The Secret History of the Pink Carnation pc-1 Read online

  Horrified comprehension swept through Amy. That groom of Delaroche’s, that smirking, spotty boy, who had been so forthcoming in telling her exactly when his master would be out of his chambers. Amy doubled over, feeling sick for reasons that had nothing to do with the bulky arm clamped around her ribs.

  Richard forced his body to relax, forced himself to wave a languid hand in Amy’s direction. “Quite a fuss over a bit of fluff.”

  “A bit of fluff?”

  Richard studiedly avoided Amy’s eyes, hoping to hell that she would realize what he was trying to do. “A light-skirt,” he clarified, in his best man-about-town air of bored sophistication, “a mere spot of dalliance. Don’t you French know something about that sort of thing? Or did you lose your talent for amours along with your monarchy?”

  “A mere spot of dalliance,” Delaroche repeated, turning the unfamiliar English words scornfully on his tongue. “Or so you claim. We have ways of testing the truth of your words. Pierre?”

  A heavy hand crashed against Amy’s face, snapping her head back. Amy gasped in surprise and pain.

  “Antoine?”

  Metal gleamed at Amy’s throat. A knife.

  “He is under orders to use it,” Delaroche said softly. “A bit of fluff, you say?”

  A strangled yelp emerged from Amy’s throat as the knife pressed against her skin, raising a thin red welt.

  “What do you want?” Richard asked grimly.

  “That, Monsieur Gentian, ought to be obvious.”

  “Not to all of us,” Richard snapped.

  “Your confession and surrender.”

  “Don’t!” Amy cried out. “Don’t do it! You’ve made a mistake, Monsieur Delaroche! He doesn’t care for me. Really! It’s not worth—urgh! Keep your bloody hand off my mouth! Owwwww . . .”

  “On one condition!” Richard’s voice rang out over Amy’s cries. The soldiers holding her froze. “You leave the girl alone. Otherwise there’s no deal. No confession. No surrender. I want your solemn word, Delaroche, that the girl will be left here. Unharmed.”

  Delaroche nodded. “Unharmed.” The knife fell away from Amy’s throat, and the hands yanking her bound arms behind her back slackened.

  The little Frenchman’s eyes gleamed with triumph. “Your mask, Gentian.”

  Richard’s hands went to the lacings of his black mask.

  “No!” Amy protested, as his gloved fingers plucked at the knot. “You mustn’t!”

  Amy pulled against the arms holding her, frantic to get to Richard before he could reveal his identity once and for all to Delaroche. She couldn’t let him do it! She couldn’t let him lose everything, all that he had worked and fought for and perhaps his life into the bargain, all because of her. If he did . . . Amy’s stomach lurched as the knot gave and the strings loosened. If he did, she would be worse than Deirdre.

  The mask tumbled to the ground.

  An inarticulate murmur of distress rose from Amy’s throat, inordinately loud in the hushed silence that had swept the alleyway. All eyes were riveted on Richard’s pale face in the moonlight, on the straight line of his nose, the cool glimmer of his green eyes, the gilded gleam of his hair as he pushed back the hood of his cape, all the features that marked him damningly and irrevocably as Lord Richard Selwick, enemy of the French Republic.

  “You can still run!” Amy cried desperately. “You don’t have to do this, Richard!”

  One by one, his black gloves joined his mask on the ground. His long, slim fingers, now bare, went to the frogs holding his cloak closed. Sweeping off the garment, Richard sketched an ironic bow.

  “Here I am, Delaroche. Unmasked, unveiled, and at your service. Now release the girl.”

  With a snap of Delaroche’s fingers, Amy tumbled, still bound, to the dirt. Using her shackled wrists as leverage, she scooted painfully towards Richard. Desperately, she tried to come up with a plan. If she could create a distraction . . . a fire, maybe? Only she had nothing with which to create fire, even if her hands had been free. Jane! Why wasn’t Jane doing anything! Amy knew she was back there in the shadows, hiding and waiting, biding her time as only Jane could bide, but why oh why couldn’t she just do something? Fling a match, cry murder, stumble in pretending to be a drunken manservant, anything!

