The Deception of the Emerald Ring pc-3

by Лорен Уиллиг

  Had it really only been two weeks? It had. I counted, and then I counted again to make sure. Going through those two weeks, I came to the relieved conclusion that while I might know that I'd made an absolute idiot of myself over him, there was no reason for Colin to know. Aside from that slight puckering incident in the old medieval cloister, I had never said or done anything to indicate more than a friendly interest. And it had been very dark out there. He might not even have noticed. I was safe.

  And I never, ever had to see him again.

  I did intend to call Mrs. Selwick-Alderly. Eventually. But just because I was in contact with his aunt didn't necessarily mean bumping into Colin.

  In the meantime, I was rather proud of everything I had accomplished over the past week without any Selwick intercession. True, it was their collection that had pointed me in the right direction, but the Alsworthy/Alsdale line of research was entirely my own, and it was paying off in spades.

  It was nice to know something that Colin Selwick didn't.

  The death of Emily Gilchrist opened all sorts of interesting possibilities. I wondered how many other raven-haired spies were roaming France and London, unremembered by commentators. And why would they? Who would read anything into—what had Geoff called it?—a chance quirk of physiognomy. That wasn't exactly the phrase (I had it in my notes, back in my little flat, backed up on three disks, just in case), but it was the same idea. I know historians aren't supposed to fall in love with their own theories, but I was head over heels about the notion of an entire band of female French agents, like a nineteenth-century Charlie's Angels. Only better.

  It made the Pink Carnation's organization look positively humdrum.

  Who, then, was the Black Tulip? Mr. Throtwottle was the obvious choice, but given all the women running about dressed as men, I wouldn't put it past Throtwottle to be yet another black-haired woman playing a trouser role. Noses like that didn't just grow naturally.

  As for Lord Vaughn…Even bearing in mind the precedent of Monsieur d'Eon, there was little chance of his being a woman. But I didn't buy his complicity with Jane, any more than Geoff did. Whatever Lord Vaughn did, he did for himself, not for king or country or even the rare combination of a keen mind and pretty face.

  Vaughn as spymaster? The idea had some potential. He had known the marquise for a long time…and there was that matter of a missing wife. The marquise? Or another black-haired agent? I had no proof, only hunches. Of all the actors concerned, Vaughn lacked motive. Related to three-quarters of the peerage of the British Isles, he had the most to lose in prestige and cold, hard cash if the French succeeded. There had been French noblemen, including Josephine Bonaparte's first husband, who had espoused the revolutionary cause, weighting ideology above their own self-interest—but that had been before the advent of the guillotine. And it just didn't seem like Vaughn.

  For a time, hunched over my favorite desk in the British Library that afternoon, I had toyed with the notion of an elaborate double-fake. It would be a twist worthy of the Black Tulip if the marquise were indeed the mastermind. A truly clever spy might deliberately choose women of her own coloring to set up as decoys, like the scene at the end of The Thomas Crown Affair, with all those men roaming the halls of the Met in identical bowler hats.

  Unfortunately, subsequent events made that theory unlikely, to say the least.

  It was always disheartening when the historical record failed to comply with my pet theories. Didn't they realize that my way was much more interesting?

  The farther down Brompton Road I went, the more deserted it got. It was a cold, damp night, with a chill that bit through to the bone, the sort of night that must have sent the early Britons huddling around the fires in their huts, concluding that blue paint was no substitute for good, strong wool. It made me understand why the Pilgrims had taken ship to the New World. Forget the Lower School textbook stuff about religious freedom; they were probably just yearning for a beach. Tropical sand, some palm trees, sunshine…Instead, they got turkeys and Wal-Mart. And religious freedom, so I guess it wasn't a total loss in the end.

  Wet leaves caked the ground, plastering themselves damply to the bottom of my shoes. They squelched eerily underfoot, like some watery monster out of the late-late-night movie. In honor of Pammy's mother, I had abandoned my habitual knee-high boots for a pair of pointy-toed pumps. In the flimsy shoes, my feet felt alarmingly open to the elements. But one didn't tread on Pammy's mother's carpets in boots, even if they were Jimmy Choos.

