The Lure of the Moonflower Read online

  And then she arched one brow.

  “If you have done amusing yourself, Mr. Reid,” said Jane, in a voice designed to evoke every governess and schoolmaster who had ever taken a ruler to his palm, “there is work to be done.”

  There was nothing like dignity to make a man squirm.

  Mr. Reid wasn’t so easily broken, however. His eyes moved over her with deliberate insolence, from her smoothly coiled hair to the absurd flounces at her hem. “The Pink Carnation has been in operation for five years, at least. You’re—what? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?”

  She would be twenty-six in February, although there were times when she felt at least twice that.

  Not that Jack Reid should throw stones. He wouldn’t be twenty-six until July, for all that he affected the world-weary air of a corsair who had raided the world twice over and found nothing in it to interest him.

  It was the stubble, Jane decided. If that was stubble and not just artistically applied dirt on his chin. She’d used that trick a time or two herself, when circumstances required her to pose as a man.

  “Age has nothing to do with it,” Jane said quellingly. “Alexander the Great conquered Greece at the age of twenty.”

  Mr. Reid was unimpressed. “Alexander the Great lived in different times.”

  Jane knew what he really meant. “And he didn’t wear a skirt.”

  “Actually, he did. And a rather shorter one.” Jane resisted the urge to tug at her skirt as Mr. Reid conducted a lengthy perusal of the garment in question. “He also had cavalry.”

  “You, Mr. Reid, are my cavalry. Such as you are. You are on loan, Mr. Reid. To the League of the Pink Carnation.”

  “The Pink Carnation in person.” The Moonflower had switched from French to English, his diction clipped, well educated, with just a hint of a lilt. His French was good, but his English was better, laced with a cutting sarcasm. “From reports, I would have thought you would be seven feet tall and carrying a saber between your teeth.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint,” said Jane, “but I left my saber in my other reticule. Now, if we could turn to the matter at hand . . .”

  “Ah, yes. My secondment.” He drew out the word, making it a mockery. “I assume you have orders for me?”

  “Wasn’t the eagle’s nest enough for you? Or do you need documents drawn up by a lawyer and signed in triplicate?” Jane smiled condescendingly at the Moonflower. “It would be an amateur’s error to carry anything in writing. And I, Mr. Reid, am not an amateur.”

  His pose was relaxed, but his eyes were far too keen, sizing her up, ferreting out her untruths.

  “No, you’re not.” It wasn’t intended as a compliment. He folded his arms across his chest, regarding her with unveiled suspicion. “What could so illustrious a figure as the Pink Carnation wish of my humble self?”

  Right now, the Pink Carnation wished him to perdition. Jane suspected the effect was both deliberate and carefully cultivated.

  Jane seated herself in a straight chair, keeping her voice brisk, businesslike. It was always best to start as one meant to go on. She gestured to Mr. Reid to sit. “What do you know about Queen Maria?”

  Instead of sitting, Jack Reid leaned lazily back against the wall. “Other than the fact that she’s stark, raving mad?”

  Jane wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing annoyance. “Other than that.”

  “I don’t know, princess,” said Reid, his voice silky. “You tell me.”

  There were times when Jane dearly missed her old headquarters in Paris, where she had carried out her shadowy activities with a well-trained cadre of underlings who followed her orders without question.

  But Paris was closed to her now.

  Jane kept her voice level. “Queen Maria was meant to take passage on a ship bound for her colony of Brazil.”

  Jack Reid tipped his hat down over his eyes. “She did. I saw her.”

  Jane sat a little straighter. “Did you, Mr. Reid? Did you see her with your own eyes? Or do you merely repeat what others have reported?”

  Jack Reid let his lids sink down over his eyes, the picture of boredom. “It was a closed carriage. But I certainly heard her. You could hear her from here to the Azores.”

  It was hard not to feel just a little bit smug. “What you heard, Mr. Reid, was her sister, Dona Mariana. Dona Mariana shares Her Majesty’s unfortunate malady.”

