Sarah was the sort of woman her mother was, the sort of woman her mother had wanted to be. She ought to be running a bustling household with a brood of children around her, all good housewifery and Dutch thrift. They had had three children, Emma had been told. She had learned of them one by one, when her mother and brothers had gradually begun writing to her again, slowly resuming the flow of family news and gossip. Two girls and a boy, all dead of the influenza, and Sarah with them, a whole family gone in one cruel blow.
“If you need distraction,” said Emma, “Paris is the place to be. It’s very good at helping one to forget.”
Or, at least, at keeping one so busy one failed to remember. Either way, the result was the same, except in those wee, dark hours of the morning, the ones not filled with balls and the chatter of sophisticated people, when memories, regrets, and doubts came crowding in, one on top of the other, murdering sleep and shattering repose.
She had tried laudanum once, but hated the grogginess that came after. It made her feel less herself, less energetic, less alive. She was left with no recourse but to keep as busy as possible, careening from event to event in the hope that by the time the morning came, she would be tired enough to sleep.
Sometimes it even worked.
There were lines next to Kort’s eyes and circles under them, attributes foreign to the carefree boy Emma had known. He looked at her soberly. “I had forgotten. You know what it is. To lose someone.”
Emma shrugged, toying with the silver fringe of her shawl. It was a flimsy thing, designed more for ornament than warmth. “It was a long time ago.” She didn’t want to talk about Paul, especially not with Kort. It was all too complicated. She slid an arm through her cousin’s, forcing herself to speak cheerfully, “I am being horrid monopolizing you like this, when there are so many fascinating people for you to meet. Shall I introduce you to the reigning beauties of Paris? Or would you rather a poet or philosopher?”
“You sound like you’re offering them up for sale,” said Kort bemusedly.
“Everything in Paris is for sale, in some way or another,” said Emma cynically. “If it bothers you, consider it more a loan. A loan to a favorite cousin.”
Emma cast about for something else to cheer him up. There was her old friend Adele de Treville in the corner, a widow, too, and a merry one. Her husband had died on the expedition to Haiti, along with Pauline Bonaparte’s spouse, victim of the yellow fever that had done more to decimate the French ranks than all the efforts of the rebel army.
Adele had been part of the fellowship at Mme. Campan’s, but Emma wasn’t sure Kort was quite ready for her yet. Adele was a darling, but she couldn’t be called anything but fast. If her conversation made Emma blush, it would horrify Kort. Right now she was talking to—
No. Oh, no.
“You haven’t met our host yet, have you?” Emma babbled, taking Kort by the arm and towing him ungently away from Adele and her companion. There were some things about her life since New York that Kort just didn’t need to know. “I’ve been hideously remiss. I ought to have introduced you straightaway.”
“No, not at all,” said Kort, submitting to being tugged along, like a sturdy vessel in the grip of a particularly determined tug. “I have messages from home I’ve been pledged to deliver. May I call on you tomorrow?”
“You may call on me at any time,” Emma promised him extravagantly, yanking him along behind her. Of all the nights for her past indiscretions to catch up with her, why did it need to be tonight? “My door is open to you at any hour of the day or night. Not literally, of course. There’s a concierge for that. He opens and closes it. The door, I mean. He gets very upset when other people try to do it for him. He takes great pride in his door. I mean, his work.”
Kort looked at her with concern. “Are you feeling quite well?”
“I am merely overwhelmed with the joy of your visit,” Emma lied. “And champagne. Have you had any? It’s really quite excellent. Here, do.”
She thrust a glass at him, looking frantically for a means of escape. If there was anyone she didn’t need Kort to meet…
“Madame Delagardie.”
Too late.
Georges Marston took her hand without it being offered, took it with an assumption of intimacy that made Emma wince and Kort lower his glass of champagne.
“Madame Delagardie,” he said. “It has been too long.”
Chapter 4
For to the fair, all things are fair,
No ill or malice can they see;
And all the while evil’s darkling hand
Descends its way towards thee!
“Emma Delagardie?” repeated Augustus. “Oh, right. Your American friend. The noisy one.”
“Emma is the obvious solution,” Jane said calmly.
In the dusky light, the white fabric of Jane’s skirts blended with the marble of the bench, making her look even farther removed from the mortal realm than usual, a goddess on her pedestal, perfect and pure.
It was hard enough to argue with a goddess, harder when one was mute with love, tongue-tied with infatuation.
It had crept up on him slowly, over the course of months. At first, he had been aware only of admiration, admiration for her calm under pressure, for her endless serenity, for the cool, Grecian good looks that had won her a place in Bonaparte’s court, and the rigorous self-discipline with which she played her chosen role. Augustus had seen so many agents come and go over the years. Some lost their nerve at the first hint of danger; others cracked through boredom, unable to sustain the pretense needed to maintain an alias over an extended period of time.
Not Jane. She made it seem so easy, as effortless and inevitable as the endless washing of waves against the beach. He had to remind himself, sometimes, that she was nearly a decade his junior. She had arrived in France fresh from the seclusion of the English countryside, with no training other than that which she had devised for herself. As far as Augustus could tell, she hadn’t put a foot wrong since.
He had been instructed to liaise with her last summer, over a matter of mutual interest: the capture and containment of the spy known as the Black Tulip. It seemed a reasonable collaboration. The English government had been looking for the Black Tulip for some time; the Black Tulip had vowed to find and eliminate the Pink Carnation.
It wasn’t her professionalism that caught him, or her beauty. It was the humor with which she entered into his ridiculous charades, the glint in her eye as she received his more alarming effusions. Competent, beautiful, and clever.
What man wouldn’t succumb? After years of writing about love, he was finally prey to it, and it hurt like hell. It was the worst of poetic clichés: the poet infatuated, the lady indifferent. It didn’t help that their professional relationship depended upon the endless perpetuation of that particular scenario, exaggerated into farce and played out before the entire audience of Paris society.
“The party at Malmaison is being held in honor of Emma’s cousin, the American envoy,” Jane was saying. “It’s not common knowledge yet, but he’s due to be recalled. This is meant by way of farewell. If anyone has the power to secure your entrée, it will be Emma.”
“Yes, but will she?” Augustus dragged his attention back to the matter at hand. No use in mooning. “Emma Delagardie has no use for me.”
“You mean you have no use for Emma Delagardie. Those are two very different propositions.”
“The woman called my writing an expense of ink in a waste of shame.”
“Clever,” said Jane.
