The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (19 page)

‘Yes. It is.’ The Purple Gentian seized Amy by the shoulders and marched her over to the mirror over the fireplace. ‘You’ – he pointed
at her image in the glass – ‘are a girl.’

‘That’s not exactly an original observation.’ Amy squirmed out of his grasp. ‘And besides, I really don’t see what that has to do with the matter at hand. I—’

‘It has everything to do with the matter at hand,’ the Gentian cut her off. ‘Don’t you realise the sort of risk you’d be putting yourself into?’

‘No more than you do every time you undertake a mission. I understand the danger. And I’m not worried. Really.’

The Gentian’s gloved hands flexed impatiently. ‘Well, you ought to be. You shouldn’t even be here now! It can only be termed criminally idiotic of you to be alone, in the dark, with a man whose identity is entirely unknown to you. With any man, for that matter,’ he ground out.

‘But your identity
is
known to me. You’re the Purple Gentian! And if it’s propriety that you’re worried about, who is there to see us? As long as no one knows you’re here, my reputation is perfectly safe. And
I’m
certainly not telling.’

Richard resisted the urge to drive a fist into the wall. ‘God, Amy, your naïveté is terrifying!’

Neither of them noticed that he had used her first name.

‘I am not naïve,’ she said stiffly. ‘Unless it’s naïve to weigh all the evidence and come to a reasonable conclusion. I’ve read about everything you’ve done. Everything! You’ve always been the very soul of honour. Why would you do so much good for so many people only to behave ill towards me? Is that naïve?’

‘Yes,’ said the Gentian sharply. ‘And what proof do you have that I am the Purple Gentian? I could be a bloody highwayman for all you know.’

‘I felt your ring.’

‘You what?’

‘I felt your ring. When I took your hand, when you first came in. I could feel the shape of the flower engraved on your signet ring through your glove. After all,’ she added smugly, ‘there was no other way I could be sure it was you. I am not quite so naïve as you think.’

‘Minx!’ the Gentian exclaimed with grudging admiration. ‘Subtle, too. I had no idea what you were about.’

‘That’s because I didn’t intend you to.’ Amy basked in his approbation. ‘Does this mean…have I passed?’

Richard closed his eyes. Damn, damn, damn. If he were intelligent, he would leave now, before this ridiculous conversation went any further. Only, given the determined set of Amy’s jaw she would probably try to follow him. Just what he needed: Amy blundering after him down the midnight alleyways of Paris.

He could solve the problem by making her despise him. He could mock her ambitions, belittle her abilities, dwell crudely upon her physical attributes. Within ten minutes, rather than begging him to stay, Amy would be pushing the Purple Gentian headfirst out the window with a boot in his back for good measure. All he had to do was make her hate him.

He couldn’t do it.

‘I am losing my mind,’ muttered Richard.

‘What was that you said?’ Amy asked hopefully.

Ping! Ping! Ping!
The china clock on the mantelpiece rocked alarmingly on its base as its high-pitched chimes rang out the hour.

Amy froze.

‘Midnight,’ Richard said grimly. Blast! If his suspicions were right, Balcourt could be here at any moment.

The last chime of the clock was still reverberating through the room when it was replaced by a very different sort of sound. An uneven series of clumps and thuds filtered softly through the closed French doors. Just on time, Richard thought dourly, listening to the footfalls on the flagstones of the courtyard. Not only Edouard Balcourt, by the sound of it, but a whole series of booted feet.

Damn. He couldn’t allow himself to be found here. Even if Balcourt wasn’t an agent for Bonaparte, Richard’s presence in his study, at midnight, in the company of his young and nubile sister, would be bloody hard to explain.

Swift action was required. So Richard acted. Swiftly.

Grabbing Amy’s arm, Richard pulled her with him behind the curtains of the window seat.

Chapter Sixteen

W
hump!
Amy fell back with a thud against the Purple Gentian’s chest.

