The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  It meant so much more and it made the stakes so much higher. “Are you sure you want to do that?” I said awkwardly. “For me?”

  “For us,” Colin pointed out. “There’s a difference.”

  I took a deep breath. “True, O King. I just—I don’t want you to wake up six months from now hating me because I’ve made you give your home away.”

  Colin took my hands in his. “Three things,” he said gravely. “One, I’m not giving it away. I’m only leasing it. I’ll get it back.”

  “Yes, but—” I knew how batty it would drive Colin to have strangers at the Hall, wrinkling the pages of his father’s paperbacks and ruining the perfect dent in his favorite chair in the library.

  Colin squeezed my hands. “Two, I wouldn’t have offered if I weren’t prepared to go through with it.”

  I shifted uncomfortably on my perch on the arm of the couch. Prepared wasn’t the same thing as ready. I didn’t want my boyfriend to martyr himself for me. “I know that, but—”

  “And, three”—Colin gave a little tug, and I plopped down inelegantly onto his lap—“it’s just a house.”

  “It’s your house,” I pointed out, struggling to sit upright, much hampered by my flowing skirts. I managed to claw my way up his chest into something resembling a sitting position, shaking my tousled hair out of my face. “You love it there.”

  “I love you,” said Colin, sliding his fingers under my chin. A hint of a smile touched his lips. “The house never comes to the pub with me. It rarely makes me burned toasted cheese—”

  “Hey!” I protested. “Those sandwiches were hardly singed.”

  “—and if it tried to sit on my lap, that would be the end of it for me.” More seriously, he said, “I’ve had a lot of time to think since you’ve gone. More time than I would have liked. I don’t want to live for a house, no matter how fine a house it is.”

  “What about your old life in London?” Before I had known him, Colin had been an I-banker with a trendy flat in one of the gentrifying areas of London. He had thrown it all in when his father died and his mother remarried.

  I had always wondered, in the back of my head, if the Colin I knew wasn’t still in a prolonged phase of grief, his Selwick Hall life just a stage.

  His relationship with me just a stage.

  Colin shook his head. “What is it you say? Been there, done that. Besides,” he added, more practically, “when I left, I cut all ties. I couldn’t go back if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

  “What do you want?” I asked, my eyes searching his familiar face.

  He cupped my face in his hands. “You,” he said. A hint of a smile touched his lips. “And, eventually, some singed toasted cheese.”

  I knew I ought to protest, to argue, to try to make him see reason for his own good, but my heart was too full. “Was this my birthday surprise?”

  “No,” said Colin frankly. “Your birthday surprise is a desk chair. It was supposed to arrive today, but it appears to have gone astray. Which is just as well. I’m not sure there’s room for it in here.”

  “We’ll have to find a bigger place,” I said, testing it out on my tongue. We. Us. Our place. The magnitude of Colin’s sacrifice humbled me. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with a one-bedroom apartment after the Hall?”

  “As long as you’re in it with me,” Colin said gallantly. He eyed my bed askance. “Preferably in a larger bed.”

  “I think that can be arranged.” I stopped, biting my lip, as the weight of reality bore down upon me. “Except—?”

  Colin thought we were talking one more semester, maybe a year on top of that if I got a fellowship in Hist and Lit. I hadn’t told him that my career plans had exploded around me.

  “Except?” Colin repeated. He struggled to sit up straighter, which wasn’t easy given that his legs were entirely smothered by my gown. “If you don’t like the idea, just say so.”

  “No!” I said quickly. “No. It’s not that. It’s just—” I pressed my lips together, trying to think of the best way to tell him. I stared at my own hands, so incongruously tan and calloused against the pale stuff of my dress. “That meeting with my advisor. It didn’t go as well as I told you. In fact, it didn’t go well at all.” I smiled crookedly. “‘Catastrophic disaster’ would be a more accurate summary.”

  “How catastrophic?” Colin’s voice was gentle, undemanding.

