The Garden Intrigue

by Lauren Willig

  Just friends? Augustus thought not. He had seen the way Marston’s hands had disappeared beneath the trim of her dress, massaging her shoulders with the familiarity of long intimacy. He had seen the way Marston leaned in to speak to her, his lips practically devouring her ear. His pantaloons were tailored so tightly, Augustus could practically hear them squeak as he bent over.

  If Marston was after Delagardie, that was all the more reason to move quickly.

  Marston wouldn’t be pursuing her without a reason. Marston liked them dark-haired and generously endowed. Mme. Delagardie was fair and slight. It might just be that Marston was being dunned by his tailor again and thought a former lover, revisited, might be moved to generosity. The blaze of diamonds that adorned Mme. Delagardie’s person bespoke a careless affluence. Marston wouldn’t be the first to use a rich widow to refill his coffers; it was a trope as old as Chaucer.

  On the other hand, there were plenty of other rich women out there, taller ones, bustier ones, ones more convenient to Boulogne. For Marston to have hied himself all the way to Paris to a house from which he had been banned, he must have a reason more compelling than an overdue boot maker’s bill.

  “Should you be in need of assistance,” Augustus directed himself to Marston, “I should be more than delighted to convey your amorous sentiments into verse for the delectation of the object of your affection. For a small but reasonable remuneration, of course.” He plucked delicately at one flowing sleeve. “I call it Service à la Cyrano.”

  “Service à la what?” Marston appeared less than overjoyed by the interruption. One might even call his tone belligerent.

  To Augustus’s surprise, Mme. Delagardie answered for him. “Cyrano. In Rostand’s play, Cyrano de Bergerac takes on the wooing of the fair Roxanne on behalf of a handsome but…less verbally inclined officer.”

  Augustus inclined his head to Marston. “Poetry, Monsieur, has long been the food of love. Perhaps you might like a small measure of assistance from a chef of long experience?”

  Marston was not amused. “When I need help, I’ll ask for it.”

  “Perhaps you ought to ask the lady.” Augustus directed a flowing bow in Mme. Delagardie’s direction. “A canto does more than cologne can to win the affections of a lady to a man.”

  A muffled snort emerged from behind Mme. Delagardie’s fan.

  Reddening, Marston turned to Mme. Delagardie, deliberately blocking out Augustus. “We can resume this later. Alone.”

  Mme. Delagardie snapped her fan shut. “You needn’t bother. I shouldn’t want to put you out. Good-bye, Monsieur Marston.”

  Marston pressed a last, lingering kiss to her palm. “Au revoir, Emma.”

  His tone was that of a lover, but his eyes were as calculating as a Cheapside moneylender’s. That was Marston for you, venal to the core.

  As for Mme. Delagardie, she watched her former lover go, but her expression was anything but amorous. In fact, if Augustus hadn’t known better, he would have said she appeared distinctly annoyed. Her lips were tight and her fan beat an impatient tattoo against her hip.

  “Bother,” she said, with feeling.

  “If I was interrupting…” Augustus fished.

  Mme. Delagardie blinked, as though she had forgotten he was there. Augustus found this unaccountably annoying. He had large, flowing sleeves and carried an oversize paper scroll. He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. And yet he appeared to have entirely escaped the notice of Mme. Delagardie.

  “Oh, Mr. Whittlesby,” she said, confirming his initial impression. “Did you want something?”

  “Me? To what wants could a humble servant of the muse possibly lay claim?” When he thought she had suffered enough, Augustus relaxed his pose. “It is not my wants, lady, but yours that bring me to your side on this fateful eve.”

  “I would have called it more fearful than fateful,” muttered Mme. Delagardie.

  “Fearfully fateful, then,” said Augustus. “Flora’s fairest flower informs me that you might have need of the assistance of an amanuensis for your amateur endeavors in the realm of Thespis.”

  “My what?”

  It was late and Augustus was tired. “I hear you’re writing a masque,” he said bluntly. “I thought you might desire my aid.”

