The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Chapter Seventeen

"I don't think that's ours," said Jay, turning back around.

"Huh?" My eyes were still fixed somewhere just over his shoulder.

"The food," said Jay. "It's the wrong order."

He didn't seem to realize that the universe had just flipped onto its head and started jumping about like a Romanian gymnast in the last leg of the Olympics.

I mustered a weak smile. "Oops," I said. "Sorry."

In an alternative universe, I continued to look and sound like a perfectly normal human being. One leg was crossed over the other, my right hand was loosely clasped around the stem of my wineglass, and my hair fell in a becoming arc just beneath my jaw. Inside, I was a blubbering mess.

I smiled at Jay and made some sort of inane comment about the food. I have no idea what it was, but it must have been perfectly acceptable, because he didn't stare at me as though I'd sprouted three heads or bolt for the door. Meanwhile, my internal monologue was stuck on a repeating loop of My God, my God, my God, enlivened with a chorus of What do I do, what do I do, what do I do, in stereo sound.

Over Jay's shoulder, Colin didn't seem to have noticed me yet. He and his friends had trooped in a noisy herd over to the bar, Ungh and friends seeking water hole after a long day of mammoth hunting.

At least he wasn't there with a woman.

Oh, no, you don't, I told myself. That didn't change the basic fact that he was back in London and hadn't called. He hadn't even tried to call. At least, as far as I knew. I didn't have an answering machine back in the flat…but that was because no one ever called me on my landline, anyway, except my parents, and occasionally Alex. Everyone else used the mobile. And the mobile registered missed calls.

Which effectively ruled out the charming picture of Colin nobly hitting redial while the phone rang and rang in an empty flat.

"How long are you in London for?" I asked Jay, in the hopes that if I got him talking again, he might not notice that I found the area just over his left shoulder much more interesting than I found him.

"Just for tonight." Jay flipped open his phone with the air of a habitual cell phone checker. I wondered if it was programmed into him never to be able to discuss time without first looking at his phone. "I fly back to New York tomorrow."

"Oh, are you going home for Thanksgiving?"

The three guys were clustered at the bar in that weird way men have, as though in a football huddle or a Canada goose flight formation, two at the actual bar, the one in the middle slightly behind. The other two were, in a word, unremarkable. The one in back had a shock of red hair and a healthily browned complexion. The other was shorter, darker, and more heavily built, with closely cut curly hair. Just guys. Or, as they would undoubtedly call themselves, blokes.

Colin hadn't seen me yet—at least, I didn't think he had. I concentrated on arranging my smile at its most becoming angle, just in case he should glance over.

"You're not going back?"

What was he talking about? Oh, Thanksgiving. I forced myself to focus for just as long as it took to reply. "I can't really justify it. I'll be heading home for Christmas in just another month, anyway."

The bartender plonked three large pints on the trendy counter, pale gold and dripping with foam. My eyes strayed to the half-finished glass in front of Jay. Why was it that when Jay ordered beer it seemed pretentious, but when Colin did, it just seemed normal?

Maybe it was because Colin wasn't wearing a jacket without a tie. Or maybe it was because I was a little bit biased.

Just a little bit.

On the other hand, Jay returned calls, and Colin didn't. Returning calls was a big plus.

"—homesick?" Jay was finishing.

I'd missed most of it, but it wasn't hard to guess. I could probably tune out for half the conversation, and come back in half an hour later knowing exactly what had been said.

That, I reminded myself, wasn't fair either. No one said anything particularly interesting on a first date. There was practically a rule against it.

"Not really," I responded to his unheard question, as though I hadn't been on the verge of sobbing into the Marks & Spencer sandwich case a few days before. "An old friend of mine always does a huge Thanksgiving dinner for expats and assorted hangers-on, so I'll get my turkey and stuffing fix for the year."

"It's not the same as going home," said Jay, in a smug way that annoyed me enough to drag my attention away from Colin.

"No, really, you think?"

At least, that was what I wanted to say.

Since that might get back to Grandma, I just shrugged, and said, "You take what you can get. And I've known Pammy and her family since I was five, so it's almost as good as going home. Lots of reminiscing about old times, that sort of thing."

"Pammy is…?"

"The friend who's doing Thanksgiving dinner. We went to Chapin together."

