The Seduction of the Crimson Rose pc-4 Read online

  Were we talking about the same Sebastian? Lord Vaughn? It was the Vaughn collection, after all. I didn't think Lord Vaughn would have tolerated the infiltration of extraneous Sebastians.

  Dempster gazed pensively off into space, a pose I recognized from far too many BBC documentaries: historian waxes informative about lack of information. At length. It's amazing how much screen time historians can eke out of the absence of evidence.

  "Sebastian's diaries place him in France at suspect times, but never say why. He attends meetings of underground societies, but leaves unspoken to what end. Do you know" — he leaned confidingly forward — "I quite suspect Sebastian himself of being the elusive Pink Carnation." His plummy voice lent "elusive" all the pomp and circumstance of Alistair Cooke introducing Masterpiece Theatre. "But I have no confirmation, no — as it were — proof."

  And then it hit me. He didn't know who Jane was. And if he didn't know who Jane was, then none of the rest of it made the least bit of sense. That list of names at the house party that had sent a hundred bells ringing for me wouldn't mean anything at all to someone who hadn't known about the circumstances of Lord Richard's marriage, Lady Henrietta's involvement in the search for the Black Tulip, and the peculiar circumstances of Lord and Lady Pinchingdale's so-called honeymoon. Based on what was available in the public record, all an outsider would know was that Lord Richard, guest at the same house party, had at one point been the Purple Gentian. That was all. And while that might tend to suggest that there might be something more going on than hunt the slipper, it wasn't enough to implicate Jane or inform one of much of anything at all.

  Almost all my revelations — the missing bits that enabled me to decode Vaughn's terse notations of his activities — had come as a result of a particular set of privately owned papers. The Selwick papers, to be precise.

  Oh dear. Selwick. Colin. Me. Him. Dinner.

  All systems accelerated to red alert. Oh God, what time was it? I had been in the basement for what felt like years, but it couldn't have been more than a few hours, could it? There were no windows down there, just those plain whitewashed walls. For all I knew, it could have been anytime between noon and midnight.

  "I've often thought," mused Dempster, in uncanny echo, "that the answer must lie in the Selwick papers."

  Oh, damn, damn, damn. I needed to take a shower, and pick an outfit, and shave every part of my body that could possibly be shaved, whether he was going to see it or not. In short, all the requisite predate preparations that men never notice, anyway, but without which we can't make it out of the door of the apartment.

  "Do you know what time it is?" I asked abruptly.

  Dempster was taken aback, but the influence of the old school tie prevailed. "Six o'clock."

  I had been there for five hours? Thank goodness he had interrupted me, or I might have turned into an archival Rip Van Winkle. I could picture Colin standing there…slowly turning old and gray…while I moldered away forgotten in the basement of the Vaughn Collection, just transcribing one last document. Of course, he wouldn't be standing there all that while. Some other lucky woman would undoubtedly snatch him up in the meantime. Intelligent Englishmen with decent dental work don't come along every day.

  "Will you excuse me?" I blurted out. "I really have to run. I have a dinner engagement — lost track of time — really don't want to be late."

  "And it's a Saturday night," Dempster finished for me, looking less stiff than I had seen him. He really wasn't a bad-looking man once he dropped the posing. If you liked that sort of type. "Don't worry. I'll put these away for you."

  "Are you sure?" I began shoving my personal effects pell-mell into my bag before he could change his mind. "That would be beyond kind of you. Thank you."

  "I'm assuming you'll be back?"

  "Absolutely! First thing on Monday." I grinned at him. "And I promise not to make you clean up my mess next time."

  Sweeping my bag onto my shoulder, I wriggled out of my chair, all but overturning it in my haste.

  Dempster edged gingerly off the table so as to cause the minimum creasage in his Savile Row slacks. "There is a fee."

  "A fee?" Swiveling back around, I tripped over the pointed toe of my own boot. Had I missed the small print somewhere?

  "Coffee," Dempster elaborated, looking far too pleased with himself. I suppose it wasn't every day that he got to send a girl staggering.

