The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

by Lauren Willig

  And then the Purple Gentian shrugged.

  ‘That’s one way of describing it.’

  The moon crumbled into a thousand shards. Infatuation. Not even a poor cousin of love. All of her carefully hoarded memories rushed back at her in a new, unpleasant aspect. Instead of the Purple Gentian’s kiss in the study, she saw his eagerness to leap out the window. Away from her. She was a liability. An impediment to the mission.

  Had everything they had shared been no more than a distraction to him?

  It could have been worse, she supposed. He could have left her with the illusion that he cared for her, kissed her goodbye, walked away, and never returned. At least he had been honest. At least he had shown her that much regard. She supposed she should be grateful for that. Her gratitude sat like ashes in her mouth.

  ‘Thank you,’ Amy said tightly, ‘for not lying to me.’

  ‘It’s not – I don’t want you to think – Damn!’ the Gentian cursed explosively.

  Why wouldn’t he just leave? The sight of him, looming there in his blasted black cloak, so dashing and handsome and – oh, anxiously boyish, stung like salt on a pricked finger.

  ‘Good night.’ Amy nodded stiffly in what she hoped was the right direction. It was hard to tell with her eyes averted. But if she looked again, the tears might start, and that, above all things, was not to be borne. ‘Thank you for seeing me home. You can leave now,’ she added.

  Only he didn’t.

  The Gentian took a step towards her, his entire body taut with tension that made his cloak rustle. He leant forward on the balls of his feet, and the muscles in his throat worked as though he were mustering himself to speak. Despite herself, Amy felt herself leaning forward to listen, wanting to hear his explanation, his excuses, his apologies. It’s not infatuation, he would say. I misspoke. I’m sorry.

  ‘Amy, I—’ he began, and paused.

  Yes? Amy willed him on, trying to keep her eagerness out of her eyes.

  Something like bitterness fluttered across the Gentian’s face. His weight shifted back to his heels, and his body and face stilled again into inscrutability.

  ‘I’ll help you up over the window,’ he said.

  Somehow, Amy managed to keep her face from crumpling. She had thought that nothing could hurt more than that dreadful word, infatuation. She had thought she had already reached whatever threshold there was for romantic agony. I’ll help you over the window. How could a simple statement be the vehicle for so much pain? Of course, it wasn’t really those words, so much as the ones he hadn’t said. She should have known better than to hope for them.

  The Purple Gentian was standing there, waiting, one hand held out to her. Amy recoiled from it as though it were an asp.

  Amy planted her elbows on the windowsill. ‘I’ll be quite all right on my own, thank you.’

  ‘No, you won’t.’ Was there a hint of amusement in the Gentian’s voice? ‘I saw you trying to make your way back in last night.’

  Horror coursed through Amy. He had seen that? Numb with embarrassment and despair, she remembered her fumblings of the night before, all the times her elbows had slipped, all the times she had painstakingly got a leg up on the sill only to tumble down again. Oh goodness. The man probably thought she was a joke. Worse than a joke. No wonder he didn’t want anything more to do with her! What use was she when she couldn’t even climb through the window of her own bloody house without making a ridiculous spectacle of herself?

  ‘Up you go.’ The Purple Gentian placed a hand under her bottom and boosted her over the windowsill, as unceremoniously as though he were heaving a sack of grain into a wagon. One rough push, and his hand withdrew. He didn’t even want to touch her. Amy remembered the myriad touches she had gloried in less than an hour past, an embarrassment of touches, enjoyed profligately, and quickly gone.

  Without looking back, she slid her legs under her, into the dining room. Behind her, fabric rustled. The Gentian’s cape, shifting in the breeze. Amy tried not to picture it, but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Good night, Amy,’ the Gentian said softly, from the other side of the window.

  Amy didn’t turn. She put one foot in front of the other, then another, moving stiffly towards the dining room door. She was concentrating so hard on movement, simple movement, that she couldn’t even be sure whether she imagined that one, last whisper.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you soon. Trust me.’