"Right." Jay processed that information as solemnly as though it were a bullet point on a spreadsheet. Did spreadsheets have bullet points? I didn't know. More important, I didn't want to know. I had a feeling Jay would try to tell me if I gave him the chance. Complete with PowerPoint presentation and graphs.

"Does your family make a big deal out of Thanksgiving?" I asked, assuming an expression of great earnestness. My motives were purely ignoble. The more open-ended the question, the longer Jay would keep talking. And the less likely he would be to notice that my attention was largely elsewhere.

His mouth began moving. I nodded and smiled, all the while tracking Colin's movements like high-tech army radar with an enemy warship in range.

I knew exactly how I was going to play it. I wasn't going to smile. I wasn't going to jump up and down and wave like a maniac. I winced at the memory of standing in a ruined cloister in Sussex, with my eyes closed, my head tipped back, and my lips puckered up.

I'd already indicated more than enough interest.

For once, I was going to play it cool. If he came up to me, I knew he was interested; if he stayed on the other side of the room, he wasn't. It was a test of the Emergency Boy Interest System.

There was just a slight hitch to the plan. Colin's back was to me, which meant that, unless he suddenly grew eyes in the back of his head (which would be a distinct turnoff in the dating department), he had no idea I was there.

Details, details.

And, lo, the great dating gods did cast the glow of their countenances down upon me. At the bar, Colin suddenly twitched and plunked his glass back down on the counter. No, it wasn't a sudden epileptic fit or an attack by a killer snake only he could see. It was his mobile, buzzing away in his left pocket. He dove sideways, like John Travolta on the downswing of "Staying Alive," and yanked the phone out of his pocket, swiveling away from his companions as he did so, that marginal move by which cell phone users maintain the illusion of privacy with the minimum actual movement.

Which put him facing directly toward me.

My little sister calls it the Evil "I-Know-You" Look. The Evil "I-Know-You" Look begins with surprised recognition (generally represented by Jillian widening her eyes, dropping her jaw, and poking one finger in the air in a sort of "Eureka!" motion). Recognition is followed by doubt—the finger droops as the viewer leans in closer to get a better look. The final stage is alarm. The outstretched hand is hastily retrieved as the viewer seeks a way to hide before being forced to acknowledge the acquaintance. Hence the "evil" in the Evil "I-Know-You" Look, otherwise, one assumes, it would simply be an "I-Know-You" Look.

Don't ask me, ask Jillian. She made it up.

Stage One: Colin froze with one hand on the mobile. Stage Two: Eyes narrowing, Colin leaned forward, face arranged in just the right blend of curiosity and confusion. Stage Three:…

I didn't wait to see Colin go through Stage Three. I hastily wrenched my gaze back to Jay.

"Tofu turkey? Really?" I said breathlessly.

I put an extra few watts into my smile at Jay, just because. It was a sickening display. Grandma would have been so proud.

"Only that one year," said Jay, clearly anxious lest I think them impossibly passй on the Thanksgiving menu front. "And it was just because my brother's girlfriend doesn't eat meat." He made it sound like a personal failing.

"What did it taste like?"

"Turkey," said Jay.

On that scintillating note, a shadow fell across our table.

"Hi," Colin said.

He smelled of the outdoors, of cold, clean air, and falling leaves, and long, open stretches of parkland, a world away from the muggy heat of the Indian restaurant. His pale green shirt was open slightly at the collar, lending a greenish cast to his hazel eyes. His skin looked tanner than the last time I had seen him, the healthy brown of the dedicated outdoorsman, although that might only have been in contrast to Jay's office-park pallor.

There's a Christina Rosetti poem that begins, "The birthday of my life is come / My love is come to me." Well, I couldn't claim—at least not with a straight face—that my heart was like the singing bird that perched upon the watered shoot. And I think Rosetti was talking about Christ, or something equally allegorical and noncarnal. But my spirits did float up like leaves eddying in playful circles in an autumn breeze.

Up—and down. All those ridiculous conflicting emotions one experiences and would like to pretend one didn't. Ecstatic joy that he had gotten up and walked all the way across the room—to see me! Staggering resentment that he hadn't called. Desperate yearning for some sort of sign, some sort of signal, that he would have liked to have called.

And, topping it all off, extreme personal annoyance for all of the aforementioned emotions. What was I, thirteen?

"Hi," I said.

We stared at each other like idiots.

