There was no sign that a woman had ever inhabited this room. The furniture was all heavy, dark wood, and the wardrobe and drawers would never have begun to accommodate the accumulated clothing of two people rather than one.
Wiggling my vanity case out of my overnight bag, I padded through to the bathroom, which looked like something out of a Jeeves and Wooster episode, only without Wooster’s rubber ducky. It was one of those bathrooms that had clearly begun life as something else – a dressing room, perhaps, or a small sitting room. White wainscoting ran all along the walls, which were papered above with yet another Morris print, peeling from the effects of continued steam over time. There was even a rug on the floor, a faded Persian marred and snagged from years of use, with the odd blob of what might have been toothpaste or shaving cream ground into the warp. Hey, it sure beat my Kmart bath mat.
The only concessions to modernity were the modern shower head that had been installed above the tub and the electrical outlets that I was relieved to see had been stuck in at bizarre intervals along the walls. Even the toilet was the old sort, with a wooden case affixed high on the wall with a chain dangling from it.
I efficiently unloaded the necessities of life from my bag. Shampoo and conditioner on the side of the tub (like most men, Colin only had the two-in-one dandruff stuff), glasses and contact lens case on the vanity, toothbrush in the toothbrush holder.
There was something scarily domestic about the way our toothbrushes nestled together in the toothbrush holder, his contact lens solution jostling for space next to my contact lens solution on the vanity.
He wore contacts. I hadn’t realised that. There was a lot I didn’t know yet, for all the casual assumption of intimacy created by our twin toothbrushes.
Back in the bedroom, Colin was still listening to his voice mail messages. Whatever it was clearly did not please him; his eyebrows had drawn together and there was a twin furrow between them.
He clicked the phone off when he saw me (ah, those early days of relationship), although he still looked abstracted. ‘Tea?’ he asked. ‘Or library?’
‘Library,’ I said decidedly.
‘Do you remember where it is?’
On a scale of one to ten? I gave that about a three. I was pretty sure that it was on the same floor we were on, which narrowed the search down a bit, but I didn’t mind opening and closing doors until I found the library. To be honest, I was more than a little curious about Colin’s house. If I wanted to pretend I was being a good little historian, I would claim it was because it was the same house owned by the Purple Gentian, the house in which he had plotted and schemed, the house from which he had run – with his wife – his spy school. But, as Colin had told me on a previous visit, the house had been entirely gutted and remodelled in the late nineteenth century, the same time all the Morris prints and Burne-Jones tiles and heavy dark wood panelling had been put in. The only bits that remained intact from the early nineteenth century were the faÇade, the gardens, and the long drawing room that spanned the entire width of the main block on the garden side.
My desire to prowl around the house had far more to do with the man who occupied it now. It was the same sort of impulse that drives you, early in a relationship, to go through the entirety of the other person’s CD collection, as if some deep insight into his character could be gleaned from the fact that he once bought this or that CD. I wanted to see where he lived, how he lived, where he spent his time.
So instead of saying, ‘Point me in the right direction,’ I smiled confidently and said, ‘I should be able to figure it out.’
Colin’s hand closed protectively around his mobile. ‘You don’t mind if I abandon you for a bit? I have some work that needs to be sorted.’
‘No problem at all.’ In fact, it worked very well for me – even though I was dying to ask him what work exactly he had. Cows, perhaps. Or sheep. Or something left over from his City days. Or just catching up on email, which goodness only knows can be work enough after a long trip without Internet access.
‘Brilliant,’ Colin said, and flashed me a smile that almost made me want to reconsider this whole going our separate ways for the afternoon thing.
But the archives were calling me. With one last, lingering kiss (yes, we were still at the stage where we kissed hello and goodbye on moving between rooms), I set out down the hallway toward the library.
‘Eloise?’
Ah, clearly he could not bear to allow me out of his arms for more than a moment.
‘Yes?’ I called back, bosom heaving as best it could under a bra, a polo shirt, and a lambswool sweater.
