The Lure of the Moonflower Page 12

  “Perron,” said Jack Reid very softly, “had outlived his usefulness. He was too bold in his beliefs, too blunt. He had antagonized the rest of Scindia’s forces. There was dissension in the ranks and talk of a potential coup. Battles were lost. Ideals were all very well, but Bonaparte needed results, not rhetoric. He needed Scindia’s armies pitted against the British. So the Gardener sent me another assignment. I was to assassinate Perron.”

  “But . . .” Jane delved into her memory. “Perron lives. He retired to France.”

  “Yes.” Jack Reid kicked a fallen twig back into the fire with the heel of his boot. “Perron lives.”

  None of this sorted with what she knew about Jack Reid, or what she thought she knew about him. “You refused?”

  Jack Reid smiled without humor. “And risk having my own neck on the block? What do you take me for?” He leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. “I had an unavoidable assignment elsewhere. By the time I returned, Perron had fled Scindia’s camp. He had received . . . anonymous information.”

  There had been something rather unusual about Perron’s escape. Jane had marked it as odd even then, but there had been too many other matters demanding her attention.

  “Perron fled to the English camp. . . . He was given safe passage to the coast.” Jane looked down at Jack Reid as the pieces clicked together. “You saved him.”

  “‘Saved’ is such a strong term.” Jack tipped his hat down over his eyes. “Perron was old enough to take care of himself.”

  If he had professed noble motives, painted a halo for himself, Jane would have been suspicious. But this . . . this had too much of the ring of truth. It would be just like Nicolas to order the dispatch of a colleague who had proved himself a liability. Jane had seen as much herself, with her own eyes.

  Perron had lived. And Jack Reid had begun selling secrets to the English.

  Jane looked narrowly at him, trying to find his face beneath his hat. “Information for safe passage. Was that the bargain?”

  Jack Reid shrugged. “The English paid more. I’m a mercenary, out for what I can get, remember?”

  He was sprawled nearly flat on his back, his head propped against his haversack, his hat tipped over his eyes, one foot propped on the opposite knee, the picture of devil may care. But he did care. He cared badly. Jane could hear it in his voice, could read it in his deliberate slouch, in his studied unconcern. Everything Jane knew about him, everything she had thought she had known—it was turned upside down, on its head. A troubled soul, Colonel Reid had called his second son. Insubordinate, those who worked with him had said. Brilliant but unpredictable.

  All true, but from it, Jane had inferred something more. A man without principle, without belief, without honor, his loyalty only to himself. Because what sort of man could turn his back on his father and make common cause with his father’s enemies?

  He called me son.

  Jane stared at the recumbent figure in mounting frustration. “Why?” she demanded. “Why tell me this now?”

  “Doesn’t every campfire need a story? Remind me next time to tell you the one about the tiger that got away.”

  “That isn’t funny.” She prided herself so on her judgment, on her ability to read the hearts and minds of men. And she had been wrong. Utterly, dangerously wrong. And why? Because Jack Reid made a career out of being provoking. Because she blamed him, still, for his carelessness in sending the jewels of Berar to England. Jane snatched the hat off his head. “Do you realize that your stubbornness may have walked us into a trap?”

  Jack sat up straight so suddenly that Jane rocked back on her heels with a thump. “My stubbornness?” There was a dangerous glint in his amber eyes. The tiger hadn’t got away. It was here at the campfire next to her. “May I remind you, Your Royal Highness, that you were the one who insisted on traveling with Captain Moreau? Against, I might add, repeated advice to the contrary.”

  Advice that she had ignored, on principle, because he was Jack Reid, and therefore automatically suspect.

  Jane wanted to cry with frustration. “If you had given me any reason to trust you—”

  “What?” Jack’s voice was rich with sarcasm. “You would have placed my judgment before your own? The Pink Carnation who does no wrong?”