At least, I was staring like an idiot, desperately trying to think of something neutral to say. "Where have you been?" and "Why the hell haven't you called me?" didn't seem to come under that category. Nor did "Colin, take me away!" Besides, that was supposed to be "Calgon," not "Colin."

"Hi," Jay said loudly, completing the conversational circle. He stuck out a hand. "Jay Watkins."

Colin's hand met his with an audible thump, like two gorillas bumping chests in the forest. "Colin Selwick."

"Oh, right, sorry," I said incoherently, shoving the hair back out of my face. It promptly flopped back again. Chin-length hair and a side part do not a convenient combination make. "Colin, Jay. Jay, Colin."

The introductions having been completed—twice—I belatedly remembered my manners.

"How is your aunt?" For Jay's benefit, I added, "Colin's aunt was kind enough to help me out with my research."

"Wreaking her usual havoc," Colin said fondly. "You should ring her. I'm sure she'll want to hear how you're getting on."

"I'll do that." All the excited flutters leached out of me, like air from a burst balloon. Of course, that was why Colin had come over. As a courtesy on behalf of his aunt. A duty visit. That was what the whole thing had been, from the very beginning, and I was an idiot to have ever thought otherwise.

What sort of pathetic creature was I, that I had mistaken plain good manners for romantic interest?

That, by the way, was a rhetorical question. The answer was too grim to contemplate.

I took a bracing sip of my wine. "It's very kind of her to take an interest."

Colin braced both hands against the tabletop, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he leaned forward. "How are you getting on?"

"Very well, actually." I couldn't have him thinking that I was entirely dependent on his family's good graces. "I followed a hunch and came across some great stuff in the BL."

"I didn't realize the BL had anything on the Carnation."

"I don't think they realized either." Flipping back my hair, I grinned up at him. "It's all under 'Alsdale'—whoever entered it into the computer clearly just took the name off the bottom of the letters."

"Alsdale? That doesn't sound familiar."

He seemed so genuinely interested that I couldn't resist. Besides, I'd been dying to tell someone. Alex was busy, Pammy couldn't care less, and my adviser responded to e-mails about once every three months. If I was lucky.

"Remember Mary Alsworthy?"

"Vaguely," said Colin cautiously. "It's been years since I read through those papers."

"Her sister Letty married Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe. He went off to Ireland in 1803—"

"That much I did know."

"—and she followed after him, under the name Alsdale."

"So you followed 'Alsworthy' to 'Alsdale'?"

"Mm-hmm," I said smugly. "And it gets even better. Guess who else was there?"

Jay wanted to play, too. "The Scarlet Pumpernickel?"

Colin fell pray to a sudden coughing fit.

"Close," I said, bracing one elbow against the table and leaning encouragingly toward Jay. Even aside from Colin's coughing fit, I did feel a little bad about Jay. After all, it must be very tedious for him to be stuck listening to a detailed discussion on an esoteric topic he knew nothing about—much like I had felt when he had been going on about his three previous companies.

Besides, being on a date with Jay was clear proof that I had never, ever cherished tender notions regarding Colin. And I certainly hadn't checked my phone every five minutes for the past ten days waiting for him to call.

Guilt—and less laudable motives—inspired me to bestow a warm smile in Jay's direction. "It wasn't the Pimpernel, but it was another spy with a flowery name."

Jay shook his head, struggling for words.

"I can't believe you're spending seven years of your life on spies named after flowers."

I abruptly ceased feeling bad about Jay.

"If all of this has been sitting at the BL all this time," said Colin, crossing his arms across his chest, "why hasn't anyone come across it before?"

I shook my head. "I'm not explaining it well, am I? First, it's in one of those jumble folios. Someone just tossed the contents of their attic into a notebook and sent it off to the BL. I don't think anyone's opened it since it got there in 1902. On top of that, Letty doesn't use proper names anywhere. I mean, from time to time she'll throw in a reference to the Carnation or the Tulip, but most of the time you have to work by inference. Everyone—and I do mean everyone—seems to be traveling under an assumed name. The only reason I was able to figure out who was who was because I was looking for it. I knew Letty's relationship to Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe, and I knew that if there was a Jane operating in concert with a Geoffrey, it was probably the Jane."

"So you followed Geoffrey to Letty, and Letty to Jane." The words were simple enough, but the admiring look that accompanied them made me want to wriggle and thump my tail like a happy puppy dog.