  "Uh, sure. Coffee." He'd made me lose precious minutes for that? "That would be great. I'll look forward to it." I paused in the doorway just long enough for a haphazard wave. "Bye!"

  The faint echo of "next week" followed me up the white-walled stairs. Fortunately, I knew the type. It wasn't my personal attributes that spurred him on, it was the prospect of an informed audience as he trotted out all his pet theories about the Pink Carnation. There would be no need to invoke the specter of an invisible boyfriend to ward him off.

  Unless, by that point, it wasn't an invisible boyfriend anymore, but a real one. One with toffee blond hair and square, capable hands…

  The jolt of my bag bumping against my hip brought me abruptly back to my senses. No point in getting ahead of myself when we hadn't even had our first date yet. Although I could imagine just how comfortable it would be to curl up together on the couch on a Sunday morning, matching coffee mugs perched on the coffee table, a half-eaten bagel sitting askew on a copy of the Sunday Times.

  Hitching up the strap of my bag before it could bump me again, I got myself firmly in hand. I didn't even have a coffee table. And I wasn't sure if they sold bagels in London. In fact, I was pretty sure that the whole idyllic image came straight out of a New York Times commercial. Reality wasn't like that. Reality was spilled coffee and newsprint on one's fingers — and being too comfortably snuggled up against a warm shoulder to care. I didn't need the bagel or the coffee table. I didn't need the paper. All I wanted was the man.

  And if I kept this up, I was going to work myself up into a proper state of first-date nerves, the type where you can barely muster a hello, much less impress the other party with your wit, charm, and long-term entertainment potential. It would be lovely if one could just circumvent the whole process and skip straight to coupledom. No excessive grooming, no wardrobe panics, no blurting out idiotic things and praying the other person will be too busy agonizing over blurts of their own to notice. Of course, then, as my friend Alex (short for Alexa) is fond of pointing out, you miss half the fun of it.

  Easy for Alex to say. She's been with the same guy since freshman year of college. It only seems fun if you don't have to do it.

  Hurrying away from Belliston Square in what I hoped was the right direction, I found myself smack in front of an array of footware. Like a homing pigeon with expensive tastes, I had gone in precisely the wrong direction, landing myself on New Bond Street, directly in front of Jimmy Choo. Oh well, it wasn't a disaster. At least, it wouldn't be as long as I didn't go in and buy anything. One shoe there could wipe out my stipend for the entire month. A pair would be completely out of the question.

  Fortunately, I had made my way to Bond Street before. All I needed to do was follow New Bond Street all the way up past the glossy shop fronts until I hit the grotty hubbub of Oxford Street, and from there it was a straight twenty-minute walk back to Leinster Street and my basement flat. I wasn't taken any chances on the tube. If it knew I had a date, it would be sure to break down.

  I was just scurrying off in that direction, when two men stepped out into the street right in front of me. They were coming out of Russell & Bromley, that most veddy British of men's shoe stores, and my first thought was, Ha! So men do go shopping together in pairs, too.

  My second was much less coherent and involved ducking around or under or behind things, if only there had been anything to duck around or under or behind. Somehow, I had the feeling that crashing through the plate-glass window of Jimmy Choo would be far more conspicuous than staying put. The fight-or-flight instinct had taken hold, and flight was wel
l on its way towards winning.

  Because those weren't just any two men.

  The one carrying a shoe box, who looked as if someone had just shot his pet dog, I vaguely recognized from the night of my disastrous blind date with the man of Grandma's choosing. But I wasn't concerned with him. It was Colin who worried me; Colin, who was strolling blithely along beside him, right in my direction. My unshowered, ungroomed, decidedly unkempt, anything but seductive direction.

  In the glow of light from the shop windows, cutting against the November dusk, Colin's hair shone like tawny gold of an old coin, back before they started diluting the currency with lesser alloys. Next to his stockier, darker friend, he looked like a Plantagenet monarch with Thomas а Becket in tow, ready to conquer France at a single blow and sweep single heiresses off their feet. I, on the other hand, looked like a mugwump.

