Free The Garden Intrigue by Lauren Willig Page A

understand each other, Paul had died. Emma had been left a widow at twenty, angry and confused, seeking easy consolation.
    Marston had been easy, but he hadn’t been the consolation she needed. It hadn’t taken long for Emma to realize that. Mimi, or whatever her name was, had provided a much-needed excuse to break off an affair that Emma already knew to be a mistake.
    “She was nothing to me,” Marston insisted, misunderstanding Emma’s comment. “Not like you.”
    “How very lowering for her,” remarked Emma, and saw Marston’s lack of comprehension. He wouldn’t have thought of Mimi having feelings. She was just an object of convenience.
    As he had been for Emma.
    Despite herself, Emma felt a stirring of guilt. She had known what he was when she slept with him; she had gone to him because of it, seeking the distraction of the physical, without messy emotional ties. She had used him as much as he had used her, if not more. She owed him the courtesy of kindness, if nothing else.
    Removing his hand from her shoulder, Emma pressed it briefly between both of hers. “I wish you all the best, Georges. Truly, I do. I hope you have all the success for which you could wish in Boulogne. Glories and triumphs and all that sort of thing.”
    “The only reward I want is right here in Paris.” His eyes smoldered. “You.”
    “I’m sorry, Georges.” Releasing his hand, Emma stepped back. “I’d get bored sitting on your mantelpiece.”
    There it was again, that flicker of confusion. There had been a lot of that in the brief time they had been together. She had always known he thought her a little odd. She’d never done well with being seen and not heard.
    “Mantelpiece?”
    Emma shook her head. It wasn’t worth explaining. “Good-bye, Georges.”
    This wasn’t what he expected. He took a step forward, crowding her back into the embrace of a garishly painted papier-mâché model of a mummy case. The mummy’s crossed arms bit into Emma’s back through the thin fabric of her dress.
    “You don’t mean that,” he said.
    “Ah, Monsieur!”
    Linen swished past the periphery of her vision. Emma sucked in a deep, relieved breath as Marston stumbled back, glaring at the source of the interruption.
    Unperturbed, Augustus Whittlesby raised a hand to one ear. “What is this I hear? My instincts inform me that you are in desperate need of the offices of a poet.” He smiled benignly at the infuriated Marston. “One should never try to woo without one.”
    “N o one,” said Mme. Delagardie firmly, “is doing any wooing. Monsieur Marston was just leaving.”
    The man didn’t look like he had any intention of leaving. In fact, he was quite firmly planted in front of Mme. Delagardie.
    For all Jane’s touching faith that the gossips must have exaggerated, it wasn’t looking good for Emma Delagardie. She had got rid of the cousin. That, to Augustus, was the crucial point. No woman created the conditions for a tête-à-tête unless she wanted one, and Delagardie and Marston were very tête-à-tête indeed. As Augustus had watched, she had led Marston on a chase through the crowded drawing room, drawing him along after her, like a comet trailing its train, her spangles glittering as she glanced back over her shoulder at him.
    Just friends? Augustus thought not. He had seen the way Marston’s hands had disappeared beneath the trim of her dress, massaging her shoulders with the familiarity of long intimacy. He had seen the way Marston leaned in to speak to her, his lips practically devouring her ear. His pantaloons were tailored so tightly, Augustus could practically hear them squeak as he bent over.
    If Marston was after Delagardie, that was all the more reason to move quickly.
    Marston wouldn’t be pursuing her without a reason. Marston likedthem dark-haired and generously endowed. Mme. Delagardie was fair and slight. It might just be that Marston was being dunned by his tailor again and thought a former lover, revisited,