"Thank God," she said heavily, catching at the foot of a statue of Artemis for balance. She moved as though her limbs pained her, which wasn't surprising, considering that the marble bench she had been occupying lacked cushions, arms, or back. "You're all right. You are all right?"

"Yes." Mary moved warily into the room, keeping a watchful eye on her sister. Letty looked far worse that she did. Her upswept crown of curls had been squashed to one side from leaning against the wall, and the weave of her shawl had imprinted itself across one cheek. "I'm perfectly well."

Letty closed her eyes. "Thank God," she repeated.

Her wide blue eyes roamed with dismay over the splotches on Mary's dress, the disarranged hair shoved up under her bonnet.

"How did you — no. Where did you — " Something in Mary's face must have stopped her, because she broke off with a strangled laugh. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. It's enough that you're back. And safe. Really, it is," she repeated, as though trying to convince herself.

Her very freckles looked like they were about to pop off her cheeks with the strain of keeping her flood of questions from bursting forth.

"You are the eldest, after all," Letty added, rather desperately, twisting her hands in the fabric of her skirt in that way she always had when she was anxious. "There's nothing I can tell you that you don't know already. And it's your life. I can't organize it for you."

She looked pleadingly at Mary. Her shawl trailed down drunkenly over one shoulder like a Scotsman's ceremonial plaid, and her hair stuck out to the right, but there was a certain heroic dignity about her as she lifted her chin and announced, "I'm not going to ask."

Mary had never been so fond of her little sister as in that moment. Crossing the room to her sister, she bent, and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"Thank you," she said, and then she turned and went upstairs to bed.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"What was Dempster planning to do, sell the papers on the black market?" I made a face at Colin over my wineglass. "Is there even a black market for old documents?"

As far as I could see, his theory about Dempster's raiding his archives for monetary gain was as full of plot holes as a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

Colin made a face right back, only he looked cuter doing it. "It's not the documents themselves that are worth money to him; it's the identity of the Pink Carnation."

"How?" I demanded. "It's not as if the French would still be willing to pay money for that information. Not unless he's living in even more of a dream world than I am."

"He might be, for all that," said Colin. "But that's not the point. The French might not be willing to pay that sort of money, but there's more than one publisher who would."

"For the identity of the Pink Carnation," I said flatly. "Now you're the one living in a dream world. It's certainly big news from a scholarly standpoint, but why would anyone else care? And scholars don't generally make up a big portion of the book-buying market."

"History sells. It sells well. And the Pink Carnation is just the sort of figure to catch the public imagination. Especially since…"

"Yes, yes, I know," I said hastily, glancing quickly around to make sure no one else was listening. "The whole woman thing. A new heroine for our times, blah, blah, blah."

"And real," Colin stressed. "Not a made-up heroine, but a real one, with documentary proof to back it up."

"I see," I said slowly. Dempster's crazy motive was beginning to seem less crazy by the moment. "There'll be History Channel programs, a made-for-TV movie…"

"Book deals, movie deals…," Colin continued.

"Maybe even a 20/20 special," I finished grimly. Certainly enough to make it worth Dempster's while seducing a pretty and somewhat neurotic twenty-something to obtain access to her family's papers. "Damn. But why would he get the money? Why not you, as the keeper of the papers? Why would all the rights suddenly belong to him?" As you can tell, my knowledge of intellectual property rights is not exactly extensive.

"As long as he publishes first, it doesn't matter who owns the papers. I can only protect the papers themselves, not the information in them. If he wrote a book about the Carnation, and the BBC based a program off his book, he's the one they would have to pay."

I mulled that over for a moment. "Even if he succeeded in conning Serena — or me — into giving him access to the information, he's not the only one who knows the secret. You know, I know, your aunt knows…How does he guarantee one of us doesn't scoop him?"