  Jack Reid shrugged. “The Braganzas are so inbred it’s a wonder they aren’t all barking like dogs. So she wasn’t in that carriage; she was in another one. Either way, she’s halfway to Brazil by now.”

  Jane rose from her seat, resting her hands on the table. “Oh? I gather there was some . . . disorder . . . attending the court’s departure.”

  Jack Reid snorted. “Some? It was a rout. I’ve seen whole armies in retreat with less baggage left behind. But they would hardly forget their monarch.”

  “Are you so sure, Mr. Reid?” Jane strolled towards the window, giving Jack the option of either following or shouting at her back. “From what I have been told, everyone assumed that someone else had seen to the Queen. Her Majesty, it appears, is not an easy charge.”

  Reid remained stubbornly where he was. “She’s mad and she’s violent. There’s more than one of her ladies-in-waiting who would happily see her overboard with no questions asked.”

  “But for the fact that she is the Queen,” said Jane, turning to face him across the room. “That still means something.”

  Reid smiled pityingly. “Does it? I hate to disillusion you, princess, but royal heads have been known to roll. A monarch is as mortal as any other man. Or woman.”

  It sounded like a warning. Perhaps it was. But Jane wasn’t that easily intimidated.

  “It means something to her people. And,” Jane added quietly, “it means something to the men who seek to rule those people. In the wrong hands . . .”

  She didn’t need to say more. Jack Reid gave a low bark of laughter. “Are you telling me that someone spirited the Queen away from the docks? And no one noticed? Try again, princess.”

  Jane met Mr. Reid’s eyes. Between his slouch and her high-heeled slippers, they were nearly of a height. “It was two days before anyone realized that she was missing. By then, it was too late to turn back.”

  Jack Reid’s lips twisted. “I’d always known the Regent wasn’t the sharpest knife in the block, but this—this rises to a new triumph of incompetence. I doff my hat to Don John, the man who lost first his kingdom and then his mother. One wonders what he will manage to misplace next.”

  “They weren’t misplaced,” Jane reminded him. “They were taken. Both of them.”

  Jack Reid shrugged, the muscles of his shoulders moving beneath the rough material of his jacket. “I can’t imagine anyone will miss her. Her son is probably breathing a sigh of relief. Have you considered the option that he might have got rid of her himself?”

  There was something strangely disturbing about that prospect. “You have an odd notion of filial obedience, Mr. Reid.”

  “Obedience ought to be earned, not given as a right.” There was steel beneath his voice, and a vulnerability that he quickly masked by flinging back at her, “Do your parents know where you are?”

  “As much as yours do,” Jane snapped, and then regretted it.

  Reid raised his brows, sensing weakness, probing at the wound. “Ah, but I’m not a gently bred young lady.”

  He was good. She had to give him that. Very, very good. That was her cue, she knew, to protest, to tell him more than she ought.

  But for the fact that she was also good. Very, very good.

  “Whatever Don John may feel, or not feel, for his mother as her son, she is also his queen,” said Jane coolly. “There are practical as well as personal considerations at work. The Regent will hardly be pleased if the French employ the Queen to set
up a figurehead government in Lisbon.”

  Jack Reid watched her with hooded eyes, but he didn’t press the point. “The French already have a figurehead government. It’s called the Regency Council.”

  He was lulling her; he would come back to the attack later. It was a technique she’d used herself.

  “The Regency Council won’t last a month.” Jane had had a week on the boat from London to come to grips with the situation on the ground in Portugal, spending long nights in her cabin reading through one report after another, tackling unfamiliar names, an unfamiliar language. She spoke with more authority than she felt. “You saw what happened in the square. The Regency Council has no authority and Junot has no patience. He’ll dismiss them on some pretext before the year is out. The people place no reliance in the Regency Council. But they do in their Queen. If their anointed Queen tells them to bow to the French, what are the Portuguese people to do?”

  Jack Reid shook his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, sweetheart. If Junot had Queen Maria, he’d have paraded her for all to see.”

