The Temptation of the Night Jasmine Read Free Page B

veteran after one prior visit, I strode straight to the bookshelves at the back of the room, crouching in front of what looked like mere wainscoting to the uninitiated eye. I expertly twisted the hidden handle, and there it was – a pile of old James Bond novels? That was not what I had been looking for. Scuttling sideways like a crab, I tried the next panel over, and there they were: big old folios with handwritten labels and piles of acid-free boxes bound with twine, with legends like ‘Household Acc’ts: 1880 – 1895’ in faded type on the labels glued to the sides.
    I wasn’t interested in the household accounts of the late nineteenth century, or even, although it was more tempting, the diaries of a Victorian daughter of the house. It wasn’t my field. Stacking aside the document boxes, I went for the folios in the back, where the older documents were stored.
    Someone, a very long time ago, perhaps even that same Victorian young lady, had taken her ancestors’ old letters and pasted them into folio volumes. I bypassed ‘Correspondence of Lady Henrietta Selwick: March – November 1803’ (I had read that volume before) and reached for the one behind it. A slanting hand had written ‘Corresp. Lady H’tta, Christmas 1803 – Easter 1804.’
    Bingo.
    From my recent researches in the Vaughn collection, I knew that the Pink Carnation had gone off to France in October or November of 1803, for unspecified purposes. I needed those purposes specified. What was the Pink Carnation doing in Paris in late 1803? And with whom?
    If anyone would know, it would be the Carnation’s cousin by-marriage, Lady Henrietta Selwick. The two had concocted an ingenious code, based on ordinary terms one might expect to see in the innocent letters of two young ladies, things like ‘beaux,’ and ‘Venetian breakfasts,’ and ‘routs,’ all with highly unladylike secret meanings.
    Settling back on my heels, I propped the volume open in my lap, flipping over the heavy pages with their double burden of letters glued to either side.
    There were faded annotations in the margins and heavy strokes of the same pen crossing out whatever the Victorian compiler felt unsuitable for the eyes of posterity. Fortunately, the ink used by the would-be censor wasn’t nearly as good as that of the original authors. It had faded to a pale brown that did little to obscure the darker letters beneath. Although it did say some very interesting things about what later generations considered improper while the Georgians did not. It always fascinated me how much more open mores were in the eighteenth and very early nineteenth century than in the period that came immediately after.
    All that was well and good, but there was one thing missing: the Pink Carnation. Not one of the letters in the folio had been written in her distinctive hand. I recognised some from Henrietta’s husband, Miles (I had got to know his sloppy handwriting, full of blotches and cross-outs, pretty well the last time I was at Selwick Hall), but most were closely written in a small and swirly script, punctuated by large chunks of dialogue. Had one of Henrietta’s friends been playing at novelist? Amused by the notion, I flipped to the back of a letter to check the signature.
    Of course. It was Lady Charlotte Lansdowne, Henrietta’s best friend and bookworm extraordinaire. Cute, but not necessarily what I was looking for. I could flip through it later, just for fun.
    I was reaching for the next folio in the pile, hoping it might prove more useful, when a word on the open page caught my eye. Well, really, it was two words, applied in conjunction. ‘king’ and ‘mad.’
    King George had gone mad again in 1804, hadn’t he? It was my time period; I was supposed to know these things. Of course he had. And a huge worry it had been to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, as well as to the queen and his daughters. It had entirely thrown off the conduct of the war with France.
    But what had