  Mme. Delagardie was silent for a moment. He had her attention now, but not necessarily in a good way. “I see,” she said, and she sounded surprisingly weary. “Are you offering to hire yourself out? Is this another sideline, like the Service de Cyrano?”

  Would she be more likely to collaborate with him if she thought she was meant to pay for the pleasure? Some people put worth only in those things to which they could set a price.

  “Even a poor poet must survive.” Something in her expression warned him that this was not a tack to pursue. Hastily, he added, “But in this case, I should be delighted to offer my expertise for the sake of art and art alone.”

  “What are you suggesting?” she asked.

  “A collaboration. Your ideas, my verse. Together, we can craft a masque to transcend the very heavens of invention!”

  “You have,” she said, “a remarkable knack for statements that sound grandiose but say nothing at all.”

  “Precisely the talent one needs for a good theatrical production,” Augustus said heartily.

  Mme. Delagardie tapped her furled fan against her chin. “You might be right, at that,” she said. “It’s all about illusion, isn’t it? Illusion and spectacle.”

  He had her. He could tell. Ha. He had told Jane this would be easy.

  “Spectacle of the most spectacular,” he promised, feeling like an unlikely Mephistopheles luring a female Faustus to his bidding. “All Paris will be talking of it for years to come.”

  “Years?” The tone was light, but the words were bitter. “Hours, more likely. Praise fades fast; only opprobrium lasts. Odd how memory comes and goes.”

  “Like a chameleon,” said Augustus solemnly, “which changes color at a whim, now this, now that, no more constant than a lady’s style of hat. It lights one’s dreams, red, gold, and green.”

  “Er, yes,” said Mme. Delagardie. “Something like that.”

  Perhaps the chameleon had been a bit much. “When shall we start?” Augustus asked. “Miss Wooliston informs me that time is of the essence.”

  “Miss Wooliston?” Mme. Delagardie’s plumes wobbled. “Was it she who told you to speak to me?”

  “She is,” said Augustus reverently, “ever gracious and ever good. How could I refuse her so small a task?”

  “Yes,” agreed Mme. Delagardie. “She is. All of those things. But in this case, somewhat overzealous. Your offer is very kind, but I have no intention of writing the masque.”

  “But—”

  “If you’ll excuse me, my cousin wants me. Good evening, Mr. Whittlesby.”

  With a vague flutter of her fan, she wafted off in a cloud of silver spangles, in the direction of an ill-dressed man with his hair clubbed back in an old-fashioned queue. It was, Augustus had to admit, very neatly done. She had cut him off so quickly, he had no time to object. He was simply left standing there, mouth open on an unvoiced argument, wondering what in the devil he had done. He had been so sure he had her where he wanted her. How hard could it be, after all? She was a silly flibbertigibbet of a society matron, easily manipulable.

  Only not.

  Her cousin extended a glass half full of a somewhat murky liquid. He spoke in English, or the version of the language that the colonials recognized as such. “I didn’t find your punch, but I managed to persuade someone to make some.”

  Mme. Delagardie smiled fondly up at him, but made no move to take the glass. “Thank you, Kort. Would you be hideously offended if, after all your valiant efforts, I declined to drink it? All I want is to find my carriage and go home.”

  “Shall I escort you back?”

  “No, stay. Enjoy yourself.” She favored him with a fleeting smile. “The night is still very young by Paris standards.”
>
  “But late by New York ones. I would be more than happy—”

  “Please,” she said, cutting him off as effectively as she had done Augustus. “I intend to curl up against the squabs and nap, and you’ll only be in the way of that. Unless you’re volunteering to serve as pillow?”

  “All right,” her cousin said reluctantly. “Before you go, though, I nearly forgot to give you this.”

  Fishing in his waistcoat pocket, he dragged out a piece of paper, loosely folded into thirds that promptly flapped open as he offered it to Mme. Delagardie.

  “Sorry. Wrong one.” He hastily stuffed it back in his pocket. Rooting about some more, he extracted a second sheet, passing it to his cousin, who accepted it with a murmur of thanks. “I’ll call on you tomorrow, once you’ve had time to read it.”

