The Lure of the Moonflower

by Lauren Willig

  A cannon made a very uncomfortable seat.

  It was, however, the only seat available. Jane perched on the barrel of a cannon, staring blankly through the embrasure at the roiling waters of the Atlantic. At least, she knew it was the Atlantic, and based on the strength of the wind she assumed its waters roiled. She couldn’t actually see much of anything. The sun had set, leaving her darkling, the enclosure behind her lit only by the scattered light of a few torches that did little to illuminate the vast swath of water beyond the range of the fort.

  Somewhere on the other side of the fort, Jane knew, lay Peniche and its lighthouse. But that was behind her. Only the cold waters of the Atlantic lay ahead, as murky as her future.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. Jane shifted uncomfortably on the barrel of the cannon, which had the dual disadvantages of being both cold and damp. She should never have agreed to read the draft of Miss Gwen’s next book. She was starting to think like her ninny of a heroine.

  The sun would rise tomorrow, as it always did. She would board the Bien-Aimée and sail back to England to prepare for her next adventure, wherever that might be.

  And Jack would remain in Portugal, doing what he did best: avoiding everyone who might possibly care about him.

  What was it Miss Gwen had said? Reptiles didn’t change their scales. They did, actually. They shed their old scales and grew new ones. But that didn’t mean that Jack was going to change his ways.

  Jane leaned her head against a rough bit of brickwork. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned. She’d known what Jack was before they began working together.

  But she hadn’t known all the other things he was: the kindness, the fundamental decency of him. Beneath the layer of deliberate devil-may-care, his moral code was as stern as hers, and he was, she realized, a great deal better at seeing to the needs of others.

  She tried to remember the frustrating bits, the moments when they had clashed. But all she could remember was Jack adapting to her change of plans. Jack taking charge when her plan had failed. Jack challenging her, making her think more carefully, and then, when she’d charted their course, covering her back without question. Caring for her.

  When she was with him, she felt the weight of being the Pink Carnation lift off her shoulders. She didn’t have to be perfect. She didn’t have to have all the answers. Because Jack was there with her.

  Well, he wasn’t going to be with her much longer, and she would just have to get her head around that, Jane told herself bracingly. There was work to be done, arrangements to be made. Misplaced monarchs didn’t just transport themselves. While she didn’t think the French had the sea power at hand to successfully storm the fort, it was very lightly manned. The sooner Queen Maria was on her way to rejoin the Portuguese fleet, the better.

  There was the sound of smashing crockery and a cry of “Ai, Jesus!” from one of the second-story windows.

  The opiates with which Nicolas had dosed the Queen appeared to be wearing off.

  She should go, Jane knew. She should make sure that Nicolas wasn’t baiting Henrietta and that Miss Gwen hadn’t run anyone through with her sword parasol.

  But she didn’t. She didn’t want to face them just yet: Miss Gwen’s smirks, and Nicolas’s practiced gallantry, and Lizzy’s youthful enthusiasm, and Miles’s and Henrietta’s obvious delight in each other.

  There was someone walking, soft-soled, across the clearing. Not Miss Gwen. Her progress was a staccato tapping. Nor any of the others; Jane knew their various treads as she knew her own.

  She might have turned or made some sign, but she didn’t trust herself. Instead she stayed where she was, a monument on a pedestal, staring blindly out to sea, painfully aware of every step, every breath, as Jack joined her in the narrow embrasure. She didn’t need to see him to know he was there; every sense was attuned to him, to the soft brush of his coat against her dress, the faint scents of sulfur and donkey that aroused memories that were not generally associated with either of the items in question.

  Jack leaned a hand against the cannon barrel by her hip. Conversationally, he said, “I hear that the eagle nests only once.”

  Time tilted backwards. Of all the things Jack might have said, nothing could have disarmed her so. There was a seductive promise to it, the idea that they might start again, wash the slate clean, forge their partnership anew.

  The salt spray stung Jane’s eyes. Rustily, she answered, as Jack had all those weeks ago, “The eagle sometimes nests in uncommon strange places.”

