The Lure of the Moonflower

by Lauren Willig

  Colin looked doubtful but wisely forbore to inquire.

  Further explanation appeared to be needed. “Pammy made me do it.”

  Colin’s face cleared. “Ah,” he said wisely. And then, “Are you looking for Jillian? She went in to use the computer.”

  “I know.” Resting my hands on my knees, I took a moment to catch my breath. How to even begin to explain? “Someone called on your phone. He wants a box.”

  “A box?” Colin glanced back over his shoulder at the tower, which was, admittedly, filled with boxes. “What kind of box?”

  “You tell me.” I straightened, realizing I had omitted the truly crucial bit. “Someone is holding your aunt hostage and he won’t release her unless you bring him the box. What in the hell is the box?”

  “Did you say hostage?” Colin blinked several times.

  I nodded vigorously. “Someone kidnapped your aunt Arabella.”

  Repeating it didn’t help it make any more sense. In fact, it sounded increasingly absurd. But I had heard her; I knew I had.

  Rapidly, I said, “It sounds ridiculous, I know, but whoever it was put her on the line. I spoke to her, Colin. She sounded scared.” It was time to get down to brass tacks. “What do you have that someone would want that much?”

  “I don’t—” He broke off, his lips frozen on a denial that wouldn’t form.

  “You don’t?” I prompted. Like George Washington, Colin couldn’t tell a lie. At least not a good one. That was one of the things I liked about him. He might clam up from time to time, but he didn’t dissemble. Which, considering that he came from a long line of spies and secret agents, was pretty amazing. “You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”

  Colin was wrestling with his conscience. “It’s not my secret to tell.”

  My pulse picked up with the crazy adrenaline rush you get before exams and right before the dentist lowers the drill. “I’d wondered about this. You’re a spy, aren’t you?”

  “What? No.” He stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “I’m not a spy. Aunt Arabella is.”

  Now it was my turn to stare. “Wait, what? Your aunt Arabella is— What?”

  “A spy. Agent. Whatever you want to call it.” Colin gave a little shake of his head. “Not is. Was. Back in the fifties and sixties. Possibly longer than that. I don’t know, really. She doesn’t talk about it.”

  I stood there, my mouth open, trying to reconcile the woman I knew, the one who wore Chanel pantsuits and placed biscuits on tea trays, with all the images conjured up by the word “spy.” It was surprisingly easy. Even in her eighties, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly had an athletic grace. In her twenties and thirties she probably could have disarmed a villain one-handed while playing a set of tennis.

  Why hadn’t I seen it before? Perhaps because, with the arrogance of youth, I had assumed she had always been just what she was: an elegant lady who lunched, a woman of her generation, those bad old days before women seized the day and began hammering at the glass ceiling.

  I, of all people, should have known better. Whatever the generation, whatever the circumstances, bright women made their own chances. The more underestimated one was, the easier to infiltrate, to listen, especially to the puffery of men who considered a sweet young thing a harmless audience.

  Mrs. Selwick-Alderly was very good at listening. I should know. The first time I’d met her, I’d blurted out my whole life’s story.

  More than that, she had a Sphinx-like calm that always made you suspect that she knew far more than she was saying. She doled out information purely on a need-to-know basis, but with the oblique promise of more.

  Rather like the Pink Carnation. In fact, very like the Pink Carnation.

  “I’m an idiot,” I said flatly. “Of course.”

  She had lived everywhere, traveled everywhere, all around the globe, from hot spot to hot spot, Cyprus, Berlin, Kashmir on the eve of the handover, following her husband, who had something to do with the army.

  Unless her husband had been following her, a convenient cover, an excuse. The higher-ups could arrange these things, I’d heard.

  I looked at Colin in sudden alarm. “You think it’s someone from her past? Then the box . . .”

  “Could be anything,” said Colin. “Or anywhere.”

  “Then why would they think you have it?”

  Colin held up his hands, palms up. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  It wasn’t a guess. It was a speed bump in our front hall. “She sent us a wedding present.”

