The Garden Intrigue

by Lauren Willig

“Hardly a crisis.” Slightly red about the ears, Mr. Fulton tucked his chin into his cravat. “I shouldn’t have reacted so strongly. But it is a relief to know they haven’t gone astray. I spent a great deal of time on that project.”

  “I could get them for you now if you like.…” Emma pushed back her chair and made as though to rise.

  Mr. Fulton put out a hand to forestall her. “There’s no urgency. I know you have a great deal to do in the theatre before tonight.”

  “Don’t you mean you have a great deal to do in the theatre tonight?” Emma teased. “I’m relying on you to run that brilliant mechanism for me, Mr. Fulton. I shall just sit in the audience and applaud wildly at every clap of thunder.”

  “And drown out my thunder, clap by clap?” protested Mr. Fulton. As an attempt at banter, it was weak. Mr. Fulton’s mind was clearly elsewhere.

  “Yes,” murmured Augustus to Jane, intuiting her unspoken question. “I’ll speak to him.”

  “Good,” said Jane.

  “Thank you for retrieving my documents,” Mr. Fulton was saying to Emma. “I really should be—” He wafted vaguely at the door, the one that led through the billiard room to the entrance hall.

  “Yes, and so should I,” agreed Emma, standing. “I have actors to herd. They’re worse than cats.”

  “We look forward to the fruits of your labors,” said Mr. Livingston kindly.

  “Don’t look forward too much,” warned Emma.

  With that parting sally, she set off in the opposite direction, towards the long gallery and the side door that opened to the theatre. Augustus looked from Fulton to Emma and back again—Fulton moving one way, Emma the other.

  Drawing a deep breath, he moved to follow Fulton.

  Emma managed to make it across the drawing room into the gallery before tripping over her own feet.

  Everything felt strangely out of shape, her perspective skewed, her own perceptions no longer to be trusted. The edges of objects softened and twisted; shadows masqueraded as substance, and substance as shadow; and there was no way of being sure that anyone was what he or she seemed.

  She wasn’t even sure about herself.

  Why had she done that just now? She might have kept her head down and let events play themselves out. They probably wouldn’t have traced the plans to Augustus. Mr. Fulton was an inventor and everyone knew that inventors were crazy anyway, nearly as crazy as poets. She had done her bit—and more!—in the name of their former friendship by the simple act of not betraying him. He, after all, had betrayed her. He had betrayed her and he had used her—or was it the other way around? Not that it mattered. She had been over it from every angle, tossing and thrashing in her bed, knowing that no amount of champagne would ever put her to sleep this time.

  He had betrayed her. She kept having to remind herself of that, like a child’s lesson learned by rote. It should hurt more, shouldn’t it? She should be angry, angry as she had been at Paul. Instead, she felt curiously numb.

  Emma pushed open the door that led out of the gallery to the side of the house, the narrow path along which Augustus had pursued her only two nights ago, wanting to talk about the kiss. How mammoth that had loomed then and how insignificant it seemed now. She had been fussing and fretting over a kiss while Augustus played with the affairs of nations.

  Had she been nothing more than that to him? Something small and insignificant, a pin on a map?

  This much is true, he had said. But how could she believe him? She had lost all faith in her ability to distinguish between truth and illusion.

  “Emma!” A hand closed over her shoulder, hard, jerking her to a halt. “There’s no need to run away like that.”

  Emma blinked up at Georges Marston. His ruddy face was bent towards hers as he oozed self-satisfaction out of every pore.

  “Surely,” he said smugly, “there’s no need to be shy now. I knew you weren’t indifferent. I knew you were just playing coy.” He gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

  Emma wriggled out from under his hand. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just now. Covering for me like that. Just playing hard to get, weren’t you, you clever thing, you?”

  Emma wondered when the world had gone mad. Had it always been this way, and she just hadn’t noticed? “I don’t understand.”

