21
" Josephine!"
A stentorian bellow shook the candles in their sconces.
Unconsciously, Amy grabbed Richard’s arm, looking about anxiously for the source of the roar. About the room, people went on chatting as before.
"Steady there." Richard patted the delicate hand clutching the material of his coat. "It’s just the First Consul."
Snatching her hand away as though his coat were made of live coals, Amy snapped, "You would know."
"Josephine!"
The dreadful noise repeated itself, cutting off any further remarks. Out of an adjoining room charged a blur of red velvet, closely followed by the scurrying form of a young man. Amy sidestepped just in time, swaying on her slippers to avoid toppling into Lord Richard.
The red velvet came to an abrupt stop beside Mme Bonaparte’s chair. "Oh. Visitors."
Once still, the red velvet resolved into a man of slightly less than medium height, clad in a long red velvet coat with breeches that must once have been white, but which now bore assorted stains that proclaimed as clearly as a menu what the wearer had eaten for supper.
"I do wish you wouldn’t shout so, Bonaparte." Mme Bonaparte lifted one white hand and touched him gently on the cheek.
Bonaparte grabbed her hand and planted a resounding kiss on the palm. "How else am I to make myself heard?" Affectionately tweaking one of her curls, he demanded, "Well? Who is it tonight?"
"We have some visitors from England, sir,"his stepdaughter responded. "I should like to present…" Hortense began listing their names. Bonaparte stood, legs slightly apart, eyes hooded with apparent boredom, and one arm thrust into the opposite side of his jacket, as though in a sling.
Bonaparte inclined his head, looked down at his wife, and demanded, "Are we done yet?"
Thwap!
Everyone within earshot jumped at the sound of Miss Gwen’s reticule connecting with Bonaparte’s arm.
"Sir! Take that hand out of your jacket! It is rude and it ruins your posture. A man of your diminutive stature needs to stand up straight."
Something suspiciously like a chuckle emerged from Lord Richard’s lips, but when Amy glanced sharply up at him, his expression was studiedly bland.
A dangerous hush fell over the room. Flirtations in the far corners of the room were abandoned. Business deals were dropped. The non-English speakers among the assemblage tugged at the sleeves of those who had the language, and instant translations began to be whispered about the room – suitably embellished, of course.
"It’s an assassination attempt!" a woman next to Amy cried dramatically, swooning back into the arms of an officer who looked as though he didn’t quite know what to do with her, but would really be happiest just dropping her.
"No, it’s not, it’s just Miss Gwen," Amy tried to explain.
Meanwhile, Miss Gwen was advancing on Bonaparte, backing him up so that he was nearly sitting on Josephine’s lap. "While we are speaking, sir, this habit you have of barging into other people’s countries without invitation – it is most rude. I will not have it! You should apologise to the Italians and the Dutch at the first opportunity!"
"Mais zee Italians, zey invited me!" Bonaparte exclaimed indignantly.
Miss Gwen cast Bonaparte the severe look of a governess listening to substandard excuses from a wayward child.
"That may well be," she pronounced in a tone that implied she thought it highly unlikely. "But your behaviour upon entering their country was inexcusable! If you were to be invited to someone’s home for a weekend, sirrah, would you reorganise their domestic arrangements and seize the artwork from their walls? Would you countenance any guest who behaved so? I thought not."
Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England. "So much for the Peace of Amiens!" she started to whisper to Jane, but Jane was no longer beside her. "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
23
" It’s just a devilish odd coincidence. I shared a boat – and a carriage – with Balcourt’s sister and cousin."
"I didn’t realise he had a sister."
"Well, he does." Richard abruptly pushed away his empty bowl.
"What a great stroke of luck! Could you use the acquaintance with the sister to discover more about Balcourt’s activities?"
"That," Richard said grimly, "is not an option."
Geoff eyed him quizzically. "I realise that any sister of Balcourt’s is most likely repugnant at best, but you don’t need to propose to the girl. Just flirt with her a bit. Take her for a drive, call on her at home, use her as an entrée into the house. You’ve done it before."
"Miss Balcourt is not repugnant." Richard twisted in his chair, and stared at the door. "What the devil is keeping supper?"
Geoff leant across the table. "Well, if she’s not repugnant, then-what’s the – ah."
"Ah? Ah? What the deuce do you mean by ‘ah’? Of all the nonsensical…"
"You" – Geoff pointed at him with fiendish glee – "are unsettled not because you find her repugnant, but because you find her not repugnant."
Richard was about to deliver a baleful look in lieu of a response, when he was saved by the arrival of the footman bearing a large platter of something covered with sauce. Richard leant forward and speared what looked like it might once have been part of a chicken, as the footman whisked off with his soup dish.
"Have some," Richard suggested to Geoff, ever so subtly diverting the conversation to culinary appreciation.
"Thank you." Undiverted, Geoff continued, "Tell me about your Miss Balcourt."
