The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (16 page)

Chapter Thirteen

L
ord Richard Selwick regarded the assemblage in the Yellow Salon of the Tuilleries Palace with a yawn. Not terribly much, it seemed, had changed in his two weeks’ absence. Richard resisted the urge to tug at his carefully arranged neck-cloth; the room was uncomfortably warm with the heat of too many bodies and too many candles. Scantily clad women drifted from cluster to cluster like moths flitting from lamp to lamp – only, Richard noted with some amusement, unlike the insects, the ladies stayed as far away as possible from the telling light of the flames. Josephine, herself older than she liked to admit, had draped the candle sconces and mirrors in gauze, but even the gentle light betrayed cheeks layered with rouge.

A burst of raucous laughter sounded from across the room. Over the curled and turbaned heads of the crowd, Richard trained his quizzing glass on the source of the sound. Ah, Marston. Between his long, curly sideburns, Marston’s face was flushed with heat and drink. He had one arm propped against the mantelpiece; the other was gesticulating with a snifter of brandy to an appreciative audience composed of Murat and a couple of other chaps in military attire hung with far more medals than their age made likely. Richard considered wandering over to investigate, but decided he needn’t push his way through the crush of perfumed bodies just yet. From the sound of the guffaws wafting from the fireplace, Marston was telling jokes, not deep secrets.

Richard let his quizzing glass trail about the room. The usual
gossip, the usual flirtations, the usual crowd of underdressed women and overdressed men. It was enough to make one understand why the French were always moaning on and on about
ennui.

‘Who are those provincials with Balcourt?’ Vivant Denon elbowed Richard in his ribs. ‘The two young ones are not ill-favoured, but those clothes!’

Denon, who had headed the scholars in Egypt, and was at present in charge of setting up Bonaparte’s new museum in the Louvre Palace, had very decided ideas about aesthetics. Especially regarding women. Denon’s own elegantly attired mistress, Mme de Kremy, was just two yards away, occasionally sending steamy looks in Denon’s direction. At least Richard hoped they had been intended for Denon; Mme de Kremy was not at all the sort of woman he preferred.

As for the sort of woman Richard preferred… Following Denon’s gaze, Richard sighted Amy Balcourt, one gloved hand lightly resting on her brother’s arm. Richard’s
ennui
evaporated in an instant. With some amusement, Richard noted that Amy fidgeted like a horse at the start of the Derby, straining to see around her brother into the crowded salon. Balcourt had paused in the doorway to exchange pleasantries with Laure Junot, and Amy was not weathering the delay well. As Richard watched, Jane, standing behind Amy with Miss Gwen, leant forward and whispered something in Amy’s ear, to which Amy responded with a quick, rueful smile. Richard started to smile back at her, even though the look had not been intended for him.

‘They should hand all young women from the provinces a fashion plate and march them to the dressmaker before they let them into the Tuilleries!’ Denon was saying.

‘These have the handicap of being from England,’ Richard commented dryly.

‘Ah, that explains it!’ Denon stared unabashedly at Amy and Jane. ‘Those heavy fabrics, those boxy styles, they are so sadly English. As charity to them, we ought to send a boatload of dressmakers across the Channel.’

Richard wouldn’t have called Amy’s form boxy. True, Amy’s dress didn’t hug her body like those of the Frenchwomen, who wore their filmy dresses with only a single slip, dampened to make the fabric cling to their legs (more than one woman had caught her death of cold by doing so in winter, but Frenchwomen seemed to agree that style was worth the risk of death). Instead, Amy’s dress fell gracefully from its high waist, lightly skimming her hips, merely hinting at the feminine form beneath. Next to the plain white lawn worn by the other women, the satin of Amy’s dress glimmered in the candlelight like snow seen by moonlight.

‘Put them in French clothes and they will still be Englishwomen,’ Richard commented admiringly.

Misunderstanding, Denon shook his head. ‘So sad.’

Balcourt had finished introducing his sister to Mme Junot and was beginning to make his way through the crowd towards Josephine Bonaparte, who sat like a queen in state towards the back of the room. As Denon went on about the sad state of fashion on the other side of the Channel, using the purple ostrich feathers stuck in the tight grey knot of Miss Gwen’s hair as a prime example, Richard entertained himself by observing Amy. It couldn’t hurt just to watch her.

