Lauren Willig - Masque of the Black Tulip

"Arsenic with a side of cyanide?"

"Mmm-hmm."

They had. The next folio down comprised Lady Henrietta's correspondence from March of 1803 to the following November. Perfect. On the edge of my consciousness, I heard the library door close. Scooting backwards, I sat down heavily on the floor next to the open cupboard, the folio splayed open in my lap. Nestled in the middle of Henrietta's correspondence was a letter in a different hand. Where Henrietta's script was round, with loopy letters and the occasional flourish, this writing was regular enough to be a computer simulation of script. Without the aid of technological enhancement, the writing spoke of an orderly hand, and an even more orderly mind. More importantly, I knew that handwriting. I had seen it in Mrs. Selwick-Alderly's collection, between Amy Balcourt's sloppy scrawl and Lord Richard's emphatic hand. I didn't even have to flip to the signature on the following page to know who had penned it, but I did, anyway. "Your affectionate cousin, Jane."

There are any number of Janes in history, most of them as gentle and unassuming as their name. Lady Jane Grey, the ill-fated seven-day queen of England. Jane Austen, the sweet-faced authoress, lionized by English majors and the BBC costume-drama-watching set.

And then there was Miss Jane Wooliston, better known as the Pink Carnation.

I clutched the binding of the folio as though it might scuttle away if I loosened my grip, refraining from making squealing noises of delight. Colin probably already thought I was a madwoman, without my providing him any additional proof. But I was squealing inside. As far as the rest of the historical community was concerned (I indulged in a bit of personal gloating), the only surviving references to the Pink Carnation were mentions in newspapers of the period, not exactly the most reliable report. Indeed, there were even scholars who opined that the Pink Carnation did not in fact exist, that the escapades attributed to the mythical flower figure over a ten-year period — stealing a shipment of gold from under Bonaparte's nose, burning down a French boot factory,spiriting away a convoy of munitions in Portugal during the Peninsular War, to name just a few — had been the work of a number of unrelated actors. The Pink Carnation, they insisted, was something like Robin Hood, a useful myth, perpetuated to keep people's morale up during the grim days of the Napoleonic Wars, when England stood staunchly alone as the rest of Europe tumbled under Napoleon's sway.

Weren't they in for a surprise!

I knew who the Pink Carnation was, thanks to Mrs. Selwick-Alderly. But I needed more. I needed to be able to link Jane Wooliston to the events attributed to the Pink Carnation by the news sheets, to provide concrete proof that the Pink Carnation had not only existed, but had been continuously in operation throughout that period.

The letter in my lap was an excellent start. A reference to the Pink Carnation would have been good. A letter from the Pink Carnation herself was even better.

Greedily, I skimmed the first few lines.

"Dearest Cousin, Paris has been a whirl of gaiety since last I wrote, with scarcely a moment to rest between engagements…"

"…Yesterday, I attended a Venetian breakfast at the home of a gentleman very closely connected to the Consul. He was all that was amiable."

In the morning room at Uppington House, Lady Henrietta Selwick checked the level of liquid in her teacup, positioned a little red book on the cushion next to her, and curled up against the arm of her favorite settee.

Under her elbow, the fabric was beginning to snag and fray; suspicious tea-colored splotches marred the white-and-yellow-striped silk, and worn patches farther down the settee testified to the fact that the two slippered feet that currently occupied them had been there before. The morning room was usually the province of the lady of the house, but Lady Uppington, who lacked the capacity for sitting in one place longer than it took to deliver a pithy epigram, had long since ceded the sunny room to Henrietta, who used it as her receiving room, her library (the real library having the unfortunate defect of being too dark to actually read in), and her study. Haloed in the late morning sunlight, it was a pleasant, peaceful room, a room for innocent daydreams and restrained tea parties.

At the moment, it was a hub for international espionage.

On the little yellow-and-white settee rested secrets for which Bonaparte's most talented agents would have given their eyeteeth — or their eyes, for that matter, if that wouldn't have gotten in the way of actually reading the contents of the little red book.

