Forget a mere chapter; this might contain the germ of a second book. I toyed with titles. A Sampler of Sedition: Female Spies in the Napoleonic Wars. I discarded that as too much like a reprise of my dissertation, with a gender slant to make it trendy. I could attempt a micro-history, using the marquise as a case study. The Marquise de Montvaclass="underline" The Maying of a Revolutionary. Now, there was an idea. How did a gendy bred young Englishwoman become a fervent adherent of revolutionary principles and a hired killer for Bonaparte? Even better, I could do a companion study of the Pink Carnation and the Black Tulip, comparing their backgrounds, their allegiances, their methods. There was one slight snag.
"Eloise!" The voice was more insistent now, and, as if from a long way away, I remembered that that was my name, and that it was generally considered a matter of social convention to respond to it.
So I blurted out what was on my mind. "The Black Tulip escaped!" I looked up wildly from the pile of papers on my lap, shoving my tousled hair out of my eyes. "I can't believe they let her escape!"
"Eloise!" There was a snap to Colin's voice that jarred me out of my preoccupations. He hadn't even bothered to come all the way into the library; his disembodied head stuck out around the frame of the door like a French nobleman after a jaunt to the guillotine, sans wig or ruffled cravat.
"Yes?" I sat to attention, suddenly very conscious that I was wearing nothing but an ancient white tank top, washed to invisibility, and a pair of fuzzy pajama bottoms printed with French poodles frolicking next to the Eiffel Tower. Yes, I had packed in a hurry Friday afternoon. I tried to tuck my legs up under me, but Colin wasn't paying any more attention to Fifi the Playful Poodle than he was to the transparency of my tank top.
"Listen," he said tersely. "Something's come up. Can you be ready to leave in fifteen minutes?"
"Fifteen minutes," I repeated blankly. Leave. Fifteen minutes. Leave?
Information did not compute.
"There's a train that leaves at seven thirty-two," Colin continued in that same harried tone. I got the sense that he was already someplace else entirely, the apparition in front of me simply a machine detailed to relay the message. All that was lacking was Thank-you-for-calling-Selwick-Hall-and-have-a-nice-day. "I'm terribly sorry, but it can't be helped."
"Of course," I stammered, staggering to my feet with the aid of the chair. "I'll just — "
"Thanks."
" — get myself together," I finished to the inside of the library door. Colin had already gone. Fifteen minutes. He had said fifteen minutes, hadn't he?
I gathered together the welter of papers and folios I had been looking at and sorted them back into their proper places with a numb efficiency born of confusion. I glanced at the big grandfather clock on the far wall. Four minutes gone already. I grabbed for my notebooks, tucking them under my arm. I could read through my notes on the train.
The train. I would have dwelled on that, but I didn't have time now to figure out why I was being tossed from the house like a Victorian housemaid found to be in the family way. Get ye gone, ye creature of loose morals, and never darken the Squires door again! Only, I hadn't had a chance to display any loose morals, more's the pity. So why was he throwing me out?
Oh, God. I paused with one hand on the doorknob of the library door. Was he regretting his impulses of last night, and trying to dispose of the evidence (i.e., me) before I could fling myself at him again? "I didn't mean to lead her on," I could say him saying to a mate over a pint at the pub. "It was just… she was there. Female, y'know." The friend would nod sagely in return, saying, "Don't know where they get these ideas." And they'd both take a long pull of their beers, shaking their head over desperate women. Then they'd probably top it off with a long belch.
It made me cringe just thinking about it.
Five minutes gone. I tabled that thought for later and sprinted to my borrowed room, flinging clothes haphazardly back into my overnight bag, yanking on the same tweed pants I had worn yesterday with an unworn beige sweater. Cursing, I tore the sweater back off over my head, accidentally sending my glasses flying in the process, added bra, replaced sweater, and fumbled around for my glasses, which had scooted all the way under the bed in that way inanimate objects have when you're in a hurry. Had I put on deodorant? I couldn't remember. I yanked up my sweater and lavishly slathered white goo anywhere but where it was supposed to go, most of it onto dry-clean-only cashmere.
Twelve minutes gone. There was no time to put in my contacts. Wiping my glasses clean on a corner of my much-abused sweater, I made sure the lids on my contact lens case were screwed tight and shoved them, my glasses case, and my bottle of contact lens solution into my bag. Tearing a piece of paper out of the back of my notebook, I fished a pen out of my bag, and scribbled a quick note. "Serena, Thanks for the loan of the clothes! Hope you don't mind. Will be glad to return the favor sometime. Yrs, Eloise."
That was the last of my allotted time. I ran a quick scan over dresser, night tables, bed; rescued my almost-forgotten watch from the dresser top; wriggled into my coat, slung my bag over my shoulder, and bolted for the stairs.
Colin was already in the car, the engine running, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel in an anxious tattoo.
"That was speedy," he said approvingly. The car lurched into action before I heard the comforting click that told me my door had latched.
"Well, you know," I gasped, flinging my satchel into the backseat of the car, and turning around again to yank down my seat belt. "I didn't have much with me."
"Right," said Colin, leaning over the wheel in that strange way men have when they're intent on emulating the Grand Prix, the automotive equivalent of air guitar. As though sensing that might not have been adequate as a response, he added, "Good."
All the tension that had fizzed between us last night had gone as flat as champagne left out overnight.
I subsided back against my seat. It belatedly occurred to me that I'd never brushed my hair, but I couldn't muster up the energy to care. Outside the window, the countryside jounced past, clothed in morning mist. Had I been in a different sort of mood, I might have waxed rapturous about the mysterious quality of the early-morning light. As it was, it just looked grim and faded, as if the tired landscape couldn't muster the energy to clothe itself in its usual colors, but had let itself dim into an indifferent blur.
I glanced at Colin, but he was far away — away with the fairies, as the local idiom goes, only, judging from the worried line between his eyes, these were hobgoblins he was hobnobbing with. No kinder to him than the trees, the gray morning light transformed him into a sepia photo of himself. His healthy tan had gone the sallow taupe of old parchment, and his skin seemed too tightly drawn over his cheekbones. The pouches that bagged beneath his eyes reminded me of old photographs of the Duke of Windsor, who always looked as though he were perpetually recovering from hangover.
With all my hyperawareness, I had seen how much Colin had consumed last night. It wasn't a hangover.
As I watched, he rubbed two fingers over his temple as though to scrub away headache. The homely gesture hit me like a kick in the stomach — no, not any other organ. Obviously, Colin had other things on his mind other than aborted smooches and unwanted houseguests.
I remembered that phone call last night, as we returned from the party, and wondered if it had been bad news of some sort. The part of my imagination bequeathed to me by my mother instantly set about producing grisly disaster scenarios. A friend might have been in a car accident: a sudden flash of lights, a twist of the wheel, a car careening out of control on a dark road. His aunt might have had a heart attack. Mrs. Selwick-Alderly looked fairly hale, but one never knew what might lurk in someone's arteries after a lifetime of roast beef and sticky toffee pudding. Of course, these days, it was more likely free-range eggs and doner kebabs, but Mrs. Selwick-Alderly had been raised in an age when meat was brought to your plate still mooing, accompanied by a side of vegetables stewed in butter. And then there was Colin's sister, Serena. She had been suffering from a minor case of food poisoning on Thursday night. What if it hadn't been food poisoning at all, but something far more serious? Cholera, perhaps. Could one even get cholera in England? Even if one couldn't, I was sure that there were plenty of other grisly diseases ripe for the catching. Not to mention all the perils involved in crossing the street, operating a hair-dryer, and drinking very hot beverages.