The Passion of the Purple Plumeria Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS

  OF LAUREN WILLIG

  The Garden Intrigue

  “Willig delights time and again with her clever, witty, intelligent, and thoughtful Pink Carnation series.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Eloise, of course, is amazing, but it’s truly the plot of The Garden Intrigue that shines . . . wonderful!”

  —Romance Junkies

  “[An] enchanting, exciting, and clever story.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Enlightening and entertaining as always, and full of plenty of romance and intrigue, this is a strong choice for historical fiction readers.”

  —Library Journal

  “As fresh and charming as its floral theme . . . a reliable romp through Napoleon’s court, filled with romance and yet another adorable and very active heroine.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Humor, love, espionage—yet again there is absolutely nothing that this incredible author leaves out. . . . [These stories] just keep getting better and better every time!”

  —Once Upon a Romance

  The Orchid Affair

  “[A] supremely nerve-racking, sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat, can’t-sleep-until-everyone-is-safe read . . . successfully upholds the author’s tradition of providing charming three-dimensional characters, lively action, [and] witty dialogue.”

  —Library Journal

  “Willig’s sparkling series continues to elevate the Regency romance genre.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Willig combines the atmosphere of the tempestuous era with the perfect touches of historical detail to round out the love story.” —Romantic Times

  The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

  “Newcomers and loyal fans alike will love brash, flirtatious Penelope’s exotic adventure in Hyderabad, India, told [with] Willig’s signature mix of historical richness and whimsical humor.”

  —The Newark Star-Ledger

  “Reading [this book] is like getting a plate of warm-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies: It’s hard not to eat them all at once, but you also want to savor every bite.”

  —Library Journal

  “Willig hasn’t lost her touch; this outing has all the charm of the previous books in the series.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Willig injects a new energy in her already thriving, thrilling series and presents the best entry to date.”

  —Booklist

  The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

  “Jane Austen for the modern girl . . . sheer fun!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd

  “An engaging historical romance, delightfully funny and sweet . . . a thoroughly charming costume drama. . . . Romance’s rosy glow tints even the spy adventure that unfolds . . . fine historical fiction . . . thrilling.”

  —The Newark Star-Ledger

  “Another sultry spy tale. . . . The author’s conflation of historical fact, quirky observations, and nicely rendered romances results in an elegant and grandly entertaining book.” —Publishers Weekly

  The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

  “Willig’s series gets better with each addition, and her latest is filled with swashbuckling fun, romance, and intrigue.”

  —Booklist

  “Handily fulfills its promise of intrigue and romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “There are few authors capable of matching Lauren Willig’s ability to merge historical accuracy, heart-pounding romance, and biting wit.”

  —BookPage

  The Deception of the Emerald Ring

  “History textbook meets Bridget Jones.”

  —Marie Claire

  “A fun and zany time warp full of history, digestible violence, and plenty of romance.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Heaving bodices, embellished history, and witty dialogue: What more could you ask for?”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Willig’s latest is riveting.” —Booklist

  “Smart . . . [a] fast-paced narrative with mistaken identities, double agents, and high-stakes espionage. . . . The historic action is taut and twisting.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Masque of the Black Tulip

  “Clever [and] playful. . . . What’s most delicious about Willig’s novels is that the damsels of 1803 bravely put it all on the line for love and country.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “Studded with clever literary and historical nuggets, this charming historical-contemporary romance moves back and forth in time.”

  —USA Today

  “Willig has great fun with the conventions of the genre, throwing obstacles between her lovers at every opportunity . . . a great escape.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Willig picks up where she left readers breathlessly hanging. . . . Many more will delight in this easy-to-read romp and line up for the next installment.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

  “A deftly hilarious, sexy novel.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James

  “A merry romp with never a dull moment! A fun read.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh

  “This genre-bending read—a dash of chick lit with a historical twist—has it all: romance, mystery, and adventure. Pure fun!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot

  “Swashbuckling. . . . Willig has an ear for quick wit and an eye for detail. Her fiction debut is chock-full of romance, sexual tension, espionage, adventure, and humor.”

  —Library Journal

  “Willig’s imaginative debut . . . is a decidedly delightful romp.”

