The Lure of the Moonflower Read online

  And I still had a face full of dried dirt.

  Colin added a small leather journal to the pile. “There’s another tray under here.”

  “Huh?” Telling myself it couldn’t hurt, I eased open the leather journal. It was in code, of course, but not the sort of numerical code that would look suspicious to anyone who opened it. No, Jane Wooliston was too subtle for that. It was a code she had worked out with her cousin’s sister-in-law, Lady Henrietta Selwick, social events substituting for darker realities.

  I spotted the Gardener, pruning the shrubbery. . . .

  The Gardener, deadliest spy of his generation.

  Well, if one didn’t count the Black Tulip. The Black Tulip’s body count had definitely been higher. And Gaston Delaroche, agent of the Ministry of Police, who had slid down the charts from third-most-feared man in France to forty-second, although not for want of trying.

  Okay, so maybe the Gardener wasn’t the deadliest spy of his generation. But he was one of the cleverest.

  “Eloise.” The strangled note in Colin’s voice called me back to the present. “You may have been right.”

  He was holding notebooks. Modern notebooks. They looked like stenographical notebooks, the sort I vaguely remembered from my mother’s office when I was very little, before everything had switched over to computers and dictation had gone the way of the dodo.

  I scooted over to him. “These must be your aunt’s.”

  Colin flipped through a few pages of the one on top. He didn’t look happy. He tried the next one. Same result.

  I took the one he’d set aside. Numbers, letters, and symbols ran riot across the page like something from a mathematician’s crazed imagination. They looked sort of like equations and sort of like gibberish. In fact, a lot like gibberish.

  Looking increasingly worried, Colin shoved the second journal my way. “Do you have any idea what they say?”

  I bit down on my lip. That it was a code of some kind I had no doubts, but it wasn’t one I recognized off the bat. Codes weren’t really my thing, but I’d been forced by necessity to decipher more than a few. It was a bit like calculus: I didn’t particularly enjoy it, but I could do it if I had to.

  “It’s not any of the classic codes.” I hated to say it, but . . . “We’ll need a cryptographer.”

  “Do you have one tucked away somewhere?”

  “I have two tax lawyers.” My family tended to run heavily towards lawyers. “Not the right kind of code, huh?”

  “No.” Colin was not amused. Few people are amused by the IRS. “What were the coordinates of the rendezvous?”

  “Two a.m. at the old abbey. Donwell Abbey?” The nearest house to Selwick Hall was Donwell Abbey, or, rather, the manor house that had been built on the ground of the old abbey. The remains of the abbey itself had been kept on as a sort of garden folly, a picturesque ruin.

  And a very good place for those who chose to lurk.

  Colin gave an unhappy jerk of his chin. “Presumably.”

  I hated the idea of leaving Mrs. Selwick-Alderly where she was. And actually bringing the box to that guy . . . What if it was the wrong box? What if we’d been wrong?

  “What do we do?”

  Colin’s expression was grim. “We go to our rehearsal dinner. After that . . . Donwell Abbey.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Did you say the Gardener?” Jack demanded, hoping to hell that he had misheard. “The Gardener . . . as in the Gardener?”

  “You know of him, then,” said the Pink Carnation, as if it were every day that the devil strolled into camp and demanded a cup of tea. But her hands betrayed her. They were clasped at her waist in a feminine gesture that didn’t at all suit the martial garb of Lieutenant Jean de Balcourt.

  “Of course I bloody well know of him. I worked for him.” The Gardener. The Gardener was there in their camp, in the flesh. This was not good. This was the antithesis of good. Jack considered himself a fairly easygoing sort, a connoisseur of human foibles, but if there were any man in the world whom Jack hated, loathed, and reviled, it was the master spy known as the Gardener. “But we never met. Everything was through intermediaries.”

  The Carnation looked at him solemnly. “He won’t know you, then. That’s to our advantage.”

