The Garden Intrigue

“It’s always useful to have a poet about,” she said to the young man. “Everyone is hiring them these days.”

“Er, yes.” He dragged his eyes up from his boots, clearly eager to change the topic. “Have you heard the news?”

“News?” Emma lifted a hand in response as her friend Adele de Treville waved at her from across the room. “Oh, do you mean that story about Mademoiselle George and the tenor? Or was it a flautist? I’ve heard it was vastly exaggerated, especially the bit about his being tossed into the Seine naked.”

M. de Lilly shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no. It wasn’t the Seine, it was the fishpond at Saint-Cloud.” There was a strange snorting sound from Mr. Whittlesby’s general direction. M. de Lilly glanced cautiously in his direction before going on. “But that’s not what I meant. Didn’t you hear?”

“Hear what?” asked Emma. If it was better than the flautist in the fish pond, it was bound to be good.

De Lilly drew himself up. “The senate has voted.”

As an attempted grand pronouncement, it fell rather flat.

“How nice for them,” said Emma. Didn’t they do that sort of thing rather frequently? “On what?”

Both men stared at her, united, for the moment, in mutual disbelief.

Mr. Whittlesby cleared his throat, shocked out of his offended silence. “Do you read anything except the fashion papers, Madame Delagardie?”

“Of course. I read Le Moniteur every day.” More like every month, but who was counting. She batted her lashes up at the poet. “How else would I know what my friends are doing?”

Bursting with his news, de Lilly ignored their byplay. “The senate voted,” he said loudly, “and Bonaparte accepted.”

His words were ostensibly directed at Emma, but his eyes were on Whittlesby.

“Should you like me to compose an ode for the occasion?” drawled Whittlesby, just as Emma demanded, “Accepted what?”

De Lilly turned to her, his eyes bright with excitement. “It’s official! Bonaparte is Emperor of the French!”

Chapter 12

What matter kings or princes bold?

Or belted earls with titles old?

All is mere pomp, none can display

The zeal that spurs me on my way.

—Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby, Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts

What in the devil was de Lilly playing at?

Augustus tried to signal his young colleague, but it was no use. Ignorant pup, thought Augustus, too busy capering for a lady’s attention to weigh the risks. Fuming inwardly, Augustus pretended insouciance and mentally began composing a memo to Wickham, listing the various reasons why Horace de Lilly was unsuitable for assignment in the field.

Whatever reaction de Lilly had hoped to elicit, he didn’t get it. Mme. Delagardie blinked. And blinked again. “Emperor? As in…Emperor?”

Avoiding Augustus’s eye, Horace de Lilly nodded vigorously, focusing all his attention on Mme. Delagardie. “I hear you’re to be a lady-in-waiting, Madame Delagardie.”

“A—”

“Lady-in-waiting. It’s a great honor,” said de Lilly earnestly.

Mme. Delagardie didn’t look honored. She just looked stunned.

“My mother was a lady-in-waiting to the former Queen,” de Lilly said importantly, before hastily correcting himself. “I mean, the widow Capet. You’ll probably have an apartment in the palace. And another at Saint- Cloud.”

“Lucky me,” said Mme. Delagardie, with something like her usual frivolity. “What a pity I have a home already.”

Horace looked mildly horrified. “But it’s not about that,” he said. “It’s so you can be at court. It’s—oh, you’re joking, aren’t you, Madame Delagardie?”

“Mmm,” said Madame Delagardie.

“Darling!” Adele de Treville breezed past in a wave of perfume and burgundy silk. Like Mme. Delagardie, she was a widow about town, intimately connected with the Bonapartes and their circle. “I’ve been waving and waving to you from the other side of the room, but you’ve been too busy with this handsome thing to pay me any notice.”

She batted her lashes at Horace de Lilly, who shifted from foot to foot in half pleasure, half embarrassment.

“Do you know Monsieur de Lilly?” Mme. Delagardie said, but it came out by rote, without her usual sparkle.

“Of course, I do.” Mme. de Treville sent a perfunctory smolder in de Lilly’s direction before turning back to Mme. Delagardie. “You’ve heard? We’re to be ladies-in-waiting together. Once Mme. Bonaparte asks us,” she added, as an afterthought. “Won’t it be splendid? Quite like old times. Although we do have nicer dresses now and Mme. Campan doesn’t supervise our gentlemen callers.” She looked up at de Lilly from under her lashes. “You will call on us, won’t you?”

“I couldn’t imagine anything I’d like better!” de Lilly declared gallantly.

For a man supposedly dedicated to the cause of restoring the Bourbon monarchy, de Lilly appeared to be adapting rather well to the new regime. Augustus looked lofty and poetical and kept an eye on his colleague. The sort of incompetence de Lilly had betrayed might merely be incompetence—or something more sinister.

Assessing the younger man blushing under Mme. de Treville’s attentions, Augustus was inclined to go with the former. It wasn’t because of the blush—a man could blush and still be a villain—but because de Lilly had been promised the return of his family’s estates should the Bourbon monarchy be restored to the throne. Bonaparte, while he had invited back the various émigré aristocrats, had made no such promises regarding their property, save for a few special instances.

Even so, if it was merely incompetence, incompetence could kill. They would have to have another little word. In the meantime, though, Augustus had other fish to fry.

Next to him, Mme. de Treville squeezed Mme. Delagardie’s arm. “I’m so glad I found you. But I must dash. I’m dying to call on Hortense. Do you think this makes her a princess now? Or a duchess? What do you call the daughter of an emperor?”

“Hortense?” ventured Mme. Delagardie.

“Oh, you,” said Mme. de Treville. She pressed Mme. Delagardie’s hand. “Call on me soon. We need to coordinate our wardrobes for Malmaison. There’s some heavenly new fabric at Madame Bertin’s. Come shopping with me tomorrow? Without you, I won’t be able to decide on a thing. You will escort me to my carriage, won’t you, Monsieur de Lilly?”

She didn’t wait for him to finish stuttering his consent. With a waft of perfume and a whisper of muslin, Mme. de Treville was gone, towing a bemused Horace in her wake.

“Is she always like that?” Augustus asked.

“Almost,” said Mme. Delagardie apologetically, adding, as though it explained something, “We went to Madame Campan’s together.”

“Did you go to school with everyone in Paris?” Augustus asked. Forget infiltrating the government, all they needed to do was infiltrate Mme. Campan’s school for girls and the entirety of Paris would be at their disposal.

“Sometimes it feels like it.” Mme. Delagardie stared unseeingly at a statue of Apollo. “It doesn’t seem