The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig Read Free Book Online

agent of the War Office for nothing, considered this for a moment and his eyes narrowed. ‘You can tell your source that she’s going to have to find someone else to fetch her lemonade at the Alsworthys’ ball tomorrow night unless she apologises. You can also tell her that I’ll accept either a verbal or a written apology as long as it’s suitably abject. And that means very, very abject,’ he added darkly. Miles snatched his hat and gloves up from a side table. ‘Oh, stop grinning already! It wasn’t that amusing.’
    Richard rubbed his chin as though in deep thought. ‘Tell me, Miles, was it a lacy petticoat?’
    With a wordless grunt of annoyance, Miles turned on his heel and stomped out of the room.
    Picking up the news sheet Miles had left behind, Richard settled back down into the comfortable leather chair.
    Two weeks, he thought. In two weeks he would be back in France, risking discovery and death.
    Richard couldn’t wait.

Chapter Three
    ‘H ow do you possibly expect to find the Purple Gentian?’ Jane hurried after Amy into the airy white-and-blue-papered room they had shared since they were old enough to abandon the nursery. ‘The French have been trying for years!’
    Their bedroom was beginning to look like a modiste’s shop struck by a hurricane. A garter dangled off the clock on the mantelpiece, Amy’s bed was snowed under by a pile of frothy petticoats, and, somehow, with one wild fling, Amy had even managed to land a bonnet on the canopy of Jane’s bed. Jane could just make out the tips of pink ribbons dangling over the edge of the canopy.
    Amy had got it into her head that if she packed at once she might be able to leave the next day. It was, reflected Jane, a typically Amy reaction. If Amy had been around for the creation of the world, Jane had no doubt that she would have chivvied the Lord into creating the earth in two days rather than seven.
    Several pairs of stockings came whizzing Jane’s way. ‘Remember that inn the papers said the Scarlet Pimpernel always stopped at? The one in Dover?’
    ‘The Fisherman’s Rest,’ Jane supplied.
    ‘Well the Shropshire Intelligencer said that they thought the Purple Gentian might be continuing the tradition. So…what if we were to stop at the Fisherman’s Rest before we sail? With a little careful eavesdropping, who knows?’
    ‘The Shropshire Intelligencer ,’Jane reminded her, ‘also carried apiece about the birth of a two-headed goat in Nottingham. And last month’s edition claimed that His Majesty had gone mad again and appointed Queen Charlotte Regent.’
    ‘Oh, all right, I’ll grant you that it’s not the most reliable publication—’
    ‘Not the most reliable?’
    ‘Did you see today’s headline, Jane? In the Spectator, mind you, not the Intelligencer.’ Snatching up the much-thumbed sheet of paper, Amy read rapturously, ‘ENGLAND’S FAVOURITE FLOWER FILCHES FRENCH FILES IN DARING RAID.’
    Amy was cut off by the scrape of the door inching open. It couldn’t move more than an inch or two, because Amy’s trunk, which she had dragged out from under the bed, was blocking it. ‘Begging your pardon, Miss Jane, Miss Amy’ – Mary, the upstairs maid, poked her head in and bobbed a curtsy – ‘but the mistress said I was to see if you would be needing any help dressing for dinner.’
    Amy’s face contorted with horror like Mrs Siddons performing Lady Macbeth’s mad scene. ‘Oh, no! It’s Thursday!’
    ‘Yes, miss, and tomorrow’s Friday,’ Mary supplied helpfully.
    ‘Oh, drat, drat, drat, drat,’ Amy was muttering to herself, so it was left to Jane to smile graciously and say, ‘We won’t be requiring your assistance, Mary. You may tell Mama that Miss Amy and I will be down shortly.’
    ‘Yes, miss.’ The maid curtsied again, closing the door carefully behind her.
    ‘Drat, drat, drat,’ said Amy.
    ‘You might wear your peach muslin,’ suggested Jane.
    ‘Tell them I have the headache – no, the plague! I