  “Come now, Emma,” Georges said exuberantly. “You can drop the act now. I know why you did it. And you won’t regret it. Once I sell them, you’ll be set up like a queen—no! Like an empress. Not this empress,” he amended. He gave a derisive laugh. “She’s not going to last long.”

  Emma gaped at him. Georges, being Georges, took it for admiration.

  Leaving aside the obvious insult to Mme. Bonaparte…“Just what are you talking about?” Emma demanded.

  “The plans!” said Georges. “The plans! Tucked safe away in my—well, you don’t need to know that.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Least said, soonest mended.”

  The more he said, the less sense it made. “You have the plans.”

  “I got them last night. From Fulton’s room. He didn’t even bother to hide them.” Georges’ voice was rich with contempt for people too stupid to know when they might be burgled. “They were right there in the open.”

  Emma’s mind raced over the possibilities. It wasn’t entirely impossible. What if Augustus, struck by a fit of remorse—a not entirely displeasing prospect—had replaced the plans in Fulton’s room after she had left him? What if that had been his way of trying to earn back her good judgment? Or, said the more cynical part of her mind, simply a means of protecting himself in the event that she broke her word and set the authorities on him. It would be very hard to prove anything without the files actually in his room.

  The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. In which case—if she could have, Emma would have banged her head against the side of the building—by oh so nobly and foolishly protecting Augustus, she had, in actuality, been protecting Georges.

  Who said there was no justice in this world? She had just been served it, twice over, with a garnish of sour grapes.

  “I have a buyer all set up,” Georges was saying smugly. “My contact in Kent. Usually, I would send a courier, but with a package this important, I plan to escort it personally. Along with a few cases of third-rate brandy. They’ll drink anything, those English, if you tell them it’s French, and pay through their teeth for the privilege.”

  He grinned wolfishly at his own cleverness.

  “You’re selling Mr. Fulton’s plans to the English?”

  “Not so loud! Who else did you think would pay so well? I offered it to the Austrians, but they had no interest,” he added.

  Emma could see where they wouldn’t, being largely landlocked.

  There appeared to be one obvious issue. “Isn’t that treason?’

  “Treason is such a nasty word. Good business is what I call it. Besides, it would never have worked anyway, that machine. I’m doing the Emperor a favor by seeing it diverted. He should be paying me to rid him of it.”

  Mr. Fulton was many things, but he wasn’t a hopeless dreamer. If he said something worked, it generally did.

  “What’s wrong with it?” asked Emma cautiously.

  “It’s meant to be a ship that sails under the water.” Marston’s expression showed just what he thought of that crazy idea. “But these plans I found, they don’t look like any type of ship I’ve ever seen.”

  Emma remembered the plans she had seen in Augustus’s bed. She would have a very hard time forgetting them. There had been a long, tubular structure, certainly not her image of a sailing vessel, but anyone with some imagination and some experience of the sea could imagine how it might be intended to work. And Georges, for his sins—especially for those sins enjoyed in the company of Bonaparte’s brother-in-law—was in charge of a regiment at Boulogne, overseeing Bonaparte’s prized new naval base.

  “It was all little pieces,” he complained. “A box and a drum and a pistol.
Is the drum meant to float? At that rate, we can just close a man in a crate, hand him a pistol, drop him in the Seine, and see what happens.”

  “It would have to be a waterproofed crate,” said Emma, but her mind was busily turning over the elements Georges had just described.

  A box, a drum, a pistol. Lots of little pieces.

  Georges had stolen the plans for the wave machine.

  Chapter 31

  If berries rot and crops decay,

  What hope have we for longer stay?

  A pledge is fair, it warms the heart,

  But makes no light to see by dark.

  —Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby,

  Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts

  Emma would have laughed if it hadn’t been quite so absurd. And quite so awful. Georges’ Kentish contact would be receiving the very latest in theatrical equipment.

  She hoped whoever it was had a masque to perform.