"Leaving aside the fact that she is by no means my Miss Balcourt" – Richard ignored the sardonic stare coming from across the table – "the girl is as complete an opposite to her brother as you can imagine. She was raised in England, somewhere out in the countryside. She’s read Homer in the original Greek—"
"This is serious," murmured Geoff. "Is she comely?"
"Comely?"
"You know, nice hair, nice eyes, nice…" Geoff made a gesture that Richard would have expected more readily from Miles. "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
24
" Richard found his quarry in the library.
‘Selwick!’ The Honourable Miles Dorrington flung aside the news sheet he had been reading, leapt up from his chair and pounded his friend on the back. He then hastily reseated himself, looking slightly abashed at his unseemly display of affection.
In a fit of temper, Richard’s sister Henrietta had once referred irritably to Miles as ‘that overeager sheepdog,’ and there was something to be said for the description. With his sandy blond hair flopping into his face, and his brown eyes alight with good fellowship, Miles did bear a striking resemblance to the more amiable varieties of man’s best friend. He was, in fact, Richard’s best friend. They had been fast friends since their first days at Eton. "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
25
" Miles was frantically trying to rearrange his cravat and smooth down his hair. ‘Damn. No time to stop off at home and get my valet to tidy me up. Oh well. Give Hen a kiss for me.’
Richard shot him a sharp look.
‘On the cheek, man, on the cheek. God knows I’d never try anything improper with your sister. Not that she isn’t a beautiful girl and all that, it’s just, well, she’s your
sister.’
Richard clapped his friend on the shoulder in approval. ‘Well said! That’s exactly the way I want you to think of her.’
Miles muttered something about being grateful that his sisters were a good deal older. ‘You turn into a complete bore when you’re chaperoning Hen, you know,’ he grumbled.
Richard raised one eyebrow at Miles, a skill that had taken several months of practice in front of his mirror when he was twelve, but had been well worth the investment. ‘At least
I didn’t let my sister dress me up in her petticoat when I was five.’
Miles’s jaw dropped. ‘Who told you about that?’ he demanded indignantly.
Richard grinned. ‘I have my sources,’ he said airily.
Miles, not a top agent of the War Office for nothing, considered this for a moment and his eyes narrowed. ‘You can tell your source that she’s going to have to find someone else to fetch her lemonade at the Alsworthys’ ball tomorrow night unless she apologises. You can also tell her that I’ll accept either a verbal or a written apology as long as it’s suitably abject. And that means very, very abject,’ he added darkly. Miles snatched his hat and gloves up from a side table. ‘Oh, stop grinning already! It wasn’t that amusing.’
Richard rubbed his chin as though in deep thought. ‘Tell me, Miles, was it a lacy petticoat?’
With a wordless grunt of annoyance, Miles turned on his heel and stomped out of the room. "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
26
" Amy was mentally packing for a midnight flight to the mail coach to Dover (plan C), when Jane’s gentle voice cut through the listing of ovine pedigrees.
"Such a pity about the tapestries," was all she said. Her voice was pitched low but somehow it carried over both the shouting men.
Amy glanced sharply at Jane, and was rewarded by a swift kick to the ankle. Had that been a ‘say something now!’ kick, or a ‘be quiet and sit still’ kick? Amy kicked back in inquiry. Jane put her foot down hard over Amy’s. Amy decided that could be interpreted as either ‘be quiet and sit still’ or ‘please stop kicking me now!'
Aunt Prudence had snapped out of her reverie with what was nearly an audible click. "Tapestries?" she inquired eagerly.
"Why, yes, Mama," Jane replied demurely. "I had hoped that while Amy and I were in France we might be granted access to the tapestries at the Tuilleries."
Jane’s quiet words sent the table into a state of electric expectancy. Forks hovered over plates in mid-air; wineglasses tilted halfway to open mouths; little Ned paused in the act of slipping a pea down the back of Agnes’s dress. Even Miss Gwen stopped glaring long enough to eye Jane with what looked more like speculation than rancour.
"Not the Gobelins series of Daphne and Apollo!" cried Aunt Prudence.
"But, of course, Aunt Prudence," Amy plunged in. Amy just barely restrained herself from turning and flinging her arms around her cousin. Aunt Prudence had spent long hours lamenting that she had never taken the time before the war to copy the pattern of the tapestries that hung in the Tuilleries Palace. "Jane and I had hoped to sketch them for you, hadn’t we, Jane?"
"We had," Jane affirmed, her graceful neck dipping in assent. "Yet if Papa feels that France remains unsafe, we shall bow to his greater wisdom."
At the other end of the table, Aunt Prudence was wavering. Literally. Torn between her trust in her husband and her burning desire for needlepoint patterns, she swayed a bit in her chair, the feather in her small silk turban quivering with her agitation.
"It surely can’t be as unsafe as that, can it, Bertrand?" She leant across the table to peer at her husband through eyes gone nearsighted from long hours over her embroidery frame.