  As he slunk around the side of the house, Richard reminded himself that it would be pure lunacy to sprint back and apologise. This was for the best. And if he kept telling himself that over and over maybe he would be able to wipe out the distressing image of Amy’s frozen face. Far better that Amy be unhappy than good men die, Richard rationalised loftily. Only, this time, the noble sentiment fell rather flat. Richard writhed with an uncomfortable combination of guilt and unfulfilled desire.

  Damn it, they’d better get their hands on that gold quickly, because he didn’t think he could take much more of this. Unless, he mused hopefully, Amy’s disenchantment with the Purple Gentian would make her more receptive to the winning qualities of Lord Richard Selwick.

  Before he made his way to the nearest cold bath, Richard had one last errand. He counted windows until he found the one he wanted. No light gleamed from behind the heavy draperies. Smiling silently to himself, the sleek smile of the panther on the prowl, Richard hauled himself over the edge of the window and into the empty room. Déjà vu, he thought, as he jumped lightly down from the velvet upholstered window seat. Only this time there was no Amy waiting for him beneath the desk.

  At least, he hoped not.

  Just to be safe – since one really never knew with Amy – Richard took a quick peek under the desk. No, no Amy. Richard reminded himself that he should be experiencing relief, not disappointment.

  Making his way to the globe, Richard took up where he had left off the night before. His fingers felt for that telltale crack along the equator, easing towards the tiny bump that must be… Ah! Richard smirked as the two halves sprang open. The catch.

  Richard’s smirk disappeared as his mouth dropped open in shock. What in the blazes? Plunging his hand into the rounded base, he ran it back and forth and around. He felt along the top of the globe to see if something might be glued to the inside. He stuck his head in so far that his nose bashed into the bottom. Clutching his wounded appendage, Richard staggered back and slammed the empty globe shut.

  Someone else had got there first.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  After the warm cosiness of Mrs Selwick-Alderly’s flat, my own little gnome hole seemed even more desolate than usual. The hall light had gone out again, leaving the blue-walled hallway in gloom, and the blue-carpeted stairs even gloomier. Juggling the caramel macchiato I’d picked up at the Starbucks next to the Bayswater Tube station and the package under my arm, I picked my way downstairs, making a mental note to call the landlord about replacing the lightbulb before someone (that is, me) broke her neck on the stairs. I managed to insert key into lock on the third try, and blundered into my dark little entryway, fumbling for the light switch.

  As furnished flats go, it wasn’t too dreadful. There wasn’t terribly much to it, just a narrow hallway with miniature kitchen appliances crammed against one wall, a tiny bathroom, and one rectangular room that tripled as living room, bedroom, and study. The conscientious owner had tried to brighten it up with cream-coloured paint and flowered curtains and large landscapes of the Tuscan countryside. Unfortunately, the latter only emphasised the contrast between the Italian sunshine and the grey excuse for light that filtered through my scrap of window.

  Dumping my coffee on the small, round table, and setting the plastic-wrapped package tenderly down on the bed, I toppled into a chair, and tackled my boots. The zipper on the left boot had gone stiff, probably in protest against the eternal rain. Another tug, and the zipper gave with that horrible tearing sound that anyone who has ever snagged a stocking knows all too we
ll.

  Ordinarily, I might have been mildly peeved about the untimely demise of my last pair of stockings. But my mind wasn’t on my wardrobe. Fuelled by caffeine and caramel, it was replaying last night’s scene in Mrs Selwick-Alderly’s kitchen in excruciating detail – the same way it had been doing since three this morning.

  I’d tried to lose myself in Amy’s letters, but the papers kept drifting down towards the coverlet as I would stare off into space, coming up with the five-hundredth witty parting line I ought to have fired after Colin Selwick. It is a truth universally acknowledged that one only comes up with clever, cutting remarks long after the other party is happily slumbering away. Somehow, I figured storming into Colin’s bedroom, shaking him awake, and delivering my brilliant one-liner would only make me look more pathetic.

  Besides, he might have got the wrong idea. To the male mind, female plus bedroom equals just one thing.

  Colin hadn’t been about when I dragged myself blearily out of the guest bedroom at seven that morning, and stumbled kitchen-wards. Instead, I’d found Mrs Selwick-Alderly at the pine table, drinking a cup of tea and reading the Daily Telegraph.