  Jean. The Gardener had called her Jean, even though she had been introduced only as Lieutenant de Balcourt.

  Jean? Or Jeanne?

  A vision of the Carnation as she had been when he first met her, ten days past, flashed through Jack’s mind, frilled and flounced and dangerously beautiful in a gown designed to make the most of her charms. A Paris gown. A gown fit for a French count’s consort.

  “But he knew you, princess.” The Gardener had known her in a disguise that would fool most. The Gardener, who had come far from his usual hunting grounds, to this out-of-the-way spot on the edges of the world. “Would you care to explain that?”

  That would be the irony, wouldn’t it, if, after all these years of successfully evading the Gardener’s men, he had blindly followed one into the middle of a French camp.

  The woman who had introduced herself as the Pink Carnation looked down the long alley of tents, twin furrows between her brows. “He’s traveled rapidly by the looks of it.”

  Jack folded his arms across his chest. “The Pink Carnation would be a prize worth bearing back to Bonaparte.”

  “Or the man who stole the jewels of Berar?” the Carnation shot back, before shaking her head decisively. “No, I don’t think it’s either of us he’s after. The jewels are two years lost now, and I—”

  “And you?” Jack’s voice was dangerously smooth.

  The Pink Carnation didn’t quite meet his eye. “The Gardener and I have an understanding.”

  “An understanding?”

  The Pink Carnation looked down her nose at him. “So long as certain rules are observed,” she said primly, “we do each other the professional courtesy of leaving each other alone.”

  In a pig’s eye. Jack had never known a spy whose motto wasn’t live and let die. “How terribly civilized,” he drawled.

  “Why shouldn’t we be?” The Pink Carnation frowned at him. “You’re blocking the door of the tent.”

  Jack held up the flap for her with a flourish. “Spying isn’t a gentleman’s game, princess. Or,” he added pointedly, as he ducked beneath, “a lady’s.”

  In the mirror on the shaving stand, Jack could see the Carnation’s teeth dig into her lower lip. “There are rules to war, as to anything else. Enemy officers have been known to take tea between battles.”

  Jack snorted derisively. “Taking tea? Is that what they call it now?”

  “Don’t be vulgar.” But she didn’t meet his eyes.

  Did she think he was blind? The tension between his companion and the Gardener could have been felt all the way in Madrid. Hell, the Gardener had all but taken out an ad in the paper.

  The Gardener played tricks. For a moment Jack felt his resolution waning. The Gardener was a master of manipulation; a few well-chosen words and he could have a man convinced the sky was green and the river red. If it amused him to give the impression . . .

  But no. Jack came back to earth hard. The woman’s averted gaze told its own story.

  And if he felt a surge of anger entirely out of proportion to the offense, well, it was anger at himself for being so easily gammoned. He wasn’t a boy, wet behind the ears. He should have known better than to have trusted this woman purely on the strength of the code phrase. The code phrase and the clean profile of a goddess on a coin.

  Everything had rung wrong. Her insistence that they travel among the French, for one.

  And yet.

  To say that she had been displeased at the appearance of her supposed lover would be an understatement. There had been a moment, a very brief moment, when she had looked as though s
he were going to be ill, her face a delicate shade of green that clashed with those damned ginger whiskers.

  A good actress could feign many things, but that level of sick disbelief was difficult to counterfeit, even for the most accomplished actress at the Comédie-Française.

  There were two roads open to him. Either she was a confederate of the Gardener or she wasn’t. In the first case, he strapped her to the chair and ran. Fast and far. Even that idiot Moreau couldn’t keep the Gardener occupied babbling on forever.

  In the second case . . .

  “Either you’re a fool or you think I am.” Jack stalked over to her. “Anyone who claims there are rules to war is courting a bullet in the back.”

  The Pink Carnation drew herself up, regarding him with a nice dollop of scorn. “Fine words from the man who refuses to wear the enemy’s colors.”