"After all, if dear Edouard is willing to take responsibility for the girls…"
"Edouard will take very good care of us, I’m sure, Aunt Prudence! If you’ll just read his letter, you’ll see – ouch!" Jane had kicked her again. "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
27
" There were, he had come to the conclusion after many tedious evenings at Almack’s, two types of chaperone. Given the number of events he had been forced to squire Hen to, Richard considered he had conducted something of an exhaustive study of chaperones.
Both types were aging spinsters (Richard discounted young widows looking after their younger sisters’ debuts; those tended to need a chaperone even more than the young ladies they were ostensibly supervising), but that was all they had in common. The first was the frumpy henwit. Although of indeterminate age, she dressed in the ruffles of a seventeen-year-old. Her hair, no matter how sparse or grey, was curled and frizzed until it looked like a nest built by a particularly talentless blue jay. She twittered and simpered when spoken to, read the sappiest sort of novels in her spare time, and generally contrived to accidentally lose her charge at least twice a
day. Rogues and seducers loved the first sort of chaperone; she made their endeavours that much easier.
And then there was the other type of chaperone. The grim dragon of a chaperone. The sort who looked like her spine had been reinforced with a few Doric columns. Chaperone number two would sneer at a flounce or a frizz. She never simpered when she could snarl, read forbidding sermons by seventeenth-century puritans, and all but chained her charge to her wrist.
As the woman bore down on him, Richard, using his brilliant powers of deduction, was quickly able to conclude that this chaperone fell into the second type. Grey hair rigidly pulled back. Mouth pressed into a grim line. The only incongruous note was the cluster of alarmingly purple flowers on the top of her otherwise severe grey bonnet. Maybe the milliner confused her order and she didn’t have time to change it, Richard concluded charitably. "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
28
" Fingers steepled in front of him, Delaroche stared at the note. The card itself was useless. Delaroche had an entire drawer full of nothing but cream-coloured cards bearing the Gentian’s distinctive purple stamp. He had long ago traced the cards to a very exclusive stationer in London which boasted a wide clientele among the ton.
If Delaroche were to go on the make of the paper alone, he could easily accuse anyone from the Prince of Wales to Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Inside – Delaroche did not need to release the card from the letter opener to look; he recalled the contents in painful detail – inside, that rogue had inscribed a bill for the accommodations. One shilling for stale bread, one shilling for rank water, two shillings for rats, three shillings for amusing insults from the guards, and so on, before signing it with the customary small purple flower. On top of the note had been a small pile of English coins, as per the reckoning.
Damn him! The list was in Falconstone’s hand – Delaroche knew the hand-writing of every man whose correspondence he had ever intercepted. Delaroche could picture the Gentian standing there, dictating, in the middle of the most carefully guarded prison in Paris. The man’s cheek was unbelievable. "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
29
" Richard!" On Hortense’s lips, the name was soft and exotic, Reeshard.
She demanded of him in French, "When did you return?"
Richard bowed over Mme Bonaparte’s hand before kissing her daughter’s. "I returned Monday night."
"And you have not called until now! Cad! Is he not a beast, Mama, to have deprived us of his company for so long? Eugene will be disappointed to have missed you – he is off at the theatre tonight."
Amy was about to back quietly away, when Hortense laid one gloved hand gently on Amy’s arm. "There is a lovely countrywoman of yours to whom I would like to introduce you!" Beaming, Hortense tilted her head in Amy’s direction, and drew Amy forward. Amy tried not to balk visibly under Lord Richard’s knowing eye. "Mlle Balcourt, I would like to you make zee acquaintance of Lord Reeshard Selweeck."
"We’ve already met," said Amy hastily.
"You ’ave?" Obviously intrigued, Hortense looked up inquiringly at Richard from under her eyelashes.
"Don’t matchmake, Hortense; it’s a beastly habit," Richard advised in French. "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
30
" You were wrong," he murmured ruefully, resting his cheek on top of Amy’s head. "You weren’t safe with me."
"I feel like Psyche kissing Cupid in the dark," Amy said dreamily.
Richard drew Amy’s arms around his back under his cloak.
"Feel. No wings."
Amy could hear the smile in the Gentian’s voice. "Does that mean if I unmask you, you won’t fly away?"
Richard tightened his grip on Amy’s arms. "Don’t even consider it."
"You could give me three trials, like Psyche."
"With what as the prize at the end? Me, or membership in the League?"
Amy managed the difficult feat of looking at him askance with her nose only inches from his. "It would be much easier for me to answer that question if I knew who you were."
"What’s in a name? A Gentian by any other name would—"
"Be an entirely different flower," interjected Amy, swatting him on the arm. "I refuse to be fobbed off with poor imitations of Shakespeare."
"If you don’t like Romeo and Juliet, how about a sonnet?" Richard suggested. "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art—"
"Not that easily deterred."
Amy extricated herself from Richard’s arms – and his cloak, which had tangled around her knees – and hopped off the window seat.
"Damnation," muttered Richard.
"I’ll ignore that,"offered Amy generously. "And we can go straight to the crucial question of how I’m going to help you restore the monarchy "
― Lauren Willig , The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1)