  Jane had reached much the same conclusion. She knew General Junot of old, from Paris. He was a man of strong appetites, without the discipline to rule them. Subtlety wasn’t Junot’s strongpoint. “We don’t know who has her. But we need to find out. And get her back.”

  Jack Reid pushed away from the wall, prowling towards her with the graceful, lazy gait of a tiger assessing his prey. “Tell me one thing, princess. Why should the illustrious Pink Carnation waste her time on a small, regional matter such as this? If,” he added, “you are the Pink Carnation.”

  Jane ignored the one point and focused on the other. “When Paris ran away with Helen, was that a small, regional matter?”

  The room wasn’t large, and it felt still smaller with Jack Reid closing the space between them. “Queen Maria is hardly the sort to launch a thousand ships.”

  Jane looked him in the eye, refusing to draw back. “Didn’t she just? If not a flotilla, at least a fleet—a fleet which Bonaparte dearly desires.”

  She’d made him think, she could tell. Reid paused, assessing her. “Even if Bonaparte gets his hands on the Queen, he can hardly order the ships back from Brazil.”

  Jane spoke with confidence. This much she knew. “It’s not just the ships, not anymore. Bonaparte secured the connivance of the Spanish crown for the invasion of Portugal. He has marched troops across the Spanish border, large numbers of troops. How long before he turns on his allies? How long before he lays claim to Madrid, and from there to the entire peninsula? Bonaparte’s goal is a continent under his sole subjection—and Portugal is his gateway.”

  There was a silence and then Jack Reid put his hands together, clapping once, twice. It made a hollow sound in the high-ceilinged room.

  “Very nice,” he said mockingly. “All you need is a few draperies blowing in the background and a spear in your hand and you’ll be the very picture of Britannia.”

  Jane stiffened her spine. “Say what you will. If ever I were needed, it’s here, now. If we can stem Bonaparte’s ambitions in Portugal, we can put paid to his plans for Spain.”

  Jack Reid’s amber eyes were focused on her face, intent. “A large task for one woman acting alone.”

  “But not for the Pink Carnation.” Jane looked the Moonflower in the eye and said deliberately, “I’ve done more with less.”

  It might sound like arrogance, but if they were to work together, she needed him to acknowledge her authority. She was a woman and a young one. In the early days that hadn’t seemed to matter; she had built her league herself, by trial and error, half by accident. It was a game, and she was the one who determined the rules.

  But the game had turned darker somewhere along the way. It had gone from a game of wits to a struggle for survival, where there were no points for cleverness, only for results.

  The way to succeed was to show no vulnerability.

  I should like to lure you off your pedestal. The voice echoed in her memory, flavored with a lilting French accent, a voice she knew far too well for comfort.

  She had ventured off her pedestal once, and found the ground uncommonly hard and rocky.

  She would take the high road, thank you very much.

  Jack Reid held her gaze. Whatever he saw there, the mockery was gone from his voice as he said abruptly, “Have you ever been to Portugal before, princess?”

  “I have not previously had that pleasure, no.”

  Jack Reid stepped back a pace, folded his arms across his chest. “And your command of the language . . . ?”

  Jane raised her chin a little higher. “I speak French, Italian, and German.”

  “But not Portuguese.”

  “I purchased a grammar.” Jane was aware of how ridiculous it sounded, how painfully inadequate.

  “A grammar.” Jack Reid adopted a lilting falsetto. “Excuse me, sir, can you tell me the way to the nearest Moorish ruin?”

  Even as a schoolgirl, she had never sounded quite that daft. “Did you speak Portuguese when you arrived here three years ago, Mr. Reid? You learned. You learned quickly.”

  Jack Reid shot her a quick, incredulous look. “Not that quickly. You don’t have time to engage in introductory grammar. You have, what? A week? Two at best? If you’re to find the Queen before someone else does, you’ll need to move fast.”

  You, not we, Jane noticed.

  “Which is where you come in,” said Jane crisply. “You, Mr. Reid, are to be my mouth and ears. Our first order of operation is to discover whether there were any disruptions to the Queen’s domestic arrangements in the days before the fleet departed.”