  Emma Delagardie lifted a hand and touched a finger lightly to his cheek. “I shall look forward to it. Good night, Kort.”

  She tucked away the second paper in her reticule too quickly for Augustus to view what was written on it. He had, however, got a fairly good view of the first document, too loosely folded for privacy. It hadn’t been a letter, but a drawing, marked out in brown ink with numbers and other scribbling along the sides.

  In other words, a diagram. A diagram of some variety of mechanism.

  Or device.

  Chapter 6

  Sussex, England

  May 2004

  There was a large device squatting smack in the middle of the dining room table.

  I had taken my fair share of art history classes in undergrad, but it still took me a few moments to identify it as a projector. It was much larger and snazzier than the 1950s relics commonly used by undergrad art history departments, sleek and shiny. It emitted a faint humming noise, almost a purr.

  In my own defense, one doesn’t generally expect to encounter a projector on a dining room table, in between the silver and the Spode. It made a rather odd centerpiece.

  But, then, it was all rather odd. I’d never actually used the dining room—Colin and I ate in the comfortably shabby kitchen, with its mustard yellow fixtures and battered pine table—but I’d wandered my way through it a time or two, admiring the elegant appointments and the paired portraits of Lord and Lady Uppington that loomed on either side of the room, presiding over the long mahogany table in paint as they must once have done in the flesh. It didn’t look as it would have in their day. As Colin had informed me a while back, the house had been extensively redone in the late nineteenth century by an ancestor infatuated with the Arts and Crafts movement, which explained the heavy William Morris draperies over the windows and the Pre-Raphaelite murals on the walls—although I did wonder whether Persephone eating the pomegranate was really an appropriate scene for a dining room. What sort of message did that send? Sample the fruit plate and go straight to hell?

  For tonight, that might not be so far off. Especially not with Colin and Jeremy in the same room. I didn’t like to think how Colin would react when he saw what the DreamStone people had done to his dining room.

  It wasn’t just the projector plopped in the spot where the silver epergne usually presided. Bland, caterer-supplied china had supplanted the nicked and faded Spode pattern picked out by a late-nineteenth-century Selwick. Additions had been placed to turn the long table from an oval to a T, with microphones set in the central places at the top. Worst of all, a square white screen covered the portrait of Lord Uppington. Lady Uppington, hanging safely behind the head table, had been left unencumbered, but she looked distinctly put out at Lord Uppington’s plight.

  These people didn’t know what trouble they were courting. I wouldn’t put it past her to come swooping down from the afterlife and rearrange them all to her personal satisfaction. And direct the movie while she was at it. That was just the sort of woman Lady Uppington was.

  That’s the thing with reading peoples’ papers. You start to feel as if you’ve known them personally, even if they’ve been dead for two hundred years.

  Even with an extensive library at my disposal, it had taken me several hours to track down Emma Morris Delagardie. Fortunately, at least one of Colin’s ancestors had taken an interest in American history, although books on Burr and Benedict Arnold predominated. Based on the mentions in Jane’s letters to Henrietta, I knew that Emma Delagardie was collaborating with that tedious poet, Augustus Whittlesby, on a masque to be performed at Malmaison; that she was related, in some degree, to the current American envoy, Robert Livingston; and that she had a cousin named Kortright.

  It was the Kortright name that gave me the clue I needed. With a little scrounging, I found the connection. James Monroe, not yet president, had been envoy to Paris in 1794. He had taken with him his wife, Elizabeth Kortright Monroe, his daughter Eliza—and his niece, Emma.

  There was only one reference to the niece, a throwaway line. Monroe had enrolled his daughter, Eliza, and his niece, Emma, in Mme. Campan’s school for young ladies, where Eliza formed a lifelong friendship with Hortense de Beauharnais, whose portrait could still be seen at the Monroe plantation, Ash Lawn.

  And that was all. For everything else, I was reliant on the incomplete tidbits of gossip in Jane’s letters, the gossipy, chatty, possibly lying letters that she sent to Henrietta, designed to both convey and conceal information. Was Emma with them? Against them? What was her real connection with Georges Marston?

