Which left her, then, with that one, crucial question: Do you love him?
On the stage, Americanus had retired for the night, and the pirates were beginning to creep around Cytherea’s tower. Emma found herself envying Cytherea, not for her beauty, but for the fact that her decisions were made for her. Carried off by pirates, rescued by the hero, she never had to wrestle with her heart or her conscience. There was a divinity that shaped her end: her author.
Whereas Emma…Emma was dithering, and she knew it.
She could toss a coin, she thought wildly. Heads, I love him; tails, I love him not. On the new coinage, the head was Bonaparte’s. That would be an amusing bit of irony right there, the Emperor unintentionally blessing her elopement with his enemy.
“But I must!” came an urgent whisper from the curtains that blocked the entrance to the box.
Emma twisted in her chair, grateful for any distraction. All she could see was a hand being waved about for emphasis, a hand and a bit of lace on the sleeve.
Whoever it was sounded as though he were in a high state of excitement, so excited that he was tipsy with it. “I must see the Emperor right now. I have urgent tidings for him. Important tidings.”
The guard was unimpressed. “The Emperor is not to be disturbed until after the performance.”
“But you don’t even know what my news is,” said the other man indignantly. “I assure you, the Emperor will want to know.”
The curtains moved and Emma could see him at last, Horace de Lilly, in a green waistcoat with cameo fobs. His light brown hair was charmingly tousled around his face, his cheeks pink.
He tugged at the guard’s arm. “Wouldn’t the Emperor want to know about…treason?”
The imperial box was warm, but Emma felt a chill prickle along the skin of her arms. Her nails dug into the arms of her chair. There were many treasons in France, she reassured herself. Georges for one. Treason didn’t necessarily mean Augustus.
De Lilly’s connections were with the aristocratic émigré community. If he were going to denounce anyone, it would be one of his childhood playmates. Perhaps someone had slighted his waistcoat or taken one of his toys away.
The thought didn’t bring the relief it should. Even if not from de Lilly, Augustus was in danger every moment he remained in France. Emma felt a sudden, impetuous need to urge him to flee, flee now. But that was foolish, wasn’t it? He knew what he was doing. He knew the risks.
Even so. Her eyes took in the guards stationed all around the theatre, seeing them as though for the first time. Guards at the imperial box, guards by the stage, guards on the stage, dressed as pirates. The new emperor didn’t stint on precautions, even at his wife’s beloved Malmaison.
The guard at the door took in de Lilly’s youth, his waistcoat, the slight English accent that persisted from a childhood in exile in England. Emma could see him arriving at the same conclusions she had, placing de Lilly in a compartment roughly labeled trouble-making aristo.
“After the performance,” said the guard implacably.
Horace jiggled with frustration, setting his watch fobs jangling. “But by then the poet may have got away!”
The guard pointedly let the heavy velvet curtain drop, right in de Lilly’s flushed face.
On the stage, the first signs of the storm were brewing. Emma could hear the distant rumble of thunder, and the pattering sound of raindrops, cunningly created by pebbles in a jar. Thank goodness for it. It masked the frantic pattering of her heart, clattering a mile a minute. The poet. There was only one man at Malmaison who could, with confidence, be called the poet. The gray silk storm clouds drew together, eked out with a fine haze of mist. At any moment, the full force of the storm’s fury would be unleashed.
Right on Augustus’s unwitting head.
Energy crackled through Emma like lightning; she could feel her fingers tingle with it. The masque was half done, proceeding unevenly but inevitably towards the storm, the sea battle, the reconciliation and happily-ever-afters.
They had an hour.
Leaning forward, she whispered in Mme. Junot’s ear, “There’s something not quite right with the storm machine. I’m going to get someone to fix it.”
Mme. Junot nodded without looking at her. “Good luck,” she whispered back.
Emma appreciated the sentiment. She rather thought she would need it.
She forced herself to move slowly, even though every instinct urged her to run. Her silk skirts dragged on her legs; her fan weighed on her wrist like an anchor. She wanted to shake free of them and sprint, but she confined herself to a measured saunter, smiling and nodding at her acquaintances as she went.
Augustus was standing at the back of the theatre, in the section reserved for those not favored enough to deserve seats. She saw him look up at her, his eyes eager, hopeful.
“The wind machine isn’t working properly,” she said, loudly enough that the people on both sides could hear it. “I need you to fix it. Now.”
The wind machine? They both knew he couldn’t tell one end of a machine from another.
Augustus cloaked his surprise. Her expression was imperious, but her eyes were watchful, her nails digging into the palms of her gloves. All his instincts immediately went on the alert. Something was wrong.
“Immediately, Madame,” he said, with a deep bow, following her through the door, between the laughing courtiers, who were reaching their own conclusions about the urgent summons. Their comments about ballast might not be original, but they certainly made their point.
Emma signaled silence, drawing him several yards away from the theatre, into the lee of a potted tree.
“If this is a seduction attempt…” Augustus began hopefully.
“It’s Horace de Lilly,” Emma said abruptly. “He knows.”
