The Secret History of the Pink Carnation Read online

  But if he didn’t kiss her, he wouldn’t be obligated to her, and therefore she wouldn’t distract him. It all made perfect sense. Logically.

  Richard glanced at Amy, sitting uncharacteristically silent beside him. She had drawn her knees back up to her chest, and she was staring straight out over the dark waters, biting her lip. It was too dark to discern the colour of her lips, but Richard remembered them well, a surprisingly deep pink against her pale skin, soft, inviting. He remembered watching the way her lips moved as she talked, as she smiled. Biting them was probably making them red and swollen, just as his kisses would. Logic, logic, logic, Richard reminded himself, tilting his head back and staring at the sky. When he looked back, Amy was still biting her lip.

  Richard hastily looked away again.

  ‘What is your brother’s name?’ Richard asked, just to ask something. She couldn’t bite her lip and talk at the same time, could she?

  ‘Edouard,’ Amy replied absently. ‘He’s several years older than me.’

  ‘Edouard.’ Richard sat upright so hastily that his head swam. ‘Not Edouard de Balcourt?’

  ‘Yes! Do you know—’

  ‘Edouard de Balcourt is your brother?’

  ‘You do know him, then?’ Amy asked eagerly.

  ‘We know each other slightly,’ Richard replied cautiously. That was true as far as it went; Richard had done his very best to keep the acquaintance slight.

  ‘Would you tell me about him? Please? Whatever you know. I haven’t seen him since I was five. He doesn’t write much,’ she confessed. Knowing Balcourt, Richard could well believe it. ‘I suppose he’s afraid any letters to England would be searched. What can you tell me about him?’

  ‘Um…’ Richard drummed his fingers against the deck. From the glowing expression on Amy’s face, it was clear that she cherished high hopes of her brother. Blast it all, why should he have to be the one to tell her that her brother was one of the laughing-stocks of Bonaparte’s court? Edouard de Balcourt was a fop, a toady, a man without taste, morals, or scruple. And that was putting it in the most generous way possible.

  How could Balcourt be Amy’s brother? Perhaps he was a changeling? One of them had to be.

  Amy tapped her foot impatiently. ‘So?’ she prompted.

  ‘He doesn’t look like you.’ It was the only harmless thing Richard could think of to say.

  ‘We did a bit when we were younger,’ reflected Amy. She smiled wistfully. ‘Mama always used to say it wasn’t fair that we both took after Papa’s side of the family. Mama’s family was all tall and fair and stately, like Jane, but Edouard and I were both small and dark. Papa was tall, though. When he lifted me onto his shoulders, I thought I could touch the stars.’

  For a moment, Amy lost herself in the memory of bouncing on Papa’s shoulders, grabbing for stars. He had even given her a tiny little diamond bracelet – a string of stars, he had sworn, gathered while she was asleep in the nursery.

  ‘He promised, when I was older, that he would lift me into the night sky so that I could string myself a necklace. A necklace of stars.’ Amy blinked back tears and stared longingly into the sky.

  There were no stars tonight.

  But there was one very silent man beside her, watching her closely, and Amy plummeted abruptly into the present, like Icarus falling from the sky, shaken and a little abashed.

  What had possessed her to reveal so much? Her memories of Mama and Papa were her own, her treasured cache, more precious than any number of necklaces of stars. She spoke of them to no one, not even to Jane, who was the sister of her heart, her one confidante, and the person who knew her better than anyone in the world. Yet it had been so easy to speak of them to Lord Richard. Obviously, her wits had been addled by the almost kiss and the moonlight. People did silly things by moonlight. It didn’t matter that the moon had gone behind the clouds quite some time ago; it was still there, affecting her actions, even if she couldn’t see it.

  Though there was also something about Lord Richard. Something that made it quite easy and natural to confide in him. Something she couldn’t blame on the moon. Something that made Amy feel quite, quite vulnerable, and she wasn’t at all sure she liked it.

  Amy broke the fragile silence by saying with forced bravado, ‘Now that you know all about me, it’s your turn. Why are you going to France?’

