Latin and Greek would do her no good in her mission, but Amy read them anyway, in memory of Papa. Papa had told her nightly bedtime stories of capricious gods and vengeful goddesses; Amy tracked all his stories down among the books in the little-used library at Wooliston Manor. Uncle Bertrand’s own taste ran more towards manuals on animal husbandry, but someone in the family must have read once, because the library possessed quite a creditable collection of classics. Amy read Ovid and Virgil and Aristophanes and Homer. She read dry histories and scandalous love poetry (her governesses, who had little Latin and less Greek, naïvely assumed that anything in a classical tongue must be respectable), but mostly she returned again and again to The Odyssey. Odysseus had fought to go home, and so would Amy.
When Amy was ten, the illustrated newsletters announced that the Scarlet Pimpernel had retired upon discovery of his identity—although the newsletters were rather unclear as to whether they or the French government had been the first to get the scoop. SCARLET PIMPERNEL UNMASKED! proclaimed the Shropshire Intelligencer. Meanwhile The Cosmopolitan Lady’s Book carried a ten-page spread on “Fashions of the Scarlet Pimpernel: Costume Tips from the Man Who Brought You the French Aristocracy.”
Amy was devastated. True, the Pimpernel had botched her father’s rescue, but, on the whole, his tally of aristocrats saved was quite impressive, and who on earth was she to offer her French language skills to if the Pimpernel retired? Amy was all ready to start constructing her own band when a line in the article in the Shropshire Intelligencer caught her eye. “I have every faith that the Purple Gentian will take up where I was forced to leave off,” they reported Sir Percy as saying.
Puzzled, Amy shoved the paper at Jane. “Who is the Purple Gentian?”
The same question was on everyone else’s lips. Soon the Purple Gentian became a regular feature in the news sheets. One week, he spirited fifteen aristocrats out of Paris as a traveling circus. The Purple Gentian, it was whispered, had played the dancing bear. Why, some said Robespierre himself had patted the animal on the head, never knowing it was his greatest enemy! When France stopped killing its aristocrats and directed its attention to fighting England instead, the Purple Gentian became the War Office’s most reliable spy.
“This victory would never have happened, but for the bravery of one man—one man represented by a small purple flower,” Admiral Nelson announced after destroying the French fleet in Egypt.
English and French alike were united in their burning curiosity to learn the identity of the Purple Gentian. Speculation ran rife on both sides of the Channel. Some claimed the Purple Gentian was an English aristocrat, a darling of the London ton like Sir Percy Blakeney. Indeed, some said he was Sir Percy Blakeney, fooling the foolish French by returning under a different name. London gossip named everyone from Beau Brummel (on the grounds that no one could genuinely be that interested in fashion) to the Prince of Wales’s dissolute brother, the Duke of York. Others declared that the Purple Gentian must be an exiled French noble, fighting for his homeland. Some said he was a soldier; others said he was a renegade priest. The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have, had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead, being French, they were forced to say it in their own language.
Amy said he was her hero.
She only said it to Jane, of course. All of the old plans were revived, only this time it was the League of the Purple Gentian to whom Amy planned to offer her services.
But the years went by, Amy remained in Shropshire, and the only masked man she saw was her small cousin Ned playing at being a highwayman. At times Amy considered running away to Paris, but how would she even get there? With war raging between England and France, normal travel across the Channel had been disrupted. Amy began to despair of ever reaching France, much less finding the Purple Gentian. She envisioned a dreary future of pastoral peace.
Until Edouard’s letter.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
“What?” Amy was jolted out of her blissful contemplation of Edouard’s letter, as a blue flounce brushed against her arm.
A basket of wildflowers on Jane’s arm testified to a walk along the grounds, but she bore no sign of outdoor exertion. No creases dared to settle in the folds of her muslin dress; her pale brown hair remained obediently coiled at the base of her neck; and even the loops of the bow holding her bonnet were remarkably even. Aside from a bit of windburn on her pale cheeks, she might have been sitting in the parlor all afternoon.
“Mama has been looking all over for you. She wants to know what you did with her skein of rose-pink embroidery silk.”
“What makes her think I have it? Besides,” Amy cut off what looked to be a highly logical response from Jane with a wave of Edouard’s letter, “who can think of embroidery silks when this just arrived?”
“A letter? Not another love poem from Derek?”
“Ugh!” Amy shuddered dramatically. “Really, Jane! What a vile thought! No”—she leaned forward, lowering her voice dramatically—“it’s a letter from Edouard.”
“Edward?” Jane, being Jane, automatically gave the name its English pronunciation. “So he has finally deigned to remember your existence after all these years?”
“Oh, Jane, don’t be harsh! He wants me to go live with him!”
Jane dropped her basket of flowers.
“You can’t be serious, Amy!”
“But I am! Isn’t it glorious!” Amy joined her cousin in gathering up scattered blooms, piling them willy-nilly back in the basket with more enthusiasm than grace.
“What exactly does Edward’s letter say?”
“It’s splendid, Jane! Now that we’re no longer at war, he says it’s finally safe for me to come back. He says he wants me to act as hostess for him.”
“But are you sure it’s safe?” Jane’s gray eyes darkened with concern.
Amy laughed. “It’s not all screaming mobs, Jane. After all, Bonaparte has been consul for—how long has it been? Three years now? Actually, that’s exactly why Edouard wants me there. Bonaparte is desperately trying to make his jumped-up, murderous, usurping government look legitimate . . .”
“Not that you’re at all biased,” murmured Jane.
“. . . so he’s been courting the old nobility,” Amy went on, pointedly ignoring her cousin’s comment. “But the courting has mostly been going on through his wife Josephine—she has a salon for the ladies of the old regime—so Edouard needs me to be his entrée.”
“To that jumped-up, murderous, usurping government?” Jane’s voice was politely quizzical.
Amy tossed a daisy at her in annoyance. “Make fun all you like, Jane! Don’t you see? This is exactly the opportunity I needed!”
“To become the belle of Bonaparte’s court?”
Amy forbore to waste another flower. “No.” She clasped her hands, eyes gleaming. “To join the League of the Purple Gentian!”
Photo © Sigrid Estrada
The author of eleven previous Pink Carnation novels, Lauren Willig received a graduate degree in English history from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School, though she now writes full-time. Willig lives in New York City.
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