The Secret History of the Pink Carnation Read online

  So Amy explained. She told her about the meeting in the study, the fracas in the gardens – Amy rapidly hurried through that bit, as Jane’s face darkened in a way that foretold lectures to come – and the dreadful walk home. The events on the boat, aside from a chaste kiss or two, Amy omitted. And she left out any mention of stars, especially in the form of a necklace.

  Jane listened thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure this means what you think it means.’

  Amy plucked listlessly at an embroidered lily on the edge of her eiderdown. ‘I’ll never see him again, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Amy, you can’t just—’

  ‘Romance would get in the way of my mission, anyway. It already has.’

  ‘Birds of a feather,’ muttered Jane. ‘That sounds a great deal like—’

  ‘When you woke me up, you said you had something to tell me?’ Amy cut in.

  Jane retrieved her tidy stack of papers. ‘It will keep till later. We’re to go to the Tuilleries at four, and I have some little odds and ends I want to tie up before then.’

  Amy buried her head again in her pillow. ‘I’d forgotten. Lord Richard’s antiquities.’

  Her spirits were still low hours later as Miss Gwen shepherded them into the Tuilleries to keep their appointment with Lord Richard. Amy derived less than the usual enjoyment from watching Miss Gwen make loud demands in English and poke the baffled guards with her parasol. An entourage of three footmen, all clutching their sides in pain, eventually escorted them to Lord Richard’s office.

  The room was smaller than Amy had anticipated. Or maybe it merely seemed small due to the clutter of objects that filled the room. Long tables ran down both sides and the centre of the room, their surfaces covered by vases, pottery, fragments of jewellery. Crates, lined up one after another, formed a solid block beneath the tables and rose in tottery piles at the corners of the room. At the very end of the room sat Lord Richard, nearly hidden behind a stack of immense, leather-bound ledgers. He was, Amy saw as they moved further into the room, squinting at a shard of pottery, the quill in his other hand poised over a page already half filled with tidy script.

  And he wasn’t fully clothed.

  Amy didn’t mean to stare, but Lord Richard’s jacket was slung over the back of his chair, his waistcoat hung open, and the linen of his shirt was so very fine. The healthy sheen of skin showed through the white fabric. Amy watched, fascinated, as the sleeve bunched and pulled against the sleek muscles of his arm as he reached over to dip his quill in the inkwell. Her eyes travelled up the length of his arm, to the loosened knot of his cravat, the pulse moving in the hollow of his bare throat.

  ‘Hrrrrmph!’ Miss Gwen cleared her throat forcefully enough to create a hurricane three counties away.

  ‘I do beg your pardon.’ Lord Richard grabbed for his jacket. ‘I hadn’t expected you for another quarter hour yet. Welcome.’ He ushered them into the room, turning his devastating smile in special welcome upon Amy.

  ‘When were you in Egypt?’ asked Miss Gwen in her peremptory way, saving Amy from having to say anything at all.

  ‘I went over in ninety-eight with Bonaparte’s expedition and returned later that year,’ Lord Richard said, not meeting Amy’s eye.

  Blast! Trust Miss Gwen to bring up an awkward topic, when the point of the visit was to charm Amy into liking him as himself. A few more mentions of the Egyptian expedition, and she’d be scowling at him again as though he had single-handedly guillotined half the French aristocracy. But could he really blame Miss Gwen for bringing up Egypt when he’d invited them to view Egyptian antiquities? Hmm. Richard considered that conundrum. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any nice, safe Roman or Greek antiquities lying about, and he couldn’t very well ask them to leave for a few hours so that he could procure some.

  ‘You were in Egypt when Nelson destroyed the French fleet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Miss Gwen’s steely eyes were rather too probing for Richard’s peace of mind. He hastily picked up a necklace from one of the long tables lining the sides of the room. ‘This is a necklace made of faience, which is—’

  ‘Where were you?’

  The necklace dangled in the air in front of Amy, shades of dusty red and blue, as Lord Richard turned to cock a confused eyebrow at Miss Gwen. ‘Where was I when?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Miss Gwen waved an imperious hand. ‘It doesn’t signify.’

  Jane stepped in to rescue him. ‘What’s this, my lord?’ she asked, indicating a piece of stone, engraved with what looked to be little squiggles and pictures, which stood propped against the wall.