“Of course, he knows. He’s—” Augustus’s brain belatedly kicked back into service. “Wait. How do you know about de Lilly?”
Emma’s face was very pale in the starlight. “He came to the Emperor’s box. He demanded to speak to him. He said he had great tidings to impart. About treason.”
A double cross. He might have suspected it, but much as one played with the idea of drowning on a crossing. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but no one ever expected it. Augustus conjured up the image of old Mme. de Lilly, the spider in her web. She wanted the de Lilly estates back. How better to prove one’s loyalty to the new regime than a bit of double-dealing.
Augustus faced Emma. “What did he tell the Emperor?”
“He didn’t have the chance,” she said, and Augustus felt the weight on his chest lighten. “The guards wouldn’t admit him. They made him wait until after the performance.”
“Which means,” said Augustus, glancing sideways at the theatre, “that I have an hour. At the most.”
An hour. An hour to grab the plans, steal a horse, and get well away before Bonaparte could hear the news and snap into action. He would have to abandon any hope of taking Fulton with him. Fulton might come later, of his own volition. Or not. That wasn’t the worst of it.
Augustus looked wordlessly at Emma, struck silent by the sheer hopelessness of it all. What was there to say? He couldn’t ask her to come with him, riding pillion, on a midnight flight through the night. There wasn’t even time for a proper good-bye.
“Emma—” he said brokenly.
“I have a plan,” Emma blurted out.
“What?”
Diamonds dazzled his eyes as she waved her hands about. Her eyes blazed brighter than the jewels, excited and anxious all at the same time. “I have a plan,” she repeated rapidly. “It may not be the best plan, but—can you trust me?”
“No one better,” he said, and meant it.
Emma lifted her chin. “I’ll get the plans and you find Mr. Fulton. Here’s my idea.…”
As the clocks in the hall chimed eight, a heavily cloaked man stepped out from beneath the tented entrance to Malmaison. A carriage waited for him, small, dark, and sleek,
twin lanterns set on either side of the box casting a thin light over the gravel and the dozing post boys. From the theatre, yards away, came the distant sound of thunder, but outside all was peaceful and silent, save the crunch of the horses’ hooves against the gravel.
The man wore a cloak with the collar turned up around his chin, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over his forehead. Beneath one arm, he carried a roll of paper; behind him hurried a serving man carrying a small trunk with a rounded top.
“Set it up there,” he said impatiently. “Yes, there—no! Carefully, you fool! Don’t you know a Vuitton trunk when you see one? If it’s nicked, I’ll take it out of your useless hide. Hurry, damn you! What?”
A pale figure glided up behind him. Dressed all in white satin with a spangled shawl draped around her shoulders, she looked like a wraith in the torchlight.
“Georges?” she murmured. “Don’t you want to see me?”
“It’s not that I— Of course, my sweet.” Marston juggled with the roll of paper and his temper. “You startled me.”
Emma looked up at him from under her lashes. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She was moving backwards, drawing him with her, step by step, so naturally, he wasn’t even aware of it. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just that…I needed to see you.”
Her shawl slipped on her shoulders, a slow, sensual movement, baring pale skin that seemed to shimmer in the moonlight. Skin or silk? Augustus couldn’t see from where he stood, but his own mouth was dry, his hands curled in fists from the tension of remaining silent.
Marston licked his lips. “Flattered as I am, my darling, it will have to wait. As you can see…” He gestured at the waiting carriage, the restless horses, the coachman on the box. “The tide waits for no man.”
“Five minutes only,” said Emma breathlessly, fluttering her lashes up at him for all she was worth. Her shawl slipped further, revealing skin this time, quite definitely skin, and a décolletage as low as permissive fashion permitted. “I couldn’t let you leave without wishing you luck…properly.”
Or improperly.
Marston wasn’t the one to say no to temptation when it offered itself to him, be it strong brandy, fast horses, or a quick lay.
“Five minutes,” said Marston so condescendingly that Augustus ached to flatten him then and there. He schooled his breathing to stillness. He had agreed to this plan.
Of course, when he had agreed to it, he hadn’t pictured Marston’s eyes on Emma’s bosom, his hands grasping for her waist.
Emma evaded him with a laugh and a wiggle, taking him by both hands. “This way,” she murmured, her voice low and husky. “There’s a nice, soft patch of grass just around the side.…”
She kept up a constant stream of patter, fluttering and promising, as she led Marston around the side of the house, out of the view of the page boys, out of the glow of the carriage lamps.
She did her job well. Marston’s gaze was fixed on his prize, the blood flowing to parts of his body other than his brain.
As Emma released his hands, taking a step back, it took him just one moment too many to spot Augustus lying in wait.
“What the—”
“No need to waste time on the amenities,” said Augustus. “I’ve been wanting to do this for some time.”
His fist connected with the other man’s jaw, sending Marston sprawling backwards. It was meant only to be a warning shot, but the other man’s head slammed back into the side of the wall, hitting the stone with a neat smack. Marston’s eyes opened wide with alarm before rolling back in his head.
Marston slumped down against the side of the house, leaving Augustus standing en garde, feeling slightly cheated.
