The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (27 page)

Right. Now was probably not the best of times to relay
Bonaparte’s plans for invading England, Amy consoled herself. Certainly not over the body of a member of Bonaparte’s military, unconscious though he certainly seemed to be. Could Marston merely be pretending to be unconscious, waiting for them to let go to wreak his revenge? Amy winced as she remembered the sound of the Gentian’s boot connecting with Marston’s chin and quickly discarded the possibility that Marston might be feigning oblivion. The man would have to have a head of steel not to be unconscious. Nonetheless, it probably wouldn’t hurt to wait until they were in a less populated area before relaying her monumental information to the Gentian.

Amy hastily let go of Marston’s feet as the Purple Gentian unceremoniously dumped Marston into a liquid that Amy hoped was spilt wine. Marston’s body landed with a satisfying thump.

Brushing his hands together with the air of a man who considers a job well done, Richard took one last look at the crumpled figure in the gutter. Marston had begun snoring noisily, his mouth flopping open. His gaudy coat was smeared with dirt and mottled with blood. Between the state of his attire and his coarse expression, he looked like nothing more than a servant who had gone brawling in his master’s clothes. All he needed to complete the scene was an empty bottle in his limp hand.

Richard glowered at the fallen body. ‘How could you think I was Marston?’

‘Vanity, thy name is man?’

‘Objecting to being compared to
that
’
– the Gentian jerked a finger over his shoulder at Marston as he took Amy by the arm and steered her towards the river – ‘is not vanity. It’s simple self-respect.’

‘The comparison made sense at the time,’ mused Amy. ‘No! No, I didn’t mean it that way,’ she hastily amended, as the Purple Gentian gave every sign of boiling over like an offended volcano. Taking care to emphasise that she found Marston in no way comparable to the Gentian, Amy explained the series of deductions that had led her to believe Marston must be he.

‘After all, there he was in the courtyard, wearing a black cloak just like yours. What else was I to think?’ she finished.

‘It does make a certain amount of sense,’ the Gentian admitted grudgingly, as they trudged down stone steps onto a pier to wait for one of the small boats that ferried passengers along the Seine for a fee. ‘Though why you couldn’t tell the difference—’

‘I had only met him once, and briefly, at that. And when I found the information…’

The Purple Gentian’s eyes narrowed. ‘The information that was so vitally important that you had to set up an assignation in the middle of the night?’

Amy cast him a sidelong glance. ‘Do we really have to go into all that again?’

‘Yes.’ The Gentian crossed his arms across his chest.

‘You may change your mind when you hear what I have to tell you.’

Even through his cloak and mask, the Purple Gentian radiated scepticism.

‘All right, then. If you really don’t want to hear about Bonaparte’s plans for the invasion of England…’

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘A
bout
what
?’ The Purple Gentian yanked Amy over to the side of the quay with such force that her cloak rippled out behind her like a pennant on a windy day.

‘Bonaparte’s plans! They were under his blotter on his desk.’

Richard’s memory momentarily clicked back to that afternoon, to Amy, flustered, running into him as she raced out of…Bonaparte’s study. He’d been so delighted by the opportunity that her running into him had afforded him, so focused on flirting with her, that it had never occurred to him to wonder why she was scurrying through that particular anteroom.

‘He plans to land a force of one hundred seventy thousand men with twenty-four hundred ships,’ Amy whispered urgently. ‘But Mme Bonaparte has emptied the treasury, so he can’t do it until gold enough to finance the expedition arrives.’

‘So that’s it!’ That was what Murat had been about to say. Nothing could be done until the gold arrived. Richard could have kicked himself. After six years of close contact with the Bonapartes, six years of listening to Bonaparte rant about his wife’s extravagance, you’d think he could have put two and two together. ‘Does he have the money?’

‘That’s the splendid thing!’ Amy hugged the Gentian’s arm in her glee. ‘He’s arranged for a loan – as if he intends to pay it back – from Swiss bankers. It’s due to come in by carriage to a Paris warehouse the night of the thirtieth. Don’t you see, it’s perfect! If we can just—’

‘Intercept the gold before it reaches Bonaparte…’ the Purple Gentian continued for her, grinning broadly.

‘We can stop the invasion of England and topple the government!’

‘Shhhh!’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Amy bit her lip. ‘I got a bit carried away. But can’t you just see it? When that gold doesn’t arrive…’

‘But how do we keep it from arriving?’ The Gentian paced in a little circle around the quay. Amy watched in appreciation, enjoying the way the cape swished about his booted legs as he walked, the way his jaw shifted as he thought through plans. Most of all, she basked in that thoughtless ‘we.’

The Gentian whirled with a particularly satisfying swish. ‘How many men will be guarding it?’

‘The letter didn’t say,’ Amy admitted. ‘Fouché just wrote that it would be heavily guarded, whatever that means.’

‘Stealth, rather than force,’ muttered the Gentian, resuming his circles.