  He was on his feet now, looking down at her. Jane had never felt smaller in her life, her legs drawn against her chest, plastered with mud, Jack Reid standing over her, legs apart, arms crossed, regarding her with an expression of utter contempt.

  “Don’t blame me for your own mistakes, princess,” he said, and turned on his heel, stalking past the small circle of the fire.

  “Wait.” Jane scrambled to her feet, her boots slipping and sliding against the damp pine needles. She had no map, no compass. Only Jack Reid. “Where are you going?”

  “To cover our tracks,” said Jack, without breaking stride.

  And he was gone before Jane could follow, leaving her, foolish and alone, by the dying remains of the fire.

  • • •

  Jack spent the rest of the night laying false trails.

  If the Gardener inquired after them, he would discover that a French lieutenant and his batman had been seen at a tavern on the road, making rapidly for Lisbon. Should that not suit the Gardener’s temper, inquiries in the other direction would ascertain that, in fact, a woman and a man traveling together—the woman with pale brown hair, claiming to be a French noblewoman, the man dressed in local costume—had bespoke a carriage and were headed for the Spanish border.

  Trails, trails, trails, and more trails, as tangled as Jack’s thoughts, as the sky paled to the chill dawn of December, as gray as the Carnation’s face as he had left her behind in the camp.

  That had been ill-done, Jack knew. A cad’s trick, his father would have said reprovingly, ever the ladies’ man, solicitude bred into the bone. And this time his father would have been right.

  Jack’s conscience gave an unaccustomed twinge. He had been sixteen when he ran away from home, old enough to be on his own. But he could still remember that first night sleeping rough, the desperation and terror of it. He’d stayed awake the whole night, hearing brigands in every footfall, holding with both hands to the bundle of his belongings. And that had been in a city he knew, where he spoke the language, could chart his own course.

  You can walk down the street unchaperoned.

  Jack had never stopped to think of that before, that there might be others who had been more hard done by than he. For a moment, just a moment, he had seen something in the Carnation, something that spoke to him—and then it had been gone again, locked beneath that haughty mask that reminded him, so forcefully, of the Brits back in Madras, the ones who had looked at him with a sneer on their lips, spoken to him with those same plummy voices, expecting obedience and respect from him all because his mother had been of a Rajput family whose lineage was prouder than any of theirs.

  Jack had played them for fools, those men. He had bled them dry, selling the opium they craved for their silly rituals while saying “yes, sir” and “no, sir” and laughing behind his hand while he milked them of information and of coin.

  They were so sure of themselves, those English aristocrats. So arrogant. As arrogant as the Carnation, who expected him to say “yes, sir” and “no, sir” and follow her lead, even as she led him into a mare’s nest.

  Maybe that was why he had done it, why he felt such a need to crack that cool exterior, to make her doubt, question, stop looking at him as though he were beneath contempt.

  She hadn’t looked at the Gardener like that. For him, she had been all wide eyes and sudden uncertainty.

  Nicolas, she had called him.

  Jack had worked for the Gardener for years, and against him for as many again, but he had never known the man’s name.

  For that matter, he still didn’t know the Carnation’s.r />
  Well, and what did it matter? Jack trudged up the path, yanking on the lead rope of a very cranky donkey. It was unclear whose temper was worse, Jack’s or the donkey’s.

  “If you didn’t move so damn slowly, I wouldn’t have to pull so damn hard,” Jack informed the donkey shortly.

  The donkey balked, favoring Jack with a look of scorn remarkably similar to the Carnation’s. That was, if the Carnation were covered with gray fur and had long, slightly floppy ears.

  Jack prodded at the recalcitrant animal. “You know, meat is scarce here. There is such a thing as donkey stew.”

  The donkey gave a defiant bray and minced three delicate steps. In the wrong direction.

  Yes, decided Jack grimly. Definitely kin to the Carnation.

  Another massive tug on the rope, and the donkey was once more headed, reluctantly, in the right direction, towards their makeshift camp. Assuming, that was, that the Carnation was still there.

