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English were born with protocol in their very bones.
    “It is an honor, Mr. Livingston,” said Jane, slipping into English as the others had done. “With so many cousins, to be Madame Delagardie’s favorite must be a signal distinction indeed.”
    “You are English, Miss Wooliston?” Kort said, looking at her quizzically. Technically, travel between England and France was prohibited. Jane was something of a special circumstance. Bonaparte admired beauty.
    More important, Hortense had taken Jane under her wing. Bonaparte might not respect many peoples’ wishes, but his stepdaughter had a special place in his affections. Sometimes, Emma forgot that Jane hadn’t attended Madame Campan’s with them; she had fit so seamlessly into their fellowship.
    “English by birth,” said Jane calmly. “Paris is my adopted home.”
    “Miss Wooliston has cousins here,” Emma jumped in before the conversation could become awkward. Although some of Emma’s cousins had remained Tories, her branch of the family had supported the colonies’ splitwith Britain; even thirty years on, feelings towards the British could not be termed warm. Kort had always minded terribly that he had been born too late to take an active part in the Revolution. “You’ve met Monsieur de Balcourt, I think. Or if you haven’t, you will.” She wafted her fan around the music room, with its oversize sarcophagi and smirking sphinxes. “This is his home.”
    Kort looked dubiously at a mummy case. “It’s all very…exotic.”
    Emma remembered the family homestead on the Hudson, decorated in the last word of pre-Revolutionary style, all clean, classical lines and plain dark wood. Her mother didn’t go in for fads. Kort’s mother, her own mother’s second cousin, considered herself somewhat more stylish, cutting a dash in Albany, but even she would have seen nothing like this.
    “It’s called
Retour d’Egypte
,” explained Emma, “in honor of the First Consul’s expedition to Egypt.”
    “Hence the name,” contributed Jane blandly. “If you will excuse me, there’s a wounded soul I must soothe.”
    Emma followed her gaze to the doorway. Whittlesby clasped his scroll to his heart, looking soulfully at Jane.
    Was it silly that it stung, just a bit?
    “Wounded soul, indeed!” Emma turned back to Jane, the silk of her skirt swirling around her legs with a very satisfying swish. “It was only a flesh wound.”
    “You gouged his ego,” teased Jane.
    “Yes, but I left his heart alone,” said Emma severely. “You’ll lead him on if you continue to encourage him so.”
    Jane made a face. “That depends on whether you believe Petrarch really loved his Laura. I’m nothing more than a poetic object of expedience.”
    Emma grinned. “A muse of convenience?”
    “Every poet must have one,” said Jane. “Mr. Livingston.”
    With a cordial nod to Emma’s cousin, she crossed the room to rejoin the poet, accepting the arm he held out to her.
    Emma watched them as they made their way across the room. Jane wastall, but the poet was a head taller. He had to bend to speak to her, the linen of his shirt stretching across a back that was broader than it had any right to be. Hefting a quill must be better exercise than it seemed.
    “What was that all about?” Kort asked.
    Emma yanked her attention back to her cousin.
    “Oh, nothing,” she said hastily. “Just a poet.”

Chapter 3
    She took the key about her neck
    And shook her shining head.
    “You must seek elsewhere, brave my knight,
    And be not daunted or misled.
    My key is not the key you seek,
    Nor can it stand in stead.”
    —Augustus Whittlesby,
The Perils of the
    Pulchritudinous Princess of the Azure Toes,
    Canto XII, 41–34
    I know I can trust
you
, Miss Wooliston, to listen to my ode without the offense of unnecessary interruptions,” Augustus proclaimed loudly.
    Jane slid her arm through his, giving him a warning look under cover of her fan as she strolled with him to French doors that