advised Amy’s back.

“I am quite comfortable where I am.” As if in illustration, Amy sat herself down on the damp deck and circled her knees with her arms.

Richard sat down beside her.

Amy looked at him in surprise. Derek would never have risked getting brown streaks on his tan trousers. Or grass stains or rust stains or any other kind of blemish. Amy had frequently been able to avoid his clumsy advances by climbing over a fence or traipsing off into places where dandies feared to tread.

“You’ll stain your breeches.”

“You’ll stain your skirt,” Richard returned equably.

“This is an utterly inane conversation!”

“Would you rather discuss the weather?”

“I’d rather not discuss anything at all.”

“Good.” Richard stood, leaning over to offer her a hand up. “Then we can go back inside.”

Amy batted at his outstretched hand like a cat rejecting a substandard ball of yarn. “No, you can go back inside.”

“Miss Balcourt, you cannot remain out here alone.”

His tone set her teeth on edge, but Amy remained silent.

“Someone might come upon you in the darkness.”

“Someone already has.”

“That’s not what I meant. I came out here to see that you were safe.”

“Well, I am. You’ve seen that. Now go away.”

“You don’t take awfully well to being rescued, do you? All right, then.” Richard executed a bow so formal it could only be meant as an insult. “Good night, Miss Balcourt. Enjoy your lonely sojourn on the deck. If any sailors come after you, don’t scream for me.”

Amy sniffed.

Richard turned sharply on his heel and stalked off towards the stairs. Two yards away, he stopped and stalked right back again. Shaking his head at Amy, who was watching him with an expression compounded of contempt and confusion (although confusion seemed to be winning out), he said, “No. Sorry. Can’t.”

“Can’t what, my lord? Walk? It’s really quite simple. You just put one foot in front of the other and keep on going until you’re all the way down the stairs and in your own berth.”

“No.” Richard lowered himself back down next to her. “I can’t just leave you here. Unfortunately for both of us, I was raised with a sense of honor that precludes leaving a young lady alone in the middle of the night with a crew of ruffians sleeping just below. My obligation is clear; if you persist in remaining outside, I shall have to remain, too. Besides,” he added, before Amy could make a sharp comment about his sense of honor not extending to avoiding his country’s enemies, “it’s easier for me to stay here with you now than to come running when you start screaming.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Let’s not put it to the test, shall we? Carry on with whatever you were thinking about. You’ll scarcely know I’m here.” As if to prove his point, Richard swiveled his head and gazed ostentatiously off at the ocean.

Amy tried to rekindle the memory of her parents, but the image had taken on the flat quality of a set of cardboard dolls against a clumsily illustrated backdrop. The very reality of the man sitting next to her rendered the daydream weak and insubstantial. His presence crowded her thoughts. He was sitting a good foot away from her, far enough to be proper, far enough to satisfy the most particular of chaperones (in other words, Miss Gwen), but far too close for Amy’s liking. She could smell the citrus of his cologne, hear the even exhalations of his breathing, feel the heat rising from his body in the chilliness of the night. Every time he shifted on the hard deck, she tensed. Every time she heard his hair whisper against his high collar as he turned his head, she wondered if he was looking at her.

You’ll scarcely know I’m here? Amy thought. Ha!

Resting her chin on her knees, she squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to conjure up the Purple Gentian (her very favorite daydream, the one where he pressed her hand in his and told her he could do nothing without her), but the image was as flat as an amateur painting, and the Purple Gentian’s voice kept taking on the inflections of Lord Richard Selwick.

Sneaking a little sideways glance, Amy wondered if she had, perhaps, been too hard on him that afternoon. It was absolutely appalling of him to have worked for the French, but that had been a full five years ago. He must have been quite young five years ago, and Mrs. Meadows was always going on about how young people did foolish and thoughtless things. Perhaps he truly hadn’t considered the situation in France when he charged off to Egypt. Perhaps he had since repented of his actions.

Perhaps she really should go back inside, before his presence beside her spurred her on to even more ridiculous flights of fancy.

It might have eased Amy somewhat to know that the object of her thoughts was having equal difficulty concentrating. Richard had tried to consider strategies for ferreting out Bonaparte’s plans for the invasion of England, but Amy conquered his concentration more effectively than any number of units of artillery.

Under cover of the darkness, he shifted his weight to face Amy and asked softly, “What brings you to France?”

Amy snapped her head up, instantly on the defensive. Richard put out a hand as though in his own defense. “Retract your claws! I’m scarred enough from this afternoon. Can we cry a truce, at least for the night?”

Amy eyed him askance.

“Consider it our own personal Peace of Amiens. I’ll be France and you can be England.”

Some of the wariness crept out of Amy’s stance. “You can be England and I’ll be France before the Revolution,” she offered.

“Sorry. I’m afraid you’re stuck with the present.”

“Only if you stay on your own side of the Channel, then.” Amy indicated the sliver of deck that separated them.

“What would you do if I tried to invade?” Richard wiggled his eyebrows in mock flirtation.

