The Passion of the Purple Plumeria Read Online Free PDF Page B

worked ideally.
    At least, it had been working ideally.
    Over the past few months, Gwen had marked a change in her charge. Ever since Bonaparte’s coronation, the Pink Carnation had embarked upon a policy of “watch and see,” compiling dossiers of information through slow and painstaking effort rather than acts of derring-do. She didn’t seem to be deriving the same relish from their activities that she once had. Admittedly, the game had become more dangerous. Fouché, Bonaparte’s minister of police, had consolidated his hold, wiping out many of the networks of couriers on which they relied. They had also lost their long-term War Office contact, Augustus Whittlesby.
    If Jane were another sort of woman, Gwen might have wondered if Whittlesby’s departure had something to do with her malaise. The poet had made no secret of his admiration for Jane. She had sworn her heart wasn’t touched, but— Jane was twenty-three now, an age when other women would be thinking of home and hearth.
    Other women, Gwen reassured herself, tamping down a frisson of alarm. Not the Pink Carnation. They had work to do still; Jane knew that. She wasn’t the sort to abandon her post for so unremarkable a creature as a man. Heaven only knew, she’d seen enough prime specimens over the years. A waste of good linen, most of them.
    No. It was the lack of a challenge that had been plaguing the Pink Carnation; that was all. Gwen rubbed her gloved hands together. She’d tell Jane about this evening’s gleaning. That should catch the Pink Carnation’s fancy.
    What person was proof to the allure of a missing mythical jewel?
    Gwen let herself in through the servants’ entrance of the Hotel de Balcourt, the home of Jane’s cousin Edouard, a prime example of the failings of the male sex. Balcourt housed them reluctantly, turning a blind eye to their activities, less out of cousinly feeling than out of fear that if he were to turn them in, they would share with the authorities certain rather interesting documents in Jane’s possession regarding Edouard’s cross-Channel trade in muslin and brandy. It was an arrangement that suited them all quite well. They ignored the barrels of brandy in the cellar and Edouard ignored their odd comings and goings.
    In her room, Gwen pressed the button that opened the secret back of her armoire. Here, hidden behind the respectable ranks of day dresses and evening gowns, she kept her real wardrobe: the breeches, the waistcoats, the serving maids’ dresses, the floppy hat of a coastal fisherman, a wide array of wigs, and a small arsenal of firearms. She folded her purple frock coat back among its fellows, right above a footman’s livery and the uniform of a minor officer in the imperial guard. With the ease of long practice, she sponged off her false whiskers, setting them aside to dry.
    There was a light knock on the door. Gwen rapidly shut the secret panel, although there was reasonably only one person who would be knocking on her bedchamber door at this time of night.
    “Yes?” she called.
    The Pink Carnation slipped neatly into the room, shutting the door behind her.
    “Miss Gwen?” Through all they had experienced together, Jane still employed the conventional honorific. Old habits died hard. Partners they might be, but Gwen was still Jane’s chaperone.
    “I’m glad you’re still awake,” said Gwen briskly, shaking her hair free of the tight queue in which she had bound it. “I have news.”
    “So have I,” said Jane. She was in her nightdress, her long light brown hair streaming down her back, like Ophelia about to hand out weeds. Her face was pale and worried in the uncertain light of the candles. “Agnes has gone missing.”
    Agnes? Gwen’s head was stuffed with sultans and emperors; it took an effort to bring it back to the quiet of the English countryside. Frowning, she managed to dredge up the image of a quiet girl with a long face and light brown hair, a pale copy of Jane. Agnes was the