All of her reactions passed across her face with the colourful variety of a sky at sunset. Amy’s face flared with interest as her brother introduced her to Mme Campan, one of Marie Antoinette’s former ladies-in-waiting. As Georges Marston folded into an elaborate bow, she blinked incredulously at his gold-embroidered, peacock-blue coat, and giggled something to Jane under cover of her fan that made serene Jane’s eyes water with suppressed laughter. Amy’s lip gave a perceptible curl of distaste as she made her curtsy to Joseph Fouché and Gaston Delaroche, who brooded in the light-hearted assembly like two ravens amidst a gathering of doves. And then Amy’s eyes lighted on Richard.

She tripped over the hem of her dress.

It was just a small stumble, not enough for anyone else to mark,
but enough for Richard to be oddly pleased. Well, one did like to have one’s presence noted. Amy quickly regained her balance and continued walking with her head tilted to prevent Richard from entering her line of vision. So she didn’t intend to acknowledge the acquaintance, did she?

Denon elbowed Richard. ‘You know these Englishwomen, no?’

‘No. I mean, yes, I do know them. We shared the boat over from Dover two days ago. One is Balcourt’s sister, the other his cousin, and the dragon with the purple plumage is their chaperone.

‘Une femme formidable!’
breathed Denon, eyeing Miss Gwen’s plumage with considerable alarm. ‘I feel for you, my friend. These English – their women are lacking of all the social graces. They do not realise that the flirtation, it is an art! The boredom you must have endured upon that ship!’

‘Not at all. You do these ladies an injustice.’ Just because Amy bore him a grudge didn’t mean
he
had to be uncivil. ‘Miss Balcourt – the small, dark-haired one – is surprisingly well read. She has some very original observations about the relations between the Greeks and the Egyptians.’

Denon squinted at Amy’s back through his quizzing glass. ‘Ah, a – how do you call them? – a bluestocking?’

‘She’s certainly not a bluestocking.’ Richard contemplated Amy’s dark curls before adding, very, very softly, ‘I’m not sure what to call her.’

‘An Original, perhaps?’ Denon was peering through his quizzing glass at Amy with an intensity that had his mistress’s fan fluttering indignantly.

‘An Original.’ Richard couldn’t repress a smile as he remembered Amy’s comments on metaphorical cannibalism and the French Revolution. ‘Assuredly.’

On the other side of the room, waiting among the crush of people paying their respects to Mme Bonaparte, Jane whispered to her assuredly Original cousin, ‘How long do you intend to keep your head at that angle?’

‘Is he still looking at me?’

‘No.’ If it was possible to whisper with asperity, Jane did so. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Amy!’

‘I don’t want to have to talk to him. He annoys me.’

‘And if you pretend not to see him, you don’t have to talk to him?’

‘Exactly!’

‘Girls! It is not polite to whisper!’ whispered Miss Gwen.

Amy rolled her eyes at Jane behind her fan.

Resisting the urge to lift one gloved hand to massage her sore neck, Amy lurked behind her fan and contemplated the progress of the search for the Purple Gentian. Or, rather, the lack of progress. Since their arrival, she had eavesdropped on ten conversations with great stealth and skill. As a result, she now knew exactly how deeply M. Murat was in debt to his tailor, where to find the best kid gloves in Paris, and that a Mme Rochefort, whomever that might be, was supposedly engaging in illicit amorous relations with her footman, or maybe her groom (the woman in the large, green-silk turban telling the story hadn’t been entirely clear on that point). Unless the energetic Mme Rochefort somehow knew the identity of the Purple Gentian and could be blackmailed, Amy really didn’t see how any of this information could be the slightest bit useful.

