"I don't think he's in the mood for new people," said Colin tactfully. "But, thank you."
"Another time, then. We could all do drinks." I could see the Machiavellian wheels in Pammy's head churning up images of potential double dates.
"Won't you be seeing someone else by the time the mourning period is over?"
"I like to keep a backup list," said Pammy blithely. "You never know when they might come in handy."
"Like understudies," I explained to Colin, as the three of us filtered out into the front hall. "She keeps them in the wings in case the principal is unable to go on."
"Or sent to Hong Kong?"
"Happens all the time."
"Isn't it time to call your understudy in from the wings? Now that Jay has been sent back to grandmother?"
I glanced back up over my shoulder at him, turning down the corners of my mouth in feigned regret. "I'm not nearly as well organized as Pammy. My backstage is totally empty."
"That will never do." I couldn't see his face, but I could hear the amusement in his voice. "You need to restock."
"I haven't really had time to set up any auditions." The stage analogy wasn't entirely inapt; my heart was beating as though I were walking a tightrope as I paused next to the front door and turned to face him. "Except the hideous Jay one, and you saw how that one turned out."
"You ought to get back out there."
"Hear, hear!" said Pammy. "I've been telling her that for ages."
"Thanks, Pams."
Colin paused with one hand on the doorknob, and glanced casually down at me. "What are you doing Saturday night?"
I was supposed to be having dinner with Pammy. A swift kick from Pammy informed me that our plans were officially off.
"Nothing."
"Dinner?"
"One of my favorite meals."
"How does eight sound?"
Like a host of celestial angels singing. "Like an excellent time for dinner."
Next to me, I could feel Pammy bristling with repressed commentary.
"Brilliant," said Colin.
That had all happened a little too fast for me.
Did I have a date with Colin? Or was that just an abstract inquiry into the desirability of eight o'clock as a dining hour? It wasn't the sort of thing one could ask without looking really, really stupid.
Besides, Colin was busy thanking Pammy for a lovely evening, and Pammy was smirking in a way usually reserved for successful fairy godmothers. Any moment now she was going to sprout a tutu and start singing "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo."
The niceties disposed of, Colin poked his head around the door one last time. "Till Saturday, then."
"Don't forget your audition materials!" I twinkled.
Fortunately, the door was already swinging shut, placing three inches of good, solid oak between Colin and my silly comments.
I really hoped he hadn't heard that.
I lowered my head to my clenched hands. "Audition materials. Oh, God. I didn't."
Pammy snickered. "It could have been worse. At least you didn't say his audition piece."
"Pammy!"
"Do you think it's a long audition piece?"
I whacked Pammy on the arm. "That's not what I meant. We're just having dinner."
Pammy waggled her eyebrows. "Dinner, eh?"
"Oh, Pams." Overflowing with joy to the world and goodwill toward men, I gave her a quick hug. "Thanks."
"You're welcome." Pammy patted my back complacently. "Now who's making fun of Mustafa and the mountain?"
I didn't even bother to correct her. I was too happy. She could have all the Mustafas she wanted.
"I have a date."
"Uh-huh," said Pammy benignly.
"With Colin."
"That's him."
"I have a date with Colin."
Pammy slipped an arm through mine and began propelling me back toward the living room. "Okay, we got that. But you can't just get complacent. You have to think about the important things. Like, what you're going to wear."
Dinner. Saturday. Eight o'clock. It all sounded pretty incontrovertibly date-ish. Even allowing for transatlantic cultural differences, "Saturday" and "date" tend to be synonymous.
I had a date with Colin! A real date with Colin!
From the kitchen wafted the unmistakable scents of roasting turkey and yams swimming in syrup. Warm, homey smells vested with a wealth of good feelings, like lemon polish and clean linen. A deep feeling of contentment welled within me, the sort you have when you're very little, and the sun is shining, and your parents suggest ice cream without your even having to wheedle for it. All was right with the world. I had a whole new angle for my dissertation, turkey and American accents for Thanksgiving, and a date with a handsome Englishman on Saturday. A man who didn't confuse the Pimpernel with pumpernickel. Life couldn't get much better than this, not for all the Jimmy Choos in China.
With a little smile, I remembered the compositions we had to write each November in Lower School. They invariably began, "I have reason to be thankful because…" At the time, it usually had a lot to do with My Little Pony and naturally curly hair, with the occasional pious reference to loving parents thrown in for ballast.
Thinking of Colin, I sent a heartfelt message of gratitude out to all those turkeys who had perished to make Thanksgiving possible.
"I know!" exclaimed Pammy. "I have the most adorable little yak-skin corset!"
"No yak skin," I said.
Even gratitude only goes so far.
Historical Note
Truth can be very convenient for fiction. The events in Ireland in 1803 make a colorful story without any additional embellishment. After a brief exile in France, Robert Emmet and other veterans of the rising of 1798 returned to Dublin to plot a new insurrection. Stockpiling weapons in various depots around the city, Emmet planned to launch an attack on key centers of power within the city, to be coordinated with risings elsewhere in Ireland, and possibly a French invasion.
At six thirty in the evening on July sixteenth, all those plans quite literally went up in smoke. An explosion at the Patrick Street depot forced the hands of the insurgents. Faced with a choice of acting quickly or abandoning the enterprise, they moved the date of the rising up to July twenty-third, far earlier than intended. As Ruбn O'Donnell sums it up, "The stark choice facing Emmet and the other commanders was to launch a Dublin-centered rebellion without delay or to hold out in the hope that the French would invade Ireland or England as expected in August/September."
Without a full muster of men, without aid from France, the rebellion was practically over before it began. As Emmet's biographer Patrick Geoghegan recounts, "As daylight faded on the evening of 23 July, Emmet waited for the rebels to arrive at the main depot…. He expected two thousand men to appear. Eighty turned up. Worse, before assembling, most of them had been to the Yellow Bottle public house…." The rebel units did manage to hold positions on Thomas Street and James Street for nearly two hours, but the planned attack on Dublin Castle never occurred and the evening ended in rout and riot. Emmet fled to the Wicklow Mountains. Along with twenty other rebel leaders, he was apprehended and executed, dying a martyr for his cause.
The historical record of the rebellion is so rich that it was a wrench not to be able to use everything. One of my favorite tid-bits was the use of hurling societies (not to be confused with curling, which is a different sort of sport entirely) as a screen for military maneuvers, with the hurling stick standing in for a musket or pike. Sadly, I couldn't think of any excuse for proper young ladies like Letty and Jane being allowed anywhere near the Donnybrook hurling club. But even with hurling out of the picture, there were plenty of details that I was able to press into service. The rebel depots, with their warren of secret rooms and hidden hordes of weapons, were a novelist's dream, and the explosion at Patrick Street simply begged for a role in the story. The rockets, designed as a variant on those used in India, were Emmet's innovation, not mine, and did indeed lead to the fatal explosion at Patrick Street.