The Garden Intrigue

Many thanks for the currant cakes. May I entice you to take some supper with me before the opera tonight? You need the feeding more than I do. Champagne, Mme. Delagardie, is not an adequate meal.

Augustus

E. Delagardie to A. Whittlesby

Scold, scold, scold. I’ll mend my ways, my dear Mr. Whittlesby, when you mend yours. You’re quite wrong, you know. Champagne is a perfectly lovely supper and it doesn’t catch in your teeth when you’re trying to talk to people.

Adele would be perfectly willing to play the Pirate Queen should you change your mind. She isn’t so keen on the poetry, but she’s quite eager to try her effect on the gentlemen in breeches. Her effect in breeches, that is. Not that the gentlemen wouldn’t be in breeches too. You know what I mean.

All the arrangements have been made for Malmaison. We are to go up Wednesday along with the principles in the cast. Hortense has arranged for costumes, so all that will be left for us will be to make time for the final fittings in between rehearsals. The rest of the party arrive on Friday and the performance is to take place on Saturday night.

Mr. Fulton faithfully promises to send us our wave maker by Wednesday afternoon so that Americanus might be beset by waves upon the treach’rous seas, or however it is we phrased it.My coach will call for you at eight on Wednesday.

Yes, I do mean eight in the morning. There is one. I had no idea.

In anticipation,

Emma

A. Whittlesby to E. Delagardie

There is, I have heard, a little thing called sunrise, in which the sun reverses the process we all viewed the night before. You might assume such a thing as mythical as those beasts that guard the corners of the earth, but I have it on the finest authority, and have, indeed, from time to time, regarded it with my own eyes.

While I am sure your Mme. de Treville would look very well in breeches, the entire premise behind the piece is the union of Americanus and France, in the person of Cytherea. What message does it send if Americanus runs off with a pirate queen instead? France’s feelings might be hurt. Hell hath no fury like a country scorned.

Are you pleased with the script as it stands? (Or sits or lies?). Given the restraints, I’d say we’ve made quite a creditable job of it. I’ll say no more for fear of enraging the muses. We can gloat comfortably together in the privacy of your carriage tomorrow morning at that most uncomfortable hour.

Eagerly,

Augustus

p.s. I’ll bring my cloak if you bring more currant cakes.

Chapter 14

Sussex, England

May 2004

“Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Huh?” I was still staring after Nigel Dempster. The stripes on his suit were too close together. A little like his eyes. Not like I was prejudiced or anything. It didn’t count as prejudice when it was true. “What?”

Colin was not going to be happy when he heard that his sister’s snake of an ex was on the premises. Admittedly, Colin was already unhappy, but this was going to add a whole new level of awful to a week that was already shaping up to rival one of Dante’s inner circles of inferno. All we needed was a frozen lake and a few upside-down popes. And maybe some little demons with pitchforks.

“About the computer,” said Cate. “That would be really great, if you’re sure it’s okay. There’s only one for the whole crew, and this sound guy keeps hogging it.”

“Oh, right.” It had been only about five minutes since I had contrived my cunning plan to win over a member of the film crew with extra Internet access, but it felt much longer. Back then—before Dempster—I’d only been worried about people walking in on my shower and Colin going after Jeremy with a fish knife. This was just getting more fun by the moment.

But none of it was Cate’s fault.

“Of course, it’s fine,” I said, baring way too many teeth in an attempt to make amends for my abstraction. “Just don’t tell anyone else or we’ll have half the cast knocking down the door. Do you want to come with me now? I can show you where it is.”

Cate fell into step beside me. “Thank you so much. I have a boyfriend at home, and this whole text thing—” Cate waved her phone in the air in illustration. “Well, it’s kind of limiting.”

Listening to someone else’s relationship woes was preferable to trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to gently break to Colin that we had another crisis on our hands.

Or telling him that I had only one month left to live—I mean, date.

I made a sympathetic face at Cate. “How long have you been doing the transcontinental thing?”

“Two weeks.” Cate regarded her mobile with disfavor. “It feels like longer.”

“The whole time zone thing sucks, doesn’t it?” Colin and I had played that game when I was home in New York over Christmas.

It’s funny I had no problem doing math when it involved historical dating, but apply it to time zones or the calculation of a tip and I was completely lost. Hence that two a.m. call that time. His two a.m., not mine. Unfortunately, Colin isn’t really a night owl. It was one of his few drawbacks as a boyfriend.

Cate’s brown curls bobbed in affirmation. “I wouldn’t recommend it,” she said, and I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not.

My gut said not.

My gut wasn’t a happy place. In one month, that would be me. Three months if I pushed it and stayed around for the summer. Our relationship would shrink to an hour at dinnertime—my dinnertime, his bedtime—and an amusing assortment of e-mail forwards, sent less for themselves and more as a placeholder, a shorthand for “Hi! I have nothing to say, but I’m thinking about you!”

We would have less and less to say. Whatever they say about absence making the heart grow fonder, a relationship lies in the daily details, not the grand reunions. Right now, Colin and I were in the process of building up a foundation of shared memories.

I don’t mean the major memories, the groundbreaking moments, but the little, everyday ones that, in their own weird way, last longer and mean more. When I thought about Colin, it wasn’t of our more dramatic encounters. I didn’t dwell on our almost kiss in a ruined monastery or his magnificent fury (okay, fine, so it was more like mid- level pissiness, but the other sounds better for posterity) at finding me going through his aunt’s papers. Instead, what I remembered was the solidness of his arm around me when I tripped on loose gravel in the pub parking lot, or the play of shadow on his face as he stood by the kitchen window, rinsing the dishes before loading them into the antiquated dishwasher.

I liked that Colin, the domestic Colin. Our conversation was less and less about the big issues—politics, religion, the inherent inferiority of the Napoleonic regime—and more and more about whether it was a pub night or a home night, or the recurring debate about who left the lid off the toothpaste tube. (Hint: It wasn’t me.) I’d traded in my daydreams for domesticity. Maybe it sounds unromantic, but it had a solid feel to it. It was real.

At least for now.

“So what’s the deal with Dempster?” I asked my new best friend. “What does a historical consultant actually do?”