Not being an immovable object, Amy moved on, replacing the offending document in the centre of the blotter, with the quill placed across it as though just dropped by Napoleon’s hand.
A sheaf of papers bristled under a fragment of classical pottery serving as a paperweight. At any other time, Amy would have been intrigued by the artefact; keen on her mission, she went straight for the documents, which were folded and roughly bound together with a piece of string. Carefully, Amy eased the letter on the top out of the pile. Ten thousand francs. Amy squinted at the spidery writing. Had she misread it? No. It was a bill from Josephine’s mantua-maker for a white lawn gown embroidered with gold thread. Amy yanked out the next paper from the pile, which turned out, unsurprisingly, to be an invoice for the matching slippers. Recklessly, Amy shook out all of the papers, and began to thumb through them. She flipped past bills for cashmere shawls, for diamond bracelets, for shipments of rose cuttings, for more pairs of slippers and gloves and fans than Amy could imagine using in a decade of continuous party-going. There wasn’t a clandestine note or a suspicious purchase among the lot.
Wait! Unless… Could the documents be a code? Perhaps what was meant by slippers was really rifles – different colours could refer to different types! And rose cuttings could refer to cannon balls, or something of that ilk. Buoyed by her own cleverness, Amy snatched back up the documents she had dropped in disgust seconds before. Perhaps by looking at them more closely, she would find a key to the code.
On second glance, it became quite clear that the bills were indeed bills. The only thing revealed by looking at them more closely was that Amy’s imagination was more effective than her spying. And that Josephine, for all her charm, was a prodigious spendthrift, but that wasn’t anything everybody didn’t already know. The English papers delighted in carrying tales of Josephine’s extravagances and Bonaparte’s infuriated reaction. It was rumoured – in the Spectator, not the Shropshire Intelligencer – that Josephine had already bankrupted the French treasury with her uncontrollable acquisitiveness.
Scowling, Amy bundled the folded papers back into their string. Marvellous. She had stumbled into Bonaparte’s abandoned study in the spying opportunity of a lifetime, and what did she discover? A packet of bills.
Amy rested her hands on her hips and glared at the desk. Really, there had to be something more informative among the clutter. A bird landed on the windowsill, puffed out its chest, and unleashed an operatic series of trills. Absently, Amy flapped a hand at it, hissing, ‘Shh!’ Offended, the bird gave a few indignant hops, relieved himself on the windowsill, and flew squawking back into the garden to complain to his fellows.
Amy returned to rifling half-heartedly through Bonaparte’s desk. Perhaps the Purple Gentian had been right to call her naïve last night. It had certainly been naïve of her to believe that a man clever enough to take over the rule of a turbulent country, cutting out numerous competitors at home, and conquering a slew of countries abroad along the way, would be dim enough to leave his plans for the invasion of England in plain sight upon his desk.
All right then, if Bonaparte’s secret papers weren’t in plain sight upon his desk, she would just have to figure out where they were. By the time she emerged from this room, she would have something to report to the Gentian, something that would make his eyes widen with admiration and his jaw drop. ‘Amy, you astound me,’ he would say, and she would simply raise an eyebrow – well, both eyebrows, since she couldn’t manage just the one – and murmur, ‘You doubted me?’
Amy’s gaze drifted up around the walls, searching for secret caches. That painting on the far wall could conceal a safe of some kind. And over there, by the window, that long, dark line might be a relic of another inkpot that had perished for its country, or it might indicate a break of some kind in the wallpaper. Amy planted both her hands on the desk and leant forward for a better look.
‘Ouch!’ Lesson one of spying: Never plant your hands anywhere without first checking to make sure you won’t be maimed. Amy absently sucked on a cut on her index finger, and searched for the weapon of destruction. She wouldn’t put it past the tyrant to have strewn poisoned tacks on his desk, or… Oh, it was a paper cut.
The sharp edge that had sliced her finger poked out from underneath the blotter. Grabbing the edge with her uninjured left hand, Amy yanked it free. Probably another bill, she thought irately. The series of numbers marching across the page gave credence to that theory, but the signature at the bottom said Joseph Fouché. Fouché had sent Bonaparte calculations for the cost of the Army for the Invasion of England.
Amy’s first impulse was to stuff the paper into her bodice and flee. She went so far as to poise the paper over her neckline, but common sense prevailed. Not only would it create quite a lump under the thin fabric of her dress, but Bonaparte was sure to notice its absence. She would just have to memorise it. Two thousand four hundred ships, Amy repeated to herself, and one hundred and seventy-five thousand men. Amy felt a swell of indignation that had nothing to do with proving herself to the Purple Gentian or the ills done the monarchy. Her overactive imagination had presented her with an image of one hundred and seventy-five thousand Frenchmen marching grimly through Uncle Bertrand’s peaceful meadows, trampling his fields and kicking his sheep.
‘Not while I’m around to stop it,’ Amy muttered, and read on.
The treasury, Fouché wrote, could not support such an expense. No wonder, thought Amy, glancing at the pile of bills she had plunked back down on the desk in irritation moments before. The next time Amy saw Mme Bonaparte, she would be sure to bring her attention to the necessity of owning at least three diamond tiaras.
Unfortunately, Fouché had secured funds from the Swiss. Amy scowled at the letter. Secured, indeed! Extorted would doubtless be the better word. The money, in gold, was to be transported by coach from Switzerland to Paris on the evening of April thirtieth, and thence to what Fouché referred to as ‘a safe place.’
‘That’s what he thinks.’ Amy regarded the scrap of paper with the smug sort of smile usually reserved by felines for canaries.
The last day of April. That gave her a week and a half to figure out how to intercept the money. Plenty of time, thought Amy blithely. First, she would notify the Purple Gentian, who, of course, would be so impressed that he would henceforth include her in all his counsels. Together, they could create a daring plan to make off with the money. Without money, Bonaparte’s invasion of England would be thwarted. The discontented masses would rise against him. And the monarchy would be restored. Amy grinned as she stuck the letter carefully back under the blotter. Not bad work for a girl fresh from Shropshire.
Amy strode hurriedly out of the study. Before she continued on to Hortense, she would have to send a note to the Gentian, telling him to meet her…where? Perhaps in the Luxembourg gardens. She could find a page to –
Ooof! Amy collided at high speed with someone entering the anteroom from the other direction. Her head was still spinning as a pair of capable hands righted her, and a warm chuckle sounded somewhere above her ear. ‘What an original way to make your presence felt!’
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, encircli
ng 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 leant lazily against the panelled 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 spiralled 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 realise 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, accepeted 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 leant 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 leant 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 mid-afternoon 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.
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation Page 21