  She wasn’t.

  The clearing was empty and still, all signs of their presence removed. The Carnation had, Jack noted, not only damped the fire, but done her best to remove all traces of its existence. An experienced tracker would find the marks—she wasn’t so expert as that—but he would have to look for them.

  This was not good. This was, in fact, the opposite of good. She might, Jack told himself, as he tried to control his rising alarm, have run back to the Gardener. She might, as he had once supposed, be in his pay.

  Or she might have blundered into the night, looking for Jack. And if she had, anything might have become of her. The winter woods were full of dangers, especially during the rainy season. Especially for someone accustomed to city streets, to linkboys and sedan chairs.

  He could remember her face as he had walked away, pale with alarm, her voice calling after him.

  Temper, my boy, temper, his father would have said, so disappointed in him yet again. Disappointed and wary. Colonel Reid had never said anything, but Jack had known all the same—known that his father watched him more closely than he did the others, terrified of finding in Jack’s childish tantrums traces of his mother’s terrifying rages.

  Jack had been only three when she died, but he could remember the storms breaking above his head: fabric rending, furniture breaking, voice ranting, high and shrill. She had been beyond reason in her rages. Jack remembered his father futilely attempting to soothe her, to cajole her, before he gave up entirely, choosing to spend his time instead in the mess with his friends and a bottle.

  Jack remembered those years only dimly: hiding during her rages, attempting to tease her into good humor as she lay in a darkened room, her head turned to the wall. And the good times, the times that she would lift him in her arms and spin him around, would cradle him and sing to him and tell him tales of their ancestors, those proud, proud men who had conquered kingdoms that made the East India Company’s possessions look petty.

  He remembered those years dimly, but he remembered the sequel very well. He remembered the way his father watched him every time he raised his childish voice in anger, every time he fought with his brother or snatched a toy from his sister. Jack remembered the fear in his father’s face, the false note in his voice, so different from the way he spoke to Kat and Alex. It was always there, the fear that Jack would be like his mother, governed by emotions beyond his control.

  Jack had proved the contrary to himself time and again. He prided himself on keeping his head, on controlling his emotions.

  And then there was last night.

  Jack looped the donkey’s rope over a shrub, pulling it tight. “Princess?”

  “Up here.” There was a rustling overhead, and the Pink Carnation dropped neatly down, landing lightly on her feet.

  Jack said a prayer of thanks to every god he could remember. “You were up a bloody tree?”

  The Carnation looked up at him from under her lashes. Almost apologetically, she said, “I had thought it best to be prepared in case there was . . . unwanted company.”

  “I won’t ask in which category I fall,” said Jack dryly.

  The Pink Carnation winced, but didn’t say anything. There was, thought Jack, something different about her this morning. Something tentative and hesitant.

  It must, he decided, be the lack of wig. Without the exuberant dark curls, her own hair escaping in pale wisps from her tightly coiled braids, she looked strangely vulnerable, as though she had lost part of her armor.

  She was still wearing her mud-spattered white trousers and the frogged green jacket that shouted “enemy.”

  Jack seized on that point with relief. “You can’t wear those. You’ll have your throat slit within the week.”

  “You instructed me to leave my ball gowns in Lisbon.” The Carnation glanced down at her dirty trousers. “I’m afraid this is all I have.”

  “Here.” Jack dug in the saddlebag, thrusting a thick pile of cloth in her general direction. “Take these.”

  Warily, the Carnation shook out one piece, then another, revealing a thick brown wool skirt, a tight red bodice, and a long-sleeved white linen chemise. The clothes were all sturdily constructed, but well-worn.

  “Did you raid someone’s clothesline?”

  “I leave that to your friends in the French camp. I paid for it.” More than it was worth. The region had never been a wealthy one and was poorer still after the depredations of the French troops, who operated under instructions from their Emperor to help themselves as they went.