  “Yes, I know. The Georgian silver service.” Colin frowned at me. “No. There’s nothing in there except tissue paper. A great deal of tissue paper.”

  That was a thought, secrets in tissue paper, but I didn’t think that was it. “Not that one,” I said definitely. “She sent us another present—the Pink Carnation’s traveling trunk. It just arrived today.”

  “Was there a note?” If there had been a light brigade on hand, Colin would have been ordering the charge.

  “There was.” I dug it out of the pocket of my jeans, somewhat bent but still legible. I handed it over to Colin. “Here. It’s all rather oblique.”

  Lips pressed together, Colin quickly scanned the note. His head jerked up. “Treasure,” he said. “She talks about treasure.”

  I glanced sharply at him. “I had assumed it was metaphorical. You don’t think . . .”

  “Jeremy,” said Colin grimly.

  I couldn’t blame him. Once he’d said it, I’d thought the same thing.

  It was hard to think of treasure and not think of Jeremy. He’d upended our lives a year ago, trying to find the lost jewels of Berar, which, due to a rather tangled chain of custody, had ended their bloodstained career in the bucolic fastness of Sussex, forgotten for two centuries. Jeremy had wanted those jewels badly.

  In the end, he and Colin—and I—had all wound up working together to find them, but that was only because Jeremy’s grandmother, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, had twisted all of our arms. It had been truly expert twisting.

  Once, I would have been delighted to blame Jeremy for any amount of skullduggery, but now . . .

  I bit down hard on my lower lip. “He’s been so well behaved recently.”

  Forget olive branches; Jeremy had hauled along a whole olive tree. He’d been oozing sweetness and light, up to and including offering to host Colin’s stag party. In Monte Carlo. Colin had declined and gone with his best man, Nick, to a series of clubs in London about which I preferred to know as little as possible, given that I presumed they most likely involved women wearing a minimum of clothing.

  Whatever we needed, Jeremy had offered to provide it. There were plenty of plausible explanations for his sudden burst of goodwill. Concern for his grandmother, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, who had made it clear a) that she wasn’t going to be around forever, and b) that she wanted her grandson and great-nephew reconciled before she shuffled off this mortal coil. Belated guilt for the various tricks he had pulled on Colin, including inviting a film crew to Colin’s home, and, oh, yes, let’s not forget the main one, running off with Colin’s mother over Colin’s father’s deathbed. And, of course, attempting to steal the jewels of Berar out from under Colin’s nose, plotting against Colin with Colin’s emotionally delicate younger sister, and, most unpardonable of all, wearing black cashmere turtlenecks. In August.

  But he had seemed to be trying to make up for all that, with the possible exception of the cashmere turtlenecks, about which he appeared to feel no shame. There had been something almost endearingly puppy-doggish about Jeremy’s efforts.

  But this was Jeremy we were talking about, a man who had changed his name along with his fortunes, smoothly going from Jamie Alderly to Jeremy Selwick-Alderly because he thought it looked better with black cashmere and champagne flutes. He was a chameleon and, from what I had seen, ultimately self-serving.r />
  Tigers didn’t change their spots. Jeremy didn’t change his turtlenecks.

  Except for other turtlenecks.

  I could tell Colin was thinking the same thing. His lips compressed into a tight line. “He’s been a little too well behaved.”

  No. It was the day before our wedding, dammit. I couldn’t believe that even Jeremy would be that cruel. “Would he kidnap his own grandmother?”

  “If he thought he could get away with it?”

  Colin looked so weary that I reached out and cupped his cheek. He hadn’t shaved yet. His chin was faintly scratchy against my palm. “But we found the jewels of Berar.”

  The rubies had been embedded in the cover of a folio edition of the 1806 blockbuster hit The Convent of Orsino, cunningly disguised with a layer of brown paint.

  “Not all of them.”

  The sun was shining directly in my eyes. I squinted up at Colin. “The Moon of Berar?” According to legend, it was the prize of the raja’s hoard, a jewel with mystical powers. No one was entirely clear on what the jewel was or what mystical powers it contained, but the very vagueness only made people want it more. “That was just a myth.”