As for the Gentian himself… Amy had dismissed most of the guests as far too French. Unless the Gentian were merely aping the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Gentian’s very name was an indication of his nationality. So far she had met only two men of English extraction. One, a Mr Whittlesby, with hair and sleeves both flowing in romantic disorder, had taken one look at Jane, flung himself prostrate at her blue slippers, and composed an on-the-spot ode to ‘the pulchritudinous princess of the azure toes.’ It didn’t scan. Mercifully, Miss Gwen stepped hard on the poet’s hand, cutting him off with a squeak in the middle of his second stanza. True, it could all be a disguise, but… Amy frowned behind her fan.

Her second candidate, Mr Georges Marston, was, like his name,
only half English, and his bright regimentals were as off-putting in their own way as Mr Whittlesby’s rumpled white linen. But there was a certain bold gleam to Mr Marston’s blue eyes that might bespeak a man of action hidden under all that gold braid.

A hand with plump white fingers reached out and tugged Amy’s fan down to below nose level. ‘Mme Bonaparte, it would please me very much to present to you my sister, Mlle Aimée de Balcourt,’ Edouard was saying in French.

Amy sank into a deep court curtsy. Mme Bonaparte half rose from her chair and nodded in acknowledgment. She smiled very sweetly at Amy and said in French, ‘I knew your dear mother before the Revolution. She was such a dear, lovely woman! Why, when she discovered that I loved roses, she sent me some cuttings I’d been longing to add to my garden. You shall have to come someday to see my little garden at Malmaison, which wouldn’t be nearly so nice as it is but for your darling mama.’

Mme Bonaparte spoke French with a lilting Creole accent that settled on its hearers with the benevolent warmth of island sunshine. Under her diamond diadem, her large hazel eyes gleamed with kindness. Amy had seen drawings of Bonaparte’s wife, and puzzled over her reputation as a beauty. Face-to-face, Amy realised that her beauty resided not so much in regularity of feature, but in the serene goodwill that she seemed to exude as easily as breathing. Amy longed to curl up at her feet like a small child and beg for tales of her parents. But she couldn’t sacrifice all of her plans for a moment of nostalgia. If Mme Bonaparte – and thus all of the court – knew that she spoke French, half of her utility to the Purple Gentian would be lost.

So Amy forced a puzzled look onto her face and said in very bad, broken, schoolgirl French, ‘Remembering the French I am not. The esteemed lady is speaking the English maybe?’

An expression of mild distress crossed Mme Bonaparte’s pleasant face. From the corner of her eye, Amy could see Edouard turning bright red with horror and frustration. ‘I beg your pardon for my
sister, your excellence,’ he began hurriedly, but a pretty blonde girl leant over the back of Mme Bonaparte’s chair and said, ‘There’s no need for apologies, M. de Balcourt!’ Switching to English as poor as Amy’s French, she said carefully, ‘Mama desire to tell to you zat she was ’aving zee acquaintance of your mama.’

Edouard, looking for all the world as though he wished the polished parquet floor to part and swallow him up, performed hasty introductions, presenting the blonde girl as Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte, Mme Bonaparte’s daughter by her first marriage, now married herself to Napoleon’s younger brother Louis. When Miss Gwen stamped heavily on Edouard’s foot, he finally introduced Miss Gwen and Jane as well.

‘I must to you beg pardon for my English
abominable
!’ Hortense said with a self-deprecating wave of her fan. ‘My stepfather, ’ee was not liking of my tutor, so I ’ave lacked for lessons.’

‘Your English isn’t bad at all,’ Jane reassured her. ‘It’s much better than my French, I assure you.’

‘Yes, you do yourself far too little credit!’ While Edouard waxed lyrical in showering the First Consul’s stepdaughter with compliments on her linguistic abilities, Amy found herself seized by the most brilliant of plans. A plan that would secure her access to the palace on a regular basis…

‘I would be happy to teach you English!’ she blurted out.

Hortense looked so delighted and grateful that Amy almost felt guilty for her subterfuge. Almost.

‘Would you
vraiment
?’

‘Of course she will!’ Edouard’s face bore the expression of a man who has sighted the promised land after an uncomfortable session with brimstone and pitchforks down below. His sudden squeeze of Amy’s hand informed her that she was back in her brother’s good graces. ‘The Balcourts are always happy to be of service to the First Consul and his family! When would you like her to begin?’