The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Chapter Forty-One

Onslow Square looked much prettier in the sunlight.

Or it would have, had I not been in the grip of a massive hangover which turned the sunlight glinting off iron railings and car windows into a direct affront. I huddled into the entryway of Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s building and contemplated the buzzer. Part of me was inclined to pop two more Tylenol, call Mrs. Selwick-Alderly with dire tales of bubonic plague, and flee home to my darkened flat.

Of course, that meant getting back on the Tube. The Tube is not the place for a queasy stomach.

If it had just been a matter of an unsettled stomach, I might have braved the Tube. But I was weighted in place by the bundle in my arms. In a capacious Waterstone’s bag, I carried the bulging, plastic-wrapped package of manuscripts. I had promised Mrs. Selwick-Alderly that I would return it today, so return it today I must.

Last night . . . what had I been thinking? I resisted the urge to bang my head against the intercom. I had made an absolute ass of myself in front of Colin Selwick. Oh God. I hadn’t fallen over, had I? Or sung anything? I desperately searched my mental archives, wincing as I flipped through last night’s collection of embarrassing memories. No falling and no singing. I could always call Pammy tonight and make sure. I didn’t think there were any big black spots in my memory, but that’s the problem with black spots, isn’t it? You can’t know they’re not there because you can’t remember them in the first place. Urgh.

What I did remember was bad enough. Why in the hell did I have to hit him with that glow stick? And the glow stick was minor compared with grabbing him and yanking him across the room. Not that any of it mattered, I reminded myself for the fiftieth time. If anyone ought to be ashamed, it was Colin Selwick. What was the idea of letting me think his sister was his girlfriend? To be fair to him, I was the one who had leaped to the conclusion that she was his girlfriend. But he might have disabused me of the notion. The only reason I could come up with to explain why he hadn’t done so was that he was afraid I would fling myself at him if I thought him girlfriendless. Not exactly flattering. Do I look that desperate?

I really hoped Colin Selwick had gone back to Selwick Hall. Or out to a movie. Or anywhere. I didn’t care where, just so long as it wasn’t 43 Onslow Square.

Okay. Enough dithering. I would return the manuscript, have a cup of tea with Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, and go home. Nothing to make a big deal about. I pressed the buzzer.

“Yes?”

“It’s me, Elo—”

“Come right up, Eloise,” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly called down, only in the way of buzzers, it came out, “Grrr grrr grrr, rrrr.” The metallic crunching noises reverberated through my skull.

Hauling my aching head up to the first landing, I was trying to arrange my face into a suitably amiable expression when I caught sight of the open door. And its occupant.

So much for the attempt to smile.

“Feeling a bit rough?” inquired Colin Selwick from his spot against the doorframe.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” I muttered. It wasn’t fair. He’d been out last night, too, tossing down the champagne, and there wasn’t so much as a dark shadow under his eyes. All right, so I’d had a four-glass head start on him, but still. He had no right to look quite that bright and alert and well rested.

Since I couldn’t express any of that, I vented some of my disgruntled emotions by shoving the plastic-wrapped pile at him. “Here. I’ve brought your aunt’s manuscripts back.”

From the look on his face as he accepted the package, it didn’t look like his aunt had ever gotten around to informing him about the manuscript loan. The only word to describe him was nonplussed. Fortunately, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly appeared before Colin could regain his powers of speech.

“Eloise! Welcome!”

“I’ve brought the manuscripts,” I repeated, for lack of anything better to say. Colin, fortunately, seemed to have passed from alarm to resignation without passing rage; or, if he was angry, he was holding his tongue as he passed the manuscripts silently to his aunt. “They’re all there,” I added, for Colin’s benefit.

“I’m sure they are.” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly ushered me into the parlor, Colin following silently behind. Damn, I had been hoping he would go away. How could I ever speak freely to Mrs. Selwick-Alderly with Colin lurking there? I couldn’t look at him without wincing.

The parlor looked much the same as it had the day before yesterday, right down to the tea tray, only this morning the fire was unlit. And there were three cups on the tray instead of two. Damn, damn, damn. I sank onto the same side of the sofa I had occupied on my last visit, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly to my left. Colin flung himself into the overstuffed chair next to my side of the sofa.

“How’s your sister doing?” I asked pointedly.

Colin didn’t miss a beat. “Much better,” he said promptly. “She thinks it was a dodgy prawn sandwich she ate for lunch yesterday.”

“What’s all this?” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly looked up from the tea tray in some concern. “Is Serena ill?”

Colin explained, while I accepted a cup of tea from Mrs. Selwick-Alderly and browsed among the biscuits, searching for something plain. “You’ve won an admirer for life, Eloise,” he finished, stretching his long legs out comfortably in front of him. “She was singing your praises in the cab home.”

This was not what I had expected. I cast a suspicious sideways glance in his direction.

“That was very kind of you, dear,” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly said approvingly. “Biscuit, Colin?”

Colin took three.

Since he clearly wasn’t going anywhere, I decided to just go on as though he weren’t there. Putting my teacup down on the coffee table, I leaned towards Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, effectively cutting Colin out of the conversation.

“What did happen after Richard and Amy returned to England?”

Mrs. Selwick-Alderly tilted her head to one side in thought. “They were married, of course. Both Jane and Miss Gwen returned briefly from France for the occasion—Edouard as well. The Bishop of London performed the ceremony at Uppington House, and the Prince of Wales himself attended the wedding breakfast.”

“Good old Prinny,” commented Colin. “Probably hoping to revive the droit de seigneur.”

I ignored him. Mrs. Selwick-Alderly had more effective tactics. “Colin, dear,” she asked, “would you fetch down the miniatures?”

Colin loped across the room to fetch. Carefully, he freed the two small portrait miniatures that hung above the trunk from their tiny hooks and brought them over to Mrs. Selwick-Alderly.

“These were painted shortly after their wedding,” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly informed me, as Colin dragged his chair closer. Planting an arm against the side of the sofa, he leaned over my shoulder to look at the miniatures. I scooted closer to Mrs. Selwick-Alderly. “This”—she passed me the first painting, a man in a high collar and intricately tied cravat—“is Richard.”

I had expected him to look like Colin. He didn’t.

Lord Richard’s face was narrower, his cheekbones higher, and his nose longer. The coloring was similar, but even there Lord Richard’s hair was a shade lighter, and his eyes were, even in the tiny portrait, a distinct green. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising after two hundred years for a family resemblance to have died out. It was Amy’s comments about blond hair and a supercilious expression that had led me astray. I considered the latter. Hmm, maybe the family resemblance hadn’t entirely died out after all.

“And this”—Mrs. Selwick-Alderly handed me the second miniature, as I settled Lord Richard carefully in my lap—“is Amy.”

Amy’s dark hair was pulled into ringlets at either side of her face, like Lizzie’s in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, and she wore a plain, high-waisted, white muslin gown. In her hand, extended as though towards the occupant of the other miniature, she held a small flower, shaped like a bluebell, but of a deeper hue. Purple, in fact. Despite my lack of horticultural knowledge, I had a feeling I knew which species of flower Amy was holding. Cute. Very cute.

Amy herself was more cute than pretty, with her bouncing curls and her rosebud lips scrunched into a barely repressed grin. She looked like the sort of girl who would lead a midnight kitchen raid at a slumber party. Or burgle Napoleon’s study.

I settled Amy next to Richard in my lap. They looked quite pleased to be reunited; Amy’s eyes glinted mischievously over her oval frame at Richard, and Richard’s expression looked less supercilious, and more “I’ll see you later.”

I wondered if Amy had found life in England intolerably dull after her adventures in France. Did she, in the end, resent having to turn over the title of Pink Carnation to Jane? I hated to think of her becoming old and bitter, and resenting Richard for depriving her of the adventures she might have had.

“Were they . . . happy?” I asked.

“Did they live happily ever after, do you mean?” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly clarified.

A sound suspiciously like a snort emerged from the chair to my right.

“As much as any two persons of strong temperament could,” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly continued. “There is still a stain on the upholstery of one of the dining room chairs from a decanter of claret that Amy emptied over Richard’s head one night.”

“He complained that she hadn’t used a better vintage,” Colin put in through a mouthful of chocolate-covered biscuit.

“He should have thought of that before he provoked her,” I suggested.

“Maybe that was why he did it,” riposted Colin. “Get the bad wine out of the way.”

Something in that struck me as logically flawed, but I was too headachy to isolate it. “He could have just drunk it.”

“Like last night?” Colin murmured, with a smile that invited me to share in his amusement.

I pointedly turned my attention to my tea.

Resting both elbows on the armrest of his chair, Colin tilted towards me and asked, “Now that you’ve found what you’re looking for, will you be returning to the States?”

“Certainly not!” He could be a little less obvious about wanting to be rid of me, I thought indignantly. “I have hundreds of questions that still need to be answered—Jane Wooliston, for example. Did she remain the Pink Carnation?”

I fixed Colin with a sharp look; I hadn’t forgotten his aborted “You think the Pink Carnation is Amy?” He could have just told me that it was Jane who eventually became the Pink Carnation instead of letting me find out for myself this morning, as I slogged through the last of the manuscripts. But, no, that would have been too helpful.

I wasn’t taking any chances this time. “Is Jane the one who stops the Irish rebellion and helps Wellington in Portugal, or is it someone else using the same name?”

“Oh, it’s Jane all right,” Colin acknowledged affably.

“What else did you want to know, my dear?” asked Mrs. Selwick-Alderly.

There had been an intriguing tidbit in the last letter I had read, a letter from Amy to Jane (Jane was back in Paris by then) dated just after Amy’s wedding. Rather than letting their spying skills go to waste, Amy proposed opening a school for secret agents, based at Lord Richard’s estate in Sussex. But it had only been mentioned in passing, and might, like so many of Amy’s plans, never have come to fruition. Still, it didn’t hurt to inquire. . . .

“The spy school,” I asked eagerly, “did it actually happen?”

“Look,” Colin broke in, sitting up straight, “this is all very interesting, but—”

“The best description of the spy school was written by Henrietta,” contributed Mrs. Selwick-Alderly placidly.

“Lord Richard’s little sister?”

“The very same. Richard was furious with her, and insisted she leave it at Selwick Hall. They were doing their best to keep word of the spy school from getting around, you see.”

“Is it here?” After all, there were all those other papers in the trunk. The manuscripts that I had been given were a mere fraction of the folios and manuscript boxes I had glimpsed inside the trunk two days ago. They could just be nineteenth-century laundry lists, but . . .

“All of the papers relating to the spy school”—Mrs. Selwick-Alderly tilted her head towards Colin—“are still at Selwick Hall.”

“They’re in very poor condition,” Colin countered.

“I’ll follow proper library procedure,” I promised. “I’ll wear gloves and use weights and keep them away from sunlight.”

If he wanted, I would wear a full-body hazard suit, disinfect my eyelashes, and dance counterclockwise around a bonfire under the full moon. Anything to be allowed access to those manuscripts. I could deal with talking him into letting me publish the information later.

“Our archives”—Colin dropped his teaspoon onto his saucer with a definitive clatter—“have never been open to the public.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

Colin’s lips reluctantly quirked into a faint echo of a smile. “I believe it was a letter, actually. At any rate,” he added in a far more human tone, “you’ll find Selwick Hall an inconvenient trip from London. We’re miles from the nearest station, and cabs aren’t easy to come by.”

“You’ll just have to stay the night, then,” said Mrs. Selwick-Alderly as though it were a foregone conclusion.

Colin gave his aunt a hard look.

Mrs. Selwick-Alderly gazed innocently back.

I very carefully lowered my teacup into my saucer. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“In that case—”

“But if it wouldn’t be too much of a bother,” I rushed on, “I’d be very grateful for the opportunity to see those papers. You wouldn’t have to entertain me. You can just point me to the archives and you won’t even know I’m there.”

“Hmm,” expressed what Colin thought about that.

I couldn’t blame him. As someone who likes her own space, I wouldn’t much like to be saddled with a weekend houseguest either.

“I’ll even do my own dishes. Yours, too,” I threw in as an additional incentive.

“That won’t be necessary,” Colin replied dryly. “I’ll be there this weekend,” he continued, “but you must already have plans. Why don’t we meet for drinks sometime next week, and I can summarize—”

Trying to fob me off with drinks, was he? I put an end to that.

“No plans at all,” I countered cheerfully. Pammy would understand why I was ditching our Saturday shopping spree—at least, she would if I mentioned Serena’s surprisingly hot brother rather than nineteenth-century manuscript material. “Thank you so much for the invitation.”

It hadn’t really been an invitation. He knew it. I knew it. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly and the portrait miniatures in my lap knew it, too. But once the words were out of my mouth, there was little he could do to deny them without seeming rude. Thank heavens for social conventions.

Colin tried another tack. “I was planning to drive down this afternoon, but I imagine you’ll need—”

“I can be packed in an hour.”

“Right.” Colin’s lips tightened as he levered himself out of his chair. “I’ll just go and make the arrangements, then, shall I? Can you be ready to leave at four?”

The answer he was clearly hoping for was “no.”

“Absolutely,” I chirped.

I recited my address for him. Twice. Just so he couldn’t claim he had been waiting outside the wrong building, or something like that.

“Right,” he repeated. “I’ll be outside at four.”

“Till then!” I called after his retreating back. Amazing the way the prospect of a treasure trove of historical documents can cure a hangover. My head still hurt, but I no longer cared.

In the hallway, a door slammed.

That did not bode well for our weekend.

Rising, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly began to gather up the tea things. I leaped up to help her, but she waved me away.

“You”—she wagged a teaspoon at me—“should be packing.”

Over my protests, she herded me towards the door.

“I look forward to hearing the results of your researches when you return,” she said firmly.

I murmured the appropriate responses, and started towards the stairs.

“And Eloise?” I paused on the top step to look back. “Don’t mind Colin.”

“I won’t,” I assured her breezily, waved, and continued on my way.

Manuscripts, manuscripts, manuscripts, I sang to myself. But despite my cavalier words to Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, I couldn’t help but wonder. A two-hour drive to Sussex—could we make polite conversation for that long? And then two nights under the same roof, two days in the same house.

It was going to be an interesting weekend.