The Garden Intrigue (26 page)

They sat in silence for what might have been five minutes or half an hour, no sound but the rhythmic rustle of his hair beneath her fingers, the soft susurration of their breath.

Into the dusty silence, Augustus said diffidently, “Did Jane ever mention it to you? Did she know that it wasn’t—that I—”

“If she suspected, she never said anything.” Emma chose her words very carefully, stroking his hair in long, measured strokes. “I think she values you too much for that.”

“Yes, but only—” Augustus mumbled something incomprehensible.

“What?”

Augustus shifted in his seat. “Nothing.” But the mood was broken. He shook off her hold, drawing back so he could look at her, his hair brushing across her chest. “When you said you knew what it was like, what did you mean?”

Emma caught herself floundering, unsure of what to say. It was much easier being on the other side of it. She preferred eliciting confidences to making them.

“I—exactly what I said. That’s all.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Emma pressed his head back into the crook of her shoulder. “This is about you, not me, remember?”

She could feel his skepticism, from somewhere in the area of her collarbone. “Is it? It’s only fair. I confide in you; you confide in me.”

Emma peered down at the top of Augustus’s head. “Appealing to my sense of fair play, are you?”

His voice rose sepulchrally from her chest. “You brought up the topic.”

“I—oh, fine.” Was it possible to feel both very protective and very irritated at the same time? Fair enough. “I was very young when I met my husband,” she said, striving to put a sensible face on it. “I had all sorts of romantic images about him. Don’t misunderstand me! Paul was a wonderful man, really he was. He just wasn’t the person I thought he was.”

“What was he?” Augustus’s voice was a brush of breath against her bosom. She could feel the tingle of it straight down to her toes.

Emma shivered with something that wasn’t cold.

“Human,” said Emma, pushing away and twitching her bodice more firmly up over her shoulders. She made a droll face. “You can’t believe what a disappointment that was.”

Augustus hoisted himself back into a sitting position. “You were fairly young, weren’t you?”

“Fifteen.”

It would have been so easy to use that as an excuse. Emma contemplated her knees, twin bumps beneath the thin lawn of her gown. Nine years. Had it really been so long? Five years with Paul, four years without him. In a few months, he would have been gone longer than they had been together. It was a curious sensation.

Her skin prickled as she felt Augustus’s hand come to rest on the small of her back, rubbing in small, discreet circles. He was offering her the same promise of comfort she had held out to him. She wanted, so very much, to let herself curl into the crook of his arm, to rest her head against his shoulder and feel his lips on her hair and allow herself the solace of touch. It
would be so nice to be cuddled and comforted, all the worries of the last nine years soothed away.

If she did so, it would be under false pretenses. She might have been young, but she ought to have known better, just as she ought to know better now.

Sighing, Emma straightened. “I don’t think age has anything to do with it. We’re all prey to our emotions, whether we’re fifteen or fifty.”

“Which you know,” Augustus said drily, “because you turned fifty when?”

“When we started writing this masque,” she said and waited for him to laugh.

He didn’t. “Has it been that onerous for you?”

“Not onerous, no.” She looked at him, at the long hair curling around his thin face, at the tiny lines at the sides of his eyes, at the long, flexible mouth that could crimp into absurdity or relax into gentleness. He had become so familiar to her in the past month. Familiar and dearer than she cared to admit. “Against all my better judgment, I actually like you.”

“Just not my poetry.”

“If I were you, I would take what I can get.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, Emma realized how they sounded. “I didn’t mean—”

His brown eyes shaded to violet at the edges, warm as velvet. “I know.” His thumb rubbed against her cheekbone. “Honest Emma.”

Of all the epithets he had offered to provide her, that had to be the least flattering of the lot.

Emma grimaced. “
Make me immortal, Emma, with plain-speaking
? That doesn’t have much of a ring to it.”

His fingers found a bit of hair that had escaped from her bandeau. He smoothed it back behind her ear. Emma closed her eyes and let herself lean into his touch, just a little bit. Just for the moment.

“You said you didn’t want to launch ships.”

No, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to be just a little bit of an object of romantic desire. Someday. For someone.

Oh, well.

Emma abruptly sat up, her hair tangling in his fingers. “No, I just—”

She had been about to say
sit on them
, and maybe make a silly comment about something to do with not launching ships, but the words caught in her throat as her nose bumped his.

She went very still.

She could feel his fingers caught in her hair, the muscles of his arm tense beneath her hand, frozen, just as she was. She should, she knew, wiggle away, move back, laugh, say something.

Her voice came out half whisper, half squeak. “Augustus?”

“Emma?” he said, and she could feel the brush of his breath like a caress against her lips.

It wasn’t, she thought, entirely reassuring that he sounded as entirely befuddled as she felt.

“I—” she began, and broke off, because she didn’t have the least idea of what she was trying to say, or why she was trying to say anything at all.

His lips brushed hers, so softly she might have imagined it.

She should open her eyes, she knew. But there was something terribly seductive about the darkness, something drugging and dreamlike.

As in a dream, her hands moved without conscious volition, threading up through his hair, as tentative as his lips, learning as they went, following the curve of his scalp like someone embarking in twilight on an unfamiliar path through winter woods, warm and cold at the same time, fascinated and hesitant, white snow and dark trees, light and shade all mixed up together.

His hands cupped her face, not coercing or forcing, not pushing or demanding, but cradling. If he had pushed or demanded, she might have pulled away.

But he didn’t.

S
he smelled like violets and musk, innocence and experience, all rolled into one.

Augustus nuzzled the side of Emma’s face with his nose, breathing in the scent of her, so familiar and yet strangely heady at such close quarters, like perfume in its purest and distilled form, or spirits drunk straight.

She blinked at him, like one half asleep, eyes blurred and unfocused. She looked adorable that way, hair tousled, cheeks flushed. He had seen her flustered before, flustered, tousled, blustering, but never like this, soft around the corners.

“I don’t think—” she said hoarsely.

Augustus put a finger to her lips. “Yes, you do,” he said fondly. “All the time.”

Gently, he brushed his finger across her lips. For a moment, he thought
she might argue, her lips parted as though to speak, but only air came out. Her eyelids flickered closed, lilac paint making purple shadows.

“Emma,” Augustus said, tasting the name on his tongue, invocation and question all in one. This was Emma and it wasn’t, commonplace and strange all at the same time, like a familiar landscape viewed from a new angle. What was the line?
Suffer a sea change to something rich and strange
.

Rich and strange, indeed. Her lips were soft and slightly parted beneath his finger, her breath a benediction on his skin. So many discussions they had had, so many conversations, so many arguments, and he had never imagined her lips would feel like this, like crinkled satin, smooth and soft to touch.

How had he known her without knowing this?

In fact, all of her was soft, from the whispery fabric of her dress to the bare skin of her arm beneath the small, puffed sleeve of her dress. The costly muslin of her dress felt coarse next to the silk of her skin, coarse and crude, the clumsy work of man a poor second to the wonders of nature. He skimmed his hand lightly up her arm, feeling the goose pimples rise beneath his fingers. He had dismissed her as skinny once, but there was flesh on her bones, soft, feminine flesh that quivered with the passage of his touch.

He ran his knuckles along the border of her bodice, once so seemingly low, now far too high.

“Emma,” he said again, and leaned in to kiss her.

“Don’t.” Emma jerked sharply sideways. Augustus’s lips grazed hair. “Augustus—don’t.”

Augustus spat out a blond hair that had attached itself to his tongue. “Emma?”

Using both hands, she held his head away from her. Her small hands had surprising strength in them. “No. Please.”

Augustus pulled back. “Of course. Whatever you say.” Seeing her look at him that way made him feel like the meanest sort of cad. Worse than a cad. Someone like Marston. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t.” Clumsily, she scrambled off his lap, her elbow digging hard into his chest as she pushed away. Her voice was muffled by the movement. “That’s just the problem.”

“That’s not—” Augustus broke off, befuddled.

