Henrietta let out an indignant gasp. Miles froze, suspended above her.
‘Hen?’ he rasped. ‘Are you all right?’
Henrietta considered. Miles’s heart wrenched in a way that almost distracted him from the clamorous demands of certain parts of his anatomy as Henrietta’s nose squinched and her lips quirked in a heart-stoppingly familiar expression. After an endless moment – as Miles’s arms began to quiver with the agony of holding still – she gave a little nod.
She moved experimentally against him, arching her hips the tiniest bit.
‘I think so.’
‘Are you sure?’ gasped Miles, even though he wasn’t at all sure what he would do if the answer were no. Jump out the window, most likely. He was spared that fate by Henrietta tightening her legs around him in a way that left no doubt as to her intentions. She strained against him, nodding as emphatically as she could, because little jolts of pleasure made speech a perilous prospect at best. She could feel him beginning to move, filling her, his shoulders warm and familiar beneath her hands, the fine hairs on his chest teasing her already sensitive nipples.
Henrietta clung to sanity, fighting the waves of sensation threatening to sweep over her.
‘Miles?’ she said uneasily.
‘Still here,’ he murmured into her ear, his hands moving tenderly over her waist, her hips, stroking, coaxing. Using his hands to gather her closer, he drove deeper and deeper into her, pressing to the very core of her being. ‘Always.’
Henrietta cried out in surprise as pleasure scintillated through her, like a thousand champagne bubbles glistening by candlelight, oscillating and bursting in a golden glow. As she convulsed around him, Miles groaned and surrendered to his own release. Together, they collapsed back against the dusty counterpane in a state of satiated somnolence.
Miles rolled to his side, taking Henrietta with him. She sighed contentedly, fitting herself against his side, one leg thrown over his, and her head tucked in the crook of his neck. Miles rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, enjoying the scent of her hair, the feel of her sweaty skin against his, the pressure of her breast against his side. He ran one hand down the tangled length of her hair, enjoying the silky feel of it beneath his palm. Henrietta gave an irritated wriggle as his finger snagged on a knot, but didn’t say anything.
‘Hen?’ Miles poked her. ‘Are you alive?’
‘Mmm,’ murmured Henrietta.
‘That’s all you have to say?’ protested Miles.
‘Mmm,’ repeated Henrietta, and nestled deeper into the crook of Miles’s shoulder.
Miles grinned. ‘Eighteen years, and I’ve finally rendered you speechless.’
Henrietta shifted slightly. ‘Mrr-grr-grr,’ she mumbled into Miles’s shoulder.
‘What was that?’
Henrietta tilted her head back. ‘Wonderful,’ she sighed. ‘Splendid. Superlative. Superb.’
‘Couldn’t resist, could you?’
‘Blissful, ecstatic, euphoric, brilliant…’
‘Enough!’ exclaimed Miles, rolling her over onto her back.
Henrietta had a decidedly wicked glint in her eye. ‘Marvellous,’ she said deliberately, ‘magnificent, glorious…’
‘Right,’ said Miles. ‘You leave me no choice.’
By the time the first rays of dawn began to peek through the bed curtains, Henrietta was forced to agree that there were moments for which even adjectives were entirely inadequate.
Chapter Thirty-One
Poetry: a series of instructions from the War Office, couched in code. Reserved for the most imperative of communications. See also under Verse, Verbiage, and Verbosity
– from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation
Even the gauze draped over the candle flames could not dim the glitter of diamonds threaded through ladies’ curls and broad shoulders laden with epaulettes in the Yellow Salon of the Tuileries Palace. Dowagers chattered, military men guffawed, and fans spoke their own whispery language in secluded corners of the room. The usual swarm of dandies, beauties, and Bonapartes clustered at Josephine Bonaparte’s Thursday night salon, appraising one another’s clothes and exchanging the latest on-dits.
Among the throng moved the Pink Carnation, gliding seamlessly between groups, picking up and storing information with all the industry of an ant at a picnic. Jane had left off her black breeches. She had left off her white cap and itchy hair dye. And she had made sure to leave off the odiferous shawl that accompanied her guise as fishmonger’s wife.
Tonight she wore a disguise of quite a different sort: She came as herself.
