Marston dropped to his knees in front of her. “Would I joke about this much money? I mean, about our future? They want those plans. Badly.” His hands were crushing hers; she could feel her bones protesting the pressure. “Which means I want those plans. Badly.”
“Georges—” Emma tried to extricate her hands.
“They trust you. They’ll tell you where it is.” He levered himself up, looming over her. Emma could feel the sharp edge of the plinth biting into the backs of her legs as she strained backwards. “I know he has them. I saw them with him in the carriage. He’ll tell you.”
His hands were on her shoulders, crushing, insistent.
“One small thing, Emma,” he urged. “Just this one small thing.”
“Oh, dear,” someone drawled loudly, loudly enough that Marston cursed and let go. “Do I wander unwelcome into Eros’s amorous domain?”
Chapter 22
These sails I spy upon the main
Might offer succor, risk or pain;
Are they mirage or do I see
What my eyes are offering me?
“Yes, you bloody well do,” snarled Georges.
Augustus lounged in the doorway, picking at the lace on his cuffs as though the entire matter were one of extreme indifference to him. Emma felt her chest contract with a dangerous combination of relief and confusion and irritation.
“No,” she said firmly, and stepped around Georges. “Colonel Marston was just going. Weren’t you, Georges?”
Augustus’s eyes narrowed at her use of Georges’ first name, but he didn’t let it spoil his act. Gazing vaguely into the air, he declaimed, “Far be it from a humble votary of the muses to disturb the worship of Venus, but that the pressing concerns of Thespis demand Madame Delagardie’s prompt and immediate assistance.”
Georges cracked his knuckles. “I’ll tell you what you can do with your thespian.…”
Emma felt an absurd bubble of laughter rising in her throat. Naturally, Georges would think it had to with a prostitute. “Not a thespian, Georges. Thespis. The muse of the theatre.”
Augustus looked pained. “Dear lady, much as it pains me to contradict one so fair, I must not, I cannot, be silent when the honor of the magnificent muses rests upon the witness of my humble tongue. Thespis, although a prime mover in the origin of our art, was a mere mortal, an actor. The muses with whom the playwright pleads are Thalia, the queen of comedy, and Melpomene, the dark lord of tragedy, spring and winter, the Persephone and Hades of our theatrical scheme.”
He paused, either because he had said his piece, or because he had run out of breath.
Emma jumped in before Georges decided to end the agony by throttling him. “Mr. Whittlesby requires my help with the masque,” she translated.
“With the burning urgency of a thousand suns,” Augustus assured her solemnly. His eyes met hers. He quirked an eyebrow in unspoken question. Beneath the vapid mask, she could see the concern in his eyes.
Emma shook her head slightly, although what he was asking and what she was answering, she wasn’t quite sure. Part of her wanted to take him by his artfully disarranged collar and shake him. It wasn’t fair. Why did he have to come barging in, being all heroic and concerned, just when she most wanted to resent him?
Georges was brooding over his own wrongs. “If that’s the case, why didn’t he just say so?” He turned imperiously to Emma, dismissing Augustus with a shrug of the shoulder. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”
Emma touched her fingers to Georges’ sleeve, tilting her head coquettishly up towards him, ignoring Augustus for all she was worth. He wasn’t the only one who could play a role.
“I’m afraid it can’t,” she said with false regret. “One would hate to have the Emperor disappointed in our entertainment, don’t you agree?”
No one could argue with the Emperor. It was the trump card to trump all trump cards.
Georges looked at the hand resting on his sleeve, eyes narrowed. Emma wished she were wearing gloves; she felt strangely vulnerable without them, her fingers bare and very pale in the cold, making her rings loose on her fingers.
His other hand closed over hers, tightly. Not so tight as to be punitive, but tight enough to send a message. Emma could feel Augustus shift on the balls of his feet.
“Another time, then.” Georges raised his hand to her lips, deliberately reversing her hand so that his lips touched her palm. “Think about what I told you.”
Turning on his heel, he strode towards the door, only to go sprawling in a most undignified fashion as his shin connected with Augustus’s calf. He let out a bellow of shock and rage as he stumbled, arms flailing, catching himself just before he crashed into Mme. Bonaparte’s French windows.
“Oh, dear,” said Augustus, the malicious glint in his eye belying his vague tone. “Was I in your way?”
Georges didn’t bother to answer. Favoring Augustus with a look of extreme dislike, he wrenched open the door to the hall. He looked back over his shoulder at Emma.
“Remember,” he said, and was gone.
He didn’t slam the door. It might have been less disconcerting if he had.
Bother, bother, bother.
“You shouldn’t have made him angry,” she said shortly, watching Georges’ distorted form in the glass as he made an abrupt turn towards the billiards room, ostentatiously favoring his left leg.
Behind him, in reflection, she could see Augustus, his white shirt misty pale against dark panels.
Instead of responding, he asked, “Are you all right?”
That was all.
To know that someone did care, really cared, but just didn’t care enough…That was worst of all.
Emma took a deep breath, tucking up the ragged ends of her pride. “Perfectly all right,” she said tartly, turning away from the glass.
It was almost a shock to see him in the flesh rather than in reflection, startlingly, corporeally real. Too real. She knew the texture of his cheek, the shape of his scalp, the scent of his skin, so close and yet so far.
“It was very kind of you to intervene,” she said primly. “But there was no need.”
“That’s not the way it looked to me.”
“Georges wouldn’t hurt me. He just wants what he wants.” She added pettishly, “There was no need to come charging in like that. Now he’ll only seek me out and we’ll have to have the whole tiresome conversation all over again.”
Augustus folded his arms over his chest, looking as forbidding as a man in a ruffled shirt could look. “And what if you were in the way of what he wanted?”
“He would be too loath to get blood on his uniform to do anything violent,” Emma said lightly. “Really, Augustus, there’s no need to worry. I can take care of myself.”
“You’re a third of his size.”
Emma self-consciously straightened her spine. “There’s no need to harp on my height.”
Just because Jane was tall…Emma banished the unworthy thought. This wasn’t a competition.
If it was, she wouldn’t win.