  —Booklist

  “Relentlessly effervescent prose . . . a sexy, smirking, determined-to-charm historical romance debut.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A delightful debut.”

  —Roundtable Reviews

  ALSOBY LAUREN WILLIG

  The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

  The Masque of the Black Tulip

  The Deception of the Emerald Ring

  The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

  The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

  The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

  The Mischief of the Mistletoe

  The Orchid Affair

  The Garden Intrigue

  New American Library

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com.

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, August 2013

  Copyright © Lauren Willig, 2013

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Willig, Lauren.

  The passion of the purple plumeria: a Pink Carnation novel/Lauren Willig.

  p. cm.
/>   ISBN 978-1-101-61417-4

  1. Spies—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.I575P37 2013

  813'.6—dc23 2013001734

  Designed by Alissa Amell

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  Also by Lauren Willig

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Note on Timing

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Historical Note

  About the Author

  Readers Guide

  AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR OF THE CONVENT OF ORSINO OR HOW NOT TO INTERVIEW MISS GWEN

  AN INTERVIEW WITH LAUREN WILLIG OR HOW TO BADGER YOUR AUTHOR

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Excerpt from Lauren Willig's Next Novel

  To Tasha Alexander, Tracy Grant, Sarah MacLean, Deanna Raybourn, and Beatriz Williams: wonderful writers and even better friends;

  and to Claudia Brittenham

  for keeping me from tossing the whole thing into the shredder.

  A Note on Timing

  In the early nineteenth century, travel between London and Calcutta could take anywhere from four to six months, depending on weather. The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, in which we first met Colonel Reid, opened in the autumn of 1804. Colonel Reid left Calcutta in October of 1804 and arrived in England in March of 1805. Because of this, he has no knowledge of anything that occurred in India after he left.

  That is why, although Purple Plumeria takes place several months after Blood Lily, the main actors are unaware of some information that the seasoned Pink Carnation reader already possesses.

  The seasoned Pink Carnation reader and anyone who managed to get mail onto a faster ship . . .

  Prologue

  Sussex, 2004

  “I seriously doubt the lost jewels of Berar are under your bath mat,” I said.

  My boyfriend straightened, narrowly missing banging his head on the underside of the sink. He squinted at me, myopia rather than malevolence. “I dropped my contact lens.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.” I spotted a glint of blue on the tiles near the mat. I don’t know why, but even clear contacts always turn blue when they dry out. “Over there. No. Your other there.”

  “Thanks.” Colin groped for the bit of plastic. “I was afraid I’d stepped on it.”

  “Ah,” I said, slipping my arms around his waist. “Then you’d be entirely at my mercy.”

  He considered that. “Until I put my glasses on.”

  I gave him a peck on the back and let go of him. “Spoilsport.”

  We were being very touchy-feely these days. At least I was. I’m not usually much of one for PDA, even when the only public was the mold in the grouting, but at my back I could already hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near. Or, in this case, time’s winged 747. My flight back to the States was booked. It was one of those flexible STA Travel things, but even so. I had a time. I had a flight number. I had a ticket.

  I had only two more months with Colin.

  Time is a strangely malleable commodity. When I moved to London, last fall, the first two months had lasted for years, and not in a good way. I had come to London on a ten-month grant. Like a good little academic squirrel, I was meant to be gathering the nuts of primary sources, great armloads of them, and then scurrying back to Cambridge—the other Cambridge—to crack and dissect them in the calm of my basement office in the history department. At the time, I had yearned for the comfortable familiarity of the history department, the basement vending machine, the caked-on coffee in the bottom of the department coffee machine that no one ever remembered to clean.

  Everything in England was just so . . . English. As an Anglophile, I’d thought I’d known what I was getting into, but years of Masterpiece Theatre hadn’t prepared me for the realities of life in London: the miniature bottles of shampoo, the peanut butter that didn’t look like peanut butter, the sun that set at three in winter. Of course, all that would have been bearable, war stories for later, if only the research were going well.

  Scrap that: if the research were going anywhere at all.

