The Lure of the Moonflower (5 page)

“—spavined jade.” Instinct—and the raised voice of one of the dragoons—prompted Jack to glance up from beneath his hat.

His younger siblings’ mother used to say that one’s misdeeds always caught up with one, if not now, then later.

In Jack’s experience, it was usually now.

Unless he was much mistaken, that dragoon had bought a horse off him the previous week, in his role as Rodrigo the itinerant horse trader. Jack had also, in the process, lifted some rather interesting dispatches out of the man’s saddlebags, combined with some rather less interesting bills and billet-doux. The man had a taste for expensive tobacco, and his mistress couldn’t spell.

Without hurrying or making eye contact, Jack rose casually from his bench, swaying a bit for effect. With any luck, the dragoon wouldn’t make the connection between Rodrigo the horse seller and Alarico the drunk.

But, just in case, now seemed like a rather good time to answer the call of nature. Particularly as nature was, indeed, calling.

Taking care to stay in his role, Jack lurched and swayed across the room, making sure to wave to acquaintances and step on the odd foot along the way, all the while calculating the distance to the door and from the door to the alley. One yard, two . . .

And he was in the alley.

But he wasn’t alone. One of the dragoons had followed him out. Not the irate one with the illiterate mistress, but the stripling, the one who looked barely old enough to hold his musket, only the shadow of a mustache above his lip, and a weak, pale look to him beneath the regulation hat. He moved tentatively along the wall, as if unsure of the exact etiquette of finding a place to relieve himself.

Jack could have told him that. There was no etiquette. But he moved aside all the same, making room for the boy.

And he nearly jumped out of his skin as he heard the voice of the Pink Carnation say, “There’s about to be trouble.”

J
ack pulled up his breeches in record time.

“What in the blazes are you doing here?” he hissed, his fingers clumsy as he tied his laces.

“Watching your back,” said the Pink Carnation equably, which Jack found rather disingenuous, given that his back had not been the part of his anatomy in view.

How in the devil hadn’t he realized it was she? Grudgingly, he could see how it had been done. He might have suspected a man or woman alone, but she had entered as part of a group—a group already so inebriated that the addition of an extra to their party had occasioned no comment, in that stage of drunkenness where people came and went and scenes shifted in dizzying ways. The uniform jacket hid a multitude of details; one’s eye skated over it, seeing just another French dragoon. The uniform was convincingly battered, as though it had been put through a rough march and then unsuccessfully repaired.

And her face . . . Somehow she’d altered even that. The pure lines of her face were broken, changed by that wispy little mustache and the high stock she wore, pushing her chin at an odd angle. Even her eyes looked different, smaller, darker. Makeup, he could see, now that he looked closely. So skillfully applied that only another master of the trade would know it was there.

She’d gammoned him. Skillfully and thoroughly.

Jack jerked his jacket back into place. “Get an eyeful, princess?”

“Don’t be childish.” The Carnation dropped her voice, speaking softly in French. “One of the dragoons knows you.”

“You mean he knows Rodrigo, the trader of horses,” Jack corrected her.

“He says you sold him a lame mare.” Even as she spoke, she was going through the appropriate motions, pretending to unbutton her breeches, wiggling her posterior in those tight, uniform pants. If anyone emerged, they would see only two men, each looking straight ahead, answering nature’s call.

Jack pulled his hat down over his eyes. “The mare wasn’t lame when I sold it to him.”

“Be that as it may, he’s out for restitution.”

“Don’t you mean retribution?”

“Given that it’s your blood he’s after, I wouldn’t quibble about the details.” Her eyes shifted sideways, meeting his. “He’s sent one of his lackeys to lie in wait for you.”

“Only one? I’m insulted.”

The Pink Carnation wasn’t amused. “You haven’t seen the lackey.”

The lackey didn’t worry him nearly as much as the woman standing next to him. Lackeys he’d dealt with before. A blow here, a kick there. He knew how to keep himself alive in a brawl. It was refreshingly straightforward. Unlike the Carnation.

So far, in their brief acquaintance, she’d managed to fool him twice, first as a courtesan, then as a soldier. Jack didn’t like it. It made him feel as though his feet were on shifting ground. He was the one who made the ground shift, thank you very much.

She’d claimed not to speak Portuguese, but why should that be any more true than anything else?

Jack looked at her from under the brim of his hat. “I have the information you need—but you know that already, don’t you?”

The Pink Carnation neither confirmed nor denied. All she said was, “Not here.”

Jack couldn’t argue with that. The alley smelled regrettably of piss, not to mention charred fish. “Where, then?”

The Pink Carnation put a hand at the small of his back and shoved him so that he stumbled nearly into the open doorway.

“Follow my lead,” she murmured, just before she dealt him a stinging slap across the face.

