I wasn't turning into one of those desperate singles who fancied that every man she met was flirting with her, was I? The very thought was horrifying. Soon, I'd start reading great meaning into the way the counter guy at the convenient store across the way from my flat counted out my change, or imagine a hungry gleam in my landlord's eye as he descended into my basement bower to empty the electricity meter.
Have I mentioned that my landlord is fifty-something and paunchy?
I twisted to look back at the house, wondering if I should suggest we go back. I could leave Colin to the tender ministrations of Joan, and as for me… there was always the bar. And the vicar. Not that I thought the vicar was interested in me, of course. He was just someone to talk to. At the bar.
"You know," commented Colin, grabbing my arm as I stumbled, "you would probably fall less if you walked forwards instead of backwards."
I could feel the warmth of Colin's hand through the thin rayon of Serena's dress, seeping through the fabric, combating the November cold.
I removed my elbow from Colin's grasp. "Are these cloisters of yours much farther?" My voice sounded sharp, strained, and stridently American. "I wouldn't want to keep you out here too long."
"I don't mind."
"Someone else might."
"The vicar? You and he did seem to be getting on." Before I could respond to that, Colin's flashlight beam shifted abruptly to the left, catching on an object several yards ahead of us. "There are the cloisters."
"Where?' I said dumbly.
No, it wasn't because I was looking at Colin rather than the tiny circle of light. I was just looking in the wrong place. I had expected… well, a building, at least. Stone walls around a courtyard, maybe even a small church of some kind. I didn't expect them to be intact, but some sort of structure was to be expected. Was this all an elaborate practical joke that they played on visiting historians? Perhaps Joan was in on it, too, and the vicar. I dimly remembered some sort of sci-fi movie along those lines, where everyone in town belonged to the same alien race except the unwitting heroine, although I did have to admit that feigning the existence of medieval buildings was quite different from being able to pull off one's skin and transform into a reptile creature.
"There," repeated Colin patiently, lowering the beam a bit, and this time my eyes picked out the lumps in the landscape that were nothing to do with nature.
"This is it?"
"Sad, isn't it?" agreed Colin, flashlight beam drifting across a window that had been rendered redundant by the absence of walls. "Half the buildings nearby were built of Donwell stone."
"I suppose you could look at it as recycling," I said, surveying the depleted ruins, "but it still seems like a waste."
There wasn't much left to the old monastery. I'm sure what there was must have been picturesque in summer, with greenery creeping over the tumbled masonry, but in the autumn dark, the bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang were more forbidding than quaint. Once, a series of arches must have marked off the peripheries of a courtyard. Now, only half-buried stones and the occasional vestige of a pillar remained. Knee-high walls preserved the memory rather than the reality of rooms, and occasionally, among the wilted weeds, one could see the outline of something that might once have been a paving stone in a past life.
As we grew closer, and the area encompassed by the flashlight expanded, I could see that the walls grew higher as we went on, rising shoulder high in some places, higher than my head in others, peaking and falling again. Only one room, all the way at one end of the cloister, maintained the majority of its original walls. There was even a bit of ceiling remaining, made of heavy stone that sloped inwards like the hull of a ship turned upside down.
It was into that remaining room that I followed Colin, picking my way gingerly across the floor. It was more intact than those farther along the cloister, the majority of the floor stones still in place, but they were weathered and uneven, cracked in unexpected places. In other words, hell on heels.
"Get me to a nunnery," I said lightly, just to say something, and felt like an idiot as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Get me to a nunnery? That was nearly as bad as the "I carried a watermelon" line in Dirty Dancing. And it had been a monastery. Not a nunnery. Not the same thing. My medieval history professor would be having palpitations. I had once confused the Carthusians with the Cistercians and had been afraid we were going to have to rush him to Harvard University Health Services for emergency care.
"Not much of a nunnery these days," replied Colin with amusement, though it was hard to tell whether he was amused with me or at me. The beam of the flashlight swooped in a circle along the floor, picking out signs of recent habitation. An empty Coke can, a discarded packet of cheese-and-onion-flavored crisps. "It's quite popular with the local youth."