“I’d call out the heavy artillery.” She motioned to the hatch leading down to the cabin.

“I’m sorry. You can’t pass off a dragon as a brace of guns. Not allowed. And I assure you, dragons are not an acceptable weapon in modern warfare.”

“Why not? They both breathe fire.”

“Yes, but . . .” Richard cast about for a rejoinder, but all he could come up with was, “but dragons are frightening!” which didn’t sound terribly brave and manly.

“I win!” Amy crowed.

“But dragons are obsolete,” Richard finished smugly. “As the victor of that round, I claim a boon.”

“I don’t believe you deserve one, Sir Knight. After all, you didn’t slay any dragons.”

“Nevertheless”—he held up a magisterial hand—“I still claim a boon. Outwitting you ought to rank with slaying dragons.”

“I don’t know if I’d call that outwitting,” protested Amy.

“It was a compliment.”

“You don’t compliment people often, do you? That was really an awfully poor attempt. If you’d like, I’ll help you practice. We could start out with something simple, like, ‘Why, Amy, how clever you are!’ and proceed from there.”

“Nonetheless.” Richard leaned forward, his dark blond hair shimmering in the moonlight. “Do I get my boon?”

Amy’s pulse picked up speed at a reckless rate. “What sort of boon did you have in mind?”

“I would like you”—his voice was low and intimate—“to tell me what brings you to France.”

“Oh.”

“Is it that much of a secret?” Richard teased.

Amy fought against an unreasonable sense of disappointment. “No, no, of course not. It’s quite dull really. I’m going to live with my brother in Paris.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Miss Balcourt. How can someone who so disapproves of the French have a brother there?”

Amy stumbled to her feet, catching her skirt on her bare toes and clutching the railing to steady herself. She towered over Richard. “My brother is half French; I am half French; good heavens, you really are the most provoking man! Is there anything else you wanted to know, or may I go back to the cabin?”

Richard took Amy’s hand and tugged her back down. “If your brother’s in France and you were in England, where are your parents?”

Amy allowed herself to be tugged, but settled on her heels, as if ready to spring up again at any moment. “They suffered the embrace of Madame Guillotine,” she said tersely.

Still holding her hand, Richard squeezed it lightly, for comfort.

“Actually, only Papa was really murdered, but Mama might as well have been. She loved Papa so much—they must have said good-bye three dozen times before we left. When they killed Papa, they killed her, too. Theirs was a love match, you see.”

Oddly enough—for one who had thus far assiduously avoided matrimony—Richard did see. His own parents had married for love, and had stayed in love, rather distressingly so. At least it had been distressing for the poor adolescent boy forced to witness his parents holding hands under the table. Not to mention all the times Richard had accidentally stumbled upon his parents kissing in corridors. But for all he made faces and the occasional inarticulate noise indicating extreme disgust (because everyone knew that parents weren’t supposed to engage in intimate behavior), Richard secretly thought it was rather sweet. He thought it was rather sweet the way his indomitable mother would blush and flutter at a whispered comment from his father, and he thought it was rather sweet the way his dignified father would bolt abruptly out of debates in the House of Lords just to take tea with his mother. Of course, you wouldn’t catch him confiding that to just anybody.

It wasn’t until he had hit the London social scene as a rakehell, fresh from the innocence of Eton, that Richard had realized how unusual it was, that sort of connection his parents enjoyed. Until then, he had naïvely assumed that all married couples were like that, holding hands under the breakfast table and kissing in corridors. But then he saw married men in brothels, received scented solicitations from married women, and watched marriages contracted with no more feeling on either side than . . . well, no feeling at all. In all of his meanderings from ballroom to ballroom, Richard had seen perhaps one couple in ten who shared some sort of affection, one couple in a hundred truly in love. And he had realized, for the first time, that what his parents had was something wonderful and rare, and that he himself could never stoop to settle for anything less.

And Amy had seen that, too, and had been forced to see it wrenched away.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“Why should you be? You didn’t wield the ax.”

“If I had known, I wouldn’t have baited you so. I didn’t realize you had a personal interest.”

Amy looked up at him in confusion, wondering at the sudden change in his demeanor. The moon had gone behind a cloud, leaving his face in shadow, no glimmer of light to reveal whether he spoke sincerely. If only the clouds would part and she could see—she wasn’t sure what she hoped to see. Something that would tell her whether he was honest or a thorough blackguard.

“I am truly sorry,” he said again, and with his deep voice vibrating through her ears, Amy knew, just knew, he was sincere, the same way she knew that Jane was good, and that sheep were vile, and that she was going to find the Purple Gentian.

And somehow it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he would take her free hand in his own, and even more natural that he was leaning towards her and she towards him. Their joined hands formed a bridge across the sliver of deck she had laughingly called their Channel. Amy couldn’t tell if he were pulling or she was; there no longer seemed to be a place where her arms ended and his began. And what did it matter if there were? Amy closed her eyes, and felt his warm breath on her lips.