  ‘We think that might be a funeral stela,’ explained Lord Richard, running a finger fondly along the carvings. ‘See the pictures on top? That’s the pharaoh in the middle, giving offerings to a god – that’s the chap with horns, on his right. His queen, with the tall hat, stands on his left.’

  ‘Who was she?’ asked Amy, moving to stand next to him, drawn in despite herself.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Lord Richard admitted, grinning boyishly down at her. ‘Would you like to hazard a guess? Perhaps a princess from a faraway land, brought overseas from her home.’

  ‘Ship-wrecked on the coast of Egypt,’ suggested Amy, ‘like the heroine of a Shakespeare play. Forced to disguise herself as a boy, until her innate nobility shines through her humble robes. She catches the eye of the pharaoh…’

  ‘And they live happily ever after,’ finished Lord Richard.

  ‘I wonder what really happened to her,’ Amy said, eyes scanning the unreadable symbols in front of her. It reminded her of the first time she had looked at the Greek letters on the page of one of Papa’s books, how it seemed impossible that the strangely configured strokes of ink could resolve themselves into the love of Ariadne and the treachery of Theseus. Amazing how many stories dwelled on men repudiating the women who loved them. Theseus and Ariadne, Jason and Medea, Aeneas and Dido. Too bad she hadn’t learnt her lesson well enough from her storybooks.

  ‘You don’t think she lived happily ever after?’ Lord Richard asked softly, his fingers brushing past Amy’s as she traced the contours of a small bird.

  ‘That’s an ending for books, not for people.’

  ‘What are books about, if not people?’

  Richard yielded to the temptation to lean just a little bit closer to Amy. The lavender scent of her hair filled his nostrils. His gaze roamed over the dark curls of her hair, the gentle curve of her cheek, the kissable little dent at the base of her throat.

  Amy backed away from the force of Lord Richard’s gaze. ‘Why don’t you ask Miss Gwen,’ she suggested. ‘She can tell you all about the characters in her horrid novel, I’m sure.’

  Lord Richard didn’t so much as glance at Miss Gwen. His green gaze narrowed even more intently on Amy. What was it about his voice, his presence, his talk of happy endings that was making her so nervous? Amy felt a slight flush rising in her cheeks at the sight of Lord Richard’s tapering fingers stroking the stone tablet, caressing the contours of the carvings. She focused her eyes on Lord Richard’s face. She could see the little crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the gold tips of his lashes, the slight dusting of pale hairs across the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Uppington,’ announced Miss Gwen out of nowhere. Lord Richard started and banged his head against the stela. Amy let out the breath she’d been holding in a giggle.

  ‘The Selwick Marquesses of Uppington of Uppington Hall. In Kent, unless I mistake myself,’ Miss Gwen continued.

  Rubbing the bump on his head – Richard wondered if he’d find hieroglyphs embedded on his skull from the force of that blow – he smiled ruefully at Miss Gwen. ‘You know your Debrett’s well.’

  Miss Gwen sniffed. ‘Young man, I live in the countryside, not the wilds of America. We are not entirely cut off from the civilized world.’

  ‘My apologies.’

  ‘When I made my debut, I knew my peerage better than any girl in London. I could identify the cre
st on a carriage from five streets away. The Uppington estates are adjoined by those of the Blakeneys, are they not?’

  ‘Does that mean you know the Scarlet Pimpernel?’ Amy asked breathlessly.

  Lord Richard’s face stilled into a mask as imperturbable as that of the carving of the pharaoh on the stela. Amy blinked. She must have imagined the expression. Lord Richard was smiling, all affability, at Miss Gwen as he replied, ‘Yes, I spent much of my youth raiding the Blakeney kitchens. Would you like to see a mummy?’ he added. ‘It might prove a useful device in your novel.’

  Richard took Miss Gwen’s bony arm, and steered her down the centre of the room, away from Amy.

  Amy hurried after them. ‘What is the Scarlet Pimpernel like?’

  ‘Percy is a splendid chap,’ Richard said warmly. ‘He never even scolded me for picking all of the plums out of his plum pudding.’

  Amy smiled. Richard smiled back. They smiled together. It was quite definitely a moment.

  It was, alas, only a momentary moment. Miss Gwen spoilt it by banging her parasol against the flagstones of the floor. Richard supposed he should be grateful that it had been the floor, rather than his toe.

