The Deception of the Emerald Ring pc-3

by Лорен Уиллиг

  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.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They were late for the theater.

  By the time their small party filtered into the box, a gentleman dressed as an Oriental potentate was already on the stage, belting out a complaint whose words were lost between the burr of rolled Rs and the chatter of conversation in neighboring boxes. It was already clear, however, that the main entertainment of the evening was not to be on the stage.

  As Geoff struggled to untangle the ribbon of Gilly's opera glass, Jasper stole up behind Letty, cupping her shoulders. Letty could feel the imprint of his fingers through the fabric of her cloak, bearing down on her like a yoke.

  "Allow me to help you with your cloak." Jasper's right hand slid from her shoulder to the front of her cloak, bypassed the clasp entirely, and veered straight toward Letty's bosom.

  "I'm quite capable of managing," replied Letty, twitching out of his grasp. She would have slapped the roving hand, but that would have entailed touching Jasper voluntarily. Knowing Jasper, he would probably take it as encouragement.

  "Surely you wouldn't deny your devoted cavalier such a small service?" Jasper's profession of devotion was only slightly marred by the fact that his eyes were fixed on his cousin as he uttered it.

  "Enough, Jasper." Dropping Jane's opera glass unceremoniously in her lap, Geoff crossed the box in two long strides. Miss Gwen snatched the opera glass from Jane and promptly trained it on her companions in the back of the box.

  Geoff plucked the cloak from Letty's shoulders.

  "There," he said tersely, draping the wrap over his arm. "Shall we sit?"

  Jasper grabbed the cloak back from Geoff.

  "Confoundedly silly creatures," muttered Miss Gwen.

  She was not referring to the actors.

  Letty heartily seconded the sentiment. The ride to Crow Street had been an utter misery, with Jasper and Geoff exchanging barbed comments over her head. In a carriage meant for four and crammed with five, a little enmity went a long way. Letty could only be grateful that the use of swords as accessories had gone out of fashion or someone would have been skewered. As she was sitting in the middle, that person would probably have been her.

  As far as Letty was concerned, being fought over had little to recommend it, especially when it was blindingly apparent that their bickering had nothing to do with her charms, and everything to do with thirty thousand pounds a year and an estate in Gloucestershire. Jasper Pinchingdale cherished for his cousin an antipathy that made England's Hundred Years War with France look like a minor squabble between friends. The only reason Jasper was laying clumsy siege to her was because she belonged to Geoff—at least, in the eyes of the law and their three hundred wedding guests. What Geoff had, Jasper strove to take. And what Jasper strove to take, Geoff moved to protect. It was as simple as that. She was the equivalent of a dilapidated border fortress that nobody wanted until another monarch tried to grab it.

  If it had been Mary…

  Letty trampled on that thought before it could spread its poisonous blooms. What was the use of comparing herself to Mary? She w
asn't Mary. Growing up with Mary, Letty had always felt a bit like a sturdy daisy incongruously planted in the same tub as an orchid. It wasn't just the perfect cheekbones or the willowy waist that so perfectly suited the same high-waisted gowns that turned Letty into a dumpling. No, it was the indefinable art of fascination that Mary had honed to a point more deadly than Cupid's arrows. Mary knew how to tilt the head to convey admiration, and when a smile would serve better than speech. Letty had never mastered the knack of gazing charmingly up from under her lashes; when she walked, her feet quite definitely touched the ground; and, while she could certainly hold her tongue if she had to, she had never seen the point of mimicking a mute to win a man's admiration.

  That, Letty told herself firmly, was entirely beside the point. Deeper emotions had never been part of the bargain—any bargain.

  Over the past week, she and Lord Pinchingdale had achieved an entente that, if it wasn't quite friendship, might at least be termed camaraderie. True to his promise of truce, Lord Pinchingdale—Geoff, as he had given her leave to call him—had made no reference to botched elopements or forced marriages. There had been no veiled slights, no barbed double entendres, not even a resentful glower when he thought she was looking the other way. Every now and again, she would catch him eyeing her the way she imagined a naturalist would a particularly baffling specimen, like a caterpillar missing a leg. And once, as he handed her down from the carriage, he had paused as though he might say something—but Jane had called out to them, and the moment had fled.

  Ever since that moment on the steps of St. Werburgh, when Jasper had interrupted them, Geoff had gone back to treating her as he had a million years ago in the ballrooms of London. Kind. Patient. Detached.