He’d been going to say that wasn’t what he meant, but he’d be damned if he knew what he did mean. All he knew was that his lap felt very empty without Emma in it. His mind was still scrambling to catch up with his body.

His body, meanwhile, wanted to catch up with Emma.

“Emma, I don’t know what to say. I—”

Turning away, Emma yanked at her bodice. A few tugs, and she had hoisted the fabric higher than it had ever been meant to go. “It’s quite all right,” she said. She wouldn’t look him in the eye but concentrated on righting her bodice. “You don’t have to say anything. I understand.”

He was glad someone did. He sure as hell didn’t.

Augustus shoved himself up off the rounded keel of the rowboat, his movements stiff and awkward. “Emma—”

Turning, she shook out her skirts, rousting out creases with unnecessary force. “Shall we go back to the house? It must be nearly time for supper. Are you hungry?”

Hungry? Food was the last thing on his mind.

Emma kept up a steady flow of chatter. “It won’t be anything fancy; it never is at Malmaison. Bonaparte likes to be simple in the country—the Emperor, I mean. I can’t seem to remember to call him that.”

“
Wait.
” Augustus plunged desperately into the gap left by a semisecond’s silence. “That’s it?”

“What’s it?”

“This. Us. Now.” It wasn’t his most articulate moment.

“There isn’t an us.” She fiddled with her rings, turning a cluster of diamonds around and around and around. “It’s all right. You don’t have to pretend. I know this isn’t about me.”

His body disagreed. It thought it was very much about her. He could
still feel the press of her against the crook of his arm and more distracting places, like an impression left in wax.

Emma took his silence as assent. “It’s just that I was here,” she said earnestly. “I do understand, you know. You were hurt. You wanted comforting.”

No. Yes. Maybe?

Augustus shoved his hair back away from his face. “Emma—”

She smiled a rueful smile. “Right now, I imagine any warm body would do. Mine just happened to be here.” Turning, she ducked beneath a painted proscenium, maneuvering around a miniature version of the leaning tower of Pisa. “Shall we take the side door? It’s faster.”

Augustus grabbed for her, catching her hand. “Not so fast.”

Her hand felt painfully frail in his, tiny bones in tiny fingers, the massive stones of her rings biting into his palms, the last defense of a kingdom unprepared for siege.

“Yes?”

Now that he had her attention, he didn’t know what to do with it. What was he supposed to tell her?
You’re not just a warm body
?
In fact, you’re rather chilly?
Or
Yes, this was all about Jane, but you’re not so bad yourself
?

Brilliant, Augustus, brilliant. One could launch ships with that.

Brusquely, he said, “Don’t sell yourself short.”

Emma’s eyes fell to their joined hands. “I’m not.” She closed her eyes and then opened them again. “I’m just being…realistic. It’s a natural reaction, to seek consolation. How can I fault you for that? I’ve done it too.”

“Have you?” Augustus’s reaction was visceral and negative. He didn’t like the thought of that, not one bit. It had probably been Marston, the bastard, based on all accounts. He had never heard Emma’s name linked with anyone else’s, not in that way at any rate. Flirtations, yes; courtships, naturally; but an affair? Only Marston.

He hated the thought of Emma in Marston’s arms, her tiny form engulfed in his embrace, Marston’s hands in her hair, on her shoulders, her breasts.

She nodded, but didn’t elaborate. “So you see, I do understand.”

Augustus wished she would stop understanding. “Yes, but…”

“Well, then,” Emma said, as though that answered everything. She smiled at him, the smile she wore in Paris, the bright, fake smile that went with her paste jewelry and glittery garments. It looked very out of place with her snagged gown and tousled hair. “We only have two days left to rehearse. I do hope Kort manages to remember his lines this time.”

Damn Kort and his lines. “It doesn’t matter what he says,” Augustus said shortly. “They would applaud if he recited the alphabet.”

“I don’t think we’re quite so desperate as all that.” Emma twisted open a door Augustus hadn’t even seen. It opened onto a short path between the theatre and gallery that ran along the right side of the house, a faster and more convenient route than going all the way around to the front. “We should have some semblance of a play by Saturday.”