  I took a deep breath. “He thinks I need to rewrite my dissertation from scratch. That means I won’t be on the job market this year. Or next year. Basically, my career is in limbo.”

  I had never realized before just how accurate that word was. “Limbo,” where souls were left wandering between heaven and hell, neither here nor there.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Colin demanded, offended on my behalf, and, in the midst of my misery, I felt a little glow of warmth, because, if nothing else, Colin believed in me. Even if he didn’t trust my sandwich-making skills.

  I snuggled down into the comfortable crook of his arm. “He thinks it reads too much like fiction.”

  Colin’s lip curled. “Maybe fiction is too much like life,” he said dismissively. “You can’t help it if my ancestors tended to be . . .”

  “Somewhat flamboyant?” I offered. “That’s another problem. He thinks I’m relying too heavily on one source base. I’d have to go and try to drum up other documents.”

  Other archives. Other spies. Once, I might have felt excited about that. Now—

  I was done.

  I could go through the motions, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I cared about the Pink Carnation. I wasn’t sure I cared about spies in the abstract.

  “What are you going to do?” Colin asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” I said wretchedly. “I could probably graduate this year anyway. I wouldn’t be eligible for any of the big jobs, but I might be able to find a teaching position somewhere.”

  I felt Colin’s lips against my hair. “You don’t sound thrilled about that.”

  More horrible truths. “I don’t really like teaching. I’m okay at lecturing, but I’m horrible at leading a seminar. And I hate grading. If I get one more complaint just because I gave someone a B minus . . .” I buried my face in Colin’s chest. “But the thought of going back to the archives and starting all over makes me want to curl up in a little ball and cry.”

  Colin leaned back, peering down at me. “If you don’t like the teaching and you don’t like the research—why are you doing this?”

  “Because it’s what I thought I wanted six years ago.”

  “Six years ago,” said Colin, “I thought I wanted a posh flat and an office with a glass door.”

  Point taken.

  I rested my elbows on his chest and pushed my hair back behind my ears. Behind him, I could see my bookshelves, crammed with monographs and reference works, all the effluvia of the last six years.

  “If I don’t do this, what do I do?” I transformed my face into a comical grimace. “I don’t want to go to law school.”

  Only it wasn’t funny. Two of my advisor’s other students had already gone that route. A third had become personal trainer to the Duchess of York, but I didn’t think that was an option for me. I wasn’t any good at making myself exercise, much less someone else.

  Colin just barely managed not to smile. “There have to be other options.”

  Were there? I had a hard time thinking of any. That was, I realized, a large part of why I had gone to grad school in the first place. It gave me something to do. And it wasn’t law school.

  Which, in retrospect, wasn’t a great reason for choosing a career.

  “I really do love history,” I said wistfully. “I just don’t love the practice of it. All this”—I waved a hand in the direction of the bookshelves, all those weighty tomes bristling with footnotes—“it sucks all the lif
e out of it.”

  Colin stroked my hair. I resisted the urge to purr. “Your advisor said your dissertation sounded too much like fiction?”

  I nodded.

  “Then write it as fiction.”

  I blinked up at my boyfriend. I could still see only one of him, so I couldn’t be that sloshed. “That’s crazy.”

  “Is it? You have the material. All you have to do”—Colin’s lips lifted at the corners—“is add dialogue.”

  I didn’t think it was really quite that easy, but Colin’s smile was so irresistible that I couldn’t help but smile back. I struggled out of his lap, sitting back so I could see him better. “You wouldn’t mind? Your family history being on display like that?”

  “It was going to be on display in your dissertation,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, with a circulation of three.” In other words, my dissertation committee. “If I wrote it as popular fiction, you run the risk that it might be—”

  “Popular?” Colin raised a brow.

  “Yes,” I said, with dignity. “I mean, I realize how hard it is to get a book published. It might be a complete flop. But just on the off chance—do you really want all of this out there?”