"Popular?"
"I came here a time or two myself," he added with a reminiscent grin.
"Ugh," I said, wrinkling my nose at the cold stone floor. "That can't be very comfortable. Or sanitary."
Colin lounged back against one of the remaining walls in a position of supreme masculine smugness. Thinking of conquests past, no doubt. "You'd be surprised. A few blankets, a bottle of wine…"
"Spare me the tales of your depraved youth," I said repressively, turning away and tracing a hand along the embrasure of the window, running a ringer over the chips and chinks in an elaborate fleur-de-lis.
"Yours wasn't?" His voice was warm, teasing.
I glanced back over my shoulder. "I don't kiss and tell."
"Or just not in cloisters?"
"I don't see the appeal." I dug among my collection of misremem-bered quotations for ammunition. " 'The grave's a fine and quiet place / But none I think do there embrace.'"
"Ah," said Colin, setting the flashlight down on one of the recessed benches so that the light fanned out against the wall, "but this is a cloister, not a grave."
"It is a sort of a grave, isn't it?" I argued, licking my lips and taking a little step back. It had been so long since I'd flirted with anyone, I'd practically forgotten how. We were flirting, weren't we? "It's a grave of lost hopes and ambitions. You wonder how they must have felt when the monasteries were dissolved, suddenly seeing their whole way of life go the way of… well, the grave."
I had no idea what I was saying. I was vaguely aware of my mouth moving, and words coming out, but I couldn't have made any guarantees as to content.
"Besides, it's a monastery," I said stubbornly. "Can you think of anyplace less appropriate for romantic dalliance?"
Colin laughed. "Haven't you read your Chaucer?"
"You can't believe everything you read in Chaucer," I protested, but it didn't come out very forcefully, because Colin had ever so casually leaned a hand against the stone wall behind my head.
I made a valiant effort to pull myself together and pay attention to what he was saying, instead of just staring in the general direction of his lips and wondering… well, we don't need to go into what I was wondering. History. I reminded myself firmly. That was what I was here for. Spies. Monks. Spies dressed as monks.
Right now, I couldn't have cared less if someone had waltzed across the room in a large flower costume with a sign saying get your black tulips here. Every nerve in my body was on man-alert, screaming, "Incoming!" I could feel the warmth radiating from his chest, smell the clean, detergent-y smell that clung to his collar, and my lips prickled with that peculiar sixth sense that only clicks into gear as a man leans too close for plausible rationalization. My eyes drifted shut. BRRRRING!
Something emitted a jarring screeching noise, like five fire alarms going off all at once. I froze, eyes still closed and face lifted. I must have looked like a mole caught out of its tunnel by daylight. Above me, I could sense Colin, equally arrested by that dreadful jarring sound. It wasn't an air raid. It wasn't even Joan, come to take her revenge. It was my phone. Bleeping. Damn.
I kept my eyes closed, in the futile hope that if I stayed ver
y very still and prayed very very hard, the sound would go away, and Colin and I could pick up where we'd left off as if nothing else had happened. BRRRRING! BRRRRING! My phone bleeped again. Insistently.
The pleasant mix of detergent and aftershave wafted away, to be replaced with cold air. I wrenched open my eyes and peeled myself away from the wall, my pashmina slipping drunkenly down my arms.
"Would you excuse me for a moment?" I asked in an agony of mortification, fishing in my bag for my vibrating mobile. Thanks to its untimely interruption, it was the only thing left vibrating — other than my lacerated nerves. "I mean… it's just… in case there's an emergency," I finished lamely.
"Certainly," said Colin blandly, so blandly that I had to wonder if I had imagined the whole episode. Like the Cheshire Cat, he had managed to rematerialize several feet down the wall. With an elbow resting against the ruined window frame, he looked as unruffled as if he had been standing there the whole time.
Maybe he had been. Maybe I'd imagined the whole thing.
