The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (45 page)
Read The Secret History of the Pink Carnation Online
Authors: Lauren Willig
Colin gave his aunt a hard look.
Mrs Selwick-Alderly gazed innocently back.
I very carefully lowered my teacup into my saucer. ‘I wouldn’t want to impose.’
‘In that case—’
‘But if it wouldn’t be too much of a bother,’ I rushed on, ‘I’d be very grateful for the opportunity to see those papers. You wouldn’t have to entertain me. You can just point me to the archives and you won’t even know I’m there.’
‘Hmm,’ expressed what Colin thought about that.
I couldn’t blame him. As someone who likes her own space, I wouldn’t much like to be saddled with a weekend houseguest either.
‘I’ll even do my own dishes. Yours, too,’ I threw in as an additional incentive.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Colin replied dryly. ‘I’ll be there this weekend,’ he continued, ‘but you must already have plans. Why don’t we meet for drinks sometime next week, and I can summarise—’
Trying to fob me off with drinks, was he? I put an end to that.
‘No plans at all,’ I countered cheerfully. Pammy would understand why I was ditching our Saturday shopping spree – at least, she would if I mentioned Serena’s surprisingly hot brother rather than nineteenth-century manuscript material. ‘Thank you so much for the invitation.’
It hadn’t really been an invitation. He knew it. I knew it. Undoubtedly, Mrs Selwick-Alderly and the portrait miniatures in my lap knew it, too. But once the words were out of my mouth, there was little he could do to deny them without seeming rude. Thank heavens for social conventions.
Colin tried another tack. ‘I was planning to drive down this afternoon, but I imagine you’ll need—’
‘I can be packed in an hour.’
‘Right.’ Colin’s lips tightened as he levered himself out of his chair. ‘I’ll just go and make the arrangements, then, shall I? Can you be ready to leave at four?’
The answer he was clearly hoping for was ‘no.’
‘Absolutely,’ I chirped.
I recited my address for him. Twice. Just so he couldn’t claim he had been waiting outside the wrong building, or something like that.
‘Right,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be outside at four.’
‘Till then!’ I called after his retreating back. Amazing the way the prospect of a treasure trove of historical documents can cure a hangover. My head still hurt, but I no longer cared.
In the hallway, a door slammed.
That did not bode well for our weekend.
Rising, Mrs Selwick-Alderly began to gather up the tea things. I leapt up to help her, but she waved me away.
‘You’ – she wagged a teaspoon at me – ‘should be packing.’
Over my protests, she herded me towards the door.
‘I look forward to hearing the results of your researches when you return,’ she said firmly.
I murmured the appropriate responses, and started towards the stairs.
‘And Eloise?’ I paused on the top step to look back. ‘Don’t mind Colin.’
‘I won’t,’ I assured her breezily, waved, and continued on my way.
Manuscripts, manuscripts, manuscripts, I sang to myself. But despite my cavalier words to Mrs Selwick-Alderly, I couldn’t help but wonder. A two-hour drive to Sussex – could we make polite conversation for that long? And then two nights under the same roof, two days in the same house.
It was going to be an interesting weekend.
At the end of any historical novel, I’m always plagued with wondering which bits really happened. Richard and Amy’s exploits, along with the whole host of flower-named spies, are, alas, purely fictional. Napoleon’s plans for an invasion of England were not. As early as 1797, he had his eye on the neighbouring coastline. ‘Our government must destroy the British monarchy… That done, Europe is at our feet,’ Napoleon schemed. Even during the short-lived Peace of Amiens (the truce that enabled Amy to join her brother in France), Napoleon continued to amass flat-bottomed boats to convey his troops to England. In April 1803, on the eve of the collapse of the peace, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States to raise money for the invasion – a more reliable method of fund-raising than bullying Swiss bankers.
