The Garden Intrigue

trunk with a rounded top.

“Set it up there,” he said impatiently. “Yes, there—no! Carefully, you fool! Don’t you know a Vuitton trunk when you see one? If it’s nicked, I’ll take it out of your useless hide. Hurry, damn you! What?”

A pale figure glided up behind him. Dressed all in white satin with a spangled shawl draped around her shoulders, she looked like a wraith in the torchlight.

“Georges?” she murmured. “Don’t you want to see me?”

“It’s not that I— Of course, my sweet.” Marston juggled with the roll of paper and his temper. “You startled me.”

Emma looked up at him from under her lashes. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She was moving backwards, drawing him with her, step by step, so naturally, he wasn’t even aware of it. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just that…I needed to see you.”

Her shawl slipped on her shoulders, a slow, sensual movement, baring pale skin that seemed to shimmer in the moonlight. Skin or silk? Augustus couldn’t see from where he stood, but his own mouth was dry, his hands curled in fists from the tension of remaining silent.

Marston licked his lips. “Flattered as I am, my darling, it will have to wait. As you can see…” He gestured at the waiting carriage, the restless horses, the coachman on the box. “The tide waits for no man.”

“Five minutes only,” said Emma breathlessly, fluttering her lashes up at him for all she was worth. Her shawl slipped further, revealing skin this time, quite definitely skin, and a décolletage as low as permissive fashion permitted. “I couldn’t let you leave without wishing you luck…properly.”

Or improperly.

Marston wasn’t the one to say no to temptation when it offered itself to him, be it strong brandy, fast horses, or a quick lay.

“Five minutes,” said Marston so condescendingly that Augustus ached to flatten him then and there. He schooled his breathing to stillness. He had agreed to this plan.

Of course, when he had agreed to it, he hadn’t pictured Marston’s eyes on Emma’s bosom, his hands grasping for her waist.

Emma evaded him with a laugh and a wiggle, taking him by both hands. “This way,” she murmured, her voice low and husky. “There’s a nice, soft patch of grass just around the side.…”

She kept up a constant stream of patter, fluttering and promising, as she led Marston around the side of the house, out of the view of the page boys, out of the glow of the carriage lamps.

She did her job well. Marston’s gaze was fixed on his prize, the blood flowing to parts of his body other than his brain.

As Emma released his hands, taking a step back, it took him just one moment too many to spot Augustus lying in wait.

“What the—”

“No need to waste time on the amenities,” said Augustus. “I’ve been wanting to do this for some time.”

His fist connected with the other man’s jaw, sending Marston sprawling backwards. It was meant only to be a warning shot, but the other man’s head slammed back into the side of the wall, hitting the stone with a neat smack. Marston’s eyes opened wide with alarm before rolling back in his head.

Marston slumped down against the side of the house, leaving Augustus standing en garde, feeling slightly cheated.

Augustus inspected his knuckles. Barely grazed. Nice to know that all that boxing during his university days had paid off.

He glanced tentatively at Emma. Even though this had been, in the larger sense, her idea, she might still be put off by seeing her former lover laid out flat in front of her, without so much as an “en garde” for warning.

“Nicely done,” said Emma, retrieving the real plans from where he had stashed them behind a potted plant. Stepping over the unconscious man, she considered the plans for the wave machine, made a little clucking sound at the back of her throat, and plucked them out of Marston’s grasp, adding them to the roll of papers.

“Not exactly sporting…” demurred Augustus.

“He would have hit you over the back of the head and thought nothing of it,” said Emma crisply. Dropping down beside the unconscious man, she plucked his hat from his head and tossed it to Augustus. “Quick. Put that on.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Emma ruthlessly stripped Marston of his cloak. “This, too. You’ll have to pass yourself off as Georges, at least for the first stretch. Once safely away, you can resort to bribery instead.”

“I’ll take a long bath after,” Augustus joked, muffling himself in the cloak as directed.

Emma’s white silk dress shimmered in the moonlight, laughably inappropriate, her feathers and jewels at odds with her determined tone and the fierce set of her shoulders. How could he ever have thought her silly? She was a tiger, a tiger in dove’s clothing, and he had never admired anyone more.

Augustus watched as she crouched down next to Marston’s recumbent form, rifling through Marston’s pockets with more determination than skill. Emma squinted at the writing in the dark, then thrust a crumpled handful of papers up at Augustus. He could dimly make out the official seals at the bottom.

“Here. His papers. These might be useful to you. And,” she added, “he seems to have multiples of them.”

She staggered to her feet, grabbing at the wall for balance. Augustus caught her before she could stumble.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, not looking at him, and twitched away.

“Emma—” How in the hell did they say good-bye? He couldn’t let her go, not now. But what other choice was there? Short of picking her up and flinging her into his carriage à la the pirates in their masque, and that was the sort of thing he didn’t see Emma taking to terribly well.

“Here,” she said quickly. She stripped the diamonds off her wrist and dropped them in his hand, closing his fingers over them. “Take it. It may be paste, but most people see the glitter first and ask questions later. It should get you past at least one checkpoint. As for the others”—she wrenched the earrings from her ears, cascading, elaborate things composed of a dozen or more small stones—“there are these.”

She held them out to him. The looped chains of tiny diamonds swung back and forth, glittering in the moonlight. She looked, Augustus thought, even lovelier without them.

“Augustus?” She thrust the earrings forward. “They’re only paste, really.”

They might be paste, but she was the real thing, diamond to the core.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Augustus said.

Emma bit down on her lower lip. “There’s no need to waste time on that now, not with the carriage waiting.”

Come with me, he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat. He was asking her to risk her life on a frenzied run to the coast, then to entrust herself to whatever band of cutthroats Marston had in his pay.

“You could never be a waste of time,” he said softly.

“With imperial guards in pursuit? You might change your mind. Besides—” She mumbled something. Whatever it was, Augustus didn’t quite catch it.

He leaned forward, breathing in the familiar scent of her, the tickle of her feathers against his nose, trying not to think that this would be the last time, the last time he would smell her perfume, the last time she would make him sneeze.

Come with me.

“Pardon?” he said.

Emma twisted her hands together behind her back, not quite meeting his eyes. “I said…I said there will be plenty of time for that later.” She took a deep breath and lifted her eyes to his. “Once we get to England.”

Chapter 33