  I was on the trail of the most elusive element of the Napoleonic Wars, those shadowy men and women who had donned aliases rather than uniforms. Spying might have been considered more than a bit ungentlemanly at the time, but there was no denying either its utility or its glamour. With images of the Scarlet Pimpernel dancing in my head, I had envisioned myself making the scholarly coup of the century, unmasking the one spy who had never been unveiled, the spy who sent Napoleon’s Ministry of Police into palpitations and launched a series of florally themed fashion crazes among England’s aristocratic elite: the Pink Carnation.

  Yes, admittedly, the name might be a little less than fearsome, but the roster of exploits attributed to the Carnation was impressive indeed. In addition to the usual mocking notes on Napoleon’s pillow (there were times when it seemed that the little dictator’s bedroom must have been busier than Grand Central on a summer Friday), the Carnation had thwarted a plot to kidnap George III, intercepted shipments of Dutch gold, spiked Bonaparte’s plans for a naval invasion, and cured the common cold.

  The accounts were all inconclusive and contradictory in the extreme. If you believed the contemporary newsletters, the Carnation was reputed to have been simultaneously in India, Portugal, France, and Shropshire, and possibly somewhere in the Americas, as well. He kept popping up like Elvis, minus the shiny suit. The French Ministry of Police were constantly finding him under their pillows; the British press attributed every French disappointment to his good agency.

  In short, it was a mess. After months in the archives, I had been no closer to sorting it out. I was on the verge of sourly ascribing to the popular academic theory that the Pink Carnation had been a deliberate fictional construct, invented by the English government to throw fear into the hearts of their French foes, with the role of the Carnation being played, successively, by a variety of English heroes ranging from Sir Sidney Smith to Lord Nelson’s first cousin twice removed. In other words, the Dread Pirate Roberts, Napoleonic edition.

  In one last, desperate attempt, I’d played my final card. I’d sent out letters to the holders of private family archives, hoping against hope that something, some tiny clue to the Carnation’s identity (or identities), might have survived, something that would give me something to put into my dissertation other than the theoretical mumbo jumbo that is the scholar’s best smoke screen for the complete dearth of any actual sources. I’d sent those letters out on the off chance.

  Those letters led me to the Pink Carnation. And Colin.

  Life works in weird ways, doesn’t it? Romance had been the last thing on my mind in October—I was more concerned with ABD than MRS—but those letters, mailed in desperation, had netted me more than a crack at some private sources. They
had plunged me right into the heart not just of historical drama but of a modern one, too. Colin and I had been together, officially, for just a little more than six months now. Just enough time to put down roots, not enough time for declarations. We were betwixt and between and the clock was rapidly running down.

  Just because I was going back to the States didn’t mean it was over.

  Why did that sound less and less convincing the closer we got to August?

  Colin squirted multipurpose solution on his contact, regarded it philosophically, and maneuvered it back into his eye.

  “Jeremy rang this morning,” he said thickly. Like mascara application, contact lens insertion requires a partially open mouth.

  I could see my own face in the mirror, lips pinched, eyes narrowed. “Oh, did he?”

  I mentioned modern drama, didn’t I? That drama had a first name, spelled J-E-R-E-M-Y. Jeremy was both Colin’s cousin and his stepfather. If it sounds complicated, it’s because it is. There was some debate as to whether Colin’s father had been cold in his grave yet when Jeremy took up with his cousin’s widow. There had been a suspicious interval of overlap while Colin’s father was in the hospital—or, as they say over here, in hospital—struggling through the final stages of pancreatic cancer, and Colin’s mother had been, shall we say, being comforted by Jeremy, said comforting involving lots of long walks on a beach in the Grenadines.

  Don’t think that I was jumping to conclusions or basing my opinion of Jeremy entirely on rumor and hearsay. After some rather intensive observation, I had come to my own conclusions about Jeremy: He was a loathsome cad.

  Yes, I know it sounds all Barbara Cartland, but trust me, the phrase had never been more apt. Like a Cartland cad, Jeremy was the sort of man who would gamble away his daughter at cards and never think twice about it. Human beings were just another form of coin to him. I’d seen him play fast and loose with Colin’s family. Colin and his sister were still barely speaking, thanks to one of Jeremy’s lovely machinations. Of one thing I was sure: Jeremy was pure poison.

  Colin blinked experimentally and then, once he was sure the contact was firmly in place, raised a brow at me. He was so cute when he tried to be all supercilious. I didn’t say that, of course.