“Thief!” she shouted in French, so loudly that even Bernardo roused from his drunken stupor, lifting his head and looking about with glazed eyes. “Pig!
Canaille!
I paid you ten livres for a horse and what did I get? Not even a donkey!”

Jack held up both his hands in exaggerated pleading. “Please, I swear, monsieur—” His French was convincingly broken. “It was the best mare—”

She cuffed him around the ears. “I’ll have you up before the authorities. Come with me, cretin.” The soldiers at the table had half risen to their feet. The Pink Carnation waved them down. “This one is mine,” she said, her voice convincingly slurred. “Justice!”

And with that, she placed a boot in his back, propelling him forward into the street. Jack didn’t need to feign his stagger as he slipped in the refuse in the gutter. The Carnation grabbed him by the ear, half pulling, half pushing him down the street.

A shadow fell over them as a man stepped out from the alley. Jack hated to admit it but the Pink Carnation had a point about the lackey. He had the physique of a gorilla and the face of a rat. It wasn’t a pleasant combination.

But the Pink Carnation breezed past him with all the arrogance of her class. “You may return to your master,” she said. “I have this
canaille
in my charge.”

And then, just to make sure of the matter, she flipped a coin in the man’s general direction.

Leaving the lackey scrabbling in the dirt, the Carnation marched Jack past the tavern, down a side street, and into a narrow alcove between two buildings.

“We’re safe enough here. They won’t follow.”

“Was that quite necessary?” Jack’s ear hurt and there was a boot-shaped dent in his back.

“I got you out of there, didn’t I?” As the Carnation spoke, she was already stripping off her uniform jacket, revealing a frock coat beneath. She reached into a hole between stones, pulling out a plain black cloak. She swirled it around her shoulders, transforming in a moment from a French soldier to a gentleman out for the evening, her shako hidden beneath a tall black hat.

“You planned that,” said Jack flatly.

“I took the necessary precautions.” The uniform jacket was whisked away, beneath the cloak. Given what he had seen earlier in the day, she made a surprisingly convincing man. It was, Jack realized, the small details, the way she held herself, the way she walked. She had made a thorough study of her craft.

She might, he thought ruefully, even be the bloody Pink Carnation.

“How did you know the cloak and hat would still be here?” he asked accusingly.

“I took a calculated risk.” Her face was completely calm, her hands steady. Jack felt a moment of reluctant admiration. Whatever she was, the woman had nerves of steel. “The streets aren’t safe for a lone French officer after dark.”

“The streets aren’t safe for anyone,” Jack corrected. Any large city attracted its share of bandits and cutthroats; right now, with the city seething with resentment, the danger was multiplied tenfold. “I’ll see you back to your lodgings.”

She didn’t argue. Possibly because she was already walking ahead, speeding her pace slightly, as befitted a gentleman being dogged by a drunk.

“Please, sir,” Jack whined. “Just a coin, sir.” And then, more softly, “You were checking up on me.”

The Pink Carnation shook her cloak free of his grasp. “I speak no Portuguese, Mr. Reid. I have a vested interest in keeping you alive.” They were at the grille that led to her lodgings. “I’ll leave the gate unlocked. Wait ten minutes and then follow.”

She swept up the stairs as Jack squatted in the dirt outside, picking at illusory fleas, and deeply regretting the loss of his old contact. Jack hadn’t liked the man; he had been one of those round-bellied English merchants, full of his own consequence. The man had never been quite able to hide the faint disdain he felt for a half-caste like Jack, but he had done Jack the supreme favor of limiting his involvement to collecting reports, leaving Jack to get on with his own work as he saw fit.

In the eight hours since the Pink Carnation had arrived at Rossio Square, Jack had been beaten with a parasol, outwitted, and kicked.

This did not bode well for their partnership.

He waited a little longer than instructed, just because. Part caution, and partly because it would be deeply satisfying to make the Carnation squirm. Once roughly half an hour had elapsed, Jack slouched his way up the stairs.

The Carnation had removed her mustache and wig, but still wore the tall black boots and uniform trousers, the white leather clinging to her hips and thighs in a way that made Jack’s throat suddenly dry.

She was standing in front of an age-pocked mirror, sponging off the remains of her makeup. Her eyes met Jack’s in the mirror. “You said you had information for me?”

Jack removed his hat, tossing it onto the table. “You shouldn’t leave the door open, princess. Anyone might walk in.”

The Pink Carnation turned, and Jack found himself facing the point of a pistol. It was a very attractive piece of weaponry, chased in silver. It was also primed and cocked.

“If so,” she said calmly, “they would have been given reason to depart.”

“Off this mortal coil?” Since the dress of the evening appeared to be casual, Jack shrugged out of his odiferous jacket, draping it over a chair. Beneath, he wore only a loose linen shirt over his breeches. “Don’t point a weapon unless you intend to use it, princess.”