  Under Amy’s horrified gaze, Delaroche wound a rope around Richard’s outstretched wrists. Fifteen musket-bearing soldiers closed ranks around them, their high-crowned hats blocking Richard from Amy’s sight.

  “You won’t get away with this!” she railed at the row of blue-clad backs, propelling herself unevenly forward across the ground. “The Pink Carnation will rescue him and see you hanged!”

  Preoccupied with Richard, no one paid the slightest bit of attention, except one infantryman, towards the edge of the group, who turned back and jerked a finger at Amy. “What about the girl, sir?”

  Without removing his eyes from his long-awaited prize, a bound (if not yet humbled) Purple Gentian, Delaroche shrugged.

  “Leave her to the dogs.”

  As the booted feet receded into the distance, Amy could hear Delaroche utter, “We have much to talk about, you and I, Monsieur Selweeck. And you will talk.”

  Richard never looked back.

  Amy stared after the retreating party of soldiers, her indignant cries frozen on her lips, the enormity of the situation only gradually beginning to dawn. She half expected to hear the sounds of a fray, to see a black-garbed figure break away from the group and dart for the shadows. But he didn’t.

  “Amy!” Jane bent anxiously over her. “Lean forward so I can untie you.”

  “They have Richard,” Amy whispered incredulously.

  “I know.” Jane tugged at the tail of the rough-hewn piece of rope. “I saw.”

  “Why didn’t you do anything?” Amy twisted towards Jane, chafing her sore wrists as Jane pulled the rope free.

  “Amy, there were fifteen of them.” Jane thriftily coiled the rope and looped it around her arm. “I considered going for help but it seemed more prudent to wait and see what happened before charging off.”

  Prudent. The word tasted sour on Amy’s tongue. “Well, now you know.” Amy stumbled to her feet. “So let’s go after them!”

  Jane grabbed her by the wrist, making Amy wince as her hand closed around skin chafed by the rope. “Not alone,” Jane protested. “We’ll be no use to him alone. They’ll simply capture us and use us against him.”

  “As they already did.” Amy’s face twisted. “But we can’t leave him there! We can’t! Jane, the Ministry of Police has him! Do you know what they do to people? Oh, God . . . there’s no time to be lost!”

  “Stop that!” Jane shook Amy sharply. “What good do you think you’ll do him running off after him alone?”

  Amy stared at Jane with wide, horrified eyes. “What would you have me do? Sit and wait for him to be executed? Jane, I can’t! I’d rather be caught and tortured!”

  “We will save him.” Jane took a deep breath, her own face pale and miserable in the moonlight. “We will. You wanted to be the Pink Carnation, Amy? Now’s your chance. You need to think like the Pink Carnation. Not like . . . like the heroine of a silly horrid novel running pell-mell into disaster! Show some sense! We need reinforcements and we need a plan,” Jane finished decisively.

  Amy drew a shuddering breath, knowing Jane to be right, and hating it. “His family. We can go to Lord Richard’s town house. There must be some members of his league there who can help us.”

  Amy didn’t waste any more breath; she set off at a run. They both knew the reputation of the Ministry of Police for cruelty. Abuse, torture, even mention of the dark arts. Tales of English agents captured and never seen again. Or, worse—could it be worse?—released as vestiges of their former selves, their minds as broken as their bodies, babbling like village idiots as they limped along on crumpled limbs.

  They ran down twisted streets, past drunken carousers, through puddles of filth. Jane slipped in a patch of mud, and Amy yanked
her upright and hauled her forward.

  Hideous thoughts chased Amy. Oh, heavens, Richard had been right; her involvement had been fatal for him. If he had never met her, he would still be free, not in the hands of a fanatical maniac intent on torturing him for both professional and personal reasons. If she hadn’t been so credulous . . . why hadn’t she realized that Delaroche’s groom was parting with information far too freely? Even a child could have realized it was a trap! But, no, she, Amy, in all her hubris, had just assumed that their instant success was due to her innate knack for espionage, not because she was an unresisting pawn in the hands of the French Ministry of Police. If that weren’t bad enough, she had kept Richard there arguing—what had possessed her to stand there bickering with him in the chambers of the Assistant Minister of Police? Good heavens, she couldn’t have done him more disservice had she been in Delaroche’s pay!

