The Garden Intrigue

by Lauren Willig

  Whatever she had meant to say to him, his words shocked her silent. Her eyes searched his face. Augustus felt as though he were being sized up and unconsciously drew himself up straighter.

  Emma regarded him intently, her expression serious. “You had no right,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t make you less right.”

  They stood on either side of the doorway, each waiting for the other to say something. Without her usual armor of frivolity, there were hollows in Emma’s cheeks that Augustus had never noticed before. She still wore her paint, but he felt, somehow, as though he were seeing her scrubbed bare.

  Augustus’s throat worked. He had been on delicate missions before, missions in which life or death hinged on the turn of a phrase, but never before had he felt as though quite so much depended on the choice of a word.

  “Perhaps,” he said, and watched her eyelids flicker, watched her brace herself as though for some anticipated blow.

  He held out a hand, his palm turned up, his fingers relaxed. It took all his will not to let them tremble.

  “Perhaps,” he said, and cleared his throat, “this might better be discussed inside?”

  Emma’s hand hovered for a moment at her side. He could see her eyes slide past him, to the tiny room beyond, assessing what he had said and what he was asking. Augustus held his breath and counted the seconds. He didn’t know what he wanted, but he did know that if she dropped her hand and turned away, his life would be the poorer for it. He might have tried persuasion, patter, poetry, but some things were too important for words. He could only stand frozen, his hand outstretched.

  Her lips pressed together and she dipped her chin in a movement barely recognizable as a nod.

  “Yes,” she said, and placed her hand in his. “Yes, I think that would be…best.”

  Closing his fingers around hers, Augustus drew her into the room, letting the door click shut behind her.

  Chapter 27

  The fierceness of the raging tide

  Oft throws up treasures waves do hide;

  In tempest-calm, these gifts we glean,

  Through water darkly, now fully seen.

  —Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby,

  Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts

  His room was much smaller than hers.

  It was scarcely large enough to contain a narrow bed, a spindly writing table, and a dressing stand with basin, ewer, and the mysterious accoutrements deemed necessary for the male toilette. The walls had been whitewashed rather than papered and there was no covering on the floor. A former dressing room or servant’s room, it had only the smallest pretense of a window, allowing in just enough natural light to expose the dinginess of it all. Her own room, a floor down, was petite to say the least, but boasted fresh, patterned paper and a vaguely Pompeii-esque border along the ceiling.

  Emma stepped inside, forcing herself to concentrate on the spindly legs of the writing desk, the graying white of the walls.

  Behind her, she heard the door swing shut. It made the small room seem even smaller. The four walls closed in around them, boxing her and Augustus together, too close for comfort, the bed blocking them on one side, the dressing stand on the other. The heat of the day shimmered around her, trapped beneath the attic roof. She could feel the warmth of it in her cheeks, in her breast, in her hand. There was nowhere else to lead her. Why hadn’t he let go?

  Emma wriggled her wrist and Augustus released her hand, taking a step back, a movement that pressed him almost flush to the writing table. The chair wobbled on its narrow legs.

  Emma made a show of looking about. “So this is how the bachelors lodge,” she said.

  The words sounded tinny in the expectant silence. Augustus accorded them all the attention they deserved. None.

  “I was on my way to find you. To apologize.”

  Emma locked her hands loosely at her waist. “It seems we were on the same mission, then.”

  She would have liked to sit down, but the only options were the chair, which would have required wiggling past Augustus, or the bed.

  The bed was far too much a bed.

  “You? You have no need to apologize.” Augustus rested a hand against the back of the chair, bracing himself. “Under the law, truth is always a defense to an accusation of defamation of character.”

  “In that case,” Emma said, “you have no cause to apologize either. Everything you said about me, it was true.” She hated saying it, but she forced the words out anyway. “You were right. I don’t know what I want or where I want to be. I only know what I don’t want.”

  “Marston?” suggested Augustus. His tone was light, but his eyes were intent.

