I was getting pretty damn fed up with this whole Jekyll and Hyde routine. By the time we’d made it to Leinster Street, I was windburned, breathless, and thoroughly out of patience with Colin, his mood swings, and his little dog, too. Sailing past him as he held out open the door for me, I held up two fingers to the maitre d’ and squirmed into the banquette he indicated, letting my bag slip from my shoulder and fall to the floor with a defiant thump.
“A carafe of your house red, please?” I asked, before the maitre d’ could escape. Just because I was pissed with Colin was no need to be rude to the staff. Just because some people couldn’t control their tempers didn’t mean I couldn’t. Just because
I realized a waiter was standing over me, waiting for me to take the offered menu. Belatedly, I took it from him, glad for the dim lighting that hid my flush, part irritation and part windburn.
Taking the chair across from me, which looked ridiculously little and spindly with him looming over it, Colin sat himself gingerly down. Whether that was because he feared the staying power of the chair or because he had picked up on the ominous tilt of my menu was unclear. I suspected the former.
I had meant to continue in cold silence, blasting him with the frost of my displeasure, but irritation and curiosity got the better of me. Abandoning any attempt to read the menu, I tossed it aside and leaned forwards with both elbows on the table.
“What was all that with you and Nigel Dempster out there?”
Instead of answering the question, Colin planted both
his
elbows on the table. “How long have you known Dempster?”
“Since about six o’clock this evening,” I answered automatically, and then kicked myself for it. What was I doing answering his questions? I had asked first. Just because his elbows were bigger than mine didn’t give him any right to bag first answer.
“Really,” said Colin, managing to inject a world of mistrust into that one simple word.
“Give or take half an hour,” I added. “I wouldn’t want to be anything less than perfectly accurate. How long have
you
known Dempster?”
“Awhile.”
That was certainly informative. He was just lucky I had left my thumbscrews in my other bag.
“Right,” I said. “Okay. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Dempster, but if you want to be mad at him, be mad at him. Don’t get all pissy with me.”
It wasn’t the most elegantly phrased argument I’ve ever made, but it got the point across. Colin removed his elbows from the table and looked at me curiously. “You really don’t know?”
“I don’t even know enough to know what I’m not supposed to know,” I said irritably. “I met Dempster for all of five minutes this afternoon while I was doing research at the Vaughn Collection. He’s the archivist there, you know.”
“I knew that,” mumbled Colin.
“So if you’d like to sit here and fume about Dempster or whatever else it is that’s eating at you,” I said, warming to my theme, “feel free to go right ahead. I’ll just head off home and spend the evening watching the snooker championships.”
“It’s not snooker season, actually,” offered Colin, in a conciliatory way.
“Fine. Darts, then.”
“Envisioning them thrown at my head?” he asked ruefully.
Despite myself, I smiled back. “We were getting there.”
We both leaned back as the waiter appeared and placed the carafe of wine in the center of the table between us, expertly flipping glasses right way up. He took our order, too, but don’t ask me what I ordered, or how I ordered. When he had sidled away again, we both leaned forward, as at an unspoken cue.
After a long moment, Colin said, “Would an apology do, or does it have to be the darts?”
I melted in an instant. But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook quite that easily. “I’ll accept an apology if it comes with an explanation.”
Colin rubbed his neck with his hand, regarding me like a hopeful puppy dog. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer just to fling something at me and get it over with?”
I leaned back against the cushioned back of the banquette, folded my arms across my chest, and waited.
“Dempster?” I prompted.
Colin considered for a moment, contemplated the olive plate, considered some more, and came out with, “We don’t get on.”
“That much I figured out on my own.”
Colin shifted restlessly in his seat. “It’s a long story.”
I patted the side of the glass carafe. “We have a large carafe of wine.”
Colin let himself relax into a rueful grin. “I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into it.”
“Since I’ve already been dragged,” I suggested, grasping the carafe with two hands and tipping it forwards over his glass, “it would be nice to know what’s going on.”
“Thanks.” Colin took the glass I held out to him. He raised it an ironic salute. “Cheers.”
“So?” I urged. “Story?”
After a moment’s consideration, Colin gave me the short version. “Dempster dated my sister.”
That was not quite what I had been expecting.
But it did certainly make a lot more sense. For a man to leap to the defense of his archive was just kind of odd; for him to leap to the defense of a sister was really rather sweet. Especially when that sister had just gone through a particularly nasty, self-esteem-destroying
From the dark reaches of memory, in a completely different part of my brain, a snatch of gossip came floating up to the fore.
“He’s that one!” I yelped.
Colin gave me a look.
I shrugged. “Pammy told me.”
“Pammy talks a lot.”
“She means well. She just wanted to make sure I didn’t say something that might upset Serena. Waitlet’s not stray from the point. Dempster is Serena’s evil ex?”
I was still grappling with this key concept. It wasn’t totally inconceivable. He was a reasonably good-looking man, if one went for the tall, dark type, and the little bit of gray at his temples only gave him a distinguished look, reminiscent of up-and-coming politicians and the better-looking sort of college professor. I put Dempster’s age at late thirties, early forties, but that wasn’t too ridiculous a leap for a girl in her mid-twenties, especially one looking for a replacement father figure. Grant, of unlamented memory, had been thirty to my twenty-two when we started dating. He liked them young, young and adoring. Hence my eventual replacement. But that’s another story. Grant had no business butting in on my date.