  Busy admiring Amy’s courage, Richard spoke without thinking. ‘I’m the First Consul’s director of Egyptian antiquities.’ It was a response he had made so often, to so many people, that it came out by rote.

  Amy blinked. ‘The First Consul’s director of antiquities?’

  ‘Yes, after we returned from Egypt, the First Consul invited me to…’ Richard’s voice trailed off as Amy stumbled clumsily to her feet. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘You weren’t sorry at all, were you?’ she whispered.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You weren’t baiting me, you were saying what you felt, and you weren’t sorry.’

  ‘Amy, I—’ Richard reached up to take Amy’s hands, but she backed away, wiping her hands furiously on her skirt as though to exorcise his touch.

  ‘I don’t understand it.’ Her voice had an edge of tears that lashed him far more harshly than her shouting that afternoon. ‘You’ve been with the French all along. You never left. You’ve been with them the whole time. If you stayed with them, you can’t have thought that what they did was so terrible. Why pretend to be sympathetic when you weren’t? I’ve been such a fool!’

  ‘You’re not a fool. Amy—’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me I’m not a fool! Don’t you dare presume to tell me anything, ever again!’

  Stunned by her outburst, Richard sat staring as Amy whirled like a small dervish in angry circles around the deck.

  ‘I liked you. I trusted you. Oh, goodness, I told you about my parents!’

  More than a little irritated by that string of past tenses, Richard snapped, ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

  He grabbed the railing and yanked himself to his feet.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing!’ Amy waved her arms wildly. ‘It has nothing to do with the fact that you are a rogue and a cad and a bounder and a traitor to your country and—’

  Rogue and cad and bounder had been bad enough, but traitor to his country? Richard had harboured some vague idea of suffering her insults in patient silence, but that was really the utter end.

  ‘Oh, am I?’ Richard advanced with the stealthy prowl of a panther, his voice a low purr more threatening than any growl. ‘Define treachery, Miss Balcourt.’

  Amy noticed the dangerous light in Lord Richard’s green eyes, but somehow the jade glare only fuelled her own rising anger. Rather than backing away, she stomped forward to meet him. ‘Treachery,’ she declared furiously, tipping her head back till her upturned nose practically brushed his chin, ‘is when a man wilfully allies with the enemies of his country!’

  Amy took a half step back, not from intimidation – never that! – but because her neck hurt. Blast the advantage of height! It was thoroughly unfair that he should be able to look down his nose at her in that ridiculously supercilious way, just because some good fairy had waved her wand over his cradle and given him an utterly undeserved collection of inches. If his physique were to mirror his character, why, he should be a nasty, shrivelled, twisted gnome of a man. Not a towering golden Adonis designed to lead innocent females into indiscretions. The injustice of it all rendered Amy even angrier.

  ‘Treachery,’ repeated Amy shrilly, ‘is when an unscrupulous man deceives innocent young ladies into believing he is a – a person of sense and sensibility! When all the while—’

  ‘Innocent?’ roared Richard. ‘Innocent? You’re the one who’s always picking fights with me! You call yourself innocent? I was innocently discussing Egyptology this afternoon, when you hauled off and started abusing my character!’

  ‘That might be because you’re the one in the employ of Bonaparte!’
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  ‘At least I don’t go about throwing stones at other people’s glass houses!’

  ‘Oh no, you’d just guillotine them, wouldn’t you?’

  Richard grabbed Amy by the shoulders. ‘You’ – shake – ‘are absolutely’ – shake – shake – ‘ABSURD!’

  Amy stamped her foot. Hard. On Richard’s.

  ‘That’s for calling me absurd!’

  ‘Owwwww!’ Richard released Amy somewhat more abruptly than he would have liked. How could one small foot pack such a punch? He’d been attacked by grown men who hadn’t managed to cause him quite so much pain.

  Amy backed away from him, visibly seething. ‘Don’t touch me; don’t talk to me; don’t follow me,’ she spat, stalking towards the stairs. ‘I’m going to bed!’

  ‘That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all evening!’ Richard snapped, hobbling after her.