  “Well, this was all very cunning of you,” she said, patting his arm. “But I’m afraid I must be getting on to the theatre. There’s so much to do, with the performance in less than an hour.”

  In fact, there was very little for her to do. But Georges didn’t need to know that.

  “I’ll be back for you,” he said, with a very credible smolder.

  He really was a fine figure of a man, thought Emma objectively. Tall, broad, strong-featured. And completely lacking in any moral sense.

  Did he mean to marry her to make her keep her silence? Probably not, decided Emma. It was more likely that he simply intended to dangle the prospect of his wonderful self before her, confident that his professions of devotion would keep her from running to the Emperor before he had departed with the plans. Amazing what people were willing to do for those plans. Mr. Fulton had no idea how popular his plans had made her, or what lengths men might be willing to go in order to obtain and keep them.

  She could hear Augustus’s voice, forlorn in memory: Emma, I think I love you.

  “Lovely,” said Emma. “I look forward to it.”

  “My carriage leaves at eight,” Georges murmured. “The boat sails at dawn. So this must be…farewell.”

  He made as if to embrace her, but Emma stepped back out of the way. “I’m sure you must have a number of arrangements to make,” she said politely. It was always easier to humor Georges than to argue with him. “I wouldn’t want to keep you. Not when our future depends on it.”

  Georges gave a forced laugh. “That’s my practical Emma,” he said. If he meant it to be a compliment, it didn’t quite come out that way. “Best to keep one’s eye on the prize, yes?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Emma agreed. “You wouldn’t want to let it slip away.” Someone, somewhere, was bound to be in need of a wave machine. “Safe journey.”

  Keeping his eyes on hers, Georges pressed a lingering kiss to his own palm and released it in her direction.

  Emma waggled her fingers farewell.

  With a final smolder, Georges flipped his coattails and slipped back around the house, presumably to collect the plans, harry his valet, pack his luggage, and disappear into the night. If his carriage left at eight o’clock, he only had an hour. The masque was scheduled to begin somewhere in the vicinity of seven thirty.

  It wasn’t, reflected Emma, the journey Georges needed to worry about. It was the people on the other end. They weren’t going to be best pleased when he arrived bearing the designs for a piece of expensive theatrical equipment rather than a weapon of war. She doubted that “go away or I’ll make thunder noises at you” would go far on the field of battle.

  Crosses, double crosses, and Georges outsmarted by himself. Emma would have gone so far as to call it poetic justice if poetry hadn’t been such a sensitive subject just then.

  If Georges didn’t have the plans, did that mean Augustus did? And if he did, just what did he intend to do with them?

  I think I love you, he whispered again.

  Damn him, damn him, damn him. Emma reached for the back door of the theatre.

  Someone touched her shoulder. Emma ground her teeth in irritation. Oh, for all that was holy! Hadn’t that tender parting scene been enough for Georges?

  Shaking off the hand, Emma whirled around, barking, “What?”

  “Emma,” said Augustus, and she felt the handle of the door bite into her back as she took a step back.

  He looked much the same as always, hair unbound, shirt properly disordered, breeches just on the acceptable end of tight, but there was a seriousness about him that hadn’t been there before. Or, perhaps, it always had been, and she just hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t seen a lot of things.

  “Would you like to explain what just happened in there?” he asked.

  “No,” said Emma honestly. His nearness was more distracting than she would have liked to admit. She could feel the warmth of him, just a thin layer of clothing away. Even now, even after all that had happened, she wanted him, so badly. She wanted to twine her arms around his neck and slide her fingers into his hair and…

  Flushing, Emma tucked her hands under her elbows, out of harm’s way.

  “You lied for me,” he said.

  “It wasn’t entirely a lie. I did stumble on the plans.”

  “Less stumble, more sat,” said Augustus fondly. His glance was a caress.