Her dress was both modest and modish. Amid garish diamonds and a veritable portrait gallery of cameos worn at the fingers, the neck, the ears, even the toes, Jane’s only ornament was a modest enamelled locket, bearing the picture of a small pink flower. Flowers, after all, were an eminently appropriate ornament for a young girl.
Who would possibly suspect Miss Jane Wooliston, cousin to Edouard de Balcourt – why, that was he over there, my dear; yes, the puffy-faced man in the puce cravat, such a toady to the First Consul, but then, really, who wasn’t nowadays? – of posing the slightest danger to the French Republic? She was, agreed the dowagers, a most pretty, mannered girl. She knew when to speak and when to be silent, showed a most pleasing deference to her elders, and her manner in dealing with the masculine gender combined a quiet wit with an absolute lack of flirtatious contrivances. So unlike those fast young things one saw nowadays! This last was usually said with a glare in the direction of Bonaparte’s sisters, Pauline and Caroline, of whom ‘fast’ was the least of what was whispered from fan to fan.
The old ladies approved of her, and gossiped in her presence without reserve. The young dandies liked her for quite another reason; among a people so susceptible to physical beauty, at a time so much in the sway of the ideals of classical antiquity, Jane’s beautifully boned face and aloof mien put them in mind of Roman carvings and they regarded Jane much as they would a particularly fine piece of statuary, beautiful to look upon and largely deaf. Jane had picked up quite a number of useful titbits of information that way.
Just now, however, Jane was making a masterful effort to evade the garrulous matrons, love-struck young bucks, and budding poets she had so successfully cultivated. Her one interest was to leave the salon as rapidly – and as discreetly – as possible. Her lips remained curved in a guileless smile as her brain rapidly assimilated the information she had just acquired, information so unexpected, so alarming, as to be scarcely credible.
But there could be no doubt. All the pieces fell evenly into place, like the fragments of a Roman mosaic reconstituted into a vivid tableau. In this instance, the picture was as unpleasant as it was shocking. They had, all of them, been looking in entirely the wrong direction. In the meantime, the deadliest spy in London, the one person who above all ought to have been observed and curtailed, roamed free.
Henrietta must be warned. At once.
Jane smiled sweetly at Captain Desmoreau, who showed a stubborn refusal to leave her side, and told him she was really quite perishing of thirst. Would he be so kind…?
He would. Desmoreau set off into the throng. Rising, Jane wended her way past a cluster of dowagers merrily ripping apart reputations like so much disorderly tatting, past the gloomy Louis Bonaparte, complaining about his myriad phantom illnesses, past the admiring circle who thronged Bonaparte’s wife, Josephine, her step steady, her expression serene, a Galatea with no other purpose but to adorn a pedestal at the Bonapartes’ court.
The door was in sight. Four more paces, and she could escape into the hallways, and thence to her cousin’s house, to pack for a hasty journey for England. This was not a task Jane cared to entrust to another. Couriers had an unfortunate habit of disappearing en route. Three paces. Jane’s mind was already leaping ahead. She would ride dressed in male clothes; it would be faster than taking the coach and cause less comment. She would have Miss Gwen put it about that she had taken s
ick and was keeping to her bed. Something nasty, something contagious, something that would ward off well-wishers. Two paces. She would cross at Honfleur rather than Calais; the port was less closely watched, and she had a fisherman in her pay, on the condition that his boat be at her disposal whenever she should need it. One pace left…
‘My goddess!’ A white-shirted figure lolled dramatically in her path, waistcoat open and sleeves billowing. Augustus Whittlesby, English expatriate and author of the most execrable effusions of verse ever to assault the ear, flung himself at Jane’s feet in an aspect of adoration. ‘My muse! My peerless patroness of sesquipedality!’
‘Good evening, sir,’ Jane replied for the benefit of any listeners, adding softly, ‘Not now, Mr Whittlesby!’
He pressed a languid hand to his forehead, ruffles billowing about his face. ‘I swoon, I perish, I expire at your feet, if you will not do your humble servant the inestimable honour of giving ear to my latest ode in praise of your prodigious pulchritude.’ For her ear alone, he muttered, mouth hidden from the company beneath the flowing muslin of his sleeve, ‘You really must hear this, Miss Wooliston.’