  Amy whirled on one – as Richard now knew – very dangerous little heel. Richard flinched, an involuntary movement that brought a flicker of malicious pleasure to Amy’s blue eyes. It might have just been a stray glimmer of moonlight, but Richard and his aching instep were pretty sure it was malice.

  ‘I thought I told you not to follow me!’

  ‘Do you expect me to sleep on the deck?’ Richard inquired acidly.

  Amy muttered something unintelligible, and started down the short flight of stairs.

  Richard poked her in the shoulder blades, just below her tangled dark curls, which jerked satisfyingly in response. ‘What was that you said?’ he asked.

  Amy’s hands clenched into fists at her sides as she kept walking. ‘I said I’m not speaking to you!’

  ‘Oh, that’s logical,’ drawled Richard.

  Amy emitted an inarticulate noise of great emotion.

  ‘I say, that doesn’t count as speaking, does it?’

  One hand on the door of the cabin, Amy gave an agitated hop that looked like it wanted to be a temper tantrum when it grew up. ‘Just leave me alone!’ she whispered fiercely, yanking open the door. ‘Stay on your side of the room, and leave me alone!’

  ‘Your wish is my command.’ Richard bowed mockingly and disappeared without a sound behind the wall of cloaks.

  Amy flounced over to her side of the partition, promptly tripped over the same portmanteau of Miss Gwen’s that she had whacked into earlier, and experienced no difficulty in convincing herself that it was all Lord Richard’s fault. Amy hopped into her berth, nursing her wounded toes. She had no doubt that, in some roundabout way, the storm that had stranded them on this dratted boat was Lord Richard’s fault, too. Most likely some minor deity he had offended getting back at him.

  ‘I hate him, I hate him, I hate him,’ Amy muttered as she drifted into sleep.

  Within moments, Amy found herself on a balcony outside a ballroom. Through the open French doors came the sound of laughter and music. The candlelight traced intriguing patterns at Amy’s feet, but they failed to hold Amy’s attention.

  She was looking over a garden – a large, elaborate, formal garden, with bowers of roses, a false classical temple on a distant hill, and a large, surprisingly unruly hedge-maze smack in the middle of the patterned paths and beds of flowers. And that’s when she saw him. Practically a shadow himself in a dark, hooded cloak, he slipped out of the maze and swung over the edge of her balcony. Amy reached out an eager hand to help haul him over.

  ‘I knew you’d come!’ Through the kid of his glove, she could feel the signet ring on his hand, a signet ring that bore a small, purple flower.

  ‘How could I stay away?’ he murmured.

  Amy clung to his hand. ‘I so badly want to help you! It’s all I’ve ever wanted! Won’t you tell me who you are?’

  The Purple Gentian ran one gloved finger down her cheek in a way that made Amy shiver with delight. ‘Why don’t I show you?’

  Usually, at this point in the dream – because Amy had dreamt this same dream, not once, but several dozen times, down to the very colours of the flowers in the garden – Amy woke up, anxious, bereft, and more eager than ever to track the real Gentian down to his lair.

  But tonight she watched with quivering anticipation as the Gentian painstakingly undid the knot holding his cloak at his throat, as he slowly pushed back the enveloping hood to reveal a head that glinted gold in the candlelight and a pair of shrewd and mocking green eyes.

  ‘I’ll wager you didn’t expect to see me,’ drawled Lord Richard Selwick.

  Amy woke with a gasp of horror.

  ‘Drat him!’ You would think the nasty cad could at least leave her to dream in peace! Amy punched the pillow, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Lord Richard invaded her slumbers once more, but this time Amy didn’t mind. She dreamt with great satisfaction of pushing Lord Richard off the side of the boat, and then sticking out her tongue at him as he thrashed in the cold waters of the Channel.

  On the other side of the cabin, Richard’s slumbers were equally uneasy – even though he had no idea that Amy was mentally chucking him into the Channel. He had lain awake for some time, alternately fuming over his own behaviour and that of Amy. He had dismissed a ridiculous voice in his head (which sounded unsettlingly like Henrietta’s) that rather caustically informed him that if he wanted Amy’s attention behaving like a seven-year-old was not the best way to go about it. ‘She started it,’ Richard grumbled, and then felt even worse, because, devil take it, he had sunk to the level of arguing with people who weren’t even there. If he continued like this, he’d be more fit for Bedlam than espionage.