Colin was watching me over the small bulb of the candle, the uncertain light playing off the planes of his face, making his eyes seem even more shadowed and wary than they were. “How much did Pammy tell you?”
“Only that Serena had just gone through a particularly nasty breakup.” I think Pammy’s phrasing had been more along the lines of “royally dumped,” but that wasn’t something that needed to be repeated to Serena’s brother. I can be tactful. When I remember to be.
“Right,” said Colin. “Serena’s always been a little bit
”
“Vulnerable?” I suggested.
“Quiet. Shy. Defenseless. Our family” Colin broke off with a brisk shake of his head. “That’s too much to go into. At any rate, Serena wasn’t in a good way. She met Dempster at an arts course. Something to do with authentication. Ironic, really.”
“I gather Dempster turned out to be in-authentic?”
“At the time, Dempster seemed like a good thing. Steady, devoted, solicitous.”
“What happened?” I had an uncomfortable feeling I knew where this was going. Especially when I remembered the Dempster’s plummy voice rolling over the words,
I think the answer lies in the Selwick collection.
The memory gave me chills, and not of a good variety.
Watching me, Colin nodded once, as though something had already been asked and answered. “You can guess, can’t you?”
I met his gaze straight on. “He was after her for the papers, wasn’t he?”
“Got it in one.” Colin poked at a small green olive with his fork as though the olive had personally offended him. “He was very clever about it, too. For the first few months it was all art and music and mutual acquaintances. He didn’t mention the Pink Carnation at all, except offhandedly, as part of a paper he was writing on iconic representations of great English heroes, or something of that ilk.”
“Hmm,” I said. That sounded awfully like a line in my dissertation prospectus. That did not please me. “And then?”
“He asked Serena to ‘help’ with his research by looking for old family papers. She gave him one or two thingsnot much, but enough to whet his appetite.”
That I could definitely understand. Just a glimpse of the yellowing papers in Colin’s aunt’s flat had been enough to set me drooling, provided the drool didn’t damage the papers, of course. To know that the papers were there, just out of his reach, must have been maddening to Dempster, like a brioche dangled in front of a man who had skipped breakfast. Not that I sympathized with Dempster’s methods, mind you. But I could understand the impulse.
I wondered what I would have done if Colin’s aunt hadn’t miraculously offered me carte blanche among her papers.
It wasn’t at all comparable, I assured myself. I wanted Colin entirely for his extremely attractive self, not for his access to archives. Even though that had been a very intriguing pile of papers I had left unexplored up at Selwick Hall
.
Perhaps Dempster had been initially attracted to Serena in the beginning, too, before archival fever took hold.
“And then what?” I asked, preferring not to follow that line of thought to its conclusion. It was different. It just was.
With the air of a man getting through a necessary but unpleasant task, Colin said briefly, “Dempster applied to Aunt Arabella for permission to see the rest. She refused.”
“She didn’t refuse me,” I said smugly.
Colin raised both eyebrows at me. “Aunt Arabella has excellent taste.” As I preened, he added, “Most of the time.”
I made a face at him.
“If you’re not going to compliment me, you might as well go on with the story,” I said resignedly. “I imagine Dempster didn’t take the refusal well?”
“To put it mildly. He became more and more insistent. He even asked her if she couldn’t just remove a few documents, and return them before Aunt Arabella noticed.”
I made appropriate noises indicating extreme horror and shock. The waiter hastened anxiously our way, but having ascertained that the choking sounds weren’t caused by an olive lodged in someone’s larynx, he obligingly sidled away again.
“Naturally, Serena refused,” announced Colin, sounding rather proud of his little sister.
“Naturally!” I echoed.
“When Serena refused, Dempster became abusive.”
“Physically?” I asked.
Colin made a wry face. “He didn’t need to be. Working on her mind was easy enough. She was ugly, she was dull, she was fat, no one would ever date her if she didn’t have himit was all an attempt to terrify her into doing what he wanted.”
“But it stuck,” I said softly.
“It stuck,” Colin agreed. “It was nothing she didn’t already think of herself.”
“But she’s
” I brought my hands together in gesture indicative of extreme skinniness. “Tiny. Teeny-tiny. Super skinny. And she’s absolutely charming,” I added, as an afterthought.
“Try telling her that,” said Colin grimly.
“I will,” I said, resolving to shower Serena with compliments the very next time the occasion arose. It wouldn’t be that hard. She really was that charming, in that shy, slightly retiring way that tends to get plowed under when stronger personalities are present (i.e., just about everyone else).
“So that’s why,” I said. “That’s why you reacted so badly when you saw me at your aunt’s that first time.”
“That was part of it,” Colin agreed. “I wasn’t feeling too kindly towards academics at the time.”
“And now?”
Colin leaned back in his chair, looking at me from under half-lowered lids. “Let’s just say I’m willing to admit there might be exceptions.”
“How very generous of you,” I drawled.
Colin’s eyes glinted in the candlelight. “I try to be fair.”
The sparks were coming along so nicely that I almost hated to spoil it by bringing it back to Dempster. “So when Dempster greeted me by name tonight, you must have assumed
”
“That you two were in cahoots,” Colin finished.
“Wow.” I shook my head to clear it. “That would be quite a plot. Dempster, having failed with your sister, goes and dredges up a female to try her wiles on the male half of the family. Since we all know men are notoriously susceptible to that sort of thing.”