  Emma’s red cheeks turned redder. “Well, anyway,” she said meaninglessly, as she groped for her wits. Betrayal, she reminded herself. Intrigue. Plans. Georges. “Stumbling, sitting, either way, it was a form of the truth. I did come upon them unawares.” Very unawares. “And while I may not have the plans in my possession now, I will once you give them to me to give back to Mr. Fulton. Won’t I?”

  Folding her arms across her chest, she raised her brows at him.

  Augustus didn’t take the bait. “That’s not the point. The point is that you lied for me.”

  That was a poet for you, parsing every word. Emma glowered at him. “It would have put a damper on the performance if we had had to pause to guillotine you.”

  “Emma.” He planted his hands on the doorframe to either side of her. They were in trouble, thought Emma vaguely, should someone try to come out. She was pinned to the door like someone’s archery target. “Emma, I have something to tell you.”

  He looked so earnest. But hadn’t she seen that before? He did earnest quite well. “What might it be this time? Do you have nine wives in the attic? A taste for women’s undergarments?” Emma made to duck under his arm. “Forgive me if I have very little interest in hearing.”

  Augustus blocked her by the simple expedient of lowering his arm. Trapped. She was trapped. “Emma, Mr. Fulton is coming back to England with me.”

  Emma stopped wiggling. “What?”

  Augustus dropped his arms. “I spoke to him a few moments ago. He’s not happy with the reception of his submarine. He believes it would fare better in England.”

  Emma slowly assimilated the new information. “So you’re not only stealing the plans, you’re stealing the man.”

  “Hardly stealing when he comes willingly,” said Augustus reasonably. Why did he have to be reasonable? Emma was feeling anything but. He had this all turned around, so that, somehow, he was in the right. It made no sense. “There’s something else.”

  “Are you taking cousin Robert, too?” asked Emma crankily. “Perhaps England could use a lightly used envoy.”

  “Now you’re being silly.” She was being silly? Emma would have expressed her indignation had she the breath to do so—and if Augustus hadn’t surprised her by suddenly making a grab at her hands. “Come with me, Emma. Come to England with me.”

  Emma wasn’t quite sure she had heard him right. “England? Me?”

  Augustus looked at her tenderly. “England. You.”

  No. This wasn’t right. Not any of it. Emma snatched her hands away, her mind a muddle of plans and deceptions and unlikely seductions.

  “Why? So I won’t reveal your secret?”

>   Augustus didn’t seem offended or alarmed by the question. He shook his head. “As soon as I leave France with Mr. Fulton, my identity is already compromised. I’m not coming back to France, Emma. This is it for me. I’m going back to England and starting over. Just as you said I should.” He looked down at her, his eyes locking with hers. “But I can’t do it without you.”

  Emma cleared her throat as best she could. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do,” said Augustus. She could feel the panels of the door hard against her back, blocking her egress. “You just don’t want to. And I can’t blame you for it. I understand why you’re angry with me. If circumstances were different, I could make it up to you in a million different ways. I could woo you slowly, token by token. I could find ways to make you trust me again, hour by hour and day by day. But we don’t have that kind of time.”

  Emma said the only thing she could think of to say. “When do you leave?”

  “As soon as I make the arrangements. Three days at the outside. Fewer, if anything goes wrong.”

  “That soon.” It wasn’t enough time. She needed time to think, to make sense of it all.

  Augustus’s hands settled on her shoulders, massaging the tense muscles at the base of her neck. “Come with me, Emma.”

  Come live with me and be my love / And we shall all the pleasures prove. They had discussed that poem together, a very long time ago, all the shepherd’s seductive promises to his love.

  “There’ll be a reward for this,” Augustus was saying. “Not a large one, but enough to set up that journal I’ve always wanted, maybe make a run for Parliament. There’ll be no more deceptions, no subterfuge, no playacting.” He looked down with a rueful grin. “No more shirts like these.”

  He looked so much younger when he smiled like that. So much younger and more carefree, as though he were already sloughing off the weight of carting around a second identity, so much more wearing than a waistcoat.