Swallowing an automatic exclamation of surprise, she struggled to catch her breath and her balance. She had lost her footing entirely when the Purple Gentian hauled her behind the curtain, and was sprawled across his lap in a very unsettling way. Under her cheek, she could hear his heart beating in rapid staccato through the thin linen of his shirt. That made two of them – her own pulse was racing, whether from sudden movement, fear of discovery, or in imitation of the pulse beating in the masculine chest beneath her, Amy wasn’t sure.

The linen of his shirt pressed warmly against her cheek, lightly scented with the clean, spicy tang of orange peel. Amy pushed against an uncomfortably hard cushion to lever herself up off the Purple Gentian. The cushion shifted beneath her hand in a most uncushionlike fashion, displaying an impressive array of muscles. Oh good heavens, had she just grabbed the Purple Gentian’s thigh? Amy snatched her hand away with a speed that would have done Miss Gwen proud.

Losing her balance, Amy tumbled back against the Gentian. ‘Oof,’ grunted the Purple Gentian.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ Amy mouthed, which was pointless, since she was facing away from the Gentian, but made her feel better anyway.

One would think he might lend her a hand, instead of lying
there, impersonating a cushion. Oh, wait – his hand was pinned under her elbow.

Amy twisted her body to free the Gentian’s hand, winding up with her nose wedged into a citrus-scented sleeve.

From the courtyard, the sound of the men’s voices had become louder, despite the extra barrier of the heavy fabric of the curtain. Not just one voice, but several. Grabbing the end of the window seat for balance, Amy wiggled off the Gentian’s lap. The Gentian emitted a sort of muffled groan. Amy winced, mouthing another unseen apology. She really did have to stop injuring the man if she hoped to convince him to accept her into the League. Squirming around to face the draperies, she tucked her knees up underneath her so that her legs wouldn’t dangle off the edge of the window seat and possibly disturb the fall of the fabric.

Outside, someone dropped something – was that wood splintering? – and a rough voice cursed loudly. It sounded, Amy thought, straining to hear, like that man who had been quarrelling with Lord Richard’s coachman in the courtyard several days ago. Good heavens, was he robbing the house?

Or could this be something to do with the plans of the Purple Gentian? Amy cast a quick, sideways glance at the man on the window seat beside her. His face revealed nothing. Which, Amy thought with a certain amount of aggravation, might have been due to the fact that, between the mask and the hood of his cloak, there was very little of his face revealed to begin with. Amy chafed at the futility of trying to read emotion from the set of someone’s nose.

If the Purple Gentian was to meet Edouard, why was he hiding behind the curtains with her? Why hadn’t the Gentian just shoved
her
behind the curtains, and gone on to his rendezvous with Edouard on his own? Maybe, mused Amy, because he had the good sense to realise that she wasn’t likely to stay where he’d left her.

Amy turned her attention once more to the activity in the courtyard. How frustrating not to be able to see anything! Closing her eyes – not that it made much of a difference, since all she had
been able to see with them open was the dusky fall of the curtain in front of her – Amy tried to concentrate her senses on the noises coming from the garden. Fragmented voices shifted and blended into each other. Against the blur of voices, another thud resounded through the night.

A new voice broke in. ‘Careful with that, you fools!’

Amy’s eyes flew open. ‘It’s Edouard,’ she whispered to the Purple Gentian.

‘Shhh…’ The Purple Gentian pressed a gloved finger to her lips.

He meant only to silence her. But once his finger touched Amy’s lips, Richard found he couldn’t move away. Her lower lip was full and soft under his finger, and even through the leather of his glove, he could feel the gentle exhalations of her breath through her slightly parted lips. Those pink, soft, perfect lips.

Amy’s eyes flew to the Purple Gentian’s face. Her breath stilled as she realised that through the slits of his mask, his gaze was riveted on her mouth. For a moment, time seemed to trail off into inconsequentiality. Amy’s world narrowed to encompass only the Gentian’s intent eyes, and the pressure of his finger against her lips.