  “You were right about that, too. When it comes down to it, what do I have to say for myself?” The words tore up out of her chest, giving voice to truths she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge, the sorts of truths that kept one up at four in the morning and took headache-inducing amounts of champagne to drown into slumber. “I have no useful function in anyone’s life, least of all my own.”

  “Don’t say that.” Augustus took a step forward. His voice was low and urgent. “If anything I said made you think that you have no worth—then I deserve to be horsewhipped. Never, ever say that. Don’t even think it. Don’t you know—”

  “It’s not you, really,” Emma said quickly, before he could blame himself further. “It’s me. It wouldn’t have hurt so much if I didn’t already know it for myself.” She made a face. “I know what I am.”

  “No,” said Augustus flatly. “You don’t.” Somehow, he was holding her hands. Emma hadn’t been aware of his taking them. “Shall I tell you what you are?’

  “A flibbertigibbet?” volunteered Emma.

  “A comet,” he countered, his eyes burning as brightly as any flaming star. “Whatever you do, you make it blaze. You have more energy, more joy, than anyone else I know. What sort of function would you like to have? Do you want to meddle in politics, like Madame Murat? Have a brood of babies, like the younger Madame Bonaparte? What do they add that you don’t? You can take even a third-rate masque and make it sparkle.”

  The passion in his voice unnerved her, made her warm in some places and wobbly in others and thoroughly disconcerted in all of them.

  “I think that was Mr. Fulton’s lightning machine,” Emma said. “The sparkle, I mean.”

  Augustus gave her a quelling look. “Haven’t you noticed the way people gather around you? Everywhere we go, everyone clamors for Madame Delagardie, to join in a game, to judge a contest, to read a poem. The only way to get you by yourself is to find you in your book room, and even then, the notes and flowers keep coming. You need an army of footmen to keep your acquaintances at bay.”

  Emma wordlessly shook her head. She was a habit with people, that was all. They knew her. She was convenient.

  “You don’t think so? You don’t realize how much joy you give simply by being yourself?”

  “So does a statue,” said Emma stubbornly. “Or cut flowers in a vase.”

  “Marble collects moss. Flowers wither. They’re decorative, passive. You’re the least passive person I know. I’d like to see someone try to put you on a pedestal. You’d be off before you were on. They’d be left with an empty base and a deserted gallery.”

  Was that a good thing? Emma wasn’t sure.

  “Well…” she said, but Augustus wasn’t done.

  “You told me earlier that you’re not my vision of Cytherea.” Augustus’s hands tightened on hers, holding her fast before she could pull away. “You were right. You’re not Cytherea. Cytherea is—she’s cold. If she shines, she shines the way ice shines. Her beauty chills what it touches. She’s essentially untouchable. As for you…”

  He paused, searching for the right words. Emma knew she should say something, should intervene, should potentially be offended, but she seemed to be frozen, caught in breathless expectation in the heat of the shimmering air, half fire, half ice, hot, then cold. If Cytherea was untouchable, what did
that make her? She had never felt so touchable in her life. Her skin ached with it.

  “Yes?” she said hoarsely.

  “You…” Augustus’s eyes slithered away from hers. “You transcend towers,” he said grandly.

  “Thank you,” said Emma. “I think.”

  Augustus looked at her tenderly. “Just because I didn’t render it in rhyme doesn’t mean it wasn’t a compliment.”

  “You did alliterate a bit there,” said Emma shyly. Why did she suddenly feel shy? This was Augustus, for heaven’s sake. Augustus. She ducked her head. “I shouldn’t have called you a fainéant. It was unkind.”

  Augustus released her hands, straightening. Emma found herself with a very good view of the breast of his shirt. “Unkind, but not untrue.”

  “You work very hard at your poetry,” protested Emma.

  “My poetry is rubbish,” he said brutally. She could see his chest move beneath the thin linen of his shirt as he shrugged. “It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.”