  “You mean other than invasion by the French?”

  Jane ignored the sarcasm. “Yes. Once the word came that Junot was on the march, someone laid his plans. We need to go to the palace at Queluz to interview the Queen’s servants, discover who might have got close enough to move her.”

  It shouldn’t be difficult. The palace at Queluz was within easy reach of Lisbon; she’d checked on her map. She would have to rely on Jack Reid for the interviewing, since her Portuguese was still at the rudimentary stage—she had only had a week, after all—but she could observe their faces, their movements, the little tells that often told more than words.

  The Queen’s pavilion at Queluz, the palace where she had been immured since her madness became known, was the obvious place to begin.

  “No,” said Jack Reid.

  “No?” Jane wasn’t used to no.

  “You’re wasting your time at Queluz. Don John picked the palace bare. There’s not a tapestry or an armoire left in the building. He took everything but the stones—and that was only because he couldn’t find a way to pack them. You won’t find anything in Queluz.”

  He sounded very sure.

  “All right, then, Mr. Reid.” Jane hated asking for advice, but he was the expert here, not she. “What do we do?”

  “Cut your losses and go home.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He spoke to her patiently, as to a small child. “I don’t know who you are, or what you’re really after, but I can tell you one thing: you don’t want to be here. This mission is a fool’s game.” As Jane opened her mouth to protest, he said, “You haven’t met Her Majesty. I have. The woman is delusional. She’s violent. And above all, she’s loud. Once you get your hands on her, you’ll have every French troop in Portugal down on you before the Queen can shout, ‘Ai, Jesus!’ Your mission is a fool’s errand.”

  “If so,” said Jane smartly, “why has no one yet discovered her?”

  Jack Reid shrugged. “At a guess? Opiates.”

  “Ah, yes. Opiates.” Among his other dubious activities, Jack Reid had once smuggled opium to a rowdy bunch of bored aristocrats whose Hellfire Club had made a brilliant front for other illegal activities, including a thwarted p
lot to kidnap the King. “I believe you have some experience of those.”

  Jack Reid held out his hands, palms up. “Sorry, princess. I’m out of that line of work. So unless you’ve brought enough laudanum to drug an elephant . . . Queen Maria is about the size of one, and far less amiable.”

  She had just enough powder in the compartment in her ring to send a man deep into drugged slumber. “That, Mr. Reid, is a chance I have to take.”

  “A chance you choose to take, princess. Not I.” He favored her with a benevolent smile that set Jane’s teeth on edge. “My orders were purely observational. That’s what they’re paying me for, and that’s what I intend to do.”

  “Your orders have changed,” said Jane sharply. “When Don John bowed to Bonaparte’s pressure and exiled the English from Lisbon, he exiled our agents as well. You, Mr. Reid, are what is left. For good or for ill.”

  “I see.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a studiedly rustic gesture. “Rare commodities command high prices. Do you care to start the bidding?”

  She had known he was a soldier of fortune, but it set Jane’s teeth on edge all the same. “You’re already being paid.”

  “Not for this.”

  Jane raised her chin. “I can offer you the accolades of a grateful nation.”

  “One can’t eat accolades, princess. Have I committed a betise? My apologies. I ought to have realized that the Pink Carnation is above such base concerns. Myths sup off moonshine and sip drops of dew. There’s no need to bother about such base and vulgar matters as food and lodging. Or expensive gowns.”

  The gown was one of the last of her Paris gowns, refurbished by her own hand. The days when she had money to spare for such things were gone.

  More sharply than she’d intended, Jane said, “I shouldn’t have thought the man who made off with the jewels of Berar would quibble over the odd tuppence.”

  “Ah, we come to the point.” Jack Reid regarded her with mingled resignation and regret. “Shall we abandon this cock-and-bull tale of missing monarchs? If it’s the jewels you’re after, you need only say.” He cocked a brow. “If you want to charm them out of me, you might try a little harder.”