Unheeding, unthinking, Richard brushed his finger back and forth along the ripe contours of her lower lip, tactilely memorising each crease, each fold, lingering over the adorable indentation at the centre. When Amy made no move to protest, he traced his way along the lush curves of her mouth to her upper lip.

Amy curled the fingers of her left hand around the edge of the window seat, trying to still the trembling the Gentian’s caress evoked. Little shivers of feeling made their way from her lips down her arms; a quick memory of the tremors Lord Richard had caused on the boat flashed through her mind, but the Gentian’s hand moving from her lips to her hair blotted out any thought of anyone else, or anything else. His fingers slid up through her curls, gently curving her face towards his as they knelt, facing each other, on the wide velvet window seat.

Shutting her eyes, Amy revelled in pure feeling. The feeling of
his fingers twining through the strands of her hair, the feeling of his other hand stroking warm and firm down her back, the feeling of his breath caressing her lips as he moved closer and closer, until his lips were on hers and Amy couldn’t concentrate at all; she couldn’t even think about feeling, because the feelings were too acute for thought.

The Purple Gentian’s arms tightened around her, pulling her intimately against him, her chest pressing against his. With her dress trapped by her knees, Amy’s bodice lurched perilously as the Gentian drew her forward. The linen of his shirt brushed against the exposed flesh of her breasts as his lips brushed gently back and forth along hers. Wanting, needing more, Amy leant into the kiss, moving her hands from their tentative perch by her sides up along the Gentian’s forearms. How wonderful to feel him shiver as she trailed her fingers from his wrist to his elbow, to feel the muscles tense beneath her hands as she slid from elbow to shoulder to –

Amy’s hands clutched at the Gentian’s shoulders as he teasingly touched his tongue to hers.

Neither of them noticed as the sounds in the courtyard faded voice by voice, footstep by footstep to nothingness. Neither of them noticed as a door on the other side of the courtyard clicked shut.

Neither of them noticed as a dark-clad figure on the other side of the windowpane rolled his eyes and melted back into the shrubbery.

Fearing for his sanity or Amy’s virtue – since one or the other of them was going to have to go if matters continued as they were – Richard broke the kiss, wrenching his lips from Amy’s. Their lips parted with an audible pop that made him wince and made her giggle at the absurdity of the sound and the sheer joy of the moment.

Richard, rather doubting that he could survive a repetition of the kiss without the instant application of large blocks of ice, evaded harm’s way by firmly tucking Amy’s head under his chin.

‘You were wrong,’ he murmured ruefully, resting his cheek on top of Amy’s head. ‘You weren’t safe with me.’

‘I feel like Psyche kissing Cupid in the dark,’ Amy said dreamily.

Richard drew Amy’s arms around his back under his cloak.

‘Feel. No wings.’

Amy could hear the smile in the Gentian’s voice. ‘Does that mean if I unmask you, you won’t fly away?’

Richard tightened his grip on Amy’s arms. ‘Don’t even consider it.’

‘You could give me three trials, like Psyche.’

‘With what as the prize at the end? Me, or membership in the League?’

Amy managed the difficult feat of looking at him askance with her nose only inches from his. ‘It would be much easier for me to answer that question if I knew who you were.’

‘What’s in a name? A Gentian by any other name would—’

‘Be an entirely different flower,’ interjected Amy, swatting him on the arm. ‘I refuse to be fobbed off with poor imitations of Shakespeare.’

‘If you don’t like
Romeo and Juliet,
how about a sonnet?’ Richard suggested. ‘‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art—’’

‘Not that easily deterred.’

Amy extricated herself from Richard’s arms – and his cloak, which had tangled around her knees – and hopped off the window seat.

‘Damnation,’ muttered Richard.

‘I’ll ignore that,’ offered Amy generously. ‘And we can go straight to the crucial question of how I’m going to help you restore the monarchy.’

‘When did that topic go from
never
to
how
?’
Richard inquired indignantly, pushing back the velvet drapes. ‘I never even said
if
!’

