Free The Orchid Affair by Lauren Willig Page B

in sky blue, the poet’s muse.
    Or, as Laura knew her, the Pink Carnation.
    Laura felt a tug on her arm. “What’s a muse?” demanded Pierre-André, in a whisper like a foghorn.
    “Ah, the muse!” mused the poet, striking a pose like Jove about to throw thunderbolt. “The muse, my dear poppet, is a thing of glory, a flame of fire, a blazing comet of divine inspiration! In short— she !” He wafted his sleeve in the direction of the Pink Carnation.
    The pretty lady didn’t appear to be on fire, but Pierre-André prudently backed up against Laura’s side in case she should blaze into divine inspiration and catch them all up in the conflagration.
    Undaunted, the poet was courting artistic immolation. “I have just, this very morning, finished my latest ode to your sublime, um—”
    “Sublimity?” suggested the Pink Carnation.
    Gabrielle’s eyes were like saucers and Pierre-André was tugging at Laura’s arm again, hissing, “What’s sublimmy? And can I have a shirt like that? Can I? Can I?”
    Turning back to the shopkeeper, Laura said hastily, “The Greek myths in the front. We would also like a copy of that. If you are a good boy,” she added to Pierre-André, “I’ll read you about Hercules and the snakes later. You’ll like the snakes.”
    With a nod, the shopkeeper set off to the front to fetch the book.
    Behind her, the poet was in full spate, fluttering his sleeves at Miss Wooliston in a bizarre sort of mating ritual. “Sublimity is too limiting a term to encompass the range of my regard for so rarefied a creature as thou. Which is why, instead of one word, I offer you five cantos.”
    From somewhere in the vicinity of his left sleeve, the poet made good his word by producing a very thick roll of paper, beautifully tied with a pink silk ribbon.
    “The pink,” he added helpfully, “represents love hopeful. I discuss that at some length in the fourth canto.”
    Miss Wooliston eyed the thick roll of paper with comic apprehension. “You flatter me. Again.”
    Her friend, a fair-haired woman whose claims to beauty were marred by the length of her nose, came to her rescue, “When will you immortalize me, Monsieur Whittlesby?”
    The poet swept an elaborate bow that set all his ruffles fluttering. “You, Madame Bonaparte, have no need of my humble pen to make you immortal.”
    Bonaparte. He had said Bonaparte, hadn’t he? If there had been anything in Laura’s mouth, she would have choked on it.
    This Mme. Bonaparte was too young to be the First Consul’s wife, so it was presumably his stepdaughter, Hortense, made doubly a Bonaparte through her marriage to the First Consul’s younger brother.
    That was a lot of Bonaparte in a very small space.
    Mme. Bonaparte’s lips lifted in a rueful smile. “No. My stepfather’s cannon have done so already.”
    “And a copy of Caesar’s Wars, ” Laura said brusquely as the shopkeeper set down Hercules on top of the botanical treatise.
    What was the Pink Carnation playing at? She had known Laura intended to come to the bookshop today; in fact, it was she who had advised her to do so. Why come bearing a Bonaparte? Laura didn’t like surprises, especially not in Bonaparte form.
    “Gallic or Civil?” asked the shopkeeper laconically.
    “Civil—no, Gallic,” Laura corrected herself.
    What was the Pink Carnation doing going about with a Bonaparte on her arm?
    Laura supposed it must be an equivalent of the old adage about keeping one’s enemies closer. When it came down to it, it wasn’t all that different from her notion of bringing the children along to provide an air of innocence. No one would ever suspect Miss Wooliston of delivering or receiving treasonous material with a daughter of the First Consul in tow.
    Laura might have been teaching for what felt like an eon, but when it came to espionage, she still had a great deal to learn.
    “No cannonade more powerful than the grapeshot of your eyes!” declaimed the poet. “No fusillade could match