Free The Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig

boudoir, the matter-of-fact tone—it was all designed to create an illusion of honesty, to convince him that he had peeled away the layers and come to the core of her.
    There were oranges in a bowl on the table. Jack took a knife from his pocket and began to pare one, taking his time over it. He flicked a piece of peel aside before saying, “As much as it pains me to admit it, you might be right. There’s a chance—just a chance—that the Queen’s gone north.”
    “Yes?” The Carnation was all attention. “What exactly did your informant say?”
    Jack looked at her hard. “You tell me.”
    The Pink Carnation wrung out her cloth, applying it to the paint beneath her eyes. “It would be disingenuous to say I didn’t understand a word of your conversation”—her voice was slightly muffled from her ministrations—“but a word was the extent of it. As you yourself said, Mr. Reid, it takes longer than a week to learn a language. I was there tonight because—”
    “Because?” prompted Jack.
    The Pink Carnation’s face emerged from behind the cloth. “Because even if I couldn’t understand the words, I could gauge the man’s movements.”
    It was, Jack was quite sure, not what she had intended to say. “All right, then. There have been rumors afoot that the Bishop of Porto is organizing a resistance. The Queen’s servants seem to be operating under the impression that the Queen will come again, and quickly.”
    “Not from the sea, but from the north?” the Carnation murmured.
    Jack nodded curtly. Laid out, it all sounded ridiculous. “I have an idea as to how it might have been done. The Queen acquired a new confessor just before the fleet left. If this man—priest or no—were to hide the Queen in plain sight, as part of a procession . . .”
    “Even the French might think twice before disturbing a party of monks—or endangering a holy relic.” The Pink Carnation was very still, only the flicker of her lashes betraying the rapid thought going on beneath those fine-boned features. “Once outside the city, they could abandon the procession, change their costumes.”
    Something about the way she said it made Jack very, very nervous. “We don’t know the route they’ve taken or the manner of their disguise,” he said quickly. “They could be halfway to Porto by now. Or stranded in a gorge.”
    Or dead in a ditch. There were a great number of ditches and no shortage of desperate men looking for a throat to cut.
    The Carnation set down her cloth. Her face, scrubbed clean, looked deceptively young and ridiculously fair. “Then we must follow.”
    For a bright woman, she appeared to have missed the point. “This isn’t France, princess. The roads are piss-poor. The terrain is mountainous. It could take weeks to make Porto, only to find the Queen’s not there.”
    The Pink Carnation raised her perfectly tweaked brows. “What else are we to do? Sit in Lisbon and send out pigeons?”
    “Yes,” said Jack bluntly. “Let’s say that the Queen’s halfway to Porto. She’s safer there than here.”
    The Carnation rose from the bench, the trousers molding themselves to her legs. “Until the French send reinforcements. Do you really believe they intend to stop at Lisbon? They mean to garrison the whole country—and then invade Spain. The Queen won’t be safe until we have her on a boat to Brazil.”
    What with the other distractions, it took a moment for the sounds coming out of the Pink Carnation’s mouth to resolve themselves into words. Once they did . . .
    Jack shook his head to clear it, feeling much as he had the time a mule had delivered an ill-timed kick to his temple. Was the woman mad? That was the only excuse. She had escaped from an insane asylum. No—she was a French plant, designed to be a blight to sensible, hardworking agents.
    “Some of us,” said Jack caustically, “like to stay alive. I can’t vouch for either your safety or mine if we take to the roads.”
    “That,”