Jane’s face tightened, but she knew better than to object when her fellow agent spoke in such a tone. Having perfected his role years ago, Whittlesby almost never broke character, and would certainly not do so in the heart of the enemy’s lair, Bonaparte’s palace, for any but the most pressing reasons. Placing a hand on Whittlesby’s arm, she said sternly, ‘One moment only, Mr Whittlesby. My cousin grows alarmed if I stay out too late.’
Whittlesby flourished a bow that ended somewhere in the vicinity of Jane’s silk slippers. Taking her arm and leading her through the door, into a small anteroom, he said loudly, for the benefit of those behind them, ‘I assure you, my ardent angel, you shall not regret this small mercy.’ In a harsh whisper, he added, ‘Orders. From England.’
‘Mr Whittlesby, you do me too much honour with these effusions. What are they?’
‘Honour itself pales before such divinity,’ declaimed Whittlesby. He bowed over Jane’s hand. Jane leant forward slightly. ‘Trouble,’ he muttered. ‘In Ireland. Wickham wants you there.’
‘Honour may pale, but you put me to the blush, sir,’ protested Jane, making a show of retrieving her hand. ‘I can’t. I return to England tonight.’
‘Oh, the beauty of your blush! Blessed, blithe, bounteous blush! Like the dew-touched petals of the fairest rose, spreading their bounty to the awestruck sun.’ Whittlesby flung himself to his knees before her, lifting his face in exaggerated awe. ‘My orders were clear and urgent. Tonight. A carriage will be waiting. Bring your chaperone.’
A shadow of a frown passed along Jane’s serene face as she extended a gracious hand to the prostrate poet. ‘Only a heart of stone could resist such a plea, Mr Whittlesby, and mine, alas, is of far more malleable matter.’
Whittlesby pressed his forehead to her hand in humble obeisance, and extracted a roll of parchment tied with pink ribbons from the billowing muslin folds of his shirt. Flourishing it in the air to make sure that anyone in the salon watching might have a good view, he pressed the roll into Jane’s hand.
‘Every third word of every third line,’ he muttered. While Whittlesby’s verse always served as vehicle, the code changed each time. The Ministry of Police knew Whittlesby only as a writer of bad poetry – it was a measure of Whittlesby’s devotion to the cause that he was, in fact, quite a proficient poet, and had, before the war, entertained genuine ambitions in that direction – but the agents of the English Crown were taking no chances.
‘I assure you, Mr Whittlesby, I shall read it with the utmost care,’ replied Jane, making a great show of unrolling the paper so that anyone could see the irregular lines of verse scrolled across page. ‘I need a message sent.’
Whittlesby staggered, and dropped to the ground, overcome with rapture at her acquiescence. ‘Done. To whom?’
‘Come, come, sir! Steady yourself! How can I enjoy your ode with your collapse upon my conscience?’ Bending over him in feigned concern, Jane outlined her wishes in a rapid whisper.
Whittlesby’s eyes widened. ‘Good God! Who would have—’
‘No, no, Mr Whittlesby, say no more. I am quite overcome by your compliments.’ Jane extended a hand to help him up, her back to the salon. Her face was pale and serious as she said softly, ‘You must not fail.’
Whittlesby lifted Jane’s gloved hand to his lips. ‘Fail my muse?’ he said, with a twinkle of humour as his eyes flicked up at Jane. ‘Never.’
Jane’s eyes lacked an answering twinkle. ‘Some things, Mr Whittlesby, are too serious for poetry.’
‘I will do my utmost,’ promised Whittlesby.
‘I never expected less,’ said Jane austerely. Her fine lawn skirts flicked around the turn of the doorway, and were gone.
Within five minutes, the word had passed around Mme. Bonaparte’s salon. That tedious English poet had so distracted poor Miss Wooliston that she had departed for home under pretext of a headache – and who wouldn’t, my dear? Really, the man was a pest, and his verse! The less said about his verse, the better. As for Whittlesby, at least one should be spared his effusions for the remainder of the evening. He had departed mere moments after to Miss Wooliston, to succour flagging inspiration, he said. The dowagers knew what that meant. Inspiration, indeed! More like the bottom of a bottle. Disgraceful, quite disgraceful. But what could one expect of an Englishman and a poet?