Whatever else I'd imagined, the hideous bleating noise coming from my bag was quite real. The phone was still whining in its Coach cocoon. Scratching my frozen knuckles on the zipper, I wrestled the phone out of the tightly packed bag, squinting at the tiny screen. It glowed an evil neon in the dark cloister.
pammy proclaimed the screen.
I was going to kill her. I was really, truly going to kill her.
I took a deep breath, and repressed the urge to fling the phone to the floor and stomp on it a la Rumplestiltskin. Maybe Pammy was violently ill. Maybe she had been dumped by… oh, what was his name? They never lasted long enough for me to remember. Abduction by the mafia with twenty-four hours to gather a ransom would also be an acceptable excuse for the interruption. Did they even have a mafia in England? They'd better, I thought grimly.
I clicked the view button, and Pammy's text flashed up on the screen.
HAS HE MADE A MOVE YET?
Abduction by the mafia was too good for some people. Casting a furtive glance over my shoulder, I hunched over the phone, and tersely texted back. no.
Instantly, Pammy's name flashed back up on the screen.
WHY NOT?
My fingers flashed over the tiny buttons with a will of their own.
MAYBE BECAUSE CERTAIN PPL KEEP TEXTING Me! !!
Let her make of that what she would. I jabbed the send button, followed by power, shoving the phone back into my bag. The phone died into darkness with a tinny wail. Too late. Why in the hell hadn't I thought to turn the phone off in the first place?
Damn, damn, damn.
"Anyone interesting?" asked Colin.
"Pammy," I replied, striving for rueful amusement and achieving something closer to a grunt, in a "you, Tarzan; me, Cheetah" sort of way.
Colin detached from the wall. And a good thing, too, given the state of the rest of the structure; I didn't have much faith in its stability. On the other hand, binding up his wounded brow would give me a chance to hover tenderly over him. We'll ignore the fact that I failed First Aid in high school. Three times.
Maybe it was a good thing he hadn't fallen over.
"What has she done now?" he asked.
"Oh, the usual," I said distractedly, wondering if there was any way to ever so subtly drift in his direction without my heels sounding like canon salvos on the pitted stone flags. But that would destroy the entire exercise, wouldn't it? The point was to figure out if he had any interest in drifting in my direction, not the other way around. "You know what Pammy's like."
"Yes, I do," he said, so forcefully that I couldn't help but wonder…
Colin and Pammy?
Pammy had known Colin's sister ever since she'd moved to London in tenth grade. Serena and Pammy weren't awfully close, but there would still have been ample opportunity for a flirtation with Serena's big brother. No. I just couldn't see it. Besides, Pammy would have told me. Wouldn't she? Hmm. I filed that thought away for later.
"Um, Chaucer." I yanked my borrowed pashmina back up around my shoulders, futilely attempting to effect a return to where we had been pre — Pammy and the Text Message of Doom. "You were saying something about Chaucer ?"
In the feeble light of the torch, I saw him shake his head. "It can't have been important."
"It sounded intriguing to me," I said ruefully.
"Did it?" The words were softly spoken, but they were enough to make the skin on my arms prickle in a way that had nothing to do with the November chill. Even the shadows gathered and held their breath, waiting to see what sort of action might follow on the velvet promise beneath those two little words.
"Hullo!"
A cheerful voice echoed through the old cloister, banishing the shadows and sending any romantic tension skittering far, far away.
What next? My fifth-grade homeroom teacher? The St. Patrick's Day Parade? A Fleetwood Mac revival concert? I doubted that Donwell Abbey had been quite this popular even when it was still in possession of all of its masonry and monks.
Somewhere, Cupid was snickering. I hoped he sat on one of his own arrows.
Sally skittered to a stop and rested a hand on the wall to steady herself. If there was anything coloring the atmosphere other than my own wild imaginings, she didn't seem to notice.
"Sorry to keep you! I only just got away. Joan couldn't find the ice." She shook her wild mane of hair in sororal condemnation. "Hopeless. Simply hopeless."
That did about sum it up.
"Has Colin shown you around yet?" Sally asked.
