“Well, they don’t!” Horace said indignantly. “I have been of the most subtle.”

“Right.” Augustus eyed de Lilly’s pink and green striped waistcoat. Not exactly what he would call subtle. “What was it that sent you running to Paris?”

Horace flung himself into Balcourt’s desk chair, his spurs digging into the imported Persian carpet. “It was like this,” he began, clearly determined to milk every moment of glory from the retelling. Augustus remembered when he had been like that. A very long time ago. Horace’s beardless face shone with excitement. “I was with the court of the First Consul in Saint-Cloud, when the Consul received a visit from Admiral Decres—”

A sound caught Augustus’s attention. A creak, as of a floorboard being depressed slowly and carefully by a person trying very hard not to be heard.

Augustus held up a hand, signaling Horace to silence.

“Edouard?” It was a female voice, raised in a questioning tone. A fingernail scratched against the wood of the door. “Edouaaaard?”

Augustus deliberately rustled the papers on the desk. “Who disturbs me?” he called out, stretching out the vowels in the most annoying way he could. “Who disturbs me in my poetic reverie?”

The scratching stopped. “Pardon?”

“Is it too much to ask for a humble poet to find a bit of peace to court the muse in private?” Augustus inquired mournfully. “Oh, the world is too much with us! Chattering and clattering, we lay waste our talents, consigning our patrimony of poetry to the wasted wind of the idle hour. Oh, woe! Woe it is to be—me.”

He broke off as he heard the floorboards creak in rapid retreat.

Horace leaned forward. “Was that—?” he hissed.

“Balcourt’s mistress.”

“Oh.” Horace shrugged off the intrusion. Mistresses were an inconsequential part of urban existence, like tavern owners or those annoying little people who collected bills. “As I was saying, I was at Saint-Cloud, when—”