  When I’d first met him, Colin had had firm feelings about guarding the integrity of the family archives. The Pink Carnation had stayed a secret for a very long time.

  To my surprise, Colin considered my question seriously. “I’d rather you do it than someone else. Besides,” he added, “it would be fiction.”

  This crazy idea was beginning to seem less and less crazy. “But it’s not.”

  Colin stretched his arms over his head. “Your readers wouldn’t know that. Isn’t there an old adage about hiding in plain sight?”

  “I think it was an Edgar Allan Poe story.”

  What if Colin’s crazy idea weren’t so crazy after all? My mind was spinning with possibilities. People had been hunting for the identity of the Pink Carnation for years. As nonfiction, it might make a stir in certain communities.

  As fiction . . . Look at the Scarlet Pimpernel. Ask nine out of ten people, and they’d say that Sir Percy Blakeney was a figment of Baroness Orczy’s imagination.

  I looked up at Colin with wide, startled eyes. “You know, that’s not entirely crazy.”

  “You say the sweetest things,” said Colin drily. “I wouldn’t run to say anything to your advisor yet.”

  “No,” I agreed. I didn’t need to submit this spring. I could hold off another year, give this fiction-writing thing a try.

  “And,” said Colin cannily, “there is an additional benefit to this plan.”

  “Oh?” I was still busy dealing with the revised road map of my life.

  Colin innocently straightened his cuff links. “If you need somewhere to write, I hear there’s a house in Sussex for lease.”

  I narrowed my eyes at my boyfriend. “Really? What about Jeremy’s Americans?”

  “Nothing has been signed yet. We were still negotiating the rent. But, for you,” Colin said encouragingly, “I’m sure we could come to a special arrangement.”

  “Oh?” It would, I realized, be a rather perfect solution. Why make Colin leave his home if he didn’t have to? “The Gift of the Magi” always made me cry. I wanted that poor woman to have her hair back.

  Not to mention that I rather liked Selwick Hall. I wasn’t sure I’d be up for staying there for the rest of my life—I’d been born and raised a city girl—but if Colin could give the U.S. a go for a year, I could certainly do the same with Selwick Hall. Particularly if the rent were right.

  “Just what is this special rate?”

  “One pint once a week,” said Colin promptly. “Of course, you have to put up with the landlord. I hear he can get a bit cheeky.”

  “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.” I could feel a smile beginning to spread across my face, a smile that came from deep in my chest. “Is there room for a large desk chair?”

  “I’m sure we can find a corner somewhere. Does that mean—is that a yes?”

  It wasn’t exactly the question I had imagined he would be asking me this weekend. But, then, as the Duke of Belliston had pointed out, the best things sometimes happened by accident. I had expected a proposal and a PhD, not so much because I wanted them, but because that was what I was supposed to have. The ring and the degree. The outward symbols of success.

  What Colin was offering me was something more than symbol. It was the day-to-day reality of being together, of seeing if we could mesh our lives into one.

  The ring could come later.

  As for the degree—well, we would see. I hadn’t entirely processed it all yet, but I rather liked the idea of writing with dialogue rather than footnotes. I could see the story unrolling before me. Amy Balcourt, and the Purple Gentian, and her fearful chaperone, Miss Gwen, and, perhaps, eventually, even a vampire duke.

  There was just one mystery remaining: what had happened to the Carnation after she had dismantled her League?

  I had a sneaking suspicion that the answer lay at Selwick Hall.

  With Colin.

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t remember standing, but there I was, my Regency gown light as gossamer, as though I’d been freed of a terrible weight. And Colin was standing too, his arms around me, swinging me around in a dizzying circle. “Yes.”

  Colin set me back on my feet. “I almost forgot. . . . Stay there. And cover your eyes.”

  I obediently put my hands over my eyes. “I thought I already had my birthday surprise.” A dark suspicion struck me. “You didn’t hide the desk chair in the shower?”

  I didn’t think that would do much for the desk chair. Or the shower.

