Dempster shrugged, in a nonchalant gesture worthy of Vaughn himself. "My own background is in history of art, but the Pink Carnation has become something of a hobby for me. Working among these papers" — he gestured broadly back towards the muniments room — "it's very hard not to take an interest. One of history's great mysteries here, at my disposal."
"Of course," I said, relief oozing out of every pore of my body. It was a pity he hadn't taken up the Princes in the Tower instead, but as long as his interest was genuinely that of a bored amateur, it was all fine.
"We might," he suggested delicately, "even be of use to each other. I might be able to direct you to areas of the Vaughn Collection of interest to you."
"Mmm," I said noncommittally. Considering I already knew who the Pink Carnation was, I would be of far more use to him than he to me. As for keeping it secret, my own skills at subterfuge were what one might tactfully call less than well developed. My sister, Jillian, would say it went with the red hair. Did I mention that Jillian is brunette?
On the other hand, if this Nigel Dempster really did know his way around the Vaughn papers as well as he claimed…well, it couldn't hurt to pick his brain just a bit, could it?
I firmly shut out the echo of Jillian's mocking laughter. Little sisters have no respect these days.
Dempster waved a hand at the box in front of me. "If you're looking for spies, I'm afraid you'll find Sebastian a bit of a disappointment."
"Really?"
Dempster perched familiarly on the edge of the table. I could see a bit of striped sock poking out beneath his trouser leg, patterned with discrete red blobs. "For a man who wrote so fluently on politics and art, Sebastian is remarkably chary with the details of his personal life. He remains, even within his own collection, a bit of a shadowy personage."
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.