Лорен Уиллиг: The Garden Intrigue

In the ninth installment of Lauren Willig s bestselling Pink Carnation series, an atrocious poet teams up with an American widow to prevent Napoleon s invasion of England.

Secret agent Augustus Whittlesby has spent a decade undercover in France, posing as an insufferably bad poet. The French surveillance officers can t bear to read his work closely enough to recognize the information drowned in a sea of verbiage.

New York-born Emma Morris Delagardie is a thorn in Augustus s side. An old school friend of Napoleon s stepdaughter, she came to France with her uncle, the American envoy, eloped with a Frenchman, and has been rattling around the salons of Paris ever since. Widowed for four years, she entertains herself by drinking too much champagne, holding a weekly salon, and loudly critiquing Augustus s poetry.

As Napoleon pursues his plans for the invasion of England, Whittlesby hears of a top-secret device to be demonstrated at a house party at Malmaison. The catch? The only way in is with Emma, who has been asked to write a masque for the weekend s entertainment.

Emma is at a crossroads: Should she return to the States or remain in France? She ll do anything to postpone the decision-even if it means teaming up with that silly poet Whittlesby to write a masque for Bonaparte s house party. But each soon learns that surface appearances are misleading. In this complicated masque within a masque, nothing goes quite as scripted- especially Augustus s feelings for Emma.