  “That doesn’t mean that you are,” said Emma tentatively. “Rubbish, I mean.”

  “Aren’t I?” His hair fell around his face as he looked down at her. Emma thought, absurdly, of fallen angels chained to rocks in hell. “Once I wanted to be a gadfly of the government. I was going to start a journal, write satirical political pieces, maybe even run for Parliament. Whatever I did, my words were going to count for something. And now, I find, they’ve come to this.” His gesture encompassed his attire, the unfinished page on the writing desk, the narrow room.

  “There’s still time,” said Emma. “I hear Le Moniteur is hiring.”

  “No,” said Augustus. “If I were to do it, it would have to be back in England.”

  England. The thought of it took Emma aback with a force she hadn’t expected. What would it mean for Augustus to go? No Augustus reciting silly poetry, no Augustus sprawled on the spare chair in her book room, no Augustus looking at her as though she were a comet who lit up the sky.

  As a good friend, she could encourage him to go. But…

  “Oh,” said Emma.

  “It’s not on,” said Augustus. “And do you know why? Because I’m too much of a coward to try. I’ve written nothing but this…doggerel for years now.” His face twisted with self-mockery. “My pen’s gone limp.”

  “You never know unless you try,” said Emma softly, and couldn’t help thinking that they might be talking about something more than politics or poetry. “No risk, no reward.”

  Augustus shook his head. “You were right, in every respect. I’ve become estranged from my family, shunned my friends, mooned after rainbows, and”—he paused, his face unreadable—“most unforgivable by far, I’ve done everything I can to offend and alienate the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  Emma looked up at him, quizzically. “Jane?”

  His lips quirked in something that was almost a smile. “You.”

  She was the best thing that had ever happened to him?

  “You haven’t alienated me,” she said dumbly.

  “But I have offended,” he said. He looked down at her, his expression serious. “I don’t even know where to begin begging your pardon.”

  Emma pressed a hand to his lips. “Don’t. Please. There’s no need.”

  Augustus caught her hand in his. “You have a generous spirit, Emma Delagardie.” She could feel his breath against her palm, more intimate than a kiss. “But even generosity only goes so far.”

  “If this is about—if this is about that kiss…” Emma floundered.

  There was a strange light in his deep brown eyes. “That kiss,” said Augustus, “is the one thing I won’t apologize for. I know I should say otherwise, but I can’t. I’m not sorry I kissed you.”

  After weeks of working together, debating phrasing and parsing words, it wasn’t wasted on Emma that he had said “I kissed you.” Not, we kissed or the kiss happened or any other twist of semantics that might absolve him from at least part of the responsibility.

  “You’re not?” said Emma.

  “No.” They were standing, she realized, very, very close together. His hand was still on her wrist, holding her fingers just away from his lips, his thumb resting on the point where her blood had begun to pound with betraying speed. “It may break all the rules of friendship and make me the worst sort of cad, but, no. I can’t be sorry. I’m glad I kissed you. And if I had the chance, I would do it again.”

  The blood was pounding in her ears, turning his words to sounds heard through a seashell. She could feel them in her lips, her hands, her skin. This was what the poets couldn’t put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word.

  “You would?” she said breathlessly.

  Augustus’s lips turned up at the corners. “Is that an invitation?”

  What if she said yes? Emma wondered wildly. What then?

  He was so close, all he had to do was bend his head. There was no mistaking the light in his eye. It was something she hadn’t seen in a very long time, desire and tenderness and uncertainty, all mixed together. It wasn’t just the wanting that was making her fingers tingle and her chest tight, it was the caring.

  And that was the truly scary bit.

  “Do you want it to be?” Emma blurted out, and winced at her own gaucherie.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Emma floundered.

  She put out a hand to touch his arm, a gesture she had made a hundred times, a thousand times, but this time she flinched away from it at the last minute.