  Richard fell asleep while mentally drafting an instructional pamphlet for the War Office entitled Some Thoughts on the Necessity of the Avoidance of the Opposite Sex While Engaged in Espionage: A Practical Guide. The title itself took him some effort to get just right. By the time he finished composing Item One (‘Under no circumstances allow yourself to be drawn into conversation, no matter how well read the young lady in question, or how fine her eyes’), Richard slid seamlessly into a familiar nightmare.

  He was just outside Paris, making his way through the Bois de Vincennes to the rendezvous with Andrew, Tony, and the Marquis de Sommelier. Percy was to meet them at Calais with his yacht and the Comte and Comtesse de St Antoine. Another successful week’s work for the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

  Richard wasn’t feeling particularly buoyed with success; he was still brooding over that last call on Deirdre. She had been arranging flowers from Baron Jerard when he had arrived. Baron Jerard! What sort of rival was that! Forty if he was a day! Richard would be willing to wager the man couldn’t sit the back of a horse for the duration of a hunt, much less pull off dashing rescues with half the military might of revolutionary France in pursuit. It had been the way Deirdre said his name when Richard asked about the flowers that had set Richard off. ‘Baron Jerard called,’ she’d said, and there was just a hint of something secret, something almost smug, only his Deirdre, his perfect, beautiful Deirdre would never possibly be smug. That’s when Richard rashly spilt his secret.

  But when he’d told her…well, what he wasn’t supposed to tell her, she’d just kept on arranging Jerard’s pestilential flowers, and trilled, ‘La, you are droll, my lord!’

  ‘What will it take to convince you, the head of a Frenchman on a platter?’ Richard had cried in anguish, and stormed from the parlour.

  Geoff poked Richard in the ribs. ‘Richard, something’s not right.’

  Blinking, Richard realised they were already at the small shack they used for their rendezvous. And Geoff was right – something was quite, quite wrong. There should have been a scrap of scarlet cloth in one of the rough rectangles that passed for windows. The door of the shack hung ominously ajar.

  The two old friends exchanged a long look, and crept silently along the side of the shack. ‘Ready?’ Richard breathed. Geoff nodded, and they exploded into the hovel. Only to find one man lying twisted on the floor, his clothes dark and wet with his own blood.

  Tony.

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nbsp; And then Geoff uttered the words that Richard couldn’t erase from his brain, not with a hundred bottles of port. ‘Someone must have tipped them off.’

  ‘Damn her!’ Richard cursed, as he thrashed in his sleep. ‘Damn her!’

  Chapter Eight

  Voices in the foyer jolted me out of Amy’s world.

  Expecting to hear only waves lapping against the keel of a boat, the sound of laughter in the next room knocked me unwillingly back into the twenty-first century. I blinked to rid myself of the last phantom images of tarry decks and canvas sails. It took me a moment to remember where I was; my head felt as muzzy as though I’d just taken a double dose of cold medicine. A quick glance around informed me that I was still sprawled out on the Persian rug in Mrs Selwick-Alderly’s drawing room and the fire next to me had burnt down to mere embers from lack of tending. I had no idea what time it was, or how long I’d been reading, but one leg seemed to have gone numb, and there was a vague ache in my shoulders.

  I was experimentally stretching out one stiff leg – just to make sure it still worked – when he appeared in the doorway.

  It was the Golden Man. He of the photograph on Mrs Selwick-Alderly’s mantel. For a moment, in my befuddled state, caught between past and present, I half fancied that he’d just strolled out of the photograph. All right, I know it sounds silly, but I actually took a quick look to make sure the man in the picture was still where he ought to be, frozen in perpetual laughter next to his horse. He was. And on a second glance at the man in the doorway, I picked up the differences I had missed the first time around. The man in the photograph hadn’t been wearing grey slacks and a blazer, and his blond hair had been bright with sun, not dark with wet.