The Garden Intrigue (24 page)

“No,” he said bluntly. “But I can find out. Do you know where I can find a crowbar?”

“The tools are over there.” Jane indicated a small building half hidden by a stand of trees.

Naturally. Naturally, Jane would know exactly where the tools were kept, even though this was her first visit to Malmaison, as it was his.

He used to find her omniscience endearing; right now, it struck him as more than a little eerie.

There was something chilling about that sort of superhuman competence.

He wasn’t being fair, he knew. His colleague looked entirely the same as she had half an hour ago, the same dress, the same Kashmir shawl, the same smooth wings of hair disappearing beneath the brim of her bonnet, but he couldn’t see her in the same way. The eyes that had been coolly amused were just cool, the lips that he had praised for their firmness were firmly closed against him. Her poise, her posture, the pearly tint of her skin, all seemed as off-putting as they had once been engaging.

“You should be able to persuade one of the gardeners to assist you,” she said.

“I’m sure I can contrive to manage,” said Augustus. His voice sounded strange and flat to his ears.

The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the wind had risen. Through the shaking branches, he could see the windows of the great house blaze into light, one by one, as the servants lit the lamps, throwing the dark outside into even greater relief. The theatre was invisible from where they stood, hidden on the far side of the house.

Augustus wondered if Emma had given up and gone away or found someone else to open her box for her.

How long had they been standing on the bridge? It might have been anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour. It felt like years.

He wasn’t sure which would be worse, to creep in through the dark like a thief, hiding his chagrin in the shadows, or to find Emma still there, pity and understanding written all over her face.

Jane had said it. They had a job to do. It didn’t matter what Emma thought of him. He just needed the contents of that thrice-damned crate.

“I should be getting back,” he said brusquely.

Jane put out a hand to stop him as he strode across the bridge. He didn’t stop, but he slowed, looking back over his shoulder. She was a pale blur in the shadow of the trees, insubstantial in the twilight.

A poet’s dream, nothing more.

“I just want you to know,” she said, and her voice sounded less certain than he had ever heard it. For a moment, in the wavering dusk, she sounded almost her age. “I do have the highest esteem for you as a colleague.”

He hadn’t thought he could feel any worse than he already did, but there it was.

“Thank you,” said Augustus shortly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a box to break.”

Jane didn’t ask what he was talking about. He didn’t volunteer. Why bother? She probably knew already.

With exquisite pain, he recalled other conversations, other meetings, all
those times he thought he was subtly paying homage. All those times he thought Jane was, in her own quiet way, sending his coded confirmation.

Instead, all the while, she had just been doing her best to keep him from declaring himself.

Had she realized? Had she known before? It must have been fairly obvious if Emma felt the need to comment on it.

I don’t want you hurt.

Too late.

The theatre was dark. Augustus pushed open the door, his eyes adjusting with little difficulty from the window-lit dusk to the gloom of the interior. Outside, he could hear the crickets chirping and the odd hoot of an owl anticipating his evening’s forays. Inside, all was still, rank upon rank of seats facing blankly forward, a phantom audience for a phantom show.

The theatre wasn’t entirely empty. A narrow sliver of light fell across the stage, emanating from somewhere in the wings.

Augustus made his way quietly down the aisle between the seats, carpet muffling his steps, shadows masking his movements. The light broadened as he approached, angling into a doorway. He paused in the doorway, taking in the scene.

The crate was open. The lid was propped up against one side. Straw littered the floor. Three lanterns had been lit, set out in a semicircle on the floor. There were bits of metal and tubing scattered about, like a child’s toys left out after play.

In the middle of it sat Emma, her legs tucked up underneath her as she consulted a grimy scrap of paper, muttering to herself as she reached for a piece of metal tubing, thought better of it, and put it back again.

“But if that goes here…”

She had shoved her hair back behind her ears, heedless of the fashionable bandeau that was supposed to be serving that function, causing chunks of hair to bump up at odd angles. There was a smudge of dirt or grease on one cheek and straw clinging to her dress.