  “Green has never become me.” This show of offended honor might be the sham, the chameleon spy the reality. Jack made a decision—which was not to decide. “Do you want to stand here and spar? Because it’s both of our necks you’re putting in the noose.”

  The Pink Carnation looked at him without pretense, her gray eyes more pewter than silver in the dim light. “What do you suggest?”

  Jack shrugged, watching her closely. “You could always kill him.”

  “No.” The answer was quick and instinctive. “Just . . . no.”

  “Oh?” Jack raised a brow, his mind working furiously. If she were working with the Gardener, the logical resort would have been to pretend to consider the plan, to go along with it. He strolled towards her, two steps taking up the space between them in the small tent. The sagging canvas brushed his head. “You’re in the wrong line of work, princess, if you let those sorts of scruples get in the way.”

  The Pink Carnation held her ground. There were lines of worry on either side of her mouth, but she looked him directly in the eye. “I’m a gatherer of information, not an assassin.”

  That bolt hit home harder than she knew. Jack pushed the point. “Self-defense is hardly the same as cold-blooded execution.”

  The Carnation took a deep breath. “Self-defense is a last resort when all other hope is lost.” She looked up at him, something wistful in her eyes. “This isn’t our last resort.”

  If she wasn’t honest, that was a bloody brilliant imitation of it.

  “Just keep telling yourself that when the Gardener takes you back to Paris in chains,” said Jack gruffly. He turned abruptly away, pacing as far as the tent pegs would let him. “What’s your plan, then?”

  The Pink Carnation stood where he had left her, straight and still. Reluctantly, she said, “I believe that the circumstances call for strategic retreat.”

  He’d be damned if he’d let her gild the lily. “You mean running away.”

  “No.” The Carnation’s head came up, her eyes meeting his with a fervor that shook Jack to the core. “If the Gardener is here, it is because he is also on the trail of Her Majesty. We need to get to the Queen before he does.”

  Brilliant. “I liked it better when I thought we were running away,” muttered Jack. “All right. Just how do you propose we do that?”

  The Carnation hesitated for a moment, and then said, with what dignity she could, “We go back to your original idea. We travel light and alone.”

  “My original idea,” said Jack, with fine irony, “involved our having time to prepare and provision. And it didn’t involve having that cold-blooded bastard on our heels.”

  The Carnation stiffened a bit at the profanity, but chose not to comment. “Can you get us away?”

  “How much time do we have?”

  The Carnation glanced at the flap of the tent. “Nicolas—the Gardener—won’t be in any hurry.” In a quieter voice, she added, “It would never occur to him that I might flee. He will expect me to stay and . . . spar.”

  Spar. Jack wasn’t entirely sure that was what she’d meant to say. Dally? For the Carnation, Jack suspected the two might be one and the same; no sweet nothings for her, but a clash of wits.

  Leading, eventually, to a clash of more than wits.

  Brusquely, Jack said, “You won’t be missed until supper, then. That gives us . . . an hour?”

  “More,” said the Carnation with quiet certainty. “The Comte prefers to dine late. He keeps city hours, even in the country.”

  “You know a great deal about the man and his habits.”

  The Pink Carnation looked aside. “It is—”

  “I know,” said Jack, with heavy sarcasm. “Professional courtesy.”

  The Carnation winced.

  Jack pressed forward, feeling irrationally angry with the world. “All right. But this time we do it my way. You follow my lead. No questions, no arguments.”

  The Carnation regarded him thoughtfully. “The Gardener doesn’t know who you are. You could leave me here. You could go on with the mission alone.” Her lips twisted wryly. “That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? To be free of me?”

  What he wanted? Jack stared at her incredulously, and then he began to clap. “Oh, nicely played. I can’t deny that you make a very pretty martyr.” He ran a finger along the line of one of her false whiskers, and felt her shiver beneath his touch. “But you might want to remove these before you go to your lion. Pull out your pretty frocks and give him a proper greeting.”

