The Garden Intrigue

“A certain élan? It’s perfect. Admit it.” Emma dipped her pen in the ink, spattering violet drops on Mr. Fulton’s diagram of a new hydraulic pump. “The theme is a nice compliment to both sides and we can have all sorts of fireworks and big booming noises when the various fleets collide.”

“You seem to have forgotten something.”

“Pardon?” Emma was scribbling away busily, her mind far away on the high seas. She hadn’t actually seen the sea since her passage over, a good ten years before, but she had no intention of letting reality be an impediment to imagination. There were such things as wave machines; she had seen them. There would be a storm and a pirate attack.…“We’ll have ships and fireworks and a battle. What can be missing?”

She looked up to meet Mr. Whittlesby’s warm brown eyes. “A heroine.”

“Oh.” Emma ducked her head. He didn’t mean her, of course. There was no reason to feel quite so flustered. “I knew I had you here for a reason. Well, that and the actual writing. You’re quite right, of course. A play wouldn’t be a play without a romance in it. Our heroine can be captured by the pirates. That always goes over well.”

“An American heroine?”

Emma quickly shook her head. “One whose part can by sung by Hortense. But”—now there was an idea—“we might have an American hero. It will be just the thing for my cousin. The younger one,” she specified hastily. Cousin Robert was a charming man, but a bit old to play the romantic lead. If he tried to pull himself up to a tower window, he would probably pull half the scenery down with him. The last thing Emma wanted was to accidentally create an international incident.

Another international incident, that is.

Mr. Whittlesby tapped a finger idly against the corner of the desk. “Does Mr. Livingston intend to remain that long in Paris?”

Sometime in June, cousin Robert had said. Sometime in June was the ship that was meant to take both Kort and Emma away. Just knowing that Kort had booked passage for her without asking her—without so much as mentioning it to her—made Emma see red.

It would serve him right if she conscripted him for a performance without telling him. After all, she just assumed he would want to.

She wouldn’t, she knew. But it was still a lovely thought.

“I can certainly ask him,” Emma said. “The worst he can do is say no.”

“How could anyone possibly flee our shores with such an opportunity to hold him?” There was a strangely sarcastic undertone to Mr. Whittlesby’s words. “Mr. Livingston’s accent will lend a charming verisimilitude to the roll.”

“Art imitating life imitating art? Or do I mean life imitating art imitating life?” Emma bent back over her notes. “Our American hero could be bringing a fleet filled with the bounty of the New World as a pledge to win the heroine’s hand.”

Mr. Whittlesby considered the idea. “Like Marlowe’s promises to his shepherdess? There will I make thee beds of roses / And a thousand fragrant posies, / A cap of flowers, and a kirtle / Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.”

Emma remembered the poem from long ago, from sunny afternoons in the apple tree and stolen moments with a book of poetry among the roses at Mme. Campan’s. Paul had read her Ronsard, but Marlowe she had read for herself.

She grinned at Whittlesby. “You forgot A belt of straw and ivy buds / With coral clasps and amber studs.”

For the first time, he looked at her, really looked at her. His eyes weren’t the simple brown Emma had thought; there was a darker circle around the iris, so deep it looked almost purple. His hair fell loose around his face, too long for fashion, with a natural curl any woman would envy.

He met her line and finished it. “And if these pleasures may thee move, / Come live with me and be my love.”

On the mantel, the clock chimed, three dulcet rings, one after the other.

The chimes struck the silence like a mallet against glass, making it shiver and break. Emma jumped up from her chair, wincing at the screeching noise it made as the legs scraped against wood.

Three? How was it three already?

She rustled through the debris on her desk, speaking and searching at the same time, avoiding Whittlesby’s eyes, brown and violet. “I’m afraid I have an engagement for which I’m already late.”

How did her desk manage to eat papers? After she had faithfully promised she would bring it…Of course, she had also faithfully promised she would be on time this time, and look where she still was.

Better to think of obligations and obligations unmet rather than shepherds and love.

She glanced fleetingly at Whittlesby. “Are you free tomorrow morning? And by morning, I mean afternoon.”

“I believe that can be arranged. After some consultation with the muses, that is.”

Ha! There it was. Emma snatched up the sheet of paper before it could get away again. Paul had insisted that inanimate objects couldn’t have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary.

“Well, as long as your muses don’t wake up too early, I’m sure we’ll all deal very well together.” Opening her reticule, Emma jammed the paper inside, trapping it by clicking the silver clasps shut. Rising from her chair, she held out a hand to Mr. Whittlesby, like a gentleman transacting business. That was what they were, after all, two partners embarked on a joint venture, as merchants might band together to back a ship or share a cargo. “Thank you, Mr. Whittlesby, for being so generous with your time. Tomorrow morning?”

His words were airy but his grip was firm. “I shall fly to you on the fleet feet of Hermes, Madame.”

“Won’t he want them back?” When he looked at her, she shook her head, making a rueful face. “Never mind. It made sense in my head. Many things do.”

Mr. Whittlesby stood aside to let her precede him through the door. “Shall I see you to your engagement?”

“Loath to leave my company?”

“I meant merely that we might speak more of the masque.”

Why did she always say these things? “I didn’t mean—”

He raised his voice, carrying on as though she hadn’t spoken. “We have sadly neglected the spectacle in favor of the substance. The mechanics,” he specified, when Emma looked at him blankly. “Honesty and art demand that I make full confession of my shortcomings. If spectacle there is to be, it must come from some other soul than me. These modern mechanics are beyond my ken.”

He was rhyming again. He hadn’t been before. For a little while, he had been speaking almost normally. He donned rhyme like armor, keeping her at bay. She could have told him he didn’t need to. She flirted without thinking. That was armor, too.

She knew better than to let herself be lulled by the shepherd’s song. “Come live with me and be my love.” She had believed those words once; she had followed them into an early marriage. With the arrogance of youth, she had ignored the nymph’s reply: “The flowers do fade, and wanton fields / To wayward winter reckoning yields; / A honey tongue, a heart of gall, / Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.”

“I had thought to ask Mr. Fulton for help,” Emma said quickly. “The inventor. He created the panorama a few years ago. You must have seen it. Everyone did.”

“Saw it? I wrote a poem about it! ‘An Ode to the Experience of Art in the Round.’ It was much admired in certain circles.”

“I’m sure it was.” With relief, Emma seized on the excuse offered her by the presence of her sedan chair in the courtyard, the bearers ready and waiting. There were still places in Paris where it was easier to take a chair than a carriage. “We do have much to discuss, but, as you see, my chair is already waiting.”

With the ease of long practice, she climbed into her own personal chair, reciting an address to the chairman as she did. She felt the familiar lurch of the chair as they rose to their feet.

Mr. Whittlesby’s face appeared in the chair window. “You go to Madame Hortense?” he asked.

“Yes, to tell her the good news about the masque.” Emma patted her reticule. Paper crinkled beneath her fingers. “And to bring her this.”

Emma nodded to the chairmen and they set the chair into motion, stepping in perfect pace on the uneven