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.