  I’d veered between disappointment and relief. Disappointment, because there went any chance of delivering those painstakingly crafted retorts. And relief, because I know what I look like at seven in the morning.

  Mrs Selwick-Alderly had dropped her newspaper with flattering promptness, smilingly asking me how I’d slept, and pressed tea and toast upon me. I’d accepted the tea, declined the toast, and refrained from any mention of midnight encounters with her nephew. I wondered if she was going to bring up the presence of two chocolate-streaked mugs in the sink, but either she hadn’t noticed, or didn’t think it worth mentioning. Maybe Colin had midnight cocoa tête-à-têtes all the time.

  Maybe I was being entirely ridiculous.

  I gulped down my tea in record time.

  ‘How are you finding our little archive?’ Mrs Selwick-Alderly asked, giving me a moment to recover from my burnt tongue.

  ‘It’s unbelievable,’ I said honestly. ‘I can’t thank you enough for letting me use it. But…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Colin – I mean, your nephew…’ Damn. Mrs Selwick-Alderly was well aware that Colin was her nephew without my telling her so. I started again. ‘Why doesn’t he want me to have access to your papers?’

  Mrs Selwick-Alderly looked thoughtfully at the headline of the Telegraph. ‘Colin takes his position as guardian of the family heritage very seriously. What do you think of our Pink Carnation?’

  ‘I haven’t found him yet. I’m only about halfway through the papers you gave me. The handwriting took some getting used to.’

  ‘Amy’s handwriting is awful, isn’t it? Who do you think the Pink Carnation is?’

  ‘Miles Dorrington seems like the best candidate.’ I watched Mrs Selwick-Alderly closely, hoping for a reaction; something to confirm or contradict my hunch.

  I didn’t get one. Mrs Selwick-Alderly went on calmly spreading marmalade on a piece of toast as she asked, ‘Why Miles?’

  ‘The Pink Carnation’s first recorded escapade isn’t until late April of 1803. Miles is in constant contact with the Purple Gentian, so he knows everything that’s going on in Paris; he has all the resources of the War Office behind him in London; and’ – I brought forth my best piece of evidence so far – ‘he’s in Paris in late April.’

  ‘How did you discover that, if you’re only half finished?’

  ‘I flipped ahead,’ I confessed. ‘I saw his signature on a letter that was dated Paris, April thirtieth. So I know he’s at the right place at the right time.’

  ‘What about Georges Marston?’

  ‘After his assault on Amy?’ I exclaimed incredulously.

  ‘Nobility of deed isn’t always a sign of nobility of character,’ Mrs Selwick-Alderly said quietly. ‘Great men have been known to be brutes in private life.’

  I made a face, resisting a five-year-old’s impulse to stamp my foot in protest. ‘Not the Pink Carnation,’ I said firmly, trying to ignore the little trickle of unease that slithered down my spine like the snake along the tree of knowledge.

  That would explain Colin’s reticence…the Pink Carnation, a would-be rapist. I banished the thought as an impossibility. Marston couldn’t be the Pink Carnation. If he were, we’d have heard something about him prior to April 1803; Marston had been in Paris for months, ever since his defection from the English army. Miles. It had to be Miles.

  ‘…with you,’ Mrs Selwick-Alderly said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  Mrs Selwick-Alderly repeated herself. I gaped in incomprehension.

  ‘You can’t mean it.’ That had just been an offer to take the manuscript home with me, hadn’t it? I tended to be a bit out of it in the morning, but not entirely delusional. I must have misheard.

  ‘You must finish the story,’ she said, folding her paper and putting it aside. ‘And then we can discuss whether the Pink Carnation lives up to all your expectations.’

  ‘But what if I lost them?’ I protested. ‘I might drop them on the Tube, or they might get damaged by the rain, or…’

  ‘That sort of thinking,’ Mrs Selwick-Alderly said with great satisfaction, ‘is exactly why I have no hesitation about entrusting them to your care.’

  After that, how could I argue? Especially when I wanted to finish reading those papers more than I wanted anything in my life. Retrieving the papers from her guest room, she had first placed them in their special, acid-free box, wrapped the box in a clean linen sheet from the airing cupboard, and folded the entire bundle into no fewer than seven thick plastic bags before placing the bulky package into a Fortnum’s carrier bag. They were on short-term loan – I was to return the pile the following day, presumably before Colin discovered they were missing.