  The Carnation stared down at the brightly colored bodice, her fingers worrying at the stitching on the sides. “I’d thought you’d left me here.” She glanced up, her expression wry. “And I’m not sure I’d blame you if you did.”

  He’d felt easier with the haughty aristocrat. “Put those on,” Jack said brusquely. “We need to get moving.”

  Without argument, the Carnation took the garments and retreated behind a tree. Jack turned his back, cursing himself and her. This new, humble Carnation made him nervous. He didn’t want to pity her. Or like her.

  “You’ll have to travel as my wife,” he said, raising his voice so she could hear him.

  The Pink Carnation’s head popped around the tree. “But I don’t speak the language.”

  Ah, there was the Carnation he knew.

  “You’ll just have to stay silent, then, won’t you?” Jack taunted. “Since you haven’t done me the honor of telling me your name, I’ll just have to come up with my own. We can call you . . . Jacinta.”

  The Carnation emerged slowly from behind the tree, shaking out the panels of her skirt. “Flattering, if not entirely auspicious.” She filled out that bodice altogether too well. It fit tightly beneath her breasts, cut in a deep square filled in by only the white linen of the chemise, which, in the local fashion, plunged in a deep vee, no more concealing than a fichu. “In Greek mythology, Hyacinth—”

  “I know the myth,” said Jack shortly. “Did you think I was nothing more than a bazaar brat? I spent three years in a boarding school in Calcutta. They crammed the classics down our throats. It was part of the civilizing effort. As you can see, it didn’t take.”

  The Carnation’s gray eyes regarded him levelly. “These are not civil times.” More prosaically, she added, “Might it be simpler if we claimed I had been the servant of one of the English factory in Lisbon? If I were a lady’s maid from England, that would explain my inability to speak the language.”

  “That might serve.” It would explain not just her lack of Portuguese, but the way she held herself, every inch the aristocrat, even in her shabby clothes. A lady’s maid might well ape her mistress’s airs. It was certainly better than his plan, as much as he hated to admit it.

  The Carnation fingered the laces on her bodice. “I have learned that it is generally safer to stay as close to the truth as one can.”

  Jack shoved the remains of
her uniform into one of the sacks hanging from the donkey’s sides. “As you did before, Lieutenant de Balcourt?”

  He expected the Carnation to retort in kind. She didn’t. Instead, after a moment’s internal struggle, she said quietly, “The Vicomte de Balcourt is my cousin. I spent some time living, as a guest, at his house in Paris.”

  Jack stood, one hand on the donkey’s flank, completely at a loss.

  The Carnation pleated her fingers together. “Last night you accused me of endangering us both. You were right. I—I do not take advice well.”

  Jack folded his arms across his chest. “Especially from a traitor?”

  The Carnation considered her words carefully. “It was not precisely a point in your favor.”

  Despite himself, Jack let out a rusty bark of a laugh. “You couldn’t speak straight if you tried, could you?”

  “I’m sorry.” The words shocked Jack into silence. “Is that straight enough for you? You were right. We ought to have traveled your way from the outset.” She paused a moment, her lips pressing tightly together. “Had I known that my actions would lead us into the path of the Gardener, I should have chosen otherwise.”

  As an apology, it left something to be desired, but the fact that she was apologizing at all was amazing enough. It didn’t come easily. Jack could see the cost of it in the rigid set of her shoulders, in the lines on either side of her mouth.

  But he wasn’t letting her off that easily. “Ah, yes,” he said, steeling himself. “Your friend Nicolas.”

  The Carnation took a deep breath that did very interesting things to her bodice. “You asked last night whether I was working with the Gardener.”

  Jack hastily relocated his attention to her face. “You can understand why it might be a matter of interest to me,” he said conversationally.

  The Carnation’s eyes looked past him, fixed on scenes he couldn’t see. In the tone of someone determined to see a bad job through, she said, “The Gardener and I have been, for the most part, enemies. But we did— We had occasion once to come together on a matter of mutual interest. Five months ago. In Venice.”