  “So were the rest of the jewels until we found them.”

  Fair point. “Where is Jeremy now?”

  There were worried lines between Colin’s brows. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  My family and various assorted friends and relations were staying in the house. Colin’s mother and Jeremy weren’t. Colin’s mother had, as she had informed Colin when invited, already spent too many impossibly dreary years there.

  At the time, I’d repressed the urge to do a happy dance. I’d had Jeremy as a houseguest before. If he was going to leave wet towels on the bathroom floor and expect me to pick them up, he could at least leave a tip when he left.

  I was joking—sort of—about the tip. I wasn’t joking about the towels. Colin’s mother was just as bad. The only difference was that in her case it seemed to be genuine obliviousness. In Jeremy’s it was a deliberate exercise of power.

  Either way, it was a large pile of wet towels.

  “They’re staying at Chivers?” Chivers House was a country-house B and B about half an hour from Selwick Hall as the Range Rover flies. The stately home of a Victorian magnate, it had been updated with all the mod cons, plus spa, a world-renowned chef, and swim instructors in skimpy swim trunks.

  Colin nodded. “They’ll be at the rehearsal dinner.”

  But we didn’t know that the culprit was Jeremy, not for sure. “There’s no way of tracing the phone call?”

  “I’m not a spy, Eloise. I just write about them.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Mostly. “What about the police?”

  “We could try.” Colin sounded doubtful. “But if the number was restricted—”

  “What happened to villains using pay phones?” I groused.

  “First they would have to find a pay phone.” Taking both my hands in his, Colin gave them a squeeze. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “We’ll get this sorted.”

  I loved him so much that it made my chest hurt. Colin’s great-aunt was the closest thing he had to a parent. His father was dead, his mother was a flake, and his stepfather was a rat fink. And he was trying to comfort me.

  “That’s my line,” I said, squeezing back. There was so much else that could be said, but now wasn’t the time, so I settled for “We’ll fix this. Together.”

  And if it was Jeremy, I was personally going to shake him until all his perfectly capped teeth rattled. He couldn’t allow Colin even this one day to be happy? As much as Colin claimed to be immune to anything his mother or stepfather did, I knew every betrayal still hurt him, and especially now that they’d supposedly declared an entente. Colin had been happier than he wanted anyone to know to be back on speaking terms with his cousin.

  There had to be other possibilities. . . . “Wait,” I said, tugging on Colin’s hand. “What if your aunt put something else in that trunk?”

  “Something else?”

  “I don’t know.” I squinted into the sun. My knowledge of MI6 was limited to old James Bond movies, and somehow I doubted that Sean Connery was a representative example of agent behavior. “Damning documents or old camera film or something else from her own time in the field. When you think of it, it’s a great hiding place. Who would look for modern materials in an old trunk?”

  I was warming to my own theory, partly because it made sense, but also because I wanted, very badly, for it not to be Jeremy. Not for Jeremy’s sake, but for Colin’s.

  “Just think of it,” I said enthusiastically. “Think of the symbolism of it, carrying on the Pink Carnation’s tradition, using her trunk. . . . It’s just like your aunt Arabella. If we can figure out what this person is looking for, maybe we can figure out who he is and where he has her!”

  Colin glanced at his watch. “In the next . . . hour and a half?”

  “Or we could call the police.”

  That decided him. “Where’s the trunk?”

  “Oh, God. I left it in the hall. I didn’t realize—” I grabbed Colin by the arm and began towing him towards the house. Someone tried to cut in front of us with a question about flower arrangements. “Later!” I barked.

  “Remind me never to get in your way,” murmured Colin.

  “Hush,” I said, and barreled through the back entrance, dodging the chairs set up in the long drawing room and hurrying through the passage to the front hall.

  There were plenty of boxes in the front hall. Most of them were stamped with the Bollinger logo. An hour ago I would have been delighted to see them. Now . . .