  I’d encountered Marston before, in my original researches. He hovered on the fringes of respectable society, milking his friendship with Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, for promotion, while, on the side, he had been running a lucrative little smuggling ring that might or might not have been selling secrets as well as silk and brandy.

  In his use of personal relationships for his own ends, Marston reminded me a lot of Colin’s sister’s ex-boyfriend, Nigel Dempster, curator of the Vaughn Collection. Like me, Dempster was on the trail of the Pink Carnation.

  And, like me, he had been willing to date a Selwick to get his hands on it.

  It wasn’t the same, I told myself. Colin had been—well, an accident. I had already been granted access to a bunch of the family papers by his great-aunt Arabella before he had burst onto the scene, and the attraction between us had taken both of us very much by surprise. I already had enough material for three dissertations. I was dating Colin because I wanted to be with Colin.

  But for how much longer?

  I still hadn’t answered Blackburn’s e-mail about the head TF position. Damn. I chewed on the side of a nail. I really, really hadn’t wanted to think about that.

  “Excuse me.” A girl with a clipboard was hovering just inside the door to the dining room. She ventured a tentative smile, an I’m-so-sorry-but smile. “You’re not supposed to be in here. It’s registered personnel only.”

  Registered personnel?

  I must have given her a look, because she fidgeted with the metal bit at the top of her clipboard. “You know, production staff, caterers, people connected with the family. So I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Unless this was like hospital admissions, where you had to be officially engaged before anyone would tell you anything, I considered myself pretty darn connected. Besides, picking up someone’s socks and taking turns with the washing up had to count as a domestic partnership.

  I peered over her shoulder at the chart. “I should be on there. I’m”—the owner’s girlfriend? Researcher in residence? Chief cook and bottle washer?—“Eloise Kelly,” I finished lamely.

  She rustled efficiently through several sheets of closely printed pages, looking up apologetically as she came to the end of it. “I’m afraid I don’t see you here. Unless you spell your name some weird way?”

  “Nope,” I said. “It’s just Kelly, spelled the usual way. No Qs or silent Ns or anything like that.”

  She checked again and shook her head. “Sorry. Still nothing. Are you with the magazine people?”

  Now there was a magazine involved, too? Colin wa
sn’t going to like that.

  “No, I’m with Colin. The owner,” I specified when the DreamStone representative looked blank. “The one who keeps trying to make sure that no one sets the rosebushes on fire.”

  Comprehension dawned. “Unhappy-looking guy in a green jacket?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Her face brightened. She grinned at me, girl to girl. “He’s cute.”

  “Thanks.” I wasn’t sure why I was taking the credit here, since his looks weren’t something I’d had a hand in. He had his mother to thank for that, although he also had her to thank for Jeremy and the DreamStone invasion, so maybe not so much. I shrugged. “I like him.”

  Which, as any woman knows, is girl-speak for “I’m ridiculously over the moon about him, but not like I’m going to tempt fate by admitting to that.”

  Shoving the clipboard under one arm, the girl stuck out a hand. “I’m Cate, by the way. Cate Kartowsky. That’s Cate with a C.”

  “A cate conformable to other household cates?” When she gave me a blank look, I said, “Sorry. I was having a Shakespeare moment. Isn’t this production supposed to be—?”

  “I was a communications major,” said Cate. “With a minor in poli sci. Lots of Rawls and Nozick, not so much on the Shakespeare.”

  “I do English history,” I said. “So the Shakespeare sort of creeps in.”

  Cate nodded knowledgeably. These things happened. “I guess we’ll all be getting our Shakespeare this week, right?”

  “Help me out here. Someone told me it was Much Ado About Nothing, but in Regency costume?”

  “You’ve got it,” said Cate. She leaned closer, making sure no one was listening. “I know, it sounds ridiculous. But there’s the whole Austen craze, and Micah wanted to capitalize on that. He also wants cred for doing Shakespeare. There was some version of Much Ado About Nothing that made a big stir—”

  “With Robert Sean Leonard,” I said. “And Kenneth Branagh. We were all in love with Robert Sean Leonard as Claudio when I was in Upper School.”