  ‘We have trespassed on your hospitality long enough.’ Miss Gwen shook off Richards arm, and grabbed Amy’s. ‘I have learnt all I desired…about Egyptian antiquities. Come along, Jane, Amy. Don’t dawdle. I’m sure Lord Richard has much to do.’

  ‘I’ll see you to your coach,’ Richard offered, as Miss Gwen chivvied her charges forward with the tip of her parasol.

  This Miss Gwen graciously permitted. Richard regaled Amy with tales of his childhood exploits and Percy’s benevolence all the way through the palace. Amy, enthralled, didn’t seem to notice that all of his stories stopped at least a year before Sir Percy became the Scarlet Pimpernel. She countered with her own tales of training to be a member of the Pimpernel’s band, all of the midnight escapes from the nursery, and costumes filched from the scullery or her uncle’s wardrobe.

  ‘Don’t forget the time you tried to train the sheep to stampede at the sound of a whistle,’ chimed in Jane.

  Lord Richard arched a quizzical eyebrow at Amy.

  ‘I thought they might be useful in an attack,’ Amy protested, lips twitching with suppressed laughter. ‘After all, we didn’t have any cavalry at hand, so I had to make do with what we had.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, lowering his voice in a tone of mock confidentiality, ‘did you actually try to ride the sheep?’

  Amy flushed, looking, one might say, somewhat sheepish.

  ‘Waving a wooden sword and shouting battle cries,’ confirmed Jane.

  ‘I was only eight,’ Amy defended herself.

  ‘Yes, but you were twelve when you set your hair on fire.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Lord Richard ventured, grinning at Amy. ‘You were experimenting with gunpowder to blow up the Bastille.’

  ‘Actually,’ Amy corrected him loftily, ‘I was applying ashes to my hair to see if they would make me look convincingly aged and grey-haired. The only problem was that I didn’t stamp out all of the embers quite thoroughly enough. Uncle Bertrand wouldn’t let me have any gunpowder,’ she added wistfully as they stepped outside.

  Lord Richard flung back his head and guffawed. The courtyard of the Tuilleries rang with his laughter as he escorted the three ladies to Edouard’s carriage. He made his bows to Miss Gwen and Jane, handing them into the carriage. Finally, Amy stood alone before the open door.

  His voice lowered to an intimate murmur that made the skin on Amy’s arms prickle, and ought to have caused her chaperone to drag her away at once. ‘Stay away from gunpowder,’ he cautioned, bowing over Amy’s hand. With a quick, mischievous glance into the carriage to make sure Miss Gwen was occupied in conversation with Jane, Lord Richard flipped Amy’s hand over, and pressed a lingering kiss on the sensitive skin of her palm.

  Amy’s shocked gaze flew from her palm to Lord Richard’s laughing eyes. She stared at him, her confusion palpable on her face. In the fraught moment before she turned to climb up into the carriage, he ran his thumb in an intimate caress over her palm. And then he winked.

  He told her to stay away from gunpowder?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Amy stumbled into the carriage in an extreme state of confusion. Confusion seemed to be her normal state, nowadays. Amy tried to remember what it felt like to feel sure of herself and her plans and her opinions and the people around her, and failed miserably. First, there had been the Purple Gentian, who had baffled her by seeming to care for her, then repudiating her. And now Lord Richard! Lord Richard who, whenever she thought she had him pegged – as a charming antiquarian, as an evil abettor of the French, as the lover of Pauline Leclerc – did something to confuse her. How could he speak so warmly of Sir Percy, and yet himself have aided the French? How could he bedevil her one moment and charm her the next?

  Maybe, thought Amy, her hands pressed tightly together in her lap, she was just too easily charmed. It said something rather unpleasant about the shallowness of her own character that she could fancy herself in love with the Purple Gentian one day and be fascinated by Lord Richard the next. Oh, but she had been so sure of her feelings for the Gentian! And of his for her. His promise of a necklace of stars had seemed to be a sort of divine seal of approval, marking him out as her official, one and only true love.

  The phrase fluttered in circles around her head. Something about it nagged at her memory. A necklace of stars…a necklace of stars. But she had never told the Purple Gentian about her father’s promise; she had never even told him about her parents’ death. Only one person in France knew about her childhood memory. One person who had grown up next door to Percy Blakeney, who had been in Egypt when Bonaparte’s fleet was destroyed. One person who had been sporting tight tan trousers the previous afternoon. One person who always wore citrus-scented cologne.