  Since it was too late to duck or flee, there was nothing to do but brazen it out. "Hey, there!" I called out, waving my arms like a one-woman semaphore competition. "Yoo-hoo! Colin!"

  I'm not sure if it was the yoo-hooing or the waving that did it, but his tawny head turned in my direction and his face broke into a great big smile. It looked rather nice that way. He didn't seem to notice that my hair was greasy or that my Barbour jacket was two sizes too big, or that I was wearing pants that had probably been designed for a circus clown. He just seemed genuinely glad to see me.

  How very bizarre.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, with real interest.

  "I've been archiving in the area," I explained airily. "I was just on my way off home."

  "Archiving?"

  "I archive, you archive, he/she archives…."

  "Naturally," Colin said with a grin. "I ought to have known." Belatedly remembering his friend, he turned and gestured in his direction. "Eloise, have you met Martin yet?"

  "No, I haven't," I said pleasantly, rather liking that "yet" and the sense of inevitability that came with it, as though it was a matter of course that I would be introduced to his friends. On the other hand, I was also friends — or friendish — with his sister, so the odds were that I would meet them socially sooner or later, even if not through him.

  As you can tell, I analyze way too much, especially when there's nothing there to analyze.

  I held out a hand to Martin. "Pleased to meet you."

  Martin held out a hand back. It was a nice enough hand, but his clasp lacked conviction. He looked, quite frankly, as though he were somewhere far, far away. Wherever that place was, it wasn't a pleasant one.

  "So, I see you've been shopping?"

  Martin nodded.

  "Shoes," said Colin informatively.

  "Useful things, shoes," I commented.

  Martin nodded again. His conversational repertoire appeared to be limited.

  "Well, if you two are still in the middle of shopping, I wouldn't want to keep you," I said, beginning to edge away. I pointed a finger at Colin. "I'll see you at eight?"

  "There's no need for that," said Colin.

  I frowned. Did this mean he had noticed the lack of shampoo and rather inadequate application of deodorant?

  "We're just finished," Colin clarified. "So if you're hungry now…?"

  I could hear my friend Pammy's voice in my head, whispering, "Hungry for what?" I made it stop. Dinner early was an awful idea. I still needed to shower and change and shave — not necessarily in that order.

  "I was just off home, anyway," Martin put in, proving he could manage not only words but whole phrases.

  I looked at him worriedly. If he were my friend, there'd be some serious "Is everything okay?" going on. But men don't operate that way — at least not in the presence of members of the opposite sex.

  "Are you sure?" I asked, looking from him to Colin, which was the closest I could get to an "Is he going to be okay?" without actually saying it.

  Martin answered by raising the hand not holding the shoe box. "Cheers."

  "Cheers," Colin responded.

  Neither of them sounded particularly cheery.

  "Is he going to be all right?" I murmured. "He looks like his dog just died."

  Colin glanced down at me in complete comprehension. "Not his dog, his girlfriend. She gave him the shaft last week."

  "Oh!" I said, as memory hit. "Martin. The one who just had the bad breakup."

  Colin nodded. "He's not exactly at his most sociable right now. They were together for four years."

  "Ouch." I craned my head back over my shoulder, much the way one might rubberneck at roadkill, but Martin had already been obliterated by the shifting patterns of the crowd. "Poor guy."

  Colin looked grim. "She rang him while we were in the store."

  Since another ouch would be redundant, I said, "Does she want him back?"

  "No. She wants to be friends."

  "Poor Martin," I said softly. There's nothing worse than being strung on by an ex. Not that I would know. When I dumped Grant, I had done it cleanly — if it can be called cleanly to fling a ring in someone's face and hang up on all his subsequent calls. But at least I left him in no doubts as to my sentiments. Once you've called someone lying, cheating scum who belongs under the nearest rock, and called him that loudly and in public, there's just no going back.

  "So," said Colin, looking down at me in a way that banished both Martin and the memory of evil exes from the horizon. "Shall we?"

  Absurd as it sounds, we'd been so companionably chatting about his friend's angst that I'd nearly forgotten we were supposed to be on a first date. And that I was unshowered, untweaked, and otherwise unkempt.