Henrietta spread Jane's latest letter out on her muslin-clad lap. Even if a French operative did happen to be peering through the window, Henrietta knew just what he would see: a serene young lady (Henrietta hastily pushed a stray wisp of hair back into the Grecian-style bun on the top of her head) daydreaming over her correspondence and her diary. It was enough to put a spy to sleep, which was precisely why Henrietta had suggested the plan to Jane in the first place.

For seven long years, Henrietta had been angling to be included in the war effort. It didn't seem quite fair that her brother got to be written up in the illustrated newsletters as "that glamorous figure of shadow, that thorn in the side of France, that silent savior men know only as the Purple Gentian," while Henrietta was stuck being the glamorous shadow's pesky younger sister. As she had pointed out to her mother the year she turned thirteen — the year that Richard joined the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel — she was as smart as Richard, she was as creative as Richard, and she was certainly a great deal stealthier than Richard.

Unfortunately, she was also, as her mother reminded her, a good deal younger than Richard. Seven years younger, to be precise.

"Oh, bleargh," said Henrietta, since there was really nothing she could say in response to that, and Henrietta wasn't the sort who liked being without something to say.

Lady Uppington looked at her sympathetically. "We'll discuss it when you're older."

"Juliet was married when she was thirteen, you know," protested Henrietta.

"Yes, and look what happened to her," replied Lady Uppington.

By the time she was fifteen, Henrietta decided she had waited quite long enough. She put her case to the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel in her best imitation of Portia's courtroom speech. The gentlemen of the League were not moved by her musings on the quality of mercy, nor were they swayed by her arguments that an intrepid young girl could wriggle in where a full-grown man would get stuck in the window frame.

Sir Percy looked sternly at her through his quizzing glass. "We'll discuss it — "

"I know, I know," Henrietta said wearily, "when I'm older."

She didn't have any more success when Sir Percy retired and Richard began cutting a wide swathe through French prisons and English news sheets as the Purple Gentian. Richard, being her older brother, was a great deal less diplomatic than Sir Percy had been. He didn't even make the obligatory reference to her age.

"Have you run mad?" he asked, running a black-gloved hand agitatedly through his blond hair. "Do you know what Mother would do to me if I so much as let you near a French prison?"

"Ah, but does Mama need to know?" suggested Henrietta cunningly.

Richard gave her another "Have you gone completely and utterly insane?" look.

"If Mother is not told, she will find out. And when she finds out," he gritted out, "she will dismember me."

"Surely, it's not as bad as — "

"Into hundreds and hundreds of tiny pieces."

Henrietta had persisted for a bit, but since all she could get out of her brother were incoherent mumbles about his head being stuck up on the gates of Uppington Hall, his hindquarters being fed to the dogs, and his heart and liver being served up on a platter in the dining room, she gave up, and went off to do some muttering of her own about overbearing older brothers who thought they knew everything just because they had a five-page spread on their exploits in the Kentish Crier.

Appealing to her parents proved equally ineffectual. After Richard had been inconsiderate enough to go and get himself captured by the Ministry of Police, Lady Uppington had become positively unreasonable on the subject of spying. Henrietta's requests were met with "No. Absolutely not. Out of the question, young lady," and even one memorable "There are still nunneries in England."

Henrietta wasn't entirely certain that her mother was right about that — there had been a Reformation, and a fairly thorough one, at that — but she had no desire to test the point. Besides, she had heard all about the Ministry of Police's torture chamber in lurid detail from her new sister-in-law, Amy, and rather doubted she would enjoy their hospitality any more than Richard had.

But when one has been angling for something for seven years, it is rather hard to let go of the notion just like that. So when Amy's cousin, Jane Wooliston, otherwise known as the Pink Carnation, happened to mention that she was having trouble getting reports back to the War Office because her couriers had an irritating habit of being murdered en route, Henrietta was only too happy to offer her assistance.