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.”

“Just knock before you come in, okay? I’ll let Colin know that you might be in and out.”

“Thanks.” Cate glanced back over her shoulder. Even on the second floor, we could hear the sound of cars on the gravel of the drive, and voices from downstairs, steadily rising in volume. Either this was the catering crew, or some of the guests were arriving early. “I’d better get back down there. