The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Chapter Thirty-Three

The medallion had lodged in a corner of the box, half-obscured by a packet of letters from Vaughn's mother. Wiggling the coin free of its cardboard moorings, I balanced it in the palm of my hand. It wasn't a large object. At a rough guess, it was about the same size as a five-pence coin, but the alloys were purer than the muddy brown five-pence pieces in my pocket. After two hundred years, the Jacobite keep-sake still shone pure gold.

Turning it over in my hand, I kicked myself for not having figured the answer out myself. After all, hadn't I done a paper on Jacobite iconography my first year of grad school? I knew the answer to that one. I most definitely had. It had completely ruined my Christmas break, since Harvard adheres to the charming habit of having exams and paper deadlines post-Christmas, thus ensuring a harried holiday, where the mistletoe gets mixed in with the reference books.

To be fair, spes tamen est una wasn't one of the better-known Jacobite mottos. It came late, well after the heyday of Jacobite enthusiasm, once the cause had already pretty much petered out. If I remembered correctly, it hadn't been one of Bonnie Prince Charlie's mottoes at all. Instead, it had been used as the message on a medallion he had commissioned for his daughter, Charlotte, in the hopes that she would take up the Stuart cause, and one day take her rightful place as Queen of England.

At least, everyone had always assumed that it was Charlotte those medals were commissioned for. Maybe some of them even had been.

But what if Bonnie Prince Charlie really had had a son? It wasn't impossible. Bonnie Prince Charlie had eventually married a princess with a long German title, but that hadn't been until the 1770s. According to the less sympathetic biographies, Charles Edward had spent most of his declining years drinking himself senseless to drown out the memory of his failure to attain his throne. His longtime mistress, Clementina Walkshaw, had abandoned him…when? Sometime in the 1750s, I thought, which would put her defection after the disappointment of the failed '45 rebellion, when his dipsomania was beginning to get a bit much, even for the most devoted of mistresses.

During that gap between Clementina and Louise von Something- or-Other, a clever woman might have maneuvered him to the altar. If St. George had been just about forty in 1803, that would place his birth in the early 1760s, the perfect timing for a hypothetical secret marriage. And if that was the case…

We would never know. Or maybe, someday, someone might go back and track it all down, but it wasn't going to be me. At least, not until I got the dissertation done. The Black Tulip's true identity didn't quite fit into my dissertation, which was, after all, supposed to be on the structure, methods, and cultural implications of English spying organizations, but it would make a very juicy article. I could think of several scholars who would turn a very satisfying chartreuse at the sight of it.

Who would have ever thought that the Pink Carnation's deadliest enemy wasn't a hardened revolutionary, but a thwarted Pretender? Now that I knew the answer, I realized I had missed all sorts of clues. Even St. George's assumed name was a private joke. Bonnie Prince Charlie's father, James III, had been styled the Chevalier de St. George. An obvious alias for his grandson and namesake.

If the Black Tulip really was James III's grandson.

I had all sorts of other questions, too. Had he really died in that fire? One assumed he must have. How would St. George, directly under the dome, have made his way out again? It was only in fiction that the villain, hideously scarred, returned to wreak revenge. But then how on earth did that coin make it onto the grass outside the burning pavilion and into Vaughn's pocket?

"Ah, Eloise!"

I hastily tucked the medallion away, not into my pocket, as Vaughn had, but back into the corner of the box, hoping my body had blocked the glint of gold.

Turning my chair with a hideous screech of metal against linoleum, I smiled at Dempster. It took some effort to make that smile convincing. Ever since hearing the Serena story the previous Saturday, Dempster hadn't been high on my list of favorite people.

Once again, Dempster was almost too nattily attired, in a blazer bearing the emblem of a famous prep school — or, at least, that was what it was meant to suggest. I had no idea if it did or not.

"How goes the research?" he asked fulsomely, like the lady of the manor visiting the small garden of a tenant farmer to see how the peas and potatoes were getting on. Don't ask why the image was lady of the manor rather than lord of the manor; it just was.

"I can't make heads or tails of most of this," I said cheerfully, with a wave at the box of documents, sounding as American as I knew how. "It's just so much paper!" I was tempted to add a "like, you know?" but decided that would be overdoing it.

Dempster smiled tolerantly. "Perhaps I might help you understand it better. Over a coffee?"

I clapped my hand to my mouth in false distress. "Oh, dear! I can't. My boyfriend is picking me up at — " I made a show of checking my watch. "Six. So just about now."

"Your boyfriend?"

I blinked disingenuously up at Dempster. "Yes. We have dinner plans with a friend of mine. I think you might know her."

Dempster rose to the bait like a trout breaking the water. It was beautiful to behold. He was one of those people who can never resist trying to prove he knows as many people as you do. I had been counting on that.

"Who?" he asked, visibly cycling through his mental Rolodex of useful connections.

"She was actually a school friend of a very good friend of mine," I said, rambling happily on, while Dempster looked benignly on. It wasn't an expression that sat well on him. It made him look mildly bilious. "But we've gotten to know each other since I came to London. You know how these friend-of-a-friend things are. And then you have to go back and trace the friendship web to figure out how you got to know each other in the first place."

Dempster looked so muddled that I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

"Which one was the old school friend?"

Hmph, if he couldn't handle a simple friendship genealogy, how could he be expected to master the complex interrelationships of historical personages? "My old school friend is Pammy Harrington. She's the one who introduced me to the friend I'm meeting up with tonight. The one I understand you know. Rather well, in fact."

"Oh?" The man was too dense to even realize what was up. No, "dense" isn't the right word. It just never occurred to him that any report could be less than favorable. He preened in anticipation of a second-hand compliment.

"Yes," I said sweetly, bringing the game to a close. "I believe you two might even have dated. Serena Selwick."

The wattage of Dempster's smile visibly dimmed.

"Oh," he said. "You know Serena. She's a lovely girl."

"Yes, she is," I agreed.

The silence crept in and expanded between us, like the Blob. I could tell Dempster was dying to find out just what and how much I knew. Serena wasn't the sort to go around complaining about old grievances, but still…you never knew. A guilty conscience makes for an overactive imagination.

I smiled, gently.

It had the desired effect of making him even more nervous. Dempter fiddled with a corner of his pocket handkerchief. "Have you known Serena long?"

"Not terribly long," I said, and watched as the tension in his well-tailored shoulders lightened. "But it's hard not to feel protective of her. She's so delicate. And defenseless. One of life's innocents."

"That's very noble of you," said Dempster, unsuccessfully trying to reroute the conversation.

"Not really," I said cheerfully. "It's not entirely disinterested on my part."

I gave him just a moment to let that sink in. Naturally, he judged my motives by his own. The color came back into his cheeks as he leapt to the obvious assumption that I must just be using my friendship with Serena to get to her family papers. After all, wouldn't anyone?

I could see his opinion of me going up by leaps and bounds.

"You see," I added, before he could say "archives," "I've just started dating Serena's brother, Colin."

"Did I hear my name?" drawled a familiar voice.

Lounging against the doorjamb, looking dubiously at the worn linoleum and weak tracking lighting, was none other than the man himself, managing to make the rest of the room look small and stuffy.

I'm not sure how long he had been standing there — I had been too busy tormenting Dempster — but from the suppressed smirk on Colin's face, it had been more than long enough. He did a fairly good job of suppressing his smirk. His one dimple, the one in his left cheek, wasn't even in evidence. But I knew it was there.

He also managed the drawl very well, almost up to Vaughn's standard. He must have been practicing before he came.

"Ready?" he asked, smiling at me and pointedly ignoring his sister's flummoxed ex-boyfriend, who was doing an excellent guppy imitation, his lips going in and out with little bubbles of air.

"Just about," I said brightly, jumbling my notebooks and papers back into my bag. I held out a hand to Dempster. "Thank you so much for the use of the archive. I really appreciate it."

Dempster looked from me to Colin. One had to give him points for persistence. He rallied valiantly. "Will I see you here again next Saturday?"

Traipsing across the room, I slid an arm confidingly through Colin's. "I don't think so," I said breezily. "I can't think of anything more here that I would need. But thanks. And good luck with your projects!"

"You know where to find me," Dempster called out manfully behind us. "If you need any help, that is."

I turned around just enough to waggle my fingers good-bye as Colin nudged the door closed behind us, effectively cutting off any further farewells.

My bag, as it is wont to do, thumped down my arm into the crook of my elbow. Without breaking stride or saying a word, Colin reached out and appropriated it, shifting it to his far side. He held it that way boys do, not using the strap, but grasping it by the top, so no one can suspect they might be wearing it.

I beamed at him in gratitude. No matter how used to carrying your own bags you get, it's still nice to have someone else do it for you. Of their own accord, without your having to ask.

He was, as a friend of mine would say, good people.

"So," I asked, smiling up at him as we climbed the stairs from Dempster's archival dungeon, "do you feel spiritually cleansed?"

"That's not quite how I would have put it," he said dryly, sauntering along beside me through the long drawing rooms, under Vaughn's knowing eye. Our footsteps clumped pleasingly against the parquet, two pairs in perfect tandem. Well, not quite perfect tandem. Colin's stride was much longer than mine, and his shoes thumped while mine clicked, but our steps still made a pleasant rhythm together, nonetheless.

"You know what I mean," I said.

The smirk Colin had been so successfully repressing all that time escaped and spread across his face, complete with dimple. "The look on Dempster's face when you told him you were friends with Serena — I wouldn't have missed that for the world. Excellently done, by the way."

"Thank you," I said, sketching a slight curtsy that might have been more effective if I hadn't (a) been wearing pants, and (b) still been walking. "I do try. It was indeed beautiful to behold as he watched all of his plans go poof, right up in smoke."

Strolling into the entrance hall, beneath the shadow of the massive Hercules, we contemplated Dempster's downfall in mutual satisfaction. Colin held open the front door, moving aside for me to precede him. I hastily turned up the collar of my jacket as the first blast of frigid air hit me.

"We aren't very nice people," I said ruefully.

"Dempster isn't a very nice person," said Colin calmly.

He had a point there.

I shook my head thoughtfully. "I still can't believe he really thought he could use me to get to you — to your papers, I mean."

Hunching his shoulders into his jacket against the bitter pre-Christmas cold, Colin looked down at me sideways. "Did you find what you were looking for in his?"

I nodded vehemently, watching my breath make little puffs in the air. It had gotten much colder, just over the past week. It was December already, and frosty enough to show that the weather knew it. "You'll never believe who the Black Tulip really was."

"Not the Marquise de Something-or-Other?"

"Nope. A Jacobite Pretender."

"I didn't think we still had those in the nineteenth century."

"There's a reason for that," I said, with as much pride as if I had routed the last remaining Stuart all by myself. "The Pink Carnation."

"Was there nothing she didn't get her fingers into?" asked Colin admiringly, if ungrammatically.

"Not much that I can see," I said proudly, sticking my hands into my pockets and wishing I'd remembered to bring gloves. "Of course, I've only covered a fairly small space of her career so far. There's a whole lot that's attributed to her later on, and I'm guessing only about half of it is probable."

"Shouldn't she improve as she goes on?" asked Colin, considering the question seriously. "With increased experience and a larger network of agents, there's no reason she shouldn't have been able to do more."

I hunched my chin into my turtleneck in an attempt to keep it warm. "Yeah, but could she defy the laws of time and space? It's one thing to be responsible for putting down French plots on either side of the Channel — "

"A lot of Frogs on the other side of the Channel," intoned Colin in Fawlty Towers tones.

I made a face at him. "Fine. She can have France. I'll even grant her Portugal and Spain. But India? And Russia? I just don't buy it."

"Why not? People did move around, even all the way to India and back."

"But the timing never quite works. How could she be in India to deal with a Mahratta rebellion and in France to try to stop Napoleon's coronation all at the same time?"

"Delegation?" suggested Colin. "Deputies?"

"Possibly," I said, frowning. "But which was where when?"

Colin's eyes crinkled in that way that never failed to make my stomach do flip-flops. "Will the real Pink Carnation please stand up?"

"Something like that," I agreed. "I've even seen assertions that the League of the Purple Gentian got back into business later on, but I'm assuming that must be a typo."

"Or not," said Colin mysteriously. Before I could quiz him on it, he asked, "Where are you planning to look next?"

"I haven't really thought about it," I admitted. "I've been so focused on the Black Tulip for the past month, that now that I know exactly who he was, I'm not sure where to go next."

"What about Selwick Hall?"

I was so wrapped up in my own train of thought that it took a moment for his meaning to seep through. As I looked blankly up at Colin, he elaborated: "We still have papers you haven't seen yet. There are heaps I've never looked at, and I doubt anyone else has, either. Except maybe Aunt Arabella," he added as an afterthought.

"Are you sure? I wouldn't want you to think I was pulling a Dempster and using you just for your papers."

Colin grinned down at me. "I've come to terms with the fact that you're just using me for my body."

Naturally, after that, it was impossible to say anything at all for quite a few moments. But while London is full of convenient cul-de-sacs for lovers' meetings, the climate isn't nearly so accommodating. I defy anyone to stand outside and smooch in forty-degree weather with a stinging drizzle beginning to come down.

Among other things, the cold was making my nose run. I swiped surreptitiously at it with one hand as Colin wedged my bag under one arm and wrenched at the Velcro fastenings of his umbrella.

Putting up his umbrella over both of us, Colin looked inquiringly down at me. "What do you think? Would you like to come down to Selwick Hall for a week and root about in the library?"

Was the Black Tulip French?

Oh, wait, he wasn't. But he'd been working for them. Besides, the Stuarts had quite a few French Princesses in their family tree, like Bonnie Prince Charlie's great-grandmother, Henrietta Maria, who had been Louis XIV's aunt. Either way, the answer was crystal clear.

"Are you sure you wouldn't mind having me?"

Colin gave me a look. It was a very eloquent look. I capitulated instantly — rather like the French.

"I can't think of anything I would like better," I said honestly.

"Brilliant," said Colin.

In a contented silence, hand in hand, we strolled off into the stinging December rain.