Colin’s lips were twitching, and not, I regret to add, with uncontrollable desire. He pointed at the other hallway, the one I had failed to take. ‘The library is that way.’
I threw him a little salute. ‘Aye-aye, Captain!’
God only knows why I do these things; sometimes my hands and mouth move of their own volition, without any input from my brain. Making a smart about-face, I scurried down the other hallway.
‘Just keep on going,’ Colin called after me. ‘The library is in the East Wing.’
It was very sweet of him to assume that I had any notion where east was. The keep-going bit was more helpful. After a long and arduous journey past many closed doors and a broad hallway that gave onto the central stair, I hit what I presumed must be the East Wing. My presumption was based largely on the fact that the hall stopped going.
As soon as I opened the door, I was back in familiar territory, surrounded by the comfortable smell of old paper and decaying bindings, cracked leather chairs, and musty draperies. It smelt like most libraries I had known (with the exception of certain branches of the New York Public Library, which smell more like disinfectant and eau de bum). Row upon row of crumbling books soared two stories into the air, bisected by an iron balcony that ran along all sides of the room, reached by a twisty iron staircase with tiny pie-shaped steps. Grey January light seeped through the long windows that looked to the north and east, the sort of winter light that obscures more than it illuminates.
Groping along the wall, I found a light switch. After a brief resistance, it finally consented to flip, and a massive two-tiered chandelier hanging from the centre of the ceiling flickered into light. Some of the bulbs never bothered to go on, others blinked twice and then winked out, but there were still enough to cast a reasonable amount of light down over the warm blue carpet with its pattern of red flecks. I do love old libraries, and this was the real deal, a late-nineteenth-century Gothic fantasy complete with a baronial stone fireplace, tenanted with books that had been acquired, read, and loved over the course of more than a century. There was everything from early editions of Dickens, with broken spines and scribbles in the margins, to piles of paperbacks with the lurid covers so common in the seventies. Colin’s father had obviously had a taste for spy thrillers.
A veteran after one prior visit, I strode straight to the bookshelves at the back of the room, crouching in front of what looked like mere wainscoting to the uninitiated eye. I expertly twisted the hidden handle, and there it was – a pile of old James Bond novels? That was not what I had been looking for. Scuttling sideways like a crab, I tried the next panel over, and there they were: big old folios with handwritten labels and piles of acid-free boxes bound with twine, with legends like ‘Household Acc’ts: 1880 – 1895’ in faded type on the labels glued to the sides.
I wasn’t interested in the household accounts of the late nineteenth century, or even, although it was more tempting, the diaries of a Victorian daughter of the house. It wasn’t my field. Stacking aside the document boxes, I went for the folios in the back, where the older documents were stored.
Someone, a very long time ago, perhaps even that same Victorian young lady, had taken her ancestors’ old letters and pasted them into folio volumes. I bypassed ‘Correspondence of Lady Henrietta Selwick: March – November 1803’ (I had read that volume before) and reached for the one behind it. A slanting h
and had written ‘Corresp. Lady H’tta, Christmas 1803 – Easter 1804.’
Bingo.
From my recent researches in the Vaughn collection, I knew that the Pink Carnation had gone off to France in October or November of 1803, for unspecified purposes. I needed those purposes specified. What was the Pink Carnation doing in Paris in late 1803? And with whom?
If anyone would know, it would be the Carnation’s cousin by-marriage, Lady Henrietta Selwick. The two had concocted an ingenious code, based on ordinary terms one might expect to see in the innocent letters of two young ladies, things like ‘beaux,’ and ‘Venetian breakfasts,’ and ‘routs,’ all with highly unladylike secret meanings.
Settling back on my heels, I propped the volume open in my lap, flipping over the heavy pages with their double burden of letters glued to either side.