Colin twirled his glass so the wine swirled in a circle like a burgundy sea. "While I would hate to admit to knowing how a mind like Dempster's works, I would guess that he's banking on my and Aunt Arabella's having our reasons to keep the story quiet. We wouldn't go out and publicize it for the very same reasons we haven't done so all these years. As for you," he added, before I could get my mouth open to ask him just what those reasons might be, "it's common knowledge that the academic press moves as slowly as the windmills of the gods."

I couldn't fight with that one. A friend of mine had had the same article waiting for publication for two years. Not a book, mind you. An article. All of twenty-five pages including end notes. The journal with her article in it had been supposed to come out in spring of 2001. It was now autumn of 2003. She was still waiting.

Colin set his wineglass down with an authoritative clink. "By the time you got your dissertation written, all your footnotes in place, and your manuscript placed with one of the university publishing houses, he would have time to publish five times over. And I would be willing to wager," he added delicately, "that Dempster's book will be written in a rather more sensational style."

"Are you impugning my writing style?" I demanded.

Colin raised both brows. "Popular nonfiction doesn't have footnotes. At least, not as many."

"Fair enough," I said. "I'll grant you all that."

"And," added Colin, "even presuming that it doesn't play out precisely that way, it doesn't matter. The point is that Dempster believes it could."

"How do you know so much about what Dempster believes or doesn't?" I challenged.

"He did date Serena for nearly a year. I had a good deal of time to observe."

And it hadn't been all pleasant observations, either, from the set of his mouth.

"Okay," I said. "I'll buy your argument. Dempster believes that your family papers are the key to making his fortune."

"He has," Colin pointed out, "expensive tastes."

"I did get that." Those socks hadn't come cheap. "And an archivist's salary is probably peanuts. Anything interesting always is."

Colin raised his glass. "Do I detect a hint of bitterness?"

"Call it world-weary resignation."

"At the advanced age of — ?"

"Well past the age of consent, if that's what you're worried about," I shot off, and then went bright red again. Why do I always say these things without thinking? "How old is Dempster?"

Colin accepted the change of subject, although a faint smile played around his lips. "Too old for my sister."

"Clearly." I paused to consider the problem of Serena. "What about one of your friends for her?"

Being a boy, this idea had obviously never occurred to him before. "For what?" he asked warily.

"To date, of course! That's the whole point of an older brother," I explained. "To provide eligible friends. If you hadn't been remiss in your duty, she would never have been reduced to dating Dempster."

After I'd spoken, I realized that wasn't the most politic comment I might have made, under the circumstances, but fortunately Colin took it in the spirit in which it was intended. "And your older brother?" he asked. "Did he play his role properly?"

"I didn't have one," I admitted mournfully. "I asked my parents for one, but they pointed out that by the time I was born it was too late to remedy the situation. What about Martin for Serena? He looks like he could use a little cheering up."

Colin looked skeptical. "They've met dozens of times over the years. If anything were going to happen, wouldn't it have happened?"

I was too in love with my theory to let it go that easily. "But there was that other woman was Martin was seeing. And, besides, he might have felt inhibited because Serena's your little sister."

"So," Colin said, with the air of a man turning over a flawed theoretical theorem, "what you're saying is that as Serena's brother, I ought to fix her up with my friends, but because she's my sister, none of them will be able to date her."

He had a certain point there. I chose to ignore it.

"Details, details," I said airily. "Is it just the two of you?"

It was. And by an amazing coincidence, it was just the two of us in my family, too, me and Jillian. He had a sister; I had a sister. He was the eldest; I was the eldest. By the time our main course arrived, we were positively swimming in similarities — and in red wine, but that had nothing at all to do with it. Clearly, our compatibility was of a higher order. He watched TV; I watched TV….

There, some differences arose. We discovered that we both liked Blackadder, but he confessed to an unaccountable fondness for Red Dwarf (what is it with men and spaceships?), and refused to see any merit in Monarch of the Glen.

"The young laird returns to restore the family castle?" Colin said scornfully, stabbing at his lamb shank. He had, manlike, gone straight to the largest hunk of meat on the menu. "Not bloody likely."