“About the computer,” said Cate. “That would be really great, if you’re sure it’s okay. There’s only one for the whole crew, and this sound guy keeps hogging it.”

“Oh, right.” It had been only about five minutes since I had contrived my cunning plan to win over a member of the film crew with extra Internet access, but it felt much longer. Back then—before Dempster—I’d only been worried about people walking in on my shower and Colin going after Jeremy with a fish knife. This was just getting more fun by the moment.

But none of it was Cate’s fault.

“Of course, it’s fine,” I said, baring way too many teeth in an attempt to make amends for my abstraction. “Just don’t tell anyone else or we’ll have half the cast knocking down the door. Do you want to come with me now? I can show you where it is.”

Cate fell into step beside me. “Thank you so much. I have a boyfriend at home, and this whole text thing—” Cate waved her phone in the air in illustration. “Well, it’s kind of limiting.”

Listening to someone else’s relationship woes was preferable to trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to gently break to Colin that we had another crisis on our hands.

Or telling him that I had only one month left to live—I mean, date.

I made a sympathetic face at Cate. “How long have you been doing the transcontinental thing?”

“Two weeks.” Cate regarded her mobile with disfavor. “It feels like longer.”

“The whole time zone thing sucks, doesn’t it?” Colin and I had played that game when I was home in New York over Christmas.

It’s funny I had no problem doing math when it involved historical dating, but apply it to time zones or the calculation of a tip and I was completely lost. Hence that two a.m. call that time. His two a.m., not mine. Unfortunately, Colin isn’t really a night owl. It was one of his few drawbacks as a boyfriend.

Cate’s brown curls bobbed in affirmation. “I wouldn’t recommend it,” she said, and I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not.

My gut said not.

My gut wasn’t a happy place. In one month, that would be me. Three months if I pushed it and stayed around for the summer. Our relationship would shrink to an hour at dinnertime—my dinnertime, his bedtime—and an amusing assortment of e-mail forwards, sent less for themselves and more as a placeholder, a shorthand for “Hi! I have nothing to say, but I’m thinking about you!”

We would have less and less to say. Whatever they say about absence making the heart grow fonder, a relationship lies in the daily details, not the grand reunions. Right now, Colin and I were in the process of building up a foundation of shared memories.

I don’t mean the major memories, the groundbreaking moments, but the little, everyday ones that, in their own weird way, last longer and mean more. When I thought about Colin, it wasn’t of our more dramatic encounters. I didn’t dwell on our almost kiss in a ruined monastery or his magnificent fury (okay, fine, so it was more like mid-level pissiness, but the other sounds better for posterity) at finding me going through his aunt’s papers. Instead, what I remembered was the solidness of his arm around me when I tripped on loose gravel in the pub parking lot, or the play of shadow on his face as he stood by the kitchen window, rinsing the dishes before loading them into the antiquated dishwasher.

I liked that Colin, the domestic Colin. Our conversation was less and less about the big issues—politics, religion, the inherent inferiority of the Napoleonic regime—and more and more about whether it was a pub night or a home night, or the recurring debate about who left the lid off the toothpaste tube. (Hint: It wasn’t me.) I’d traded in my daydreams for domesticity. Maybe it sounds unromantic, but it had a solid feel to it. It was real.

At least for now.

“So what’s the deal with Dempster?” I asked my new best friend. “What does a historical consultant actually do?”

“You mean other than demand more mineral water?” I got the feeling Dempster hadn’t exactly made himself popular with Cate. “And not that brand of mineral water, the other kind.”

Her English accent was even worse than mine, but I got the point.

“It’s not like he really even needs to be here,” she said, warming to her theme. “They mostly hired him to go over the script and make sure the historical—whatever—was right.”

As someone who was a professional whatever-er, I decided to just nod rather than to take offense.

“But he insisted that he had to be here, on set, from day one. Forget day one. Day zero. The bigwigs aren’t getting here until tonight. But, no, Mr. Mineral Water had to be here early.”

“So that’s not normal practice, then,” I said. “Having the historical consultant on set.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Cate hastily. She flashed me a guilty grin. “And it’s not like I’d really know. I’m not really a movie person. I just got this job because—”

“Right,” I filled in for her. “I remember. The cousin who knew someone.”