  Being the Pink Carnation had seemed such a grand idea, thumbing her nose at Richard and at Revolutionary France all at once. Why had she never thought of the consequences? She was worse than Deirdre. At least the loathsome Deirdre had merely been thoughtless. She, Amy, had known the risks Richard ran as the Purple Gentian, and set out deliberately to thwart him. She ought to have foreseen the dangers. She ought to have known.

  While her lungs twisted, and her leg muscles ached, Amy played her painful game of If. If she hadn’t let wounded pride rule her . . . If, if, if. If she had only told him in the garden that she knew who he was, and that she loved him anyway.

  If she could only have him back, she would beg him to forgive her. She would never ever quibble with him over trivialities again. She would revel in the luxury of just gazing at his face. And it wouldn’t even matter if he loved her back, just so long as he was safe and well.

  Amy clutched a tattered image of Richard, his green eyes glinting with mischief, his mobile lips twisted with amusement. Richard with his clever turns of phrase and moments of disarming boyishness. Richard taking her hand and teasing her about thorns.

  They had only been to Lord Richard’s house once before, for tea with Lady Uppington, and even Jane’s excellent sense of direction wasn’t enough to keep them from becoming hopelessly muddled in the tangled streets of Paris. A dangerously long amount of time elapsed before the two scrambled up the steps to Lord Richard’s front door. Amy pounded anxiously with the big metal knocker, knocking over and over until the door jerked open. Amy tumbled over the threshold.

  The silver-haired butler sniffed as though he smelled something nasty (which, as Amy’s clothes had formerly belonged to an undergroom, he probably did), and nudged her recumbent form with one polished toe. “Tradesmen to the back,” he said disdainfully.

  The heavy wooden door began to close.

  “Who is it, Stiles?” Lady Uppington’s voice carried through the hallway, and in the crack of the door left open, Amy could just see her standing at the top of the stairs, like a guardian angel in robe and ribboned nightcap.

  “It’s Amy Balcourt and Jane Wooliston,” called out Amy, struggling to her feet.

  “We’re sorry to call at such a late hour,” Jane added politely.

  “Do move away, Stiles, and let them in!” Lady Uppington declared, hurrying down the stairs. “What . . . ?” The marchioness enjoyed a rare moment of speechlessness as she surveyed Amy’s and Jane’s outlandish attire.

  “It’s Richard,” Amy said urgently, grabbing her hand. “They’ve taken him. The Ministry of Police.”

  In the light of her candle, Lady Uppington’s face went gray. She put the candle down abruptly on the newel of the stairs, and said, “Well, we shall just have to rescue him then, shan’t we?”

  “Mother?” Henrietta tumbled down the stairs in a flurry of white linen flounces. “Is something the matter? Oh, hello, Amy. What are you doing here?”

  Meanwhile, Miles and Geoff had filtered into the foyer from a door down the hall, and the form of Lord Uppington could be seen at the top of the stairs. Lady Uppington set her jaw in a way that reminded Amy painfully of Richard and looked around the expectant faces. “Richard has been taken by the Ministry of Police. Uppington—”

  The marquess didn’t have to wait for his wife to finish the sentence. “I’ll go to Whitworth at the embassy straightaway.”

  “Thank you.” The marquess and marchioness exchanged a look that made Amy’s throat go tight.

  “What happened?” Henrietta scurried across the hall to Amy. “Did the mission go awry? And what was Richard doing there?”

  “Mission? What mission?” As the marquess accepted his hat and coat from Stiles and hastily departed, Lady Uppington turned her attention back to Amy. And to Henrietta. Her anxious green eyes snapped with maternal alarm as she took in her daughter’s diaphanous attire.

  “Henrietta Anne Selwick, put on a dressing gown at once!”

  Her words had somewhat the reverse of the desired effect, since both Miles and Geoff instantly snapped to attention. Miles’s jaw plummeted, and his lips moved in what might have become a whistle had the female in question not been his best friend’s sister. As it was, he couldn’t quite restrain an incredulous, “Zounds, Hen!” Geoff had the grace to look embarrassed.

  Henrietta ignored them both. “But I might miss something,” she protested.

