The Garden Intrigue Read Online Free PDF Page A

assassinate the First Consul had been uncovered last month, Bonaparte’s police force had been working overtime, cracking down on threats anywhere they found them, and sometimes even where they hadn’t.
    Augustus knew he was lucky to have escaped the net this long. Ironically enough, that very longevity was a large part of his protection. He was like an old oak table or a particularly dingy patch of carpet; the Ministry of Police was so used to him that they scarcely noticed he was there.
    Horace, on the other hand, had come over with a wave of émigrés who were being invited, in bits and pieces, back into Paris to lend aristocratic polish to Bonaparte’s new court. He was new and therefore automatically suspect. Bonaparte craved the recognition of the old aristocracy, but he also mistrusted them. With reason, in this case.
    “Well, they don’t!” Horace said indignantly. “I have been of the most subtle.”
    “Right.” Augustus eyed de Lilly’s pink and green striped waistcoat. Not exactly what he would call subtle. “What was it that sent you running to Paris?”
    Horace flung himself into Balcourt’s desk chair, his spurs digging into the imported Persian carpet. “It was like this,” he began, clearly determined to milk every moment of glory from the retelling. Augustus remembered when he had been like that. A very long time ago. Horace’s beardless face shone with excitement. “I was with the court of the First Consul in Saint-Cloud, when the Consul received a visit from Admiral Decres—”
    A sound caught Augustus’s attention. A creak, as of a floorboard being depressed slowly and carefully by a person trying very hard not to be heard.
    Augustus held up a hand, signaling Horace to silence.
    “Edouard?” It was a female voice, raised in a questioning tone. A fingernail scratched against the wood of the door. “Edouaaaard?”
    Augustus deliberately rustled the papers on the desk. “Who disturbs me?” he called out, stretching out the vowels in the most annoying way he could. “Who disturbs me in my poetic reverie?”
    The scratching stopped. “Pardon?”
    “Is it too much to ask for a humble poet to find a bit of peace to court the muse in private?” Augustus inquired mournfully. “Oh, the world is too much with us! Chattering and clattering, we lay waste our talents, consigning our patrimony of poetry to the wasted wind of the idle hour. Oh, woe! Woe it is to be—me.”
    He broke off as he heard the floorboards creak in rapid retreat.
    Horace leaned forward. “Was that—?” he hissed.
    “Balcourt’s mistress.”
    “Oh.” Horace shrugged off the intrusion. Mistresses were an inconsequential part of urban existence, like tavern owners or those annoying little people who collected bills. “As I was saying, I was at Saint-Cloud, when—”
    Augustus cut him off. “Balcourt’s mistress is an informer of the Ministry of Police.”
    It took Horace a moment for the words to register. “Is she?” He seemed more intrigued than alarmed.
    De Lilly’s insouciance set Augustus’s teeth on edge. “Madame Perdite is just one of thousands, but any one of those, no matter how insignificant they may seem, can be your downfall. A landlady, a chambermaid, the boy who holds your horse. Fouché has half of Paris in his pay.” An exaggeration, but not by much. “Say nothing in front of anyone, not even the servants. Particularly not the servants. Do you understand?”
    Horace nodded, but Augustus could see he didn’t understand, not viscerally, not in that place in one’s gut that shouted danger long before the conscious senses perceived a threat. Horace had been a boy during the Terror, an adolescent in the safety of London. He had no memory of the stench of blood and sweat, the buzzing of the blood-gorged flies in the Place de la Concorde; he had never spent a night in the damp-walled hospitality of the Conciergerie, never heard the screams of a man being put to the question as he moved from