The Garden Intrigue

Chapter 14

Sussex, England

May 2004

“Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Huh?” I was still staring after Nigel Dempster. The stripes on his suit were too close together. A little like his eyes. Not like I was prejudiced or anything. It didn’t count as prejudice when it was true. “What?”

Colin was not going to be happy when he heard that his sister’s snake of an ex was on the premises. Admittedly, Colin was already unhappy, but this was going to add a whole new level of awful to a week that was already shaping up to rival one of Dante’s inner circles of inferno. All we needed was a frozen lake and a few upside-down popes. And maybe some little demons with pitchforks.

“About the computer,” said Cate. “That would be really great, if you’re sure it’s okay. There’s only one for the whole crew, and this sound guy keeps hogging it.”

“Oh, right.” It had been only about five minutes since I had contrived my cunning plan to win over a member of the film crew with extra Internet access, but it felt much longer. Back then—before Dempster—I’d only been worried about people walking in on my shower and Colin going after Jeremy with a fish knife. This was just getting more fun by the moment.

But none of it was Cate’s fault.

“Of course, it’s fine,” I said, baring way too many teeth in an attempt to make amends for my abstraction. “Just don’t tell anyone else or we’ll have half the cast knocking down the door. Do you want to come with me now? I can show you where it is.”

Cate fell into step beside me. “Thank you so much. I have a boyfriend at home, and this whole text thing—” Cate waved her phone in the air in illustration. “Well, it’s kind of limiting.”

Listening to someone else’s relationship woes was preferable to trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to gently break to Colin that we had another crisis on our hands.

Or telling him that I had only one month left to live—I mean, date.

I made a sympathetic face at Cate. “How long have you been doing the transcontinental thing?”

“Two weeks.” Cate regarded her mobile with disfavor. “It feels like longer.”

“The whole time zone thing sucks, doesn’t it?” Colin and I had played that game when I was home in New York over Christmas.

It’s funny I had no problem doing math when it involved historical dating, but apply it to time zones or the calculation of a tip and I was completely lost. Hence that two a.m. call that time. His two a.m., not mine. Unfortunately, Colin isn’t really a night owl. It was one of his few drawbacks as a boyfriend.

Cate’s brown curls bobbed in affirmation. “I wouldn’t recommend it,” she said, and I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not.

My gut said not.

My gut wasn’t a happy place. In one month, that would be me. Three months if I pushed it and stayed around for the summer. Our relationship would shrink to an hour at dinnertime—my dinnertime, his bedtime—and an amusing assortment of e-mail forwards, sent less for themselves and more as a placeholder, a shorthand for “Hi! I have nothing to say, but I’m thinking about you!”

We would have less and less to say. Whatever they say about absence making the heart grow fonder, a relationship lies in the daily details, not the grand reunions. Right now, Colin and I were in the process of building up a foundation of shared memories.

I don’t mean the major memories, the groundbreaking moments, but the little, everyday ones that, in their own weird way, last longer and mean more. When I thought about Colin, it wasn’t of our more dramatic encounters. I didn’t dwell on our almost kiss in a ruined monastery or his magnificent fury (okay, fine, so it was more like mid-level pissiness, but the other sounds better for posterity) at finding me going through his aunt’s papers. Instead, what I remembered was the solidness of his arm around me when I tripped on loose gravel in the pub parking lot, or the play of shadow on his face as he stood by the kitchen window, rinsing the dishes before loading them into the antiquated dishwasher.

I liked that Colin, the domestic Colin. Our conversation was less and less about the big issues—politics, religion, the inherent inferiority of the Napoleonic regime—and more and more about whether it was a pub night or a home night, or the recurring debate about who left the lid off the toothpaste tube. (Hint: It wasn’t me.) I’d traded in my daydreams for domesticity. Maybe it sounds unromantic, but it had a solid feel to it. It was real.

At least for now.

“So what’s the deal with Dempster?” I asked my new best friend. “What does a historical consultant actually do?”

“You mean other than demand more mineral water?” I got the feeling Dempster hadn’t exactly made himself popular with Cate. “And not that brand of mineral water, the other kind.”

Her English accent was even worse than mine, but I got the point.

“It’s not like he really even needs to be here,” she said, warming to her theme. “They mostly hired him to go over the script and make sure the historical—whatever—was right.”

As someone who was a professional whatever-er, I decided to just nod rather than to take offense.

“But he insisted that he had to be here, on set, from day one. Forget day one. Day zero. The bigwigs aren’t getting here until tonight. But, no, Mr. Mineral Water had to be here early.”

