Lauren Willig by The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Author:The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: London (England), Americans - England, Fiction, Romance, Romantic Suspense Fiction, Americans, Historical, Suspense, General, Women Graduate Students, Women Historians
ISBN: 9780749007157
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2005-12-27T06:00:00+00:00

All he had to do was dispel her lingering anxieties about his character. Hmm. Richard paused next to a painting by David. That might be too difficult a feat without revealing his secret identity. Too much effort. No, he decided. Far better to seduce Amy out of her scruples.

Ah, now there was a plan worthy of the master strategist who had saved scads of French noblemen from the guillotine.

With that out of the way, Richard could once more concentrate on sallying forth and doing his bit to defend England against old Boney by drinking French brandy and winning at cards.

Richard dropped in on a record-breaking four salons and card parties between eight and eleven o’clock. At one, he eavesdropped on conversations under the cover of music; at another, he elicited information over cards; at yet another, he rifled through his host’s desk while a poet declaimed in a room across the hall. It would have been five parties had he not spotted Pauline Leclerc as he entered the fifth salon. Grabbing his hat and gloves back from the astonished maid, he had barely escaped with his trousers intact.

Robbins dropped Richard off beneath the portico of Mme Rochefort’s town house, Richard’s final destination, just after eleven. “Don’t bother coming back for me,” Richard told his coachman, as he swung out of the chaise. “I’ll find my own way back.”

“You’re quite sure, my lord?” Robbins believed the population of Paris to be comprised entirely of footpads and assassins, all just waiting to leap out at his young master from dark alleyways.

“Quite sure. Get some rest.”

“Aye, my lord.”

As his carriage pulled away, Richard settled his hat more firmly on his head, gave his gloves one last tug, pasted on a social smile, and ascended the steps to the front door. He was let in by a maid, who took his hat and cloak and pointed him upstairs. Richard made his way up the marble staircase, skirting around a young dandy clinging to the bannister, who was already clearly the worse for drink. Richard feared for the next guest to pass below the staircase.

Reaching the landing, Richard considered his options. To his right, food had already been laid out in the supper-room, and a cadre of devoted gallants were making up plates for their beloveds of the moment.

Richard spotted his hostess in the crush, and nodded to her. Mme Rochefort waved her fan at him with more enthusiasm than decorum, a description that suited the majority of the guests rather well. Mme Rochefort’s parties teemed with young adventurers, aging flirts, and hardened roués, all barely clinging to the fringes of society. Mme Rochefort herself fell into the second category; a former crony of Josephine’s, she had been banished from the Tuilleries when Bonaparte had decided to become respectable.

Down the hall, the crowd in the card room was thinner than usual. Therese Tallien, another former friend of the First Consul’s wife, was playing a rubber of whist with a brightly dressed dandy, a heavy-lidded young

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