While the dowagers gossiped on, in the Hotel de Balcourt, two women rapidly packed by candlelight. In a stable not far from the Tuileries, a man in a flowing shirt smacked his hand sharply against the rump of a horse. ‘No delay!’ he called after the caped and hooded courier. The courier, one of three in possession of the identity of the Black Tulip, waved a hand in enthusiastic assent. With clear roads and favourable winds, he might even be in London by evening of the following day.
And in London, the deadliest of all spies plotted one final move. By the following evening, it would all be over…
Chapter Thirty-Two
Fool’s Paradise: the illusion of calm, designed to lull one’s adversary into incautious behaviour; the invariable prelude to concerted enemy activity. See also under Path, primrose
– from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation
Miles strode jauntily past the guards on duty at 10 Crown Street, a posy of primroses in his hand and a beatific smile on his face.
One of the guards nudged the other. ‘Who’s he come courting?’ he asked sarcastically, eliciting an appreciative snicker from his fellow.
Miles didn’t notice. Miles was too happy to notice. In fact, he rather doubted that all of Bonaparte’s artillery, ranged along the breadth of Pall Mall, could fright him out of his good humour just now. Miles shook his head in bemusement as he wove through the press of busy people in the corridor. What, after all, had changed? His best friend still hated him. A dangerous French spy was still on the loose in the streets of London. He had to somehow explain to Lord and Lady Uppington that he had…well, if not exactly eloped with their daughter, at least entered into a marriage so precipitate as to cause heads to wag until some greater scandal diverted the attention of the ton. That thought alone ought to have been enough to dampen even Miles’s buoyant spirits.
Yet, even the prospect of confronting the Uppingtons – Lady Uppington expostulating, Lord Uppington grim – faded back into a dim backdrop when considered next to the image of Henrietta as he had left her, one pale arm flung over her head, hair any which way on the pillow, and mouth open as if she were about to say something, even while she slept. Miles grinned, remembering last night’s spate of adjectives. One thing was for certain: Life with Henrietta would never want for words.
Miles announced himself to Wickham’s harried subordinate, who advised him to take a seat, and disappeared back into the inner sanctum.
Miles sat, and, despite telling himself he really ought to be thinking about useful topics, like spies, the
catching of, went back to grinning besottedly. The person sitting next to him shuffled his chair discreetly in the opposite direction.
Amazing how three little words could cause such bother.
There were so many treacherous verbal trinities, mused Miles. I owe you. Pass the decanter. And, of course, Out that window! which, in Miles’s experience, had caused more pain and ruined clothing than any other three words. Miles dragged in a deep breath. No matter how many trilogies he dredged up, there was no avoiding it. Those were not the three words at issue.
Somewhere along the line, he had fallen in love with Henrietta.
How in the hell had that happened? It didn’t seem quite fair. He had just been going along his ordinary business; he hadn’t gone mooning about like Geoff, or trysting with women under a secret identity like Richard, both of which could be reasonably assumed to end in uncomfortable romantic attachments while Cupid clutched his bow and doubled over with derisive laughter. But, yet, there he was, grinning like a madman despite having been threatened with castration by his best friend and shot at by French agents; concocting romantic dinners instead of cunning plans; and, in his weaker moments, actually contemplating poetry. Fortunately for him, Henrietta, and the Western poetic tradition, the result of his contemplation was brief and decisive. He couldn’t write it.
But he could make Henrietta happy, Miles assured himself. On the walk over to the War Office, he had given deep and serious thought to this weighty topic. There was, of course, always jewellery. It had been Miles’s past experience that nothing said, ‘Thank you for a splendid night of passion,’ quite like a strand of emeralds. There were only two slight drawbacks to that plan. First, Henrietta already had a strand of emeralds, complete with matching bracelet and earrings. And, even if she hadn’t…well, Miles couldn’t quite put it into words, but the techniques one used to placate a mistress were perhaps not best suited to wooing a wife. He needed something more personal, more tender, more…damn. He couldn’t even come up with appropriate adjectives, much less a dashing gesture that would sweep Henrietta off her feet. Aside from picking her up. He quite liked picking her up.