“So that’s not normal practice, then,” I said. “Having the historical consultant on set.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Cate hastily. She flashed me a guilty grin. “And it’s not like I’d really know. I’m not really a movie person. I just got this job because—”

“Right,” I filled in for her. “I remember. The cousin who knew someone.”

“I’m starting at Columbia journalism school in the fall,” she said proudly. “I’m doing their broadcast program. They’re the only Ivy to have one.”

“Congrats!” I channeled extra enthusiasm into it to hide the fact that my mind was decidedly elsewhere. “So your sense, though, is that the historical consultant wouldn’t usually need to be around at this point.”

“That’s what I heard one of the guys on the crew saying.” She shook back her brown curls. “I wasn’t the only one he was trying to treat like his personal minion.”

“He does do that,” I murmured.

Dempster was the head archivist at a choice art collection in central London. Snooty, but not exactly lucrative. Dempster, as Cate had so aptly noted, did like the finer things in life. His cunning plan? To make his fortune by writing a muckraking, best-selling work of nonfiction about England’s greatest, undiscovered spy, the Pink Carnation. His efforts in that direction had been less than scrupulous, including dating Colin’s sister, Serena, in an attempt to worm his way into the family archives via Serena’s affections.

Needless to say, that plan hadn’t gone very well.

The last time I’d had the misfortune to meet Nigel Dempster was back in November. I had hoped—if I thought of him at all—that the intervening six months would have produced new get-rich-quick schemes. Ones without a Selwick component. His presence at Selwick Hall did not bode well.

With a sick feeling, I remembered my disordered papers. Dempster had tried to steal my notes before. He had a very all’s-fair approach to scholarship, at least when it worked to his advantage.

“Oh.” Cate drew back, looking alarmed. “Do you know him? I didn’t mean— That is, if you’re friends— I’d heard he knew someone connected to the family, but I didn’t realize…”

“No!” I said quickly. “I mean, I do know him, but we’re not friends. I had to do some research in his archive a few months ago, that’s all.”

Plus, he had screwed over my boyfriend’s sister, but it didn’t seem politic to mention that bit.

“Phew.” Cate visibly relaxed. “I was afraid I’d really put my foot in it. Someone said he had a thing going with someone connected to the family, and when you said…But you’re dating the cute, grumpy guy, so that wouldn’t make sense. Sorry.”

The cute, grumpy guy. I liked that. I’d have to tell Colin later. And my friend Pammy, who had been watching the progress of the Colin affair from day one. We could call Colin CGG for short. Pammy was very big on the code names. Yes, we were secretly still fifth graders when it came to dealing with boys. I mean, men.

Colin’s study was empty, the computer monitor tilted to the side. I held open the study door for Cate and waved her to precede me. “Someone connected to the family?”

Cate lifted her hands in a gesture indicative of the mysterious ways of the office gossip chain. “The crew guys said that was how he got the job, through his girlfriend.”

What was the screen doing tilted? Colin liked it facing dead ahead. It was one of the small things that drove him batty. He was also very picky about his paper-clip collection.

I moved to draw the monitor back into place and saw something that made me pause.

“Weird,” I said.

“What is it?” Cate’s bouncy brown curls brushed my cheek as she leaned over my shoulder. “Is the Internet down?”

“No. No worries.” I pushed abruptly away from the screen, nearly slamming into Cate. “I thought I’d closed out of my e-mail, but I guess I didn’t.”

There was my webmail, open on the screen, maximized to its largest size. There was a smattering of new e-mails, distinguished by their darker font, including two with the heading “Re: 10B?”

To anyone else, that wouldn’t mean anything at all. It might be an apartment number or a Chinese food entrée or a new address for Sherlock Holmes. Only Harvard history department cognoscenti would automatically translate that to Western Civ, Part II. Besides, Colin and I had an honor system. I didn’t go through his files—well, not after that last time—and he didn’t read my e-mail. It was all about trust.

Okay, it was mostly about trust and a little bit about fear of getting caught.

“Anyway, this is the computer.” Shaking off my unease, I turned back to Cate. “As long as the study is empty, please feel free to come in and use it. Just make sure not to move anything around on the desk. And Colin likes the computer monitor facing forward, so if you move it, move it back. Oh, and there are biscuits in the tin over there. Please feel free.”

“This is so nice of you.” Cate clutched her clipboard to her chest. “I can’t tell you.”

“Just knock before you come in, okay? I’ll let Colin know that you might be in and out.”

“Thanks.” Cate glanced back over her shoulder. Even on the second floor, we could hear the sound of cars on the gravel of the drive, and voices from downstairs, steadily rising in volume. Either this was the catering crew, or some of the guests were arriving early. “I’d better get back down there. But I might sneak up later?”