  “I’m scared,” she admitted. “I haven’t felt this way about anyone since—”

  No, not even with Paul. She had been young and naïve then, and dalliance had been a game, desire a toy to be played with. She hadn’t known, as she knew now, the pleasures involved. And the pitfalls.

  She looked wordlessly to Augustus, but he had no answers for her.

  “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Ever,” he said. “You have me in terra incognita.”

  He wasn’t the only one. Here be dragons, Emma knew. Dragons and sea serpents and monsters poised to swallow a heart whole. She could stay snugly on board, steering her barque back to safer waters—but, then, who knew what wonders she might miss? No risk, no reward, Augustus had said earlier. The words circled through her head like a nursery rhyme, in rhythmic cadence, like the pounding of her heart, beat by beat, thump by thump. No risk, no reward. No risk, no Augustus. What would happen if she embarked on an affaire with him? There would be storms, she knew, storms and tempests and doubts and broken compasses, but there might be marvels, too.

  Emma very slowly lifted her head, gathering all her courage to meet his eyes. “Sail off the edge of the world with me?”

  “I’m already there,” he said, and his arms went around her, which was a very good thing, since Emma’s knees didn’t seem to be doing their duty anymore.

  She reached up to him, her arms locking around his neck, his hair caught beneath her fingers, his chest pressed against hers, linen to linen, the thin fabric damped with sweat, hardly any barrier at all.

  His kiss wasn’t tentative at all, not this time. He kissed her as though he had always meant to kiss her, his body warm and steady against hers, keeping her from falling, keeping her safe. She tasted the lingering tang of coffee on his lips. He felt so solid, much more so than his languid disarray had suggested. Emma spread her hand flat against his back as he bent her backwards, feeling the play of muscles, the broad strength of him. His skin burned through the thin fabric of his shirt—or maybe she was the one burning.

  Hands moved, tongues twined, bodies pressed together. Emma felt the writing desk at her back, the edge pressing into her buttocks. Without breaking the kiss, Augustus hitched her up, so that she was sprawled across his latest effusion, her back against the window, his tongue in her mouth and his fingers in her hair.

  Augustus br
ushed kisses across Emma’s closed eyes and down the bridge of her nose. Her familiar features were pinked with passion, hair tousled, lips swollen, cheeks flushed, her face turned trustingly up towards his. The sun fell from behind her, lighting her hair like a halo. An angel. His angel. He traced the curve of her cheek, the whorls of her ear, lowered his lips to echo the motion and felt her quiver at the touch. His America, his newfound land. Donne had known what he was about when he wrote that.

  She is all Kings, all Princes I.…Fragments of poetry—other people’s poetry, good poetry—swirled around Augustus’s brain. If we had world enough and time.…

  Only the Cavalier poets would do. Augustus pressed his lips to the sensitive spot behind Emma’s ear and felt her shiver. The writing desk wobbled. How had they missed this for so long? How had they spent hour after hour together, writing, talking, and never thought of this? This had been right below his nose all this time. This, the little freckle beneath her right ear. This, the delicate line of her throat as she arched her neck. This, the way the breath sang between her lips as she sighed.

  “An hundred years should go to praise, / Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze,” Augustus murmured, brushing his lips across her closed eyes, along her cheekbones, down to her jaw.

  Making a low, murmuring noise deep in her throat, she obligingly arched her neck for him, baring the delicate path along the side of her neck, down past her collarbone, all the way to the first swell of her breasts, where her bodice did more to tease than to cover.

  Augustus grazed a knuckle along the low neck of her bodice, watching as her breasts rose and fell against the taut fabric, practically bare already. All it took was a twitch of the fabric—all right, perhaps a little more than a twitch, a slight wriggle—and she went from being daringly décolleté to bare. She was small but well formed, perfectly in proportion to herself.

  “Two hundred to adore each breast,” Augustus quoted hoarsely. He leaned down and touched a tongue to one nipple, feeling it pebble in response.