"Basically. To anyone reading the letters cold, it would all just sound like pointless gossip—he-said, she-said sort of stuff about a bunch of historically unimportant people. You have to read pretty far along before you even get to the first Pink Carnation mention." I tried to look modest and missed by about a mile. "Guess what Jane's alias was?"

"The Scarlet Pumpernickel?"

I bit my lip on a grin and cast him a mock reproachful look. My restraint was entirely wasted on Jay, who was surreptitiously checking his BlackBerry, entirely unaware that he was being mocked. "Not even close. She traveled as a Miss Gilly Fairley."

"Gilly…for gillyflower?"

The lad was quick.

"Exactly." I beamed.

Jay slid his BlackBerry back under the table. "Gillyflower?"

"It's another name for a carnation," I explained.

"As in pink," added Colin.

"Oh, right." Jay took a long pull of his beer.

"Are you a historian?" asked Colin politely. A little too politely.

With the conversation directed back where it belonged—him—Jay perked up. "No. I help technological service providers actualize their human resource needs."

I took a peek at Colin, but he had his poker face down pat. "A necessary cog in the great wheel of social progress," he said solemnly.

Damn. Jay was rapidly losing value as a face-saving device. Something had to be done, and quickly.

"Jay made some great suggestions about my dissertation earlier!" I chimed in, like a one-woman cheerleading squad.

Across the table, Jay preened.

"Really?" Colin looked expectantly at Jay.

"Yes! I mean, yes. Jay, um, reminded me that it's all too easy to assume an Anglocentric viewpoint while working with a source base composed primarily of the epistolary product of a privileged segment of English society. He suggested that it might be a useful corrective to factor in the social, economic, and political grievances of the oppressed Irish underclass." I took a healthy swig of my wine. "In the interest of scholarly accuracy, of course."

Jay looked much as I must have when he started going on about actualizing technological potentialities. Ha! I could speak gibberish, too, when I wanted to. No field is without its own useful circumlocutions—which roughly translates as "important-sounding babble."

"Of course," Colin agreed. He seemed to be having trouble controlling the corners of his lips again. He glanced sideways from me to Jay and back again. "How do you two, er, know each other?"

At that point, I would have preferred to claim we didn't. But I was stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck. Hoist by my own petard.

"Our grandmothers are friends."

"Actually," interrupted Jay sententiously, "it's my mother who knows your grandmother."

"Right!" I said brightly. "Mitten."

"Muffin," Jay corrected.

At least I was close.

"Mm-hmm," managed Colin, in a way that suggested he knew just what was going on. I could tell he was dying to make a scone joke. I hoped he choked on it.

"But that's not all!" continued my big mouth, working overtime to correct the horrible assumption that I might, just might, be on a grandparent-assisted blind date. "My absolute best friend has been dating Jay's college roommate for absolutely ever!"

Two "absolutes" in one sentence. Next thing I knew, I was going to start spouting "like," probably coupled with "totally" and "ohmigod!"

"How convenient," said Colin. Before I could think of anything clever to say to that, he bestowed an avuncular smile on both of us in turn. "Well, I'll leave you to it, then."

"Nice meeting you." Jay reached into his jacket pocket and produced a business card. "If you ever need technical support services…"

Colin gingerly accepted the card. It boasted blue and orange lettering and was cut on a slight diagonal, in a way that was probably supposed to look edgy, but more likely just made it difficult to fit into the proper wallet compartment.

"Cheers," he said, tilting the card in ironic salute. "Good to see you, Eloise."

Going, going, going…Gone. My shoulders slumped as Colin turned and strolled back through the multicolored obstacle course of tables to his comfortable perch at the bar, his duty to his aunt's protйgй discharged. His friends greeted him with raised glasses and pointed glances. Colin shrugged and said something that produced a laugh all around.

I felt my cheeks grow pink before I remembered that, wait, I was the one on a date. He was just there with a bunch of blokes.

My pride was salvaged. I had won the upper hand—so why did I feel so miserable?

A silver basket filled with warm bread materialized just below my nose, the long-awaited naan.

Jay began methodically dividing the naan, half for me, half for him, along precise, geometrical lines.

"Wait." I finished the wine in my glass in one long swallow and thrust it over to the waiter before he could escape. "I'll take a refill, please." If I could have, I would have made it a double.

It was going to be a long night.