‘What about a smaller version of the Trojan Horse?’

‘A smaller what?’

Perching herself on a piling, Amy explained, ‘In Greek mythology, the Trojan Horse was a—’

The Gentian flapped his cape at her. ‘Stop! I know the story. You want to intercept the Swiss gold with a small wooden horse?’

‘Not exactly.’ Amy swung her legs back and forth as she expounded, her heels hitting the wood block with a series of dull thuds. ‘But you could send a delivery of barrels or something to the warehouse – barrels of something they might want – and when they haul them inside, we can leap out and seize the gold.’

Richard rather fancied the idea of springing out of a brandy barrel, rapier at the ready. ‘Not the vintage you were expecting, gentlemen?’ he would drawl as he leapt out of the cask, brandishing the shining steel of his blade in their astonished faces. With a thrust to the left, and a stab to the right, he’d fight his way through the room, duelling personally with the man in charge, flipping his sword
in an arc across the room. And then he’d deck the man guarding the gold with a quick uppercut, whirling to fight off the three men who’d jump on him from behind. He’d kick the first in the stomach, trip the second, and run through the third. And then he’d make some sort of witty remark. ‘Huzzah for the Purple Gentian!’ his men would cheer.

If only it ever happened that way.

Ruefully, Richard shook his head, forcing himself to abandon his happy dreams of swashbuckling in favour of less glamorous realities.

‘What if they don’t stop to pick up the barrels? If they’re Fouché’s men, they’ll be under strict orders. We could probably float by in a trunk with HUGE TREASURE IN HERE painted in foot-high letters across the top, and they wouldn’t so much as glance at us.’

‘Drat.’ Amy absently kicked at the piling with her heel. ‘That also ruins plan B.’

‘Plan B?’

‘Yes, I thought if the Trojan Horse idea didn’t work, maybe Jane and I could pretend to be dancing girls looking for work, and—’

‘Let’s skip straight to plan C, shall we?’

‘You don’t like plan B?’

Like? What an incredibly inadequate word
like
was. To say that he liked the idea of Amy dressed up as a dancing girl would be like saying that Midas liked gold, or Epicurus liked food, or Miss Gwen liked poking her parasol at people. It didn’t cover the half of it. By the same token, the word dislike didn’t even begin to describe the revulsion that flooded through Richard at the thought of Amy exposing herself to a warehouse full of hardened French operatives. In comparison, it made the whole Marston incident look about as dangerous as a peaceful stroll through Hyde Park at five o’clock at the height of the season. Chaperoned.

‘I
loathe, revile, and detest plan B,’ Richard replied blandly. ‘Next?’

‘Setting the warehouse on fire,’ Amy suggested promptly.

The Purple Gentian stopped his pacing and knelt beside Amy’s
makeshift pedestal. ‘Do you mean to try to burn down the building around the gold?’

Amy decided he really didn’t have to know that burning down the building around the gold had begun as plan F on the walk over, been demoted to plan M, and finally discarded altogether as impracticable. ‘What we could do is start a small fire that will let off a lot of smoke – there must be some way to do that – and someone could start shouting
fire.
With any luck, the guards would panic, and leap out of the building. And even if they didn’t, they would be so preoccupied with putting out the blaze that we could slip inside during the confusion and make off with the gold.’

‘The gold will be heavy,’ the Purple Gentian pointed out, but his tone wasn’t dismissive. He sounded thoughtful.

‘We set the fire, bash them over the head during the confusion, and
then
make off with the gold?’

‘You might have something there. We’d have to find out how the men in the warehouse were to be dressed. My guess is they won’t be in uniform. They’ll more likely be disguised as workmen. If my chaps can slip in and blend with the guards…’

The Gentian hopped to his feet, nearly colliding with Amy’s chin. ‘Wait! How do we know which warehouse it will be? We can’t go up and down the streets setting fire to every warehouse we see.’

Amy gave a little bounce on her perch. ‘And we don’t have to! It’s a lumber warehouse in the rue Claudius. A bit arrogant, don’t you think?’

The Gentian’s lips twisted wryly. ‘They picked the street for the name of the Roman emperor who conquered Britain? Clever. Very clever.’

‘But not clever enough for us!’ Amy’s outstretched hands and eager smile issued an irresistible invitation to the Purple Gentian to join in her exultation.

She laughed delightedly as he bypassed her outstretched hands, and, seizing her around the waist, whirled her in a triumphal circle. Amy felt the muscles of his shoulders move under her hands, the
folds of his cloak swirl about her own legs, and tilted back her head with the dizzying joy of it all. It was better than a fair, better than a play, better than any daydream she had ever devised.

