The Garden Intrigue Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Well, it’s not! It’s like…pining after an actor. You don’t mean anything to come of it, but he does look so very nice in his pantaloons.”
    “Mmm,” said Jane. “Does he now?”
    Emma felt her cheeks flush. “That was meant as a general he, not this he in particular. Although, yes,” she admitted, “he does look very good in his breeches. It’s his one redeeming quality. That and his hair. He has very nice hair. And fine eyes. Oh, stop!”
    “Hmm?” said Jane, but the lace of her fan couldn’t quite hide her smile. “Did I do anything?”
    “You know what you did,” said Emma severely. “It’s really just a diversion. Something safe and harmless.”
    There was nothing like an affair, her friends had told her years ago. How else was a young widow to divert herself? She had tried it and foundit wanting. Now all she wanted was a little amusement, just a little game to play, silly and safe.
    What could be sillier or safer that Augustus Whittlesby?
    It hardly even counted as a
tendre
. It was just a diversion.
    “If you say so,” said Jane, in that maddening way of hers. “Aren’t you to be writing your own magnum opus soon? That ought to engender some artistic fellow feeling with Mr. Whittlesby.”
    “Magnum opus?”
    “I heard you were commissioned to contrive a play, for a party at Malmaison.”
    “Oh, that.” Emma shook her head in dismissal. “Not a play, a masque, just a short piece, more spectacle than verse. Madame Bonaparte suggested it. I told her I would think about it.”
    “I won’t accept no,” Madame Bonaparte had said in her lingering Creole drawl, tapping Emma’s cheek in that way she had, that way that made her feel fifteen again, a schoolgirl at Madame Campan’s academy for young ladies, meeting Hortense’s mother for the first time, surrounded by the scent of roses and the warmth of Madame Bonaparte’s smile.
    They had been more family to Emma than her own family in those early days after her elopement, Hortense de Beauharnais and her mother. Hortense’s mother had just married again, an army sort, a general named Bonaparte, but they found room for Emma anyway, in the crowded house in the Rue Chantereine. They had taken her in while her own family had roared with disbelief and disapproval, had sheltered her during the disillusionment of those early days of her marriage to Paul, comforted her, helped her, asking no questions and demanding no favors in return.
    It was meant as a signal honor, this conferring of the writing of the masque. An honor and a politic move. As much as Hortense and Mme. Bonaparte might love her for herself, Emma didn’t delude herself that the offer was tendered out of affection alone. The only reason she had been asked to contrive the entertainment was because the party was being held in honor of her cousin, the American envoy to France. Bonaparte neededthe goodwill of the Americans, and Emma was about as American as they came, at least when it came to being related to envoys. Her uncle, Monroe, had been the first of the envoys to France; her cousin, Robert Livingston, currently held the post. In diplomatic circles, Emma had become known as a person to cultivate, not out of any virtue of her own but as a circumstance of the position of her relations.
    She didn’t want it to be like this. She didn’t want to think of position and status and political advantage. Only of old friendship and good fellowship. Was that so much to ask?
    “Madame Bonaparte wants the masque as a surprise for cousin Robert.” Emma looked at Jane over her fan. “I suppose that means that half of Paris already knows it, and the rest will be told by nightfall.”
    “Three quarters,” corrected Jane, with a smile. “And everyone agog to know what the subject will be and who is to act which part.”
    “Would you like to tell me?” Emma quipped. “I’m sure the rest of Paris will know before I do. Madame Bonaparte suggested a nautical theme, but other than that,