“I’m starting at Columbia journalism school in the fall,” she said proudly. “I’m doing their broadcast program. They’re the only Ivy to have one.”

“Congrats!” I channeled extra enthusiasm into it to hide the fact that my mind was decidedly elsewhere. “So your sense, though, is that the historical consultant wouldn’t usually need to be around at this point.”

“That’s what I heard one of the guys on the crew saying.” She shook back her brown curls. “I wasn’t the only one he was trying to treat like his personal minion.”

“He does do that,” I murmured.

Dempster was the head archivist at a choice art collection in central London. Snooty, but not exactly lucrative. Dempster, as Cate had so aptly noted, did like the finer things in life. His cunning plan? To make his fortune by writing a muckraking, best-selling work of nonfiction about England’s greatest, undiscovered spy, the Pink Carnation. His efforts in that direction had been less than scrupulous, including dating Colin’s sister, Serena, in an attempt to worm his way into the family archives via Serena’s affections.

Needless to say, that plan hadn’t gone very well.

The last time I’d had the misfortune to meet Nigel Dempster was back in November. I had hoped—if I thought of him at all—that the intervening six months would have produced new get-rich-quick schemes. Ones without a Selwick component. His presence at Selwick Hall did not bode well.

With a sick feeling, I remembered my disordered papers. Dempster had tried to steal my notes before. He had a very all’s-fair approach to scholarship, at least when it worked to his advantage.

“Oh.” Cate drew back, looking alarmed. “Do you know him? I didn’t mean— That is, if you’re friends— I’d heard he knew someone connected to the family, but I didn’t realize…”

“No!” I said quickly. “I mean, I do know him, but we’re not friends. I had to do some research in his archive a few months ago, that’s all.”

Plus, he had screwed over my boyfriend’s sister, but it didn’t seem politic to mention that bit.

“Phew.” Cate visibly relaxed. “I was afraid I’d really put my foot in it. Someone said he had a thing going with someone connected to the family, and when you said…But you’re dating the cute, grumpy guy, so that wouldn’t make sense. Sorry.”

The cute, grumpy guy. I liked that. I’d have to tell Colin later. And my friend Pammy, who had been watching the progress of the Colin affair from day one. We could call Colin CGG for short. Pammy was very big on the code names. Yes, we were secretly still fifth graders when it came to dealing with boys. I mean, men.

Colin’s study was empty, the computer monitor tilted to the side. I held open the study door for Cate and waved her to precede me. “Someone connected to the family?”

Cate lifted her hands in a gesture indicative of the mysterious ways of the office gossip chain. “The crew guys said that was how he got the job, through his girlfriend.”

What was the screen doing tilted? Colin liked it facing dead ahead. It was one of the small things that drove him batty. He was also very picky about his paper-clip collection.

I moved to draw the monitor back into place and saw something that made me pause.

“Weird,” I said.

“What is it?” Cate’s bouncy brown curls brushed my cheek as she leaned over my shoulder. “Is the Internet down?”

“No. No worries.” I pushed abruptly away from the screen, nearly slamming into Cate. “I thought I’d closed out of my e-mail, but I guess I didn’t.”

There was my webmail, open on the screen, maximized to its largest size. There was a smattering of new e-mails, distinguished by their darker font, including two with the heading “Re: 10B?”

To anyone else, that wouldn’t mean anything at all. It might be an apartment number or a Chinese food entrée or a new address for Sherlock Holmes. Only Harvard history department cognoscenti would automatically translate that to Western Civ, Part II. Besides, Colin and I had an honor system. I didn’t go through his files—well, not after that last time—and he didn’t read my e-mail. It was all about trust.

Okay, it was mostly about trust and a little bit about fear of getting caught.

“Anyway, this is the computer.” Shaking off my unease, I turned back to Cate. “As long as the study is empty, please feel free to come in and use it. Just make sure not to move anything around on the desk. And Colin likes the computer monitor facing forward, so if you move it, move it back. Oh, and there are biscuits in the tin over there. Please feel free.”

“This is so nice of you.” Cate clutched her clipboard to her chest. “I can’t tell you.”