  “Hush,” said Colin. “Oh, for the love of— There.” There was a rustling noise, some cursing, and the sound of a match hissing.

  “Are you all right over there?” I asked, from behind my fingers.

  “Bloody icing,” muttered Colin. “Right. You can look now.”

  I took my hands away. There, on my kitchen table, was a cupcake in the shape of a carnation, one pink candle burning in the center.

  There was a shiny decoration at the base of the candle, like a glistening drop of dew at the heart of the flower.

  It appeared to be attached to a ring.

  I looked up at my boyfriend. His tie was askew, and there was a smudge of pink icing on his sleeve.

  He smiled, a little self-consciously. “I hope you don’t mind. . . . I couldn’t find twenty-nine candles.”

  I looked from the candle, to Colin, and back again. “This one will do just fine.” My voice sounded high and strange. “Is that what I think it is?”

  The corners of Colin’s eyes crinkled. “Why don’t you blow it out and see?”

  He leaned across the table for a kiss that tasted a little bit like candy corn pumpkin and a lot like love.

  “Happy birthday, Eloise.”

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a book with a newborn is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I owe a big debt of gratitude to many people for making this book possible in the midst of all the confusion that comes of learning how to care for a new little person.

  This book would never have happened without my mother, who trekked over day after day, rain and shine, to cradle the little one so I could slip away to write (and, occasionally, nap, eat, and shower). She also taught me everything I know about the Itsy Bitsy Spider, the Muffin Man (did you know that he lives on Drury Lane?), and the art of coaxing baby giggles. Thanks, Mom!

  I am so grateful for the patience of my editor, Danielle Perez, who okayed first one extension . . . and then another . . . and then another. Many thanks to the whole team at Penguin for their support, generosity, and a very cute baby gift.

  Thanks also to my husband, who diapers and sings “Hush Little Baby” with th
e best of them—and who took a day off work so I could write when the deadline got tight.

  Thank you to Connie at my favorite Starbucks, who cheered me on from the beginning all the way to the last line and primed the pump with an endless supply of decaf skim venti peppermint mochas.

  Huge thanks go to my two plot doctors, Claudia Brittenham and Brooke Willig, who spent endless hours trying to help me wrap my sleep-deprived brain around what made these characters tick.

  When I was at my most tired and grungy, nothing cheered me up like a visit to my Web site or Facebook. Thank you, so very much, to the whole extended Pink family, for reminding me of why I love my characters, and why writing about them is worth all those lost nap opportunities. Your enthusiasm kept me going in those long, caffeine-less days.

  Lady Florence owes her existence to Justin Zaremby, who, in circumstances I cannot perfectly recall, dared me to put a stoat in the next book. Justin, this stoat is for you.

  Last but not least, thank you to my daughter for becoming more adorable every day. I have created many characters over the past few years, but none nearly so fascinating as you.

  Historical Note

  As I was writing it, I jokingly referred to The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla as my Halloween book. You may have noticed, however, that Halloween, as such, does not make an appearance in the historical part of the story.

  The origins of Halloween as we know it are murky. One version has it that Halloween originated in the Celtic festival of Samhain, a time when the dead wandered among the living. Later, in the ninth century, Pope Gregory IV transformed the celebration into a Christian holiday, Hallowmas. The name “Halloween,” or “Hallowe’en,” comes from the festival of Hallowmas: All Hallows’ Eve, All Hallows’ (or All Saints’) Day, and All Souls’ Day, in which the dead are remembered.

  Either way, the tradition of the evening of October 31 as a night on which ghosts walk goes back a very long time. As for the other practices we associate with Halloween . . . sources have it that “mumming and guising” were popular in the Celtic fringe (Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), but they don’t seem to have taken much of a hold in England. There was also a form of trick-or-treating: going door-to-door collecting “soul cakes” to pray for those in purgatory. Bonfires were lit as well, either to guide the souls to heaven or to scare them away from the living (depending on whom you ask).