  The safety of the papers was one thing, but Colin Selwick’s obsession with secrecy was quite another. I was still smarting over his high-handed directive of the night before. Nothing goes beyond this flat, indeed!

  I could understand not wanting his family’s name dragged through the muck of the tabloids – but what sort of scandal was big enough to catch the public’s attention two hundred years later? Maybe his great-great-great-grandfather, the Purple Gentian, had sold out to the French, and had been unmasked by the Pink Carnation, and that’s why Colin Selwick wanted to keep it all under wraps, I hypothesised. Even so, I couldn’t imagine that generating more than scholarly interest, or, at most, a couple of paragraphs towards the middle of the Mirror on a particularly slow news day. It wasn’t exactly stop-the-presses sort of stuff.

  Besides, as far as I could tell from the documentation I’d been reading, the Purple Gentian was fanatically devoted to his cause. The worst I’d been able to discover about him was that he had played nasty games with the heart of Miss Amy Balcourt. Poor Amy. Reading that entry of her diary in the wee hours of dawn – just before my eyelids finally gave in to gravity and my body to sleep – I’d wanted to slug Lord Richard for her. And he had sounded so charming. But, then, they all did. Even Grant had been charming in the beginning.

  Now, what was he still doing in my head? Out, out damned ex!

  Scowling, I gulped down the remains of my coffee, and went to toss the empty paper cup in the trash. I dumped it into the bin with unnecessary force.

  It wasn’t as though I was pining for Grant, I groused to myself as I stomped back over to the bed. Things had begun to go sour long before the advent of Alicia the art historian. For those last few months, we’d stayed together as much out of convenience as anything else, just because it would be too much trouble to find someone else to fill up those empty Friday nights.

  I plopped down onto the flowered coverlet, and reached for the plastic-wrapped package. Unfortunately, I knew exactly what I was suffering from. LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.

  My roommates and I had come
up with the term in college, to explain the baffling phenomenon of nostalgia for one’s most recent ex. No matter how absolutely awful that person had been at the time, after a few weeks, the relationship would take on a rosy tint, and wistful little phrases would begin to creep into conversation, like, ‘I know he cheated on me with three people at the same time, but he was such a fabulous dancer,’ or ‘All right, so he was a raging alcoholic, but when he was sober he did such sweet things! Remember those flowers he bought for me that one time?’ Inexplicable, but inevitable. A few weeks of singledom render even the most inexcusable ex charming in retrospect.

  Hence, LIPID syndrome. As everyone knows, lipids are fats, and fats are bad for you, and therefore ex-boyfriends must be avoided at all costs.

  This is what comes of having a bio major as a roommate for four years.

  The one sure way to fight off LIPID syndrome was to distract oneself. True, the only foolproof cure is a new relationship, thus knocking the LIPID back down the dating chain into harmless obscurity, but there are other, temporary diversions. Reading a novel, watching a movie, or delving into the private lives of historical characters.

  With an anticipatory grin, I eased the bundle in my lap out of its first layer of wrappings, a green Harrods bag, and began slowly unwinding the next layer, a turquoise bag from the Fortnum & Mason Food Hall. I had just got down to layer three – another Harrods bag, relic of last year’s January sales – when my raincoat began bleating out a Mozart sonata.

  Setting aside my bundle, I leapt for the vibrating pocket of my raincoat, yanking out my mobile just as it got to the third measure.

  It was still only eight in the morning. Who would call at such an uncivilised hour? Mrs Selwick-Alderly demanding the papers back? A furious Colin Selwick, accusing me of grand manuscript theft and threatening to set Scotland Yard on me?

  PAMMY, proclaimed the screen in capital letters.

  I should have known.

  Pammy and I had attended the same all-girls school in Manhattan until tenth grade, when Pammy’s parents split, and her English mother took off for London, Pammy in tow. But we’d kept in touch, first by scrawled schoolgirl letters on overly cutesy stationery, and later via marathon e-mail sessions. I loved her. I did. But Pammy was…Pammy. Over the top. Unique. About as sensitive as a construction crew. Not the person to tell about the Selwick saga.