  Jack leaned back against the curved side of the embrasure. “Where will you go now?”

  Not I’m sorry. Not Stay with me.

  Jane looked out over the choppy waves. In the night sky, the stars were just beginning to emerge, offering guidance to the sailor and light to the lost.

  “I was thinking . . . Russia, perhaps. The court speaks French.” She glanced at Jack over her bare shoulder, earbobs dangling heavily from her ears. “And I hear the Tsar has an eye for a beautiful woman.”

  Jack shoved his hands in his pockets, watching her with shadowed eyes. “You’ll travel all that way alone?”

  Jane made a brief, dismissive gesture. “I can hire a maid.”

  “That’s a long way to travel with only a maid for company.”

  “Who says I won’t find company along the way?” Jane knew it was childish as soon as the words were out of her mouth. And what was the point of making him jealous? He’d already made his position clear. Striving for normalcy, she said briefly, “Amy and Richard have a school for spies. I’m sure there is someone they can spare for me.”

  “There is another option.” Speaking rapidly, Jack said, “Have you ever considered traveling with a husband? I hear they can be rather useful for acquiring donkeys and binding blisters.”

  Jane could feel the cold metal of the cannon barrel beneath her palms. “A feigned one?”

  “No.” Jack kept his hands in his pockets, his back against the wall, but Jane felt his gaze like a touch, pinning her in place. “A real one. Bell, book, candle, or whatever it is you use.”

  “Generally special license.” This hurt too much. She couldn’t play this game. Baldly, Jane asked, “Are you volunteering for the position?”

  Gently Jack took her hands in his. He didn’t kneel; that would have put his nose against her knees. The words tumbled out like scattershot: “I would offer you testimonials, but I haven’t any. It’s not a role I’ve attempted. I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it.” His hands tightened on hers. “But I do know that wherever you go is where I want to be.”

  Jane looked down at their linked hands, fighting against an irrational desire to fling her arms around his neck and go with him wherever he wanted to go. It didn’t work like that. In one of Miss Gwen’s novels, perhaps, but not in real life. “You—you might think that now—”

  “I do,” said Jack. “I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”

  “But what about five years from now?” What about the next time she changed the plan without telling him? What about the first time he saw her flirting, on mission, with another man?

  Even as she thought it, she knew the answer. Jack’s temper might flare for a moment, but he would always, always, in the end, see her side of it. He always had.

  That wasn’t really what she was afraid of. As to what she was afraid of . . . Jane seized on the least of it. “I don’t mean to give up my work,” she said belligerently.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.” Jack’s thumbs made little circles around the insides of her wrists, warming her through. “I’m not asking you to be an ornament. Or stand on a pedestal. I’m asking you to slog through the mud with me, blisters and all. If you’ll have me.”

  Jane tilted her head, feeling a little quiver of hope, like the first faint light of dawn. “No lutes?”

  “No lutes,” Jack promised, his lips spr
eading into a grin that warmed her through to her core. The grin turned cocky. “Unless you want them. You’re welcome to serenade me, if you like.”

  He was giving her space, Jane knew. Space to make her decision. Playing for time, she said, “I’m better on the pianoforte than on the lute.”

  The tenderness in Jack’s eyes as he looked at her made Jane’s knees wobbly. “I didn’t know you played the pianoforte.”

  She played the pianoforte very well. She played the harp indifferently and sang not at all. “There’s a great deal we don’t know about each other.”

  “Would a lifetime be time enough to learn?” Jack squared his shoulders, his face serious, intent. “I mean it, Jane. I’m not walking away this time. I’ve found my nest.”

  Jane’s lips twisted up in a crooked smile. “And the eagle nests only once?”

  Jack wasn’t smiling. “This one does.”

  The stars seemed to stand out more brightly in the sky; the cries of the gulls were louder. Every detail, every line of Jack’s face stood out with unnatural clarity.

  No matter how long she lived, no matter what she saw, this moment, Jane knew, would remain complete in her memory, every word, every sound, every gesture. The world might not quite stop spinning on its axis, but it seemed, for the moment, to rest.