  I looked down at the silly pants, at my computer bag bumping against my hip, and thought of a hundred reasons to say no. I could tell him I wanted to drop my things off at my flat. Even half an hour would buy me enough time to hastily shower, put on a sweater without dyed-in deodorant stains under the arms, and give myself an extra inch with a pair of super-tottery going-out heels. I could make the usual big, predate fuss.

  Or I could just go along with Colin.

  "Sure," I said, smiling up at him through the tousled strands of my greasy hair. "Let's."

  Chapter Six

  Nine coaches waiting — hurry, hurry, hurry.

  Ay, to the devil.

  — Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger's Tragedy

  It had been very clever of Lord Vaughn to wait until she was already ensconced in his carriage before he announced the location of their first foray. Since the alternative was leaping out into traffic, Mary chose to disbelieve him instead. The very idea of her, going to a…well, it was palpably absurd.

  "All right," she said tolerantly, since nothing needled more than amused forbearance, "you've had your joke. Now where are we really going? Or would you prefer to tell me another tall tale?"

  Whatever his valet had used to polish his boots, it had created a mirrorlike sheen that reflected Vaughn's smug expression with unnerving accuracy. "My dear lady, would I jest?"

  Mary didn't even need to stop and think about it. "At my expense? Certainly."

  Mary was surprised the English government hadn't leased Vaughn out as a secret weapon of torture. They could make a fortune in fees. He needled; he baited; he drawled. His eyebrow rose more regularly than Pauline Bonaparte's hemline, and he never spoke directly when a means of confusion was to be had. If Vaughn swore the sky was blue, it probably meant it had turned green when no one was looking.

  It made for a refreshing change. After a week of living with Letty and Geoff, Mary welcomed the distraction provided by Lord Vaughn's mercurial shifts. Having her sister and brother-in-law tiptoe around her made Mary feel as though she were suffering a slow death by cotton wool, smothered in good intentions. They were painfully solicitous of her feelings, with the sort of solicitude that did far more for the giver than the recipient. It wouldn't sting nearly as much watching them hold hands beneath the breakfast table as it did when they instantly sprang apart as soon as she entered the room, exchanging a look more int
imate than any handclasp, a look, that in the private matrimonial lexicon, roughly translated to, "Mustn't upset Mary." That upset Mary. It was pure wormwood and gall to be treated as an emotional invalid needing cosseting and special care. For the first time, Mary understood what drove animals to bite the hand that fed them — sheer irritation at being patronized. It made her want to growl and snap.

  With Lord Vaughn, she could growl and snap as much as she liked. He might mock — in fact, he invariably did mock — but he never said, "Oh, Mary," or suggested that a nice cup of hot milk would make her feel just the thing. She could be just as beastly as she liked in the comfort that he would be beastly right back.

  Across from her, Lord Vaughn spread out his hands, palms up. "Today, I am all honesty."

  Mary waded comfortably into the fray. "And I am all amazement. I doubt there is such a place as this Common Sense Society."

  "Until recently, there wasn't. It was called the Paine Society until some perspicacious soul pointed out that the original title came too close to the actuality. Paine's writings are bad enough. His disciples elevate dullness to a new order."

  "If such an organization exists, why subject us to it?" If Vaughn was telling the truth, she was to be making her intellectual debut at the heart of London's most rabid disciples of political philosophy, mingling with rough, desperate men who read John Locke for fun and wallowed hedonistically in the illicit pleasures of Rousseau and Thomas Paine. It sounded about as exciting as eggs on toast.

  "Because, dull though most of these philosophers may be, there are always some few bold enough to translate idea into action. In the nineties — before your time, my dear — there were quite a few such groups, all scrabbling away for liberté, egalité, and fraternité. Corresponding Societies, they called themselves."

  "I've heard of the Corresponding Societies," Mary interjected. Before her time, indeed! The nineties hadn't been all that very long ago, and she was rather older than the usual run of debutante, although that latter was something she generally deemed it wiser not to bring to the attention of men searching for a nubile young wife. "My father belonged to one."