"I didn't realize the BL had anything on the Carnation."
"I don't think they realized either." Flipping back my hair, I grinned up at him. "It's all under 'Alsdale'—whoever entered it into the computer clearly just took the name off the bottom of the letters."
"Alsdale? That doesn't sound familiar."
He seemed so genuinely interested that I couldn't resist. Besides, I'd been dying to tell someone. Alex was busy, Pammy couldn't care less, and my adviser responded to e-mails about once every three months. If I was lucky.
"Remember Mary Alsworthy?"
"Vaguely," said Colin cautiously. "It's been years since I read through those papers."
"Her sister Letty married Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe. He went off to Ireland in 1803—"
"That much I did know."
"—and she followed after him, under the name Alsdale."
"So you followed 'Alsworthy' to 'Alsdale'?"
"Mm-hmm," I said smugly. "And it gets even better. Guess who else was there?"
Jay wanted to play, too. "The Scarlet Pumpernickel?"
Colin fell pray to a sudden coughing fit.
"Close," I said, bracing one elbow against the table and leaning encouragingly toward Jay. Even aside from Colin's coughing fit, I did feel a little bad about Jay. After all, it must be very tedious for him to be stuck listening to a detailed discussion on an esoteric topic he knew nothing about—much like I had felt when he had been going on about his three previous companies.
Besides, being on a date with Jay was clear proof that I had never, ever cherished tender notions regarding Colin. And I certainly hadn't checked my phone every five minutes for the past ten days waiting for him to call.
Guilt—and less laudable motives—inspired me to bestow a warm smile in Jay's direction. "It wasn't the Pimpernel, but it was another spy with a flowery name."
Jay shook his head, struggling for words.
"I can't believe you're spending seven years of your life on spies named after flowers."
I abruptly ceased feeling bad about Jay.
"If all of this has been sitting at the BL all this time," said Colin, crossing his arms across his chest, "why hasn't anyone come across it before?"
I shook my head. "I'm not explaining it well, am I? First, it's in one of those jumble folios. Someone just tossed the contents of their attic into a notebook and sent it off to the BL. I don't think anyone's opened it since it got there in 1902. On top of that, Letty doesn't use proper names anywhere. I mean, from time to time she'll throw in a reference to the Carnation or the Tulip, but most of the time you have to work by inference. Everyone—and I do mean everyone—seems to be traveling under an assumed name. The only reason I was able to figure out who was who was because I was looking for it. I knew Letty's relationship to Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe, and I knew that if there was a Jane operating in concert with a Geoffrey, it was probably the Jane."
"So you followed Geoffrey to Letty, and Letty to Jane." The words were simple enough, but the admiring look that accompanied them made me want to wriggle and thump my tail like a happy puppy dog.
"Basically. To anyone reading the letters cold, it would all just sound like pointless gossip—he-said, she-said sort of stuff about a bunch of historically unimportant people. You have to read pretty far along before you even get to the first Pink Carnation mention." I tried to look modest and missed by about a mile. "Guess what Jane's alias was?"
"The Scarlet Pumpernickel?"
I bit my lip on a grin and cast him a mock reproachful look. My restraint was entirely wasted on Jay, who was surreptitiously checking his BlackBerry, entirely unaware that he was being mocked. "Not even close. She traveled as a Miss Gilly Fairley."
"Gilly…for gillyflower?"
The lad was quick.
"Exactly." I beamed.
Jay slid his BlackBerry back under the table. "Gillyflower?"
"It's another name for a carnation," I explained.
"As in pink," added Colin.
"Oh, right." Jay took a long pull of his beer.
"Are you a historian?" asked Colin politely. A little too politely.
With the conversation directed back where it belonged—him—Jay perked up. "No. I help technological service providers actualize their human resource needs."
I took a peek at Colin, but he had his poker face down pat. "A necessary cog in the great wheel of social progress," he said solemnly.
Damn. Jay was rapidly losing value as a face-saving device. Something had to be done, and quickly.
"Jay made some great suggestions about my dissertation earlier!" I chimed in, like a one-woman cheerleading squad.
Across the table, Jay preened.
"Really?" Colin looked expectantly at Jay.
"Yes! I mean, yes. Jay, um, reminded me that it's all too easy to assume an Anglocentric viewpoint while working with a source base composed primarily of the epistolary product of a privileged segment of English society. He suggested that it might be a useful corrective to factor in the social, economic, and political grievances of the oppressed Irish underclass." I took a healthy swig of my wine. "In the interest of scholarly accuracy, of course."
Jay looked much as I must have when he started going on about actualizing technological potentialities. Ha! I could speak gibberish, too, when I wanted to. No field is without its own useful circumlocutions—which roughly translates as "important-sounding babble."
"Of course," Colin agreed. He seemed to be having trouble controlling the corners of his lips again. He glanced sideways from me to Jay and back again. "How do you two, er, know each other?"
At that point, I would have preferred to claim we didn't. But I was stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck. Hoist by my own petard.
"Our grandmothers are friends."
"Actually," interrupted Jay sententiously, "it's my mother who knows your grandmother."
"Right!" I said brightly. "Mitten."
"Muffin," Jay corrected.
At least I was close.
"Mm-hmm," managed Colin, in a way that suggested he knew just what was going on. I could tell he was dying to make a scone joke. I hoped he choked on it.
"But that's not all!" continued my big mouth, working overtime to correct the horrible assumption that I might, just might, be on a grandparent-assisted blind date. "My absolute best friend has been dating Jay's college roommate for absolutely ever!"
Two "absolutes" in one sentence. Next thing I knew, I was going to start spouting "like," probably coupled with "totally" and "ohmigod!"
"How convenient," said Colin. Before I could think of anything clever to say to that, he bestowed an avuncular smile on both of us in turn. "Well, I'll leave you to it, then."
"Nice meeting you." Jay reached into his jacket pocket and produced a business card. "If you ever need technical support services…"
Colin gingerly accepted the card. It boasted blue and orange lettering and was cut on a slight diagonal, in a way that was probably supposed to look edgy, but more likely just made it difficult to fit into the proper wallet compartment.
"Cheers," he said, tilting the card in ironic salute. "Good to see you, Eloise."
Going, going, going…Gone. My shoulders slumped as Colin turned and strolled back through the multicolored obstacle course of tables to his comfortable perch at the bar, his duty to his aunt's protйgй discharged. His friends greeted him with raised glasses and pointed glances. Colin shrugged and said something that produced a laugh all around.
I felt my cheeks grow pink before I remembered that, wait, I was the one on a date. He was just there with a bunch of blokes.
My pride was salvaged. I had won the upper hand—so why did I feel so miserable?
A silver basket filled with warm bread materialized just below my nose, the long-awaited naan.
Jay began methodically dividing the naan, half for me, half for him, along precise, geometrical lines.