  Until the door of the armory banged open.

  “Jane!” Lizzy burst out the door into the enclosure. “Jane! Are you— Oh.”

  “Go away,” said her brother. “We’re busy.” Turning back to Jane, he said, “While we’re on the subject, my father thinks I should tell you I love you.”

  High romance descended into farce. Jane felt more than a little giddy. “Do you?”

  Jack regarded her ruefully. “As it happens—yes.”

  Jane twined her fingers through his. “That’s not much of a declaration.”

  “You wouldn’t let me bring my lute.” Jack’s eyes were very bright in the darkness. Without turning, he tilted his head sideways. “Also, we have an audience.”

  Their audience appeared to have grown. Miss Gwen stalked out in pursuit of Lizzy. “Elizabeth! Where are— Hmph.” Catching sight of Jack and Jane, she prodded Lizzy in the back with her parasol. “Inside! Now.”

  Lizzy attempted to squirm away. “But—”

  “In!” snapped Miss Gwen.

  The door slammed shut behind them.

  Jane looked up at Jack, her eyes dancing with laughter. “Do you think they’re really gone?”

  “Have you met my sister?” said Jack darkly. He cast a hunted look over his shoulder, saying rapidly, “I give it five minutes before she comes back. Possibly less. Do you?”

  Jane blinked. “Do I what?”

  Jack hunched his shoulders, his brows drawing together. “Love me, damn it.”

  What is love? Jane had asked Nicolas, when he had professed that emotion, unasked. It hadn’t been coyness. It had been a genuine question.

  She knew what the poets said of love; she knew what great men and women had sacrificed in the name of that elusive emotion. Towers had toppled; fleets had been launched. But Jane had always wondered if they had all felt a bit sheepish about it afterwards, if what they had lauded as love was merely, in fact, the grip of a strong infatuation, lust fueled by inaccessibility. The prize, when won, lost its luster; infatuation turned to indifference. The famous beauty had a shrill voice; the great lover stinted his servants. Love was a chimera, an ideal.

  Maybe you just aren’t capable of feeling it, Nicolas had tossed back at her, one of those golden barbs that cut deeper than she had ever allowed herself to acknowledge.

  But he had been wrong. And so had she. Love wasn’t an ideal; it was messy and muddy and fraught with inconsistencies. It was a hard arm around her shoulders when she slipped and might have fallen, a reluctant nod in the middle of an argument. It was the slouch of Jack’s shoulders and the crooked line of his smile. It was knowing that whatever hardships befell them, they would stumble through it together.

  “Do you know,” said Jane, feeling rather like an astronomer who had spotted a new planet in the skies, “I’m fairly sure I do?”

  Jack rested a hand on either side of her hips, a wolfish smile spreading across his face. “Fairly sure?”

  “Extremely sure?” Jane said breathlessly, clutching at his shoulders for balance.

  Jack nuzzled her neck. “I’m not giving up until I get absolutely certain.”

  “Oh, hullo! Er, never mind.” Heavy footsteps retreated back in the direction of the fort, along with a faint whiff of ginger.

  Jack banged his forehead against Jane’s shoulder. “Can’t a man propose in peace?”

  Jane made the mistake of glancing towards the armory. Lizzy appeared to be jostling with Miss Gwen for space at the window. Colonel Reid was ineffectually attempting to shoo them both away.

  “But we might miss something!” Lizzy’s voice floated across the drilling ground.

  Jane wrapped her arms around Jack’s shoulders, resting her cheek against the top of his head. “Apparently not,” she said apologetically. “It could be worse. They might be trying to help.”

  Jack groaned. “How long does it take to get a special license?”

  Jane slipped down off the cannon, her body sliding against Jack’s. “There’s no hurry,” she said. “We have a lifetime, after all.”

  Jack’s hands closed around her waist. He looked at her through one eye. “I take it that’s a yes?”

  “Yes,” said Jane, and, heedless of the cries of the Queen and the crowd jostling at the window, sealed her answer with a kiss.