As for the Bonapartes and their hangers-on, while caricatured a bit (something of which Amy’s beloved news sheets would no doubt approve), they have been drawn largely from life; Napoleon’s court boasts a rich collection of contemporary memoirs and a mind-boggling assortment of modern biographies. Josephine’s extravagances, Napoleon’s abrupt entrances to his wife’s salons, Pauline’s incessant affairs – all were commonplaces of Napoleonic Paris. Georges Marston’s drinking buddy, Joachim Murat, suffered a tumultuous marriage to Napoleon’s sister Caroline; Josephine’s daughter Hortense took English lessons at the Tuilleries until her tutor was dismissed on suspicion of being
an English spy; and Beau Brummel really was that interested in fashion.
In the interest of the story, some rather large liberties were taken with the historical record. Napoleon inconsiderately sacked Joseph Fouché and abolished the Ministry of Police in 1802. Both were reinstated in 1804 – a year too late for the purposes of this novel. But no novel about espionage in Napoleonic Paris could possibly be complete without Fouché, the man who created Napoleon’s spy network and cast terror into the hearts of a whole generation of Frenchmen and English spies. In addition to rehiring Fouché a year too early, I also made him the gift of an impressive new Ministry of Police on the He de la Cite. No existing building possessed an extra-special interrogation chamber ghastly enough for Gaston Delaroche.
I also rearranged England’s secret service a bit. During the Napoleonic Wars, espionage was coordinated through a sub-department of the Home Office called the Alien Office – not the War Office. Given the strong fictional tradition of ascribing dashing spies to the War Office, I just couldn’t bring myself to have Richard and Miles reporting to the Alien Office. I could picture the wrinkled brows, the raised eyebrows, and the confused ‘Shouldn’t he be going to the War Office? Where do aliens come into it? I didn’t know this was
that
kind of book!’ As a compromise solution, while I call it the War Office, any actual personnel, buildings, or practices described in conjunction with Richard’s and Miles’s work really belong to the Alien Office. For the little-known story of the Alien Office and much more, I am deeply in debt to Elizabeth Sparrow’s wonderful book,
Secret Service: British Agents in France 1792 – 1815
, which is, essentially, Eloise’s dissertation. Eloise, however, is not jealous, since she a) has that fabulous scoop about the Pink Carnation, and b) is fictional.
Tempted to unmask more flowery spies?
Read on for further details of the
Pink Carnation series …
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Nothing goes right for Eloise. The one day she wears her new suede boots, it rains cats and dogs. When the tube stops short, she’s always the one thrown into some stranger’s lap. Plus, she’s had more than her share of misfortune in the way of love. In fact, after she realises romantic heroes are a thing of the past, she decides it’s time for a fresh start.
Eloise is also determined to finish her dissertation on that dashing pair of spies, the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian. But what she discovers is something the finest historians have missed: the secret history of the Pink Carnation – the most elusive spy of all time. As she works to unmask this obscure spy, Eloise stumbles across answers to all kinds of questions. How did the Pink Carnation save England from Napoleon? What became of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian? And will Eloise Kelly escape her bad luck and find a living, breathing hero of her own?
‘If modern manhood had let me down, at least the past boasted brighter specimens. To wit, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Purple Gentian and the Pink Carnation, that dashing trio of spies who kept Napoleon in a froth of rage and the feminine population of England in another sort of froth entirely.’
Modern-day student Eloise Kelly has achieved a great academic coup by unmasking the elusive spy the Pink Carnation, who saved England from Napoleon. But now she has a million questions about the Carnation’s deadly nemesis, the Black Tulip. And she’s pretty sure that her handsome on-again, off-again crush Colin Selwick has the answers somewhere in his family’s archives. While searching through Lady Henrietta’s old letters and diaries from 1803, Eloise stumbles across an old codebook and discovers something more exciting than she ever imagined: Henrietta and her old friend Miles Dorrington were on the trail of the Black Tulip and had every intention of stopping him in his endeavour to kill the Pink Carnation. But what they didn’t know was that while they were trying to find the Tulip – and trying not to fall in love in the process – the Black Tulip was watching them . . .