  Those pink lips opened, but it took a moment for sound to follow. “What are you implying?” she said hoarsely.

  “I don’t know,” said Jack silkily. His finger rubbed against her lower lip. “You tell me.”

  The Carnation stared at him, frozen, her breath coming hard between her lips. Then she blinked, twice, and yanked away. “Get the horses. If we’re to be away before sunset, we need to move now.”

  Jack’s hands dropped back to his sides. He felt as though he’d been running over rough terrain, his breath tight in his chest.

  “No horses,” said Jack tersely. “We’re traveling light, on foot. All of this”—the rosewood shaving case, the camp bed, the writing table—“stays. Take only what you can carry. And when I say you, I mean you. I’m not your mule.”

  Exercising great control, the Pink Carnation said, “We don’t stand a chance on foot against a man in a carriage.”

  “On these roads? That carriage is as much of a liability as an asset. And”—Jack smiled unpleasantly at her—“there are other ways to put a spoke in your friend’s wheels.”

  The Carnation was already gathering together provisions with quick, efficient movements. Her head jerked back over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  “Ipecacuanha,” said Jack succinctly. “A lovely little potion from Her Majesty’s colonies in Brazil. You’ve heard of it, I imagine?”

  The Pink Carnation’s hands stilled on the lid of her writing case. “I’ve never employed it. It won’t—”

  Jack permitted himself an ironic smile. “Don’t worry. It won’t kill him. It will only make him wish he were dead for the space of, oh, six hours or so.”

  It was a highly gratifying thought. A knife between the man’s ribs was an even more gratifying thought, and carried with it its own poetic justice, but the Carnation’s words rang ironically in his ears. He was a spy, not an assassin. He had broken with the Gardener over just that principle. He would hardly give the Gardener the satisfaction of breaking his word now.

  For a moment it looked as though the Carnation intended to argue with him. Her knuckles were white on the lid of her writing desk. And then she dropped her head, opening the case with a quick, jerky movement.

  “Do what you need to do.” And then, softly, “But don’t hurt him.”

  Don’t hurt him? Jack wrested the vial of ipecac out of the trunk in which he had buried it.

  “One day you’ll have to tell me how the man managed to earn such tender sympathy,” he said
, and had the satisfaction of seeing her cheeks flush beneath her false whiskers before the tent flap crashed down behind him.

  It took no time at all to empty the ipecac into Moreau’s decanter of claret. If Jack spared a moment’s regret that Moreau should suffer for his hospitality, it was only a moment. This was war, whatever the woman in his tent might think. In war, innocent people suffered. He should know. He’d seen it firsthand, again and again.

  Don’t hurt him.

  As insurance, Jack slipped off to the makeshift paddock where the horses and mules were getting what grazing they could. He didn’t set them all free. That would be too obvious. But if a few horses happened to slip their tether—well, someone’s groom must have been careless.

  The early autumn dusk was already falling and with it a light rain. Jack was grateful for both. The rain wasn’t heavy enough to seriously impede their progress, but it would keep men huddled in their tents. Not to mention dampening the ardor of would-be searchers once it became clear that Lieutenant de Balcourt and his servant had flown.

  The Carnation was waiting for him. The lamps had been lit in the tent, a lumpy shape constructed of boxes and bundles placed on the camp stool, where it cast, from the distance, an almost human shadow.

  “It is done?” she said, with uncharacteristic hesitation.

  She was still wearing her uniform, but had sponged off her whiskers. Without them, her face looked very young and vulnerable, a girl playing dress-up in her brother’s clothes.

  Not a girl, a woman. A woman with intimate knowledge of the master spy known as the Gardener.

  “It’s done,” said Jack shortly. “Now we need to move. Fast.”

  “We might have a bit more time than you think.” The Pink Carnation did her best to retain her usual poise. “I sent a note to N—to the Gardener, saying I would wait on him after supper. And another to Moreau, informing him that I had a touch of la grippe and was keeping to my tent tonight.”