“Right,” she said to herself. “It must be that other tube.…”

She scooted herself forward, adding more straw to the collection on her hem, jiggered herself up on her knees, and leaned all the way over, stretching out as far as she could to reach an errant piece of tubing that had strayed to the end of the circle. Her fingers wriggled towards the tube.

And there she froze.

She was, Augustus realized, staring at his boots. Her gaze traveled up past the tassels of his boots, to his thighs, and up to his shirt.

“Oh,” she said, and did a very quick scramble back, hand by hand, to her original position, popping up flushed and disheveled in something closer to a sitting position. “Hello! You’ve come back.”

Augustus kicked the door shut behind him. “You were right,” he said.

I
found someone to help me with the lid,” said Emma.

She heaved herself up off the floor, tripping on the end of her own skirt and trying not to careen into a pile of packing straw. Lifting her hands to shove her hair back behind her ears, Emma found that her bandeau had twisted itself halfway around, listing drunkenly to the side, with her hair all bunched up underneath. There was something grimy on the back of her hand, and, oh, Lord, was that straw on her skirt?

Emma backed out of the circle of lantern light, trusting to the dark to hide her burning cheeks and disheveled appearance. Not that it mattered. It was only Augustus, after all. Still, one didn’t like to be seen looking like a complete slattern—even if one was.

Emma gave a hasty tug to her bodice. “One of the nice footmen came by,” she babbled, “and pried out the nails for me. It took no time at all.”

“Good for you.” Augustus tossed the crowbar to one side, where it connected with the side of Miss Gwen’s pirate ship before clattering to the floor.

The sound echoed through the narrow room.

He wasn’t still annoyed about their little spat, was he? She might have been out of line, but they had promised each other honesty.

Honesty within limits.

“Thank you for bringing the crowbar,” Emma said hastily, her voice tinny in the dusty silence. “That was very…nice of you.”

Augustus didn’t look nice right now; he looked dangerous. He looked like the sort of man one wouldn’t want to run into in a dark theatre. Tension surrounded him like the sky before a storm, just waiting the right moment to crackle into lightning.

He prowled into the room, the lamplight picking out the shadows created by the folds in his shirt, dwelling lovingly on the hollows of collarbone, cheekbone, jaw. Among the coiled ropes and scattered props, his loose shirt and tight breeches gave him a piratical look. He only needed a gold ring in one ear and he would fit right in with Miss Gwen and her crew of merry marauders.

“I’m sorry to have sent you off on a wild goose chase,” Emma volunteered.

Augustus propped one booted foot on the lid of a faux treasure chest from which spilled gold-painted pieces of eight and ersatz ropes of pearls. His long hair curled around his face. “Does it count as a wild goose chase when it bears fowl? Foul fowl but fowl still.”

“I beg your pardon?” Fair might be foul and foul fair, but Emma didn’t have any inclination to hover through the fog and filthy air to try to figure out what he was saying.

“You were right.”

“That does happen from time to time. About what? The end of the masque? I told you and told you—”

Augustus kicked aside the treasure chest. Coins and chains rattled. “About Miss Wooliston.”

“Oh,” Emma said weakly. Of all the things she had anticipated, that wasn’t one of them. “How do—”

“I have it from the horse’s mouth. So to speak.”

As she met his eyes, Emma felt a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach. It was one thing to inflict her opinion upon him, quite another to have him act on it.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “You didn’t—”

“Just now. In the garden. She wanted none of me. You were right.”

Emma wished he would stop saying that. The more he repeated it, the more she felt as though she were to blame. She had anticipated this, but she hadn’t wished it on him, not really.

There were times when it was less than pleasant to be able to say
I told you so
.

Emma bit down on her lip. “I am sorry.”

Augustus prowled forward, stepping neatly over a coil of rope and a discarded cutlass. “Why should you be?” His voice was as cold and hard as the fragments of metal at Emma’s feet. “My folly isn’t your concern.”