  Reaching the end of the road, I turned in to the quiet crescent where Pammy's mother had lived since her remove from New York. It was an exclusive enclave of thirty Victorian mansions, all discreetly tucked away behind high white walls, bristling with enough alarm systems and security cameras to stock Fort Knox.

  Pammy's mother had never worked in all the time I had known them, but she had made something of a career out of marrying well. Hubby Number One, the starter husband, had been long gone by the time I arrived on the scene, and therefore of little interest. Hubby Number Two had provided Pammy and a not-inconsiderable chunk of his legendary art collection, the latter in reparation for having had the poor taste to take up with a younger model—before officially initiating divorce proceedings with Pammy's mother. It was Hubby Number Three (after her American adventure, Pammy's mother had switched back to her own countrymen) who had contributed the house in the Boltons, along with a charming little property in Dorset, where Pammy's mother presided in the summer months, much in the manner of Marie Antoinette playing milkmaid at Le Petite Trianon.

  As far as I knew, there was no Number Four on the radar screen just yet, but general wisdom (i.e., Pammy and my mother) held that it was just a matter of time.

  Letting myself in through the gate, I waved at the security camera and started up the walk toward the front door, discreetly set back among tastefully landscaped topiaries. In the dark and wet, the shrubs looked like hulking beasts guarding the door, a Cerberus for either side. But the drawing room windows were golden with light, and even through the closed door I could hear the muted residue of bubbly chatter.

  American chatter. I felt an unaccustomed swell of fondness for my compatriots. At home, I pined after things English like a parrot for the fjords, but after a few months of England—and Englishmen—there was something rather nice about a cacophony of brash American voices butchering the language as only we know how.

  All in all, I was feeling decidedly sanguine as I bounced up the three steps to the front door. Pammy's mother wasn't exactly the warm, motherly sort, but there was the comfort that came of having known her for absolutely ever (or since I was five, which amounted to much the same thing). She was a known quantity. After dealing with strangers, there's a lot to be said for that. Once you've gotten Marshmallow Fluff all over someone's Prada bag, there's not much else that can go wrong.

  Relinquishing my raincoat and bottle to the maid who opened the door, I ventured into the drawing room. It wasn't a big room, but it was cleverly arranged to provide the illusion of space, papered in textured pale blue and hung with Pammy's father's guilt offerings: one Degas, two Monets, and a smattering of lesser impressionists. His Renoirs were in the back parlor, which was paneled in Victorian walnut (original to the house) and as darkly traditional as the front room was airy, linked to the decorating scheme by the use of the same shade of blue in the accents on the upholstery.

  I could see Mrs. Harrington holding court on a sand-and-blue sofa in the front room, chatting with a couple I didn't know, but whose voices marked them as fellow refugees on foreign shores. We were going to be just shy of twenty for dinner, Pammy had told me, and it looked like the gang was mostly here. The crowd seemed fairly well split between Pammy's friends and her mother's, a nice sample of the American expat community in various stages of development.

  Pammy's mother's friends were of the banker-and-wife variety, men in suits or blazers with wives about a third of their bulk and/or age, with shoes even pointier than mi
ne. As for Pammy's friends, only one guy sported a blazer. It was constructed of orange velvet with elaborate piping, and boasted a faux flower in the buttonhole. I had no doubt that, if asked, he would refer to it as ironic.

  A bar had been set up in the back room, appropriately located beneath a painting of a frowsy Parisian barmaid, a depiction made acceptable for the drawing room with time and a famous name to sanctify it. I spotted Pammy there, wearing a belted sweater with fur bristling five inches deep from her collar and the hem of her skirt. Knowing Pammy, the animal-skin theme was probably in honor of Thanksgiving. I was just glad she hadn't insisted everyone arrive dressed in tasteful ensembles of wampum and turkey feathers.

  Waving at her, I started across the room—and stopped short when I saw just who was standing by the bar next to her.

  Oh, no. No, no, no. She wouldn't.

  She had.

