Hmph, if he couldn't handle a simple friendship genealogy, how could he be expected to master the complex interrelationships of historical personages? "My old school friend is Pammy Harrington. She's the one who introduced me to the friend I'm meeting up with tonight. The one I understand you know. Rather well, in fact."
"Oh?" The man was too dense to even realize what was up. No, "dense" isn't the right word. It just never occurred to him that any report could be less than favorable. He preened in anticipation of a second-hand compliment.
"Yes," I said sweetly, bringing the game to a close. "I believe you two might even have dated. Serena Selwick."
The wattage of Dempster's smile visibly dimmed.
"Oh," he said. "You know Serena. She's a lovely girl."
"Yes, she is," I agreed.
The silence crept in and expanded between us, like the Blob. I could tell Dempster was dying to find out just what and how much I knew. Serena wasn't the sort to go around complaining about old grievances, but still…you never knew. A guilty conscience makes for an overactive imagination.
I smiled, gently.
It had the desired effect of making him even more nervous. Dempter fiddled with a corner of his pocket handkerchief. "Have you known Serena long?"
"Not terribly long," I said, and watched as the tension in his well-tailored shoulders lightened. "But it's hard not to feel protective of her. She's so delicate. And defenseless. One of life's innocents."
"That's very noble of you," said Dempster, unsuccessfully trying to reroute the conversation.
"Not really," I said cheerfully. "It's not entirely disinterested on my part."
I gave him just a moment to let that sink in. Naturally, he judged my motives by his own. The color came back into his cheeks as he leapt to the obvious assumption that I must just be using my friendship with Serena to get to her family papers. After all, wouldn't anyone?
I could see his opinion of me going up by leaps and bounds.
"You see," I added, before he could say "archives," "I've just started dating Serena's brother, Colin."
"Did I hear my name?" drawled a familiar voice.
Lounging against the doorjamb, looking dubiously at the worn linoleum and weak tracking lighting, was none other than the man himself, managing to make the rest of the room look small and stuffy.
I'm not sure how long he had been standing there — I had been too busy tormenting Dempster — but from the suppressed smirk on Colin's face, it had been more than long enough. He did a fairly good job of suppressing his smirk. His one dimple, the one in his left cheek, wasn't even in evidence. But I knew it was there.
He also managed the drawl very well, almost up to Vaughn's standard. He must have been practicing before he came.
"Ready?" he asked, smiling at me and pointedly ignoring his sister's flummoxed ex-boyfriend, who was doing an excellent guppy imitation, his lips going in and out with little bubbles of air.
"Just about," I said brightly, jumbling my notebooks and papers back into my bag. I held out a hand to Dempster. "Thank you so much for the use of the archive. I really appreciate it."
Dempster looked from me to Colin. One had to give him points for persistence. He rallied valiantly. "Will I see you here again next Saturday?"
Traipsing across the room, I slid an arm confidingly through Colin's. "I don't think so," I said breezily. "I can't think of anything more here that I would need. But thanks. And good luck with your projects!"
"You know where to find me," Dempster called out manfully behind us. "If you need any help, that is."
I turned around just enough to waggle my fingers good-bye as Colin nudged the door closed behind us, effectively cutting off any further farewells.
My bag, as it is wont to do, thumped down my arm into the crook of my elbow. Without breaking stride or saying a word, Colin reached out and appropriated it, shifting it to his far side. He held it that way boys do, not using the strap, but grasping it by the top, so no one can suspect they might be wearing it.
I beamed at him in gratitude. No matter how used to carrying your own bags you get, it's still nice to have someone else do it for you. Of their own accord, without your having to ask.
He was, as a friend of mine would say, good people.
"So," I asked, smiling up at him as we climbed the stairs from Dempster's archival dungeon, "do you feel spiritually cleansed?"
"That's not quite how I would have put it," he said dryly, sauntering along beside me through the long drawing rooms, under Vaughn's knowing eye. Our footsteps clumped pleasingly against the parquet, two pairs in perfect tandem. Well, not quite perfect tandem. Colin's stride was much longer than mine, and his shoes thumped while mine clicked, but our steps still made a pleasant rhythm together, nonetheless.
"You know what I mean," I said.
The smirk Colin had been so successfully repressing all that time escaped and spread across his face, complete with dimple. "The look on Dempster's face when you told him you were friends with Serena — I wouldn't have missed that for the world. Excellently done, by the way."
"Thank you," I said, sketching a slight curtsy that might have been more effective if I hadn't (a) been wearing pants, and (b) still been walking. "I do try. It was indeed beautiful to behold as he watched all of his plans go poof, right up in smoke."
Strolling into the entrance hall, beneath the shadow of the massive Hercules, we contemplated Dempster's downfall in mutual satisfaction. Colin held open the front door, moving aside for me to precede him. I hastily turned up the collar of my jacket as the first blast of frigid air hit me.
"We aren't very nice people," I said ruefully.
"Dempster isn't a very nice person," said Colin calmly.
He had a point there.
I shook my head thoughtfully. "I still can't believe he really thought he could use me to get to you — to your papers, I mean."
Hunching his shoulders into his jacket against the bitter pre-Christmas cold, Colin looked down at me sideways. "Did you find what you were looking for in his?"
I nodded vehemently, watching my breath make little puffs in the air. It had gotten much colder, just over the past week. It was December already, and frosty enough to show that the weather knew it. "You'll never believe who the Black Tulip really was."
"Not the Marquise de Something-or-Other?"
"Nope. A Jacobite Pretender."
"I didn't think we still had those in the nineteenth century."
"There's a reason for that," I said, with as much pride as if I had routed the last remaining Stuart all by myself. "The Pink Carnation."
"Was there nothing she didn't get her fingers into?" asked Colin admiringly, if ungrammatically.
"Not much that I can see," I said proudly, sticking my hands into my pockets and wishing I'd remembered to bring gloves. "Of course, I've only covered a fairly small space of her career so far. There's a whole lot that's attributed to her later on, and I'm guessing only about half of it is probable."
"Shouldn't she improve as she goes on?" asked Colin, considering the question seriously. "With increased experience and a larger network of agents, there's no reason she shouldn't have been able to do more."
I hunched my chin into my turtleneck in an attempt to keep it warm. "Yeah, but could she defy the laws of time and space? It's one thing to be responsible for putting down French plots on either side of the Channel — "
"A lot of Frogs on the other side of the Channel," intoned Colin in Fawlty Towers tones.
I made a face at him. "Fine. She can have France. I'll even grant her Portugal and Spain. But India? And Russia? I just don't buy it."
"Why not? People did move around, even all the way to India and back."
"But the timing never quite works. How could she be in India to deal with a Mahratta rebellion and in France to try to stop Napoleon's coronation all at the same time?"