There were faded annotations in the margins and heavy strokes of the same pen crossing out whatever the Victorian compiler felt unsuitable for the eyes of posterity. Fortunately, the ink used by the would-be censor wasn’t nearly as good as that of the original authors. It had faded to a pale brown that did little to obscure the darker letters beneath. Although it did say some very interesting things about what later generations considered improper while the Georgians did not. It always fascinated me how much more open mores were in the eighteenth and very early nineteenth century than in the period that came immediately after.
All that was well and good, but there was one thing missing: the Pink Carnation. Not one of the letters in the folio had been written in her distinctive hand. I recognised some from Henrietta’s husband, Miles (I had got to know his sloppy handwriting, full of blotches and cross-outs, pretty well the last time I was at Selwick Hall), but most were closely written in a small and swirly script, punctuated by large chunks of dialogue. Had one of Henrietta’s friends been playing at novelist? Amused by the notion, I flipped to the back of a letter to check the signature.
Of course. It was Lady Charlotte Lansdowne, Henrietta’s best friend and bookworm extraordinaire. Cute, but not necessarily what I was looking for. I could flip through it later, just for fun.
I was reaching for the next folio in the pile, hoping it might prove more useful, when a word on the open page caught my eye. Well, really, it was two words, applied in conjunction. ‘king’ and ‘mad.’
King George had gone mad again in 1804, hadn’t he? It was my time period; I was supposed to know these things. Of course he had. And a huge worry it had been to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, as well as to the queen and his daughters. It had entirely thrown off the conduct of the war with France.
But what had Charlotte and Henrietta to do with the king’s madness? And, yet, from the page I was looking at, they certainly had. It was all very curious.
Hmm. Settling back down, I regarded the folio with new interest. I was at Selwick Hall for a whole week, after all, I reminded myself. I had plenty of time to take the odd detour in my research. Besides, I liked Charlotte. Her handwriting was extremely legible. That makes a huge difference to a researcher.
Abandoning any pretence at searching for other materials, I struggled to my feet with my prize and plumped down in a comfortably sagging armchair next to a gooseneck lamp, wrestling the folio open to the first letter.
Girdings House
Christmas Eve, 1803
My dearest Henrietta,
Isn’t Christmas Eve two of the loveliest words in the language? The holly and the ivy have been gathered, and mistletoe hangs from every place we could find to hang it. Turnip Fitzhugh already has a scratched face – not from the ladies resisting his importunities (he hasn’t made any, except to Penelope, who finds it a great joke rather than otherwise), but because he can never seem to remember to duck when he walks under the low-hanging bits. But the greenery isn’t all we brought in tonight. If I tell you who has come to Girdings, I have no doubt you will think I write in jest. But it is true, darling Henrietta, even if I have to pinch myself to believe it …
Chapter One
Christmas Eve, 1803
Girdings House, Norfolk
Lady Charlotte Lansdowne’s knight in shining armour finally appeared on a cold Christmas Eve. Not only was he three years late (an appearance on the eve of her first Season would have been much appreciated), but he appeared to have mislaid his armour somewhere. Instead of a silver breastplate, he was wrapped in a dark military cloak, the collar pulled up high against his chin. His steed was grey rather than white, dappled with dun where trotting on winter-wet roads had flung up patches of mud.
Charlotte noticed none of that. With the torchlight blazing off his uncovered head reflecting a seeming helmet of molten gold, he looked just like Sir William Lansdowne, the long-dead Dovedale who had fought so bravely at the Battle of Agincourt. At least, he looked just like what the seventeenth-century painter who had composed the murals along the Grand Staircase had imagined Sir William Lansdowne looked like.
As the visitor reined in his horse, Charlotte could hear the bugles cry in her head, the clatter of steel against steel as armoured knights clashed, horses slipping and falling in the churned mess of mud and blood. She could see Sir William rise in his stirrups as the French bore down upon him, the Lansdowne pennant whipping bravely behind him as he cried, ‘A moi! A Lansdowne!’
Charlotte staggered forwards as something bumped into her from behind.