‘But you thought it, didn’t you?’ argued Amy, with incontrovertible logic. ‘I’m just making things easier by verbalising it for you.

‘Easier for whom?’ Richard grumbled.

‘Now when I search the—’

‘How do you know I’m even planning to restore the monarchy?’ Richard interrupted desperately. He had to say something before Amy assigned herself some sort of ridiculous and dangerous task, on the argument that he would get around to appointing her eventually, so she might as well save everyone trouble by doing it for him. ‘That’s
not on my agenda for this month at all! In fact, the only thing on my mind right now is preventing the invasion of England. Not restoring the monarchy. So there’s no point in you wasting your time. Amy—’

Amy’s large blue eyes snapped open in a way that boded trouble for Richard.

‘You know who I am. You called me Amy.’

The Purple Gentian cast a panicked look over his shoulder at the unlatched window. ‘Let’s ignore that, shall we?’

‘Wait!’ Amy grabbed his cloak in both hands. ‘Do I know you from the Tuilleries reception? From England?’

‘I don’t have time to argue with you.’ The Purple Gentian pulled her to him and pressed a quick, hard kiss on her lips, letting her go so abruptly that she almost overbalanced and tumbled backwards off the window seat into the study. In one polished movement, he swung himself over the windowsill onto the ground below. ‘Till we meet again, Amy.’

‘But when? Where?’ Amy regained her balance and leant out the window after him. ‘You can’t just – oh, drat.’ The Purple Gentian could. He disappeared around the corner of the house with a dramatic swish of his cape.

How could he just run off like that after – ooh! Amy gathered her already ripped skirts together and bunched them up above her knees. Miss Gwen would disapprove, but everything she had done this evening was well beyond the bounds of propriety, so why stop now?

Amy would have liked to have tried to swing off the windowsill like the Gentian, but one quick look down revealed it to be at least a ten-foot drop, all very well when you were the Gentian’s height, but too far a fall to the flagstones for Amy’s comfort. Maybe if she wiggled out one leg at a time, then lowered herself down by her arms?

Oh, for heaven’s sake! By the time she finished figuring out how to climb out of the blasted window, the Purple Gentian could be halfway to England! Amy bravely positioned herself on the edge of
the windowsill, allowed herself one last clutch at the sides of the window, closed her eyes, and jumped.

She landed with a jarring thud, stumbled, and sprinted towards the edge of the house. What she would do when she caught up with the Purple Gentian, Amy wasn’t quite sure, but there would be ample time to figure that out after she had grabbed him by the tail of his cloak and dragged him to a stop. As she rounded the corner of the east wing, she thought she caught the faintest sight of a flutter of fabric swishing around the front of the house. Or was it just her blurry vision giving the illusion of movement? If only she had a lantern!

Ignoring the stitch in her side, Amy put on a new burst of speed. She slipped in something foul smelling, and performed an unintentional arabesque before righting herself and staggering onwards. Oh goodness, was this the gutter she was running in? On second thought, Amy decided she’d rather not know. The enveloping darkness that prevented her from seeing more than the dim outline of the stones of the wall and the rough shapes of shrubs and trees might not be an entirely negative thing. Fortunately, Amy’s breath was coming in such short, sharp pants through her parted lips that it was impossible to smell much anyway.

Finally reaching the end of the house – and mentally upbraiding whichever ancestor had decided he really
must
have a town residence half the length of Versailles – Amy grabbed the wall as she wove around the corner and skidded to a ragged stop just before she would have gone headlong into one of the great iron gates that stood open before the entrance to the cobblestone courtyard.

The gates had been closed after their return from the Tuilleries, Amy was quite sure of it. What were they doing gaping open well past midnight? The gates had to be twelve feet tall, and were, as Amy knew from watching the grooms struggling with them earlier that day, heavy enough to require the efforts of two men to move. Not exactly the sort of door one might accidentally leave ajar. Had Edouard opened them to permit the egress of the Purple Gentian?
Then why the dramatic entrance and exit through the study window?