  Next to me, I could hear orange blazer man drawling, "An ironic reconstruction of an iconic representation…"

  All the I's and R's blurred in my ears into one general buzz. Maybe my ears were going. More to the point, maybe my eyes were going.

  No such luck.

  Detaching herself from her companions, Pammy bounded across the room, arms flung wide, a miraculous feat of balance considering the nearly full glass in one hand. "Ellie!"

  I wasn't hallucinating. What I was, was the victim of an interfering, intermeddling—

  "Pammy!" Flinging my arms around her, I muttered, "I could kill you. What is he doing here?"

  I have to give Pammy some points; she didn't try to pretend that she had no idea what I meant.

  Instead, she smiled a big cat-and-canary grin, glancing over her shoulder at Colin, who was chatting with a couple of Pammy's work friends and looking unfairly dishy. "Well, if Mustafa won't come to the mountain…"

  "That's Mohammed," I said through clenched teeth.

  Pammy waved a hand. "Whatever."

  "I'm not interested."

  "Sure you're not."

  "I'm not!" I insisted.

  "Oh, go have a drink, Ellie. It will put you in a better mood."

  "Who said I was in a bad mood?"

  Pammy held up a hand, palm out. "You are just so lucky we've been friends for twenty years."

  "Twenty-one," I muttered after Pammy's departing back. She never had been any good at math.

  Not like it really made a difference. But in those twenty-one years, I was pretty sure that I'd put up with just as much from her as she had from me. More. I added tonight's party to the balance against her. She owed me at least a year of good behavior for that one.

  She might at least have warned me.

  Pammy aside, I wouldn't have minded a drink, just to have something in my hands. A drink, held debonairly aloft, goes a long way to inspiring social confidence. It's as much the pose as the contents. Combine it with a tinkling laugh and an appropriately rapt expression and, after a while, even I might be fooled.

  But Colin was standing at the bar, like a linebacker guarding a goalpost, or whatever it is that linebackers guard.

  Right, I told myself. This was it. Just to prove that he didn't mean anything to me at all, I was going to walk right up there and say hi, just as I would to any other random person on whom I had never had the teeny-tiniest hint of a crush.

  "Hi!" I said brightly, following it up with a little wave. "How are you?"

  Okay, maybe I was overdoing the gushing bit.

  "I'm fine," said Colin. No gushing there. His entire demeanor gave a whole new meaning to the word "chill." "You?"

  "Vodka tonic, please," I instructed the man behind the bar. Pammy's mother only allows drinks with a clear base, for the sake of her carpets. It's a long-established policy, dating back to their days in New York. Pammy and I were only allowed to have Coca-Cola in the kitchen and den. This, by the way, was in effect even before the Marshmallow Fluff episode.

  "I'm doing well," I said over my shoulder to Colin. "Same old, same old."

  The bartender fumbled with the tonic bottle, one of those funny little half-sized bottles, rather than the big, plastic ones we have at home. It was empty. Kneeling, the bartender started scavenging under the table.

  Colin propped an elbow against the table. "You didn't bring Jay."

  Jay? Oh, right. "He went home for Thanksgiving."

  "And didn't take you?"

  Under the table, the bartender's progress was marked by the clink of glass and crackle of cardboard. I was half tempted to tap him on the shoulder and tell him to give up already; I would just take my vodka straight. Anything so that I could take my glass and go.

  "You know how it is," I said, trying not to peer too visibly over the edge of the table. "I had work to do."

  "Hard on you." He didn't sound terribly sympathetic.

  "I'll live." I accepted my long-awaited glass from the bartender, and smiled a stiff social smile at Colin. "I really should go say hi to Pammy's mother. Good talking to you."

  "You, too." Colin raised his glass a fraction of an inch in farewell.

  "Later, then. Bye-eee!"

  Yes, I actually said "bye-eee." There is no accounting for what the brain will produce under stress.

  Since I really did have to say hi to Pammy's mother, I wandered in that direction, wondering how I had contrived to sound quite so moronic in all of three or four sentences.

  I glanced back over my shoulder at Colin, who was not glancing at me.