It wasn’t a French cavalry charge.
‘Really, Charlotte,’ demanded the aggrieved voice of her friend Penelope. ‘Do you intend to go out or just stand there all day?’
Without waiting for an answer, Penelope edged around her onto the vast swathe of marble that fronted the entrance to Girdings House, the principal residence of the Dukes of Dovedale. The basket Penelope was carrying for the purpose of collecting Christmas greenery scraped against Charlotte’s hip.
‘Oh, visitors,’ said Penelope without interest. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ agreed Charlotte absently, without the slightest idea of what she was agreeing to.
The man in front of the house rose in his stirrups, but instead of shouting archaic battle cries, he took the far more mundane route of swinging off his horse and tossing the reins to a servant. He wore no spurs to jangle as he landed, just a pair of muddy boots that had not seen the ministrations of a valet for some time. Behind him, his friend did likewise.
‘Do you know them?’
It took her a moment to realise that Penelope had spoken. Considering the question, Charlotte shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Given her tendency to go off into daydreams during introductions, she couldn’t be entirely sure, but she thought she would have recognised this man. His wasn’t the sort of face one forgot.
It didn’t affect Penelope in the same way. But, then, Penelope had always been remarkably hardheaded when it came to the opposite sex, perhaps because they were anything but hardheaded when it came to her.
Shrugging, Penelope said, ‘Well, your grandmother will know. They must be more of the Eligibles.’
The Eligibles was Penelope’s careless catchall for the men Charlotte’s grandmother had invited to spend the Christmas season at Girdings. All were young – well, except for Lord Grimmlesby-Thorpe, who was closer to fifty than thirty, even if he did paint his cheeks and pad his pantaloons to provide the illusion of youth. All had the prospect of titles in their future. And all were in want of a dowry.
It was, in fact, all a bit like a fairy tale, with all the princes in the land invited to vie for her hand. Or it might have been, if the group hadn’t tended more towards toads than princes.
Tearing her eyes away from her knight without armour, Charlotte looked thoughtfully at her friend. ‘I don’t think they can be. Grandmama only invited ten, and they’ve all arrived.’
Penelope regarded the newcomers with somewhat more interest than she had shown before. Her face took on a speculative expression that Charlotte recognised all too well. She had last seen it right befo
re Penelope had ‘borrowed’ Percy Ponsonby’s perch phaeton and driven it straight into the Serpentine. The Serpentine had been an accident. The borrowing had not.
‘Perhaps these are ineligibles, then. Let’s introduce ourselves, shall we?’
‘Pen!’ Charlotte grabbed at the edge of her cloak, but it was too late. Penelope was already descending the stairs, hips and basket swinging.
Since there was no way of stopping Penelope short of flinging herself at her and toppling them both down the stairs, Charlotte did what she always did. She followed along behind.
Pen paused two steps from the bottom, using the added height for good effect. With the torchlight flaming off her hair, she looked more like a Druid priestess than a minor baronet’s daughter. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ she called across the divide. ‘What brings you this far from Bethlehem?’
The darker one, the one whom Charlotte hadn’t noticed, made a flourishing obeisance. ‘Following your star, fair lady. Is there any room at the inn?’
Men said things like that to Penelope.
They did not, however, generally look right past Penelope, furrow their brow, and stare at Charlotte. They most certainly did not ignore Penelope altogether, take two steps forwards, hold out a hand, and say, ‘Charlotte?’
And, yet, that was precisely what Charlotte’s knight without armour did.
‘Charlotte?’ he asked again, with a bemused smile. ‘It is Cousin Charlotte, isn’t it?’
‘Cousin’ wasn’t quite the endearment she had been hoping for.
‘Cousin?’ Charlotte echoed. Although her grandmother claimed kinship with any number of peers and minor princes, the Dovedale family tree had run thin for successive generations. There were very few with any real right to call her by that name. ‘Cousin Robert?’