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stood slightly ajar to allow the cool night air to reach the overheated guests. “Do come out into the garden, Mr. Whittlesby,” she said. “The night is pleasant, and I find poetry is often enhanced by its surroundings.”
    “Ah, Miss Wooliston!” Augustus gestured extravagantly with his free arm, making the fabric of his sleeve billow like a ship under full sail. “But what rose could possibly compare to you?”
    He opened the door that led down from the drawing room into the internalcourtyard, motioning Jane to precede him. In the center of the garden, there would be no fear of being overheard. The musicians playing in the ballroom and the accumulated chatter of several hundred party guests masked their voices more effectively than any attempt at subterfuge.
    There was nothing like conducting clandestine business in plain sight.
    “Their bloom will fade; yours, fair lady, is rendered immortal, impressed on parchment by the unflagging labors of my humble pen.”
    “Really, Mr. Whittlesby,” said Jane. “Nothing so showy as a rose.”
    “A rose by any other name…”
    “Would be a different poet. I thought you were borrowing from Coleridge these days.”
    Mindful of potential viewers, Augustus thumped a fist against his chest. “You wound me, O cruel one. My execrations are entirely my own. With the occasional nod to Mr. Wordsworth.”
    “I’m sure he would be deeply flattered to hear it. Little does he realize how much he has done to secure freedom on either side of the Channel.” Jane seated herself on a low stone bench in the center of the garden, in plain view of the many windows that surrounded them. “Would you prefer to stand or to disport yourself at my feet?”
    Augustus flung himself dramatically onto the flagstones in front of her. It was too early in the season for flowers to bloom, so Balcourt had brought in flowering shrubs in faux porphyry tubs, scattering them strategically around the garden to create the illusion of abundance.
    “I’ll disport,” he said. “It provides better cover.”
    From the windows, all anyone would see was the familiar scene of the poet lolling at beauty’s feet, boring her with his latest ode.
    Augustus unrolled the scroll of paper. “So, my fair Cytherea, I have tidings for you.”
    “From across the boundless sea?”
    “Close enough. My sources claim Bonaparte’s fleet is prepared to sail.”
    Jane turned her head away, as though abashed by his praise. “That can’t be. His admirals wouldn’t approve the plan. It was impracticable.”
    “They have now.” Augustus gazed up at her yearningly over the end of the paper, the poet worshipping his muse. They had played this game many times before. “Both Villeneuve and Decres signed off on it. The fleet is due to depart in July.”
    He didn’t tell her where he had acquired his information and she didn’t ask. They both knew better than that.
    Augustus looked up at her from his vantage point on the ground, marveling, not at the clean lines of cheek and jaw that were nature’s gift and not her own, but at her calm good sense, unusual in anyone at all, let alone one so young.
    The Pink Carnation had burst upon the scene a little more than a year before, in the spring of 1803, with the spectacular theft of the gold that Bonaparte had intended for the manufacture of a fleet to invade England. Augustus had shrugged and gone about his business. He had been in Paris since 1792. Would-be heroes came and went. One spectacular intrigue, they went all cocky, and the next thing you knew, they were in the Bastille, babbling the names of their confederates and collaborators.
    Not Augustus. He was in it for the long haul. His brief was simple. Observe, record, relay. No heroics, no direct action. Just the simple gathering and transmission of information. Idiots who went swanning about Paris in a black mask seldom lasted terribly long.
    But the Pink Carnation had followed up that first success with a second and then a