  My mother was standing in the middle of the fray, counting boxes, to the growing impatience of a man with a clipboard. You don’t mess with a corporate lawyer, even a retired one.

  I poked her arm. “Mom? Did you see what happened to that trunk?”

  “—twelve. You’re two cases short,” she said to the man with the clipboard. “You mean the trunk you left sitting in the middle of the hall?”

  Why did I suddenly feel like I’d been caught stuffing my Barbies under the bed rather than putting them away in the Dream House? “Um, yes. That one.”

  “Lady—” began Clipboard Man belligerently.

  She pointed a finger at him. “Check your truck.” He slunk away. To me, she said, “I put it in your room.”

  I caught myself before I apologized for forgetting to put my toys away. “Thanks, Mom. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “Be cheated out of two cases of champagne,” she said smartly. “Is that what you’re wearing to dinner?”

  Since I was still in my jeans, it was clearly a rhetorical question.

  “I would change now if I were you,” said my father, from behind a bust of Charles I.

  “Thanks, Dad. We’ll just go do that.” I took my fiancé by the hand, and we scurried for the relative safety of our bedroom, one of the few rooms in the house that hadn’t been invaded by relatives of various shapes and sizes.

  The trunk was there, at the foot of the bed. “Thank goodness,” I said, and locked the door behind us before we could be discovered by caterers, florists, or nosy younger siblings with names beginning with J.

  Colin knelt by the trunk. “No lock?”

  “Try the brass tacks.” I hovered over Colin as he gently pressed first one, then another of the tacks, taking care not to do anything to throw off the elderly mechanism. “Maybe there’s a pattern to it? Or try pushing them both at once?”

  “That’s too—” The lid didn’t precisely pop open, but something gave a very promising click. “Easy,” finished Colin.

  “Simplicity is the best deception?” I knelt beside him, remembering our first meeting, when we had knelt beside another trunk in Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s sitting room
.

  I felt a sudden wash of panic. I couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her.

  “Let’s do this,” I said, and pushed the lid of the trunk open.

  It gave way with a sound very like a groan. Bits flaked from the old leather of the hinges. There was clothing on the top. Very, very old clothing. I hesitated before reaching in. The fabric would be weak. I should be wearing gloves; we should have acid-free boxes ready. And then I thought of Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s voice on the other end of that phone and dug in with both hands.

  “It’s a uniform,” said Colin, who, being a boy, paid attention to that sort of thing. “French. Hussars?”

  The jacket was green, but it appeared to be missing the matching pants. All sorts of possibilities came to mind. A piece of paper fluttered out of the jacket.

  Colin caught it. “Papers,” he said. “For one Lieutenant Jean de Balcourt, aide to— I can’t read it. It’s too smudged.”

  “Jean de Balcourt . . . Jane! It must be one of her aliases.” My fingers literally itched to examine that paper. I curled my hands into fists. Now was not the time. “What else is down there?”

  Another uniform, this one complete with white leather pants. Assorted gloves. Colin lifted a wooden tray, and beneath that were dresses—dresses that looked as though they belonged in the Met’s costume institute, hand-embroidered, delicately tucked and frilled.

  And there was still another tray beneath that. “It’s like Mary Poppins’s bag,” I said wonderingly. “All that’s missing is a hat stand and a rubber plant.”

  “Or a Tardis,” said Colin, removing another layer. When I looked blank, he said, “Bigger on the inside.”

  “Okay.” It seemed easiest just to agree. “Oh, my goodness.”

  It was like one of those boxes of chocolates that came in multiple layers, each one a surprise, richer than the last. This tray held papers. There were maps: maps of Portugal, of Italy, of France. The maps alone . . . I licked my dry lips. Another time. Another time I could go over them.

  There were books, too, novels and travel narratives. For amusement? Or some subtler purpose? I felt a pang as Colin set them aside, but our time was getting short. Any moment now, my mother or Jillian was going to come banging on the door, and we weren’t the least bit closer to discovering who might have Mrs. Selwick-Alderly and why.