  ‘That cad!’ Amy breathed.

  Jane broke off mid-sentence in her conversation with Miss Gwen and touched Amy’s hand. ‘Are you feeling quite all right?’

  Oblivious to Jane, to Miss Gwen, to discretion, Amy jerked her hand away and slammed it back down against the seat. ‘That utter snivelling, lying cad!’

  ‘Um, Amy? Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?’ Jane was hovering from a safe distance, lest Amy strike out again. Amy could have told her she was safe – the only person Amy wanted to hit, again and again and again, was several yards back in the Tuilleries – but at the moment, Amy wasn’t capable of uttering anything quite that coherent.

  ‘Cad…disgusting…urgh!’ she muttered. Amy’s arms flailed wildly. Jane scooted a little farther back on the seat and looked anxiously at Miss Gwen. ‘Should we…?’

  Miss Gwen, however, was smiling quite unconcernedly, if slightly maliciously, at Amy. ‘You certainly took your time figuring it out.’

  ‘You knew?’ Amy’s eyebrows flew up till they nearly reached her hairline. ‘All this time, you knew? And you didn’t tell me?’

  Jane looked brightly from Amy’s agitated face to Miss Gwen’s smug one. ‘Oh, are you talking about Lord Richard being the Purple Gentian?’

  ‘Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!’ Amy flung herself face-first into the seat cushions.

  ‘If it makes you feel better, I only figured it out this morning,’ said Jane apologetically, wrenching a corner of her skirt out from under Amy’s head.

  ‘Wonderful,’ sputtered Amy, lifting a flushed face from the bench, ‘just wonderful. Everyone knew except me.’

  ‘The First Consul doesn’t know yet,’ volunteered Jane. ‘Nor does the Ministry of Safety.’

  ‘Yes, but they haven’t been kissing him!’ cried Amy heedlessly.

  ‘I take that to mean that you have?’ Miss Gwen’s beady eyes fixed on Amy like a vulture sighting prey.

  ‘Um…’

  ‘I will refrain from comment on your reckless disregard for your reputation,’ Miss Gwen’s voice scraped across Amy’s raw nerves like talons c
lawing flesh. ‘Your morals I leave to your conscience. Since what is done cannot be undone, it remains only to take what little good one can from this unfortunate episode.’

  ‘You mean that now I’ve learnt my lesson and know never to kiss anyone ever again?’

  Miss Gwen impaled Amy on a look of utter contempt. ‘Lesson, indeed! Kindly contrive not to be more absurd than the good Lord made you. No. I require a full description of the kiss or kisses for incorporation into my novel.’

  The world and everyone in it had gone mad. That was the only explanation that Amy could come up with. Lord Richard Selwick, Bonaparte’s antiquarian, was the Purple Gentian. Miss Gwen, rather than scolding her for improper behaviour, wanted to use it in her novel. What next?

  Bewilderment momentarily distracted her from Lord Richard’s deception. But only for a moment. ‘How could he be so cruel?’ she whispered, her eyes clouded.

  ‘Why don’t you go to him and tell him you know who he is?’ suggested Jane.

  Amy shook her head so vehemently that her loose curls whipped across the end of Jane’s nose. ‘You don’t understand, Jane. I want to make him suffer.’

  Miss Gwen emitted a cracking noise that might have been a laugh. ‘Ah. Young love.’

  Amy scowled at her. ‘What in heaven’s name are you talking about?’

  ‘You shouldn’t take heaven’s name in vain, missy. You might want to go there someday.’ Miss Gwen smirked. Amy simmered. When Miss Gwen felt Amy had simmered for a suitable length of time, she spoke. ‘It’s quite simple. You wouldn’t hate him so much unless you loved him. Hmm. I like that. Maybe I’ll use it in my book.’

  ‘At least someone benefits from this farce,’ bit out Amy.

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me, young lady. I’m on your side in this. You needn’t goggle your eyes at me. The young man played with your affections in a most inappropriate way and deserves whatever punishment you choose to mete out.’ Miss Gwen considered for a moment before adding, ‘Excluding physical mutilation. One must acknowledge the bounds of decency.’