Augustus inspected his knuckles. Barely grazed. Nice to know that all that boxing during his university days had paid off.
He glanced tentatively at Emma. Even though this had been, in the larger sense, her idea, she might still be put off by seeing her former lover laid out flat in front of her, without so much as an “en garde” for warning.
“Nicely done,” said Emma, retrieving the real plans from where he had stashed them behind a potted plant. Stepping over the unconscious man, she considered the plans for the wave machine, made a little clucking sound at the back of her throat, and plucked them out of Marston’s grasp, adding them to the roll of papers.
“Not exactly sporting…” demurred Augustus.
“He would have hit you over the back of the head and thought nothing of it,” said Emma crisply. Dropping down beside the unconscious man, she plucked his hat from his head and tossed it to Augustus. “Quick. Put that on.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Emma ruthlessly stripped Marston of his cloak. “This, too. You’ll have to pass yourself off as Georges, at least for the first stretch. Once safely away, you can resort to bribery instead.”
“I’ll take a long bath after,” Augustus joked, muffling himself in the cloak as directed.
Emma’s white silk dress shimmered in the moonlight, laughably inappropriate, her feathers and jewels at odds with her determined tone and the fierce set of her shoulders. How could he ever have thought her silly? She was a tiger, a tiger in dove’s clothing, and he had never admired anyone more.
Augustus watched as she crouched down next to Marston’s recumbent form, rifling through Marston’s pockets with more determination than skill. Emma squinted at the writing in the dark, then thrust a crumpled handful of papers up at Augustus. He could dimly make out the official seals at the bottom.
“Here. His papers. These might be useful to you. And,” she added, “he seems to have multiples of them.”
She staggered to her feet, grabbing at the wall for balance. Augustus caught her before she could stumble.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, not looking at him, and twitched away.
“Emma—” How in the hell did they say good-bye? He couldn’t let her go, not now. But what other choice was there? Short of picking her up and flinging her into his carriage à la the pirates in their masque, and that was the sort of thing he didn’t see Emma taking to terribly well.
“Here,” she said quickly. She stripped the diamonds off her wrist and dropped them in his hand, closing his fingers over them. “Take it. It may be paste, but most people see the glitter first and ask questions later. It should get you past at least one checkpoint. As for the others”—she wrenched the earrings from her ears, cascading, elaborate things composed of a dozen or more small stones—“there are these.”
She held them out to him. The looped chains of tiny diamonds swung back and forth, glittering in the moonlight. She looked, Augustus thought, even lovelier without them.
“Augustus?” She thrust the earrings forward. “They’re only paste, really.”
They might be paste, but she was the real thing, diamond to the core.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Augustus said.
Emma bit down on her lower lip. “There’s no need to waste time on that now, not with the carriage waiting.”
Come with me, he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat. He was asking her to risk her life on a frenzied run to the coast, then to entrust herself to whatever band of cutthroats Marston had in his pay.
“You could never be a waste of time,” he said softly.
“With imperial guards in pursuit? You might change your mind. Besides—” She mumbled something. Whatever it was, Augustus didn’t quite catch it.
He leaned forward, breathing in the familiar scent of her, the tickle of her feathers against his nose, trying not to think that this would be the last time, the last time he would smell her perfume, the last time she would make him sneeze.
Come with me.
“Pardon?” he said.
Emma twisted her hands together behind her back, not quite meeting his eyes. “I said…I said there will be plenty of time for that later.” She took a deep breath and lifted her eyes to his. “Once we get to England.”
Chapter 33
The world, once old, is now made young;
Our tale, once told, is now begun;
Love knows no season, age, nor time,
But sings as well in prose as rhyme.
—Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby,
Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts
We,” Augustus repeated. “England. We?”
Augustus blinked at her, as though he, rather than Marston, had sustained a blow to the head.
That wasn’t entirely the reaction Emma had been hoping for. For a man who had been urging her to come live with him and be his love, his reaction savored more of shock than joy.
“Unless you don’t want me,” Emma said quickly. “I quite understand. You’re leaving in haste. The last thing you need is—”
She never finished the sentence. The air swooshed out of her lungs as Augustus swept her into a crushing embrace. There was a pin digging into her shoulder blade, and her right arm was caught uncomfortably somewhere between his chest and her side, but Emma didn’t care, not with her nose squished into his waistcoat and his lips against her hair and Augustus holding on to her as though she were his only port in a storm.
“Want you?” Augustus laughed breathlessly. Emma could feel the shiver of it straight through his chest to hers. His arms, which she had thought as tight as they could go, somehow, impossibly, tightened around her. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone or anything. I want you even though I know it would be better for you to let you go.”
“Just enough for breathing,” croaked Emma.
“For—oh.” His chin nuzzled against her hair. “I didn’t mean to crush you.”
Emma leaned back just far enough to look up at him. “That sort of crushing,” she said softly, “I don’t mind. I—oh!”
Something was grabbing at the back of her skirt. She kicked back and heard a squishy crunch, followed by a loud curse. She turned in Augustus’s arms, treading on his toe as she backed up against him in an instinctive reaction of revulsion.