“Any time,” I said, sliding into Colin’s desk chair. “We’ll be at the dinner, so the computer is all yours. You can ward off invaders for us.”

Cate brandished her clipboard. “Will do.”

“Don’t mind about the door. It”—there was a horrible squawking sound as she yanked at it—“sticks.”

“Sorry!” Cate’s voice floated back through the door panels.

My smile faded as I turned back to my e-mail. My open and maximized e-mail.

I might have just been careless and left the box open. But I didn’t think so. I was paranoid enough about Colin stumbling on that stupid 10B e-mail—not that it was really a secret, and I’d have to tell him eventually, anyway, but I’d rather tell him in my own time, once I’d figured out what I wanted to do.

Well, if Dempster had looked through my e-mails, he wouldn’t find anything of use to him, just details for my friend Alex’s engagement party, a few amusing forwards from Pammy, and those 10B e-mails.

I scrolled down the page. There were two new e-mails, one after the other. I’d shot off an SOS to two history department friends that morning, asking for advice. This wasn’t exactly the sort of dilemma with which I could go to my advisor. Archival issues, yes. Boy issues, no. Admittedly, this was a mixed issue of archive and boy, but it still smacked too much of the personal intruding onto the professional for me to share with anyone I wanted to take me seriously. So I’d appealed to Liz and Jenny instead.

Liz was my year in the history department, Jenny a year ahead of me. We had been dubbed the Triumvirate of Terror, not by the hapless undergrads to whom we had attempted to teach western civ, but by a colleague in the history department who had made the cardinal mistake of attempting to ask us each out, one after the other.

Our specialties were very different—Jenny did Charlemagne, Liz was all about madness in Renaissance Florence, and I had my thing for British spies—but we had formed a fast friendship that went well beyond complaining about undergrad essays and the lousy coffee in Robinson Hall. They were my favorite outlet shopping buddies.

They had both chimed in, Jenny from Cambridge, Liz from Florence, where she was on her research year. I checked the time stamp on Jenny’s e-mail. Wow. She really needed to stop getting up so early. Surely, Charlemagne could wait until a more civilized hour. He’d been dead about twelve hundred years, after all.

She wrote: My dearest Eloise, STAY IN ENGLAND! Really, why trade London for the joys of the Coop losing your book order and undergraduates whining that the B+ you gave them is the only thing standing between them and Harvard Law? Anyway, you found original documents. It is the Holy Grail of the historian. Stay and write them up! Boy or no boy, there will be plenty of time for teaching later. Liz and I will miss you, of course, but stay. Must run to Widener before it closes and then to Daedalus for drinks. More tomorrow. Love, Jenny

I regarded the e-mail with a warm glow. I love my friends.

I scrolled down through the e-mail chain to Liz’s feedback and my glow faded. Hey, snookums, wrote Liz. Is this about the boy?

Damn. She knew me way too well. I’d tried to couch it in neutral terms, making it out to be more about extra archival research than, well, Colin. But Liz was canny that way. She could smell ulterior motives on me like cheap cologne.

Funny, I’d expected her to be more pro, but the advice was decidedly pro-10B and anti-England. …don’t want to jeopardize your career for a guy…documents will still be there…brief research trips…if he really likes you, you can make it work long-distance.

Damn, damn, damn. One pro, one anti, and me still confused. I leaned my forehead against the heels of my hands, wondering how long I could reasonably put off replying to Blackburn. The sensible thing, of course, would be to talk it all through with Colin. He knew his archives better than I did. He could tell me whether there was sufficient material to make it worth my remaining an extra term—it didn’t need to be a whole year. I could go back to Cambridge for spring term and pick up my teaching duties then, even though it was unlikely a deal as sweet as the 10B head TF job would come along.

He could also tell me whether any of it was an option. He was, after all, a crucial part of the equation. Without a fellowship, my staying on would be predicated on his allowing me to live with him.

I thought of the poem Augustus Whittlesby had quoted to Emma Delagardie. “Come live with me and be my love.…”

Did Colin want me to come live with him and be his love and go through his archives? Or was that only for weekends and holidays, too scary to contemplate for daily use?

There was no way to find out except by asking him.

Like a petulant five-year-old resisting a nap, I didn’t wanna. Oh, I had any number of excellent excuses. Colin had enough on his plate, now wasn’t the time, I could wait until the film people left…But those weren’t the real reasons, sensible though they seemed. At base, I wanted Colin to say something without my having to. I wanted him to intuit what I didn’t want to ask. I wanted him to want me just because he wanted me, and not because it was a choice between inviting me to stay or my going thousands of miles away.