“It’s never foolish to care for someone.”

Augustus gave her a look that could turn Pompeii to ash. “Don’t ply me with platitudes,” he said. “Didn’t we promise honesty? You were honest before. Don’t hold back now.”

Emma swallowed hard. “What happened?”

“What do you think?”

“She does care for you, you know,” Emma said earnestly. “As much as she cares for anyone. It’s not you, really, it isn’t. She’s just not…romantically inclined.”

Augustus nudged at a bit of tubing with his toe, sending it rattling across the floor. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Then why had he brought it up?

All right. If he didn’t want to talk about it, they didn’t have to talk about
it, even though Emma wondered, with the sort of sick curiosity that drove people to attend public executions, what exactly had been said and unsaid.

“Then we can talk about something else,” she said cheerfully. “What do you think of your room in the house? You’re in one of the older servant quarters, aren’t you? There isn’t really space for everyone, even with the new additions. Just think what it will be like tomorrow when everyone else arrives!”

Without responding, Augustus strolled inexorably forward into the circle she had made for herself. The lanterns lit his face from below, casting a demonic light across his cheekbones, creating the illusion of flame in the folds of his shirt, where the light reflected red. His eyes glittered in the lantern light.

“It’s your turn,” Emma said breathlessly. “To not talk about something.”

“Tell me about your new machine.”

“Uh…” For all that she had spent the past half hour playing with pieces, Emma suddenly felt unprepared and untried.

It had something to do with the way he was staring at her, eyes never wavering, moving steadily forward, like a jungle cat approaching its prey. For all the length of his limbs, he was a graceful man; he scarcely made a sound as he prowled towards her, stepping unerringly over the obstacles scattered in his path.

She backed up a bit, glancing around at the pieces lying about on the floor. “It’s not one machine but four, all interconnected. I’ve been trying to sort out which is which.”

“Four? I thought Mr. Fulton was sending you a wave machine.” There was something hypnotic about those slow, steady movements, the fixed intensity of his eyes.

Emma backed up again. “Well, there is the wave machine, but Mr. Fulton wanted to try something new, so he, well, he made it more complicated. Ours doesn’t just do waves; it does waves, wind, thunder, and lightning.” She looked ruefully down at the debris on the floor. “At least, it will, when I figure out how to put it together.”

Augustus struck a pose, parodying Hamlet. “What a piece of work is this! The power to control the elements, all in one easy box. Once you needed witchcraft to conjure storms. Now all we need is—” Leaning down, Augustus hefted a curious circle made of brass, with curved protrusions. He frowned down at it. “What
is
this? It looks like a late medieval instrument of torture.”

That, at least, Emma could answer. “It’s part of an air pump.” She took the brass wheel from him, holding it up so that the lamplight slid along the curved surfaces. “It’s designed to create the illusion of wind. There are four of those circles. They sit in a frame like an artist’s easel, with a string hanging down. If we pull the string, the blades will spin, creating a rush of air.”

“Hmm.” Abandoning the air pump, Augustus prowled the circumference of the circle of lanterns, examining the detritus from Mr. Fulton’s box. Bending, he seized on another piece, a cylindrical metal drum covered with canvas. “And this?”

“That’s a drum covered with canvas,” Emma said helpfully.

Straightening, Augustus gave her a look. “That much,” he said, “I could divine on my own.”

At least he had sounded a bit more like his old self there, not the languid, versifying figure he showed to the public, but the sarcastic, short-tempered, cranky self he showed to her.

Adele was right. She really did have execrable taste in men.

“The drum is for thunder,” Emma explained. She peered around the floor. “There should be a hammer here somewhere.”

“Like this?”

“Exactly like that.” Emma nodded emphatically. “You attach the hammer to the clamp on the side of the drum and when it strikes the canvas, it creates a sound like thunder. You’ll see. It sounds surprisingly convincing.”