  How dared he ignore me when I was working so hard at ignoring him? It was downright ungentlemanly of him.

  Oh, wait. It wasn't supposed to matter anymore. I didn't care what Colin Selwick thought of me. I took a sip of my vodka tonic. Heavy on the vodka, light on the tonic, it tasted a bit like window cleaner (not that I've ever tasted window cleaner, but I imagine it has the same astringent properties). Drink any more of that, and not only would I not remember that I was supposed to be totally indifferent to Colin Selwick, I wouldn't be capable of coherent thought at all. Feeling my lips go numb from that one small sip, I deposited the glass discreetly on a small table next to an unnaturally lush potted plant and went to exchange hellos with Pammy's mother.

  Mrs. Harrington was still holding court on the small sofa in the front room, her ash-blond hair cut in a neat shoulder-length bob, brushed to the shiny patina of the Bombay chest in the hall. Her face, with its retroussй nose and wide cheekbones, was more piquant than pretty, clear illustration while I was growing up that grooming and charm get you much farther than raw good looks.

  Pammy was going to look just like her in another twenty years or so. I could see it happening already, although Pammy would vehemently deny it.

  "Hi, Mrs. Harrington!" Under the influence of old habit, my voice went up half an octave into schoolgirl sweetness. "Thank you for having me here tonight."

  "Eloise!" Mrs. Harrington lifted her cheek to be kissed. After so many years in the States, her accent was neither recognizably American nor English, but faltered somewhere in between. "We couldn't leave you alone for Thanksgiving."

  "Mom and Dad send their love."

  "How is your sister?"

  "Enjoying college."

  Mrs. Harrington narrowed her eyes shrewdly. "Not too much, I hope."

  "You know Jillian," I said, with a grin. "But somehow she always pulls through in the end. I don't know how she does it."

  Mrs. Harrington wagged a finger at me. "It's those Kelly brains. I don't know how Pammy would have gotten through algebra without you."

  Well, that much was true.

  I made modest noises of negation, anyway. It was part of the ritual, a strophe and antistrophe of compliment and demurral as stylized and immutable as the recitation of the litany, with Mrs. Harrington's Chanel No. 5 taking the place of incense.

  The amenities having been observed, she smiled and gestured to someone standing behind me. "Do come over! Don't be shy."

  The word "shy" should have tipped me off. Most of Pammy's friends don't answer to that desc
ription. Like her, they tend to be the self-assured product of a transatlantic education. There was only one of Pammy's circle I could think of to whom the adjective applied.

  Stepping aside, I made room in front of the couch for Colin's sister.

  Serena didn't look anything like her brother. Where Colin was big and blond and tanned—like the worst sort of Abercrombie ad, I thought disagreeably—Serena invited trite and mawkish analogies straight out of Victorian children's literature, phrases on the order of "as delicate as a woodland fawn." She shared Colin's hazel eyes, but in her narrow, high-cheekboned face, they had the wistful cast of a Pre-Raphaelite Lady of Shallot gazing through her casement window at faerie lands forlorn. Her skin was as pale as Colin's was browned, and her hair was a sleek chestnut that vindicated all the conditioner manufacturers' claims about their products.

  Under her shiny hair, Serena's face seemed even paler than usual, the hollows under her eyes more pronounced. In contrast to the bright raspberry of her pashmina, her skin had a sickly cast to it that suggested a lack of food, or sleep, or both.

  Pammy had mentioned a bad breakup in the not so distant past, but I wondered if there was more to it than that. The wrists protruding from under her pashmina were as brittle as the winter-bare twigs outside the drawing room window.

  "Eloise"—Mrs. Harrington's voice recalled me to the conversation—"have you met Serena Selwick? She was at St. Paul's with Pammy."

  Not only did I know Serena, I had held her head over a toilet bowl during a sudden bout of food poisoning. That sort of thing enhanced acquaintance in a hurry. It was also not the sort of story one related to one's friend's mother right before the consumption of large quantities of food.

  "We've met," I said instead, leaning in to brush a kiss across the air next to Serena's cheek. "It's good to see you again."