If only real life actually worked like that. In fiction, the hero’s declaration always comes in just the nick of time; the heroine doesn’t have to scrounge and maneuver for it.

My friend Alex, who had been in a functional relationship longer than anyone I knew, claimed that it didn’t have to do with their not caring; it was just the way they were wired. Men, that is. According to Alex, when they were least communicative was often when they were most content, happy, in ways we were not, just to take a good thing as a good thing and let it meander along its own course. In other words, the ultimate exposition of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” We fretted about what they were feeling; they were wondering about dinner.

In this case, that was probably literally true.

Crap. How was it ten to seven already? Cocktails started on the dot and I was still in jeans and a ratty old button-down shirt. I kicked back out of Colin’s chair.

Dinner and Dempster first, major relationship issues later. Fortunately, Colin’s study was just down the hall from the bedroom we now shared, at least on weekends. My jeans and sweaters were slowly making inroads into the drawers, and my brush, earring collection, and deodorant had colonized a corner of the dresser.

Colin had already come and gone, judging from the clothing on the floor and the toothbrush dripping next to the sink. Damn. I had hoped to catch him while he was changing, in that intimate never-never land of shirt studs and tie loops, breaking the Dempster news to him while he was still in dishabille. Whispering it under the curious eyes of Colin’s evil stepfather and assorted Hollywood luminaries was going to put distinct limits on our ability to discuss.

I glanced at the door, but it didn’t obligingly open with a Colin on the other side of it. Okay, I’d just have to dress like the wind and catch him downstairs. At least I didn’t have much wardrobe to dither over.

I yanked my two cocktail dresses out of the closet. A life spent among the documents of dead people did not exactly prepare one for dinner with Hollywood’s finest. My wardrobe choices were distinctly limited. If I had thought ahead, I could have hit up my friend Pammy for an outfit. As a PR person—and an unabashed trust-fund baby—Pammy’s closet made Madonna’s look tame. Don’t even ask me about the hot pink yak-skin corset.

As it was, I had two choices: black or beige.

I reached for the beige. It was the closest to a designer article of clothing that I owned, made of soft mock suede with a fringed neck and hem, embroidered with a smattering of turquoise beads. A flap across the back tied at a diagonal angle, leaving a triangle of skin bare. It was a little bit Flintstones, but if all the guys I knew who had crushes on Wilma were anything to go by, that wasn’t a bad thing. Plus, it had certain sentimental associations. I had worn the same dress to a certain absurd party thrown by Pammy the night I learned that Colin was, in fact, single, available, and most likely flirting.

That had been one fun night, despite having to hold his sister Serena’s head over a toilet bowl when some dodgy prawns caught up with her.

I twisted my arms behind my back, struggling with the tie, which had the dual disadvantage of being leather and at an odd angle.

That had been the first night I had spent real time with Serena, who had also, because my world was that small, gone to school with my old friend Pammy. It had been the night Pammy had dropped the bombshell that Serena wasn’t, as I had erroneously presumed, Colin’s girlfriend but his sister, and that his solicitous attention to her was the result of her having just gone through a particularly nasty—

Oh, God.

I froze, my arms bowed out behind my back. Breakup. She had just gone through a nasty breakup with Nigel Dempster. That had been back in October. Dempster had broken up with her in September. He had made a play for me in November. Serena and Colin had functionally stopped speaking in March, when Serena threw in her vote with Jeremy in exchange for a junior partnership in the gallery where she currently worked. In the past two months, all we’d heard about her had come, piecemeal, from Pammy or from Colin’s aunt Arabella, who, while disapproving, had chosen not to kick the erring ewe from the fold. But those snippets hadn’t been much; Colin tended to get tight-lipped and walk away when Serena came up. He had even done that to me a time or two. Her betrayal had cut deep.

We knew she was alive and sentient and still working at the gallery, but we didn’t know anything else about her. We didn’t know if she was eating or sleeping or seeing a therapist. Or dating.

Serena had leaned on Colin like a crutch after her breakup. But what happened when that crutch was taken away? What happened if Dempster had decided he wanted her back? Serena was a sweet-natured girl, but she had all the spine of a bowl of tapioca pudding.

Cate had said that Dempster wrangled his job through a personal connection with the family.

Dempster had, as far as I knew, only one connection with the Selwick family, or, at least, only one I would refer to as personal, in the most personal of possible senses.

Serena.

I could hear Cate’s cheerful voice, the words distinct in memory as they hadn’t been in the moment. “The crew guys said that was how he got the job, through his girlfriend.”

Ex-girlfriend? Or current?

This dinner party was shaping up to be even more fraught with treachery than a masque at Malmaison.