  “You clearly already know about this so-called mission,” Lady Uppington said ominously.

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  Henrietta went.

  Lady Uppington looked around the anxious group in the hall and seemed to come somewhat more to herself. “There’s no point to us all standing about like this,” she declared. “Let’s all go sit down in the drawing room. Geoff, dear, have Stiles bring us some tea—we’re going to need something to fortify us for the evening’s activities. Amy, would you like to explain what happened?”

  Thus marshaled like a small but well-disciplined army, they all followed Lady Uppington into the drawing room, while Amy explained the plan to beat Richard to the gold. She didn’t explain the motivation behind it, but Lady Uppington’s shrewd eyes wrinkled around the corners with something that would, at any other time, have been amusement.

  “It was an excellent plan,” Lady Uppington said, adding nostalgically, “I would have done the same myself.” Seating herself in a large brocaded chair at the front of the room, she said briskly, “That’s all neither here nor there. The important thing is getting Richard out. Geoff?”

  “Yes, Lady Uppington?”

  “Where will they have taken him?”

  Geoff didn’t hesitate before answering. “Delaroche has an extra-special interrogation chamber he uses for important prisoners. He’ll put Richard in a cell for a few hours, let him stew, and then transfer him to the interrogation chamber. None of the rooms on that level of the ministry have windows, so there’s no breaking in that way.”

  “Could we infiltrate the guards?” asked Amy anxiously. “Knock them over the head, take their uniforms, that sort of thing?”

  Geoff shook his head. “I wouldn’t recommend it. There are too many of them.”

  Henrietta barreled through the door, hastily dressed in a dark, high-necked gown with all the buttons in the wrong holes. “Have I missed anything?”

  “We’re trying to rescue your brother,” Lady Uppington replied.

  “Oh, what about bashing the guards over their heads—”

  “You’re a bit late on that one,” Miles cut her off. He looked her up and down, then, as if relieved to see the old, fully clothed Henrietta back, relaxed in his chair and added, “Miss Balcourt has already tried that one.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Henrietta demanded, seating herself next to Amy.

  “Now,” interposed Lady Uppington tightly, “is not the time to bicker. Ah, the tea is here. Henrietta, why don’t you pour?”

  “I do have an idea, actually,” Miles said, with a lofty look at Henrietta, who was scowling over the tea things. “Geoff and I could go to the ministry and pretend to
turn ourselves in. Then we can turn on the guards and—”

  “Bash them over their heads?” finished Henrietta, handing him a cup of tea.

  “Precisely. You learn, my child.”

  “It sounds too uncertain,” Jane broke in thoughtfully. Even wearing offensively dirty men’s clothing and a penciled-on mustache, she still somehow contrived to look neat and composed. “It’s too likely that they would secure you, leaving us with three people to rescue instead of one. I believe we need to move away from the whole subject of bashing, and think of something a bit more subtle.”

  “Infiltration!” blurted out Amy. The polite trappings of the tea party grated on her nerves, and she squirmed in her gilded chair. “Who could we disguise ourselves as?”

  “Geoff does a smashing Fouché impression,” volunteered Miles.

  Five indignant pairs of eyes glowered at him. “I was serious!” Miles protested. “He does! And who better to have free access to the Ministry of Police than the Minister of Police? Think about it!”

  Jane shook her head regretfully. “Unfortunately, Lord Pinchingdale-Snipe doesn’t look at all like M Fouché.”

  “A large hat?”

  “Miss Wooliston is right,” countered Geoff, gulping down his third cup of tea in as many minutes. “Even a big hat can’t disguise our differences in height, and the sentries there see him often enough to have a pretty good idea of what he looks like.”

  Amy stood abruptly. “Let’s just think of something, for heaven’s sake! Haven’t you rescued people before?”

  Geoff perked up for a moment, then shook his head. “Only from the Bastille. We’ve never tried to get anyone out of Delaroche’s lair.”

  On that deflating note, Lord Uppington entered. It was plain to see from the droop of his shoulders that his own task had been equally fruitless.

  “Whitworth was no help,” he said wearily. “He had some sort of row with Bonaparte the other night—over Malta, he said. He was all but packing his own bags when I called. There’s nothing he can do for Richard.”