The Purple Gentian’s arms tightened around her as he completed one last whirl. Amy’s body brushed slowly along the length of his as he lowered her to the ground. Amy’s wits seemed to have been shaken away while the Purple Gentian was spinning her in circles. After all, she should be thinking about defeating Bonaparte, not about the shocking intimacy of the Purple Gentian’s cloak entangled with her skirts. Some witty comment was in order, Amy supposed, but the warmth of the Gentian’s body against hers, the warmth of skin seeking skin through thin layers of fabric, made wit well nigh impossible.

With the uncomfortable feeling that somehow she was losing the thread of the conversation entirely, Amy dragged herself back to the matter at hand. ‘Where shall we meet to storm the warehouse?’

The Purple Gentian blinked once. Twice. ‘We?’

The pesky pronoun broke into Richard’s enjoyable contemplation of Amy’s lips. We. There was an ominous ring to that small word.

Amy nodded vehemently. ‘Of course! I can dress up as a workman. What do you think?’

Richard was spared from answering by the swish and bump of a boat pulling in against the quay. Richard silently promised to pay the boatman an extra large tip for extricating him from what would have undoubtedly been a highly uncomfortable discussion. True, he and Amy were bound to tackle the topic – if not each other – before the night was out, but it would be much better, Richard decided unilaterally, if they tackled it at Amy’s door as he dropped her off. That way he could flee into the night when she disagreed with him. Yes, definitely better for all concerned. Shakespeare knew what he was about when he said that discretion was the better part of valour.

On no account would Richard allow the topic to be brought up while they were in the boat. He didn’t care what ruses and distractions he had to employ; the waters of the Seine were cold and
dirty – not to mention, wet – and he had no desire to sample them.

‘You waiting for a ride?’ the boatman called out, punctuating his words by spitting into the water.

‘Yes,’ Richard replied, giving the boatman their destination, and hastily hustling Amy on board before she had a chance to demur. One of Amy’s boots caught on the hem of her dress as Richard helped her over the rim of the boat. She pitched forward, making the boat rock back and forth, and the boatman curse in terms it was good Amy couldn’t understand. Leaping lightly into the boat, Richard caught her before she had done more than stumble.

‘Tourists,’ the boatman muttered, pushing off from the quay.

Richard steadied Amy and helped her down onto the bench. ‘All right, then?’ he asked, settling himself down next to her, one arm around her shoulders – for warmth, of course.

‘At least I didn’t fall
off
the boat,’ joked Amy.

In her stumble, Amy had released her iron grip on her cloak. Richard’s grin turned to a frown. ‘Your dress is torn,’ he said harshly, his arm tightening around her shoulders.

‘Oh.’ Amy glanced down at the long tear stretching from the centre of her bodice all the way to the ribbon marking the high waist of the dress. The fabric flapped open, revealing the filmy fabric of her chemise, and the curves below. Amy hastily pulled the edges back together, her face clouding. ‘That must have happened when I pulled away from Marston. I thought I heard—’

The hand casually resting on her right shoulder clamped into a viselike grip. ‘I should have hit him harder.’

Something in the Purple Gentian’s tone, an intense anger underlying the seeming calm, made Amy’s eyes fly to his face. He
was
angry; it burnt from every line in his face, from the stern cast of his lips to his narrowed eyes. But there was something more, something deeper, something that warmed Amy deep down under her ripped bodice and spread through her like strong spirits.

‘I think you hit him more than hard enough,’ Amy reassured the Gentian, abandoning her hold on the edges of her bodice as she
twisted on the bench to look him full in his face. ‘It’s just a ripped dress. And I broke his nose, which I think is rather more than fair return for some torn fabric, don’t you?’

The Purple Gentian failed to answer. For a moment, Amy was worried that he had been struck ill. His eyes were slightly glazed, and, goodness, crossed. Alarmed, Amy searched for the telltale signs of fever. His forehead didn’t seem to be particularly flushed, but his breathing was certainly coming faster.

‘Are you all right?’

The Gentian’s head waggled in an indeterminate way that could have been either a shake or a nod.

You shouldn’t, Richard was telling himself, as his right hand hovered over the crevice in Amy’s bodice. You really shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t have kissed her back there, in the gardens. Kissing her just made it harder for him to maintain his resolution not to see her – well, not to see her as the Purple Gentian, at any rate. He rather doubted that Lord Richard Selwick would be getting any kisses from Amy for, say, a week, or even two. Agony.

He shouldn’t have kissed her in the Luxembourg Gardens, but he had. And if the kiss in her brother’s study had been a mistake, this last one had been nothing short of a catastrophe; the kiss in the study had been enjoyable, but the kiss in the gardens had set him ablaze. If he gave in to the urge to touch her again, the result was bound to be something on the order of Pompeii: nothing short of mass destruction. There was no logical reason in the world for him to give in to the urge to slip his hand into the tear in Amy’s bodice and every logical reason in the world for him not to.

Illogic had never looked quite so attractive.

In fact, illogic looked remarkably like a pair of well-rounded breasts, rosy areolae more revealed than concealed through the lace trim of a chemise.