  The eagle had found its nest.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  One year later . . . Constantinople, 1808

  A woman’s shrill scream rent the air.

  Janissaries rampaged down the normally forbidden Golden Way, the Sultan’s private passageway through the harem, shoving eunuchs and slaves out of the way. The sound of agitated cries and footfalls echoed off the domed ceiling and tiled walls of the privy chamber. All was in disarray.

  Rumors were everywhere. The rebels had sacked the city; the Sultan was dead. The Sultan was alive and enacting terrible reprisals. The Sultan had murdered his brothers and was killing their concubines.

  No one quite knew what was true and what wasn’t, but no one wanted to be there to find out. The history of the Ottoman sultans was too bloodstained to take chances, and Mustafa IV was not known as a kind or generous man.

  “Assassins!” someone screamed, and a rampage began, people running first this way and then that, some by accident, others by design.

  In the confusion, no one noticed when yet another Janissary threw a screaming slave over his shoulder. She was Georgian, with the fair hair and gray eyes of her people, but her ordinarily well-tended skin was streaked with ashes, and her garments were torn and dirtied.

  “You got Mahmud safely away?” muttered the Janissary, as he bore the slave girl off down a narrow stone staircase, away from the fray.

  “Only just.” The slave girl lay in a seeming swoon, her mouth close by the Janissary’s ear, her lips hidden by her white veil and the large flap of his uniform hat. “The assassins were already there. I tossed ash in their faces. Naksidil Sultan got Mahmud up to the roof of the third court while I held them off.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “Hidden in a furnace beneath the baths of the Valide Sultan.” The slave girl spoke with absolute confidence.

  This plan had been weeks in the making. The slave girl had worked closely with Naksidil Sultan, Mahmud’s mother, who spoke beautiful, lightly accented French. Some whispered that it was because she was French, kidnapped by Barbary pirates on her way home to her native Martinique. Whatever she had once been, though, Naksidil Sultan had become a force to be reckoned with within the harem, fierce in her defense
of her son.

  Tonight, Mustafa IV had sent assassins to kill his half brother, Mahmud. He hadn’t reckoned with Mahmud’s secret allies.

  “Oh, bother it.” The Janissary checked as he caught sight of a large cluster of eunuchs, but as they seemed more occupied in fleeing with whatever loot they could carry than impeding his progress, he brazenly went on.

  “And you?” the slave girl murmured to her captor. “Did you bring Alemdar Mustafa Pasha?”

  The Janissary permitted himself a smug smile. “He is proclaiming the new Sultan as we speak.” It hadn’t been easy herding the leader of the rebel forces, but when it had been explained to him that a palace coup was in progress and he could be in or out, the rebel leader had chosen in. “I assume you have the new Sultan’s assurance?”

  “That no treaties will be signed with France? Yes.”

  Napoleon had had his eye on an Ottoman alliance for years. But right now the new Sultan owed a far greater debt to someone else: the Pink Carnation.

  The Pink Carnation smiled wryly up at her husband. “Whether he’ll honor it is another matter.”

  Outside the Gate of the Girls, a covered palanquin waited to convey them to the port at Yenikapi. The curtains swished closed around them. In the confusion of the night’s events, one palanquin leaving the palace would hardly be noticed.

  The Pink Carnation glanced through the slit in the curtains, a worried line between her eyes. “Do you think we were right to interfere?”

  “Mahmud can’t be any worse than Mustafa.” More seriously, the spy known as the Moonflower added, “Between Mustafa and the rebels, there was going to be bloodshed; the most we could do was try to prevent it. You saved at least one life tonight. More than one. Well-done, Mrs. Reid.”

  Jane’s fingers twined through her husband’s, clasped and held. “I did have some assistance.”

  Jack grinned down at her. “I try to make myself useful.”

  The sun was beginning to rise over the Bosphorus, turning the sky to an imperial display of purple and gold, the light dancing between the waves that lapped at the quayside. At the end of the quay, a boat waited for them, and in it a new set of instructions, of papers, of disguises.