"Not really." Colin strolled casually across the room. "Would you do the honors, Sal?"
"Better than you," she retorted. "I can't believe you've been out here all this time and he's shown you nothing!"
Colin assumed a wounded air. "If you're just going to insult me, I'm off for a drink."
I contemplated saying, "I could do with one of the same," and trailing after him back to the bar, but clamped down on the impulse. I hadn't quite sunk to that level. The operative word being "quite." I remembered my rather blatant attempt at flirtation and was glad for the darkness that hid my sudden grimace.
"Enjoy!" I said instead, with a cheerful little wave. "Better make it a double."
"Double the alcohol?"
"For double the insults," I explained sweetly.
"A hit!" crowed Sally. "Well done!"
"I" — Colin turned and wagged a finger at Sally — "don't like you anymore. And as for you — "
I tried to look as though I weren't holding my breath.
"Yes?"
"Don't worry; I'll think of something." And on that rather enigmatic note, he made his exit.
As a threat, his statement lacked a certain something. Specificity, for example.
As flirtation… it fizzed through me like a large gulp of Veuve Cliquot, pure, heady stuff, the grand brut of suggestive remarks. I shouldn't read too much into it. I knew that. Nonetheless…
I turned to find Sally regarding me with arms crossed over her chest.
"Just here for the archives?" she said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Compromised: discovered and disgraced; the uncovering of an agents identity, followed by enforced retirement. See also under Ruin.
— from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation
Miles rapidly remembered all the very good reasons he had meant to keep far away from Henrietta until old age snuffed out baser desires, or at least the means to accomplish them. But it was too late. In front of him loomed his best friend — his former best friend — arm outstretched like a medieval woodcut of a wrathful God. Richard's very posture crackled with rage.
"Oh, no," breathed Henrietta, hastily yanking her bodice back up into place.
Amy grabbed Richard by the arm and shoved him behind herself. Given that Richard stood nearly a foot taller than Amy, the action was entirely ineffectual. Over Amy's dark head, Richard's face was stiff with fury and disbelief. Miles swallowed hard, rising slowly to his feet.
"I don't think we should be here just now," Amy hedged, trying to herd her husband in the opposite direction.
"Oh, no," said Richard dangerously, placing both hands on his wife's shoulders and moving her to the side. "I think now is exactly the right time to be here. What in the hell did you think you were doing, Dorrington?"
Think ? Miles didn't recall terribly much thought being involved.
"What do you think he was thinking?" chimed in Amy. "Really, Richard, can't we — "
"There had better be a bloody good explanation."
"How did you know we were out here?" Henrietta croaked, hoping to distract Richard from Miles before that bloody became bloody in fact. The dangerous glint in Richard's eye gave deadly content to the word.
"One of the sentries reported that there was something unusual occurring in the gardens." Richard emitted a grim bark of laughter. "He didn't know the half of it."
"Richard — " began Miles, moving to stand protectively in front of Henrietta.
"How long has this been going on?" Richard enquired conversationally. "Weeks? Months? Years? How long, Dorrington?"
"We didn't — " Henrietta interrupted.
"You stay out of this," warned her brother.
"How can I stay out of this when it's me you're talking about?"
Her brother ignored her. Eyes never leaving Miles, he began stripping off his coat. "We can discuss this at dawn or we can settle this right now."
"Before we do" — yanking off his own coat, Miles sunk automatically into a defensive crouch, fists at the ready — "I have something to say."
Richard dropped his coat on the graveled path. "That's just too bad, because I" — with one controlled lunge, he leveled an uppercut straight at Miles's jaw — "don't want to hear it."
With the ease of long practice, Miles ducked the blow and grabbed Richard's arm before he could swing again. They had sparred a thousand times before, in the well-regulated confines of Gentleman Jackson's pugilist establishment, but never in earnest. Miles didn't intend to start now. The two stood locked in a contest of strength, like athletes on a Greek vase, muscles straining against the sleeves of their coats, as Miles strove to restrain his friend.
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