For a moment their eyes met and held, the challenge simmering in the air between them.

And then the Pink Carnation smiled. Just the briefest crease of the lips, but there was something about it that made Jack feel as though he had dealt a blow, only to find himself windmilling through empty air. The Carnation had removed his target and left him flailing.

She set the pistol gently down on the corner of the table, next to the bowl of water with its stained cloth.

“My aim is true enough,” she said, “but I prefer to use other means when possible. Littering the ground with corpses is the surest way to attract unwanted attention. You said you had news for me?”

There was nothing so dangerous as charm. Not the obvious charm of the courtesan she had pretended to be before, but this, a wry weariness, agent to agent. The intimacy of her boudoir, the matter-of-fact tone—it was all designed to create an illusion of honesty, to convince him that he had peeled away the layers and come to the core of her.

There were oranges in a bowl on the table. Jack took a knife from his pocket and began to pare one, taking his time over it. He flicked a piece of peel aside before saying, “As much as it pains me to admit it, you might be right. There’s a chance—just a chance—that the Queen’s gone north.”

“Yes?” The Carnation was all attention. “What exactly did your informant say?”

Jack looked at her hard. “You tell me.”

The Pink Carnation wrung out her cloth, applying it to the paint beneath her eyes. “It would be disingenuous to say I didn’t understand a word of your conversation”—her voice was slightly muffled from her ministrations—“but a word was the extent of it. As you yourself said, Mr. Reid, it takes longer than a week to learn a language. I was there tonight because—”

“Because?” prompted Jack.

The Pink Carnation’s face emerged from behind the cloth. “Because even if I couldn’t understand the words, I could gauge the man’s movements.”

It was, Jack was quite sure, not what she had intended to say. “All right, then. There have been rumors afoot that the Bishop of Porto is organizing a resistance. The Queen’s servants seem to be operating under the impression that the Queen will come again, and quickly.”

“Not from the sea, but from the north?” the Carnation murmured.

Jack nodded curtly. Laid out, it all sounded ridiculous. “I have an idea as to how it might have been done. The Queen acquired a new confessor just before the fleet left. If this man—priest or no—were to hide the Queen in plain sight, as part of a procession . . .”

“Even the French might think twice before disturbing a party of monks—or endangering a holy relic.” The Pink Carnation was very still, only the flicker of her lashes betraying the rapid thought going on beneath those fine-boned features. “Once outside the city, they could abandon the procession, change their costumes.”

Something about the way she said it made Jack very, very nervous. “We don’t know the route they’ve taken or the manner of their disguise,” he said quickly. “They could be halfway to Porto by now. Or stranded in a gorge.”

Or dead in a ditch. There were a great number of ditches and no shortage of desperate men looking for a throat to cut.

The Carnation set down her cloth. Her face, scrubbed clean, looked deceptively young and ridiculously fair. “Then we must follow.”

For a bright woman, she appeared to have missed the point. “This isn’t France, princess. The roads are piss-poor. The terrain is mountainous. It could take weeks to make Porto, only to find the Queen’s not there.”

The Pink Carnation raised her perfectly tweaked brows. “What else are we to do? Sit in Lisbon and send out pigeons?”

“Yes,” said Jack bluntly. “Let’s say that the Queen’s halfway to Porto. She’s safer there than here.”

The Carnation rose from the bench, the trousers molding themselves to her legs. “Until the French send reinforcements. Do you really believe they intend to stop at Lisbon? They mean to garrison the whole country—and then invade Spain. The Queen won’t be safe until we have her on a boat to Brazil.”

What with the other distractions, it took a moment for the sounds coming out of the Pink Carnation’s mouth to resolve themselves into words. Once they did . . .

Jack shook his head to clear it, feeling much as he had the time a mule had delivered an ill-timed kick to his temple. Was the woman mad? That was the only excuse. She had escaped from an insane asylum. No—she was a French plant, designed to be a blight to sensible, hardworking agents.

“Some of us,” said Jack caustically, “like to stay alive. I can’t vouch for either your safety or mine if we take to the roads.”

“That,” said the Pink Carnation briskly, “is hardly what I expect to hear from Rodrigo, the seller of lame horses.”

“The horse wasn’t— Never mind.” Jack scrubbed his knife off on a fold of his shirt and stuck it back in his sleeve. It wasn’t his fault if certain Frenchmen had never learned to ride.

“You’ve traveled safely the breadth of the country,” said the Carnation, managing somehow to sound entirely sensible. “How is this any different?”

The woman had no idea what she was getting into. Yes, her performance tonight had been without par. She could masquerade convincingly as a courtesan or a French soldier—but could she saddle a mule? Scale the side of a gorge? She was an urban creature, a creature of the drawing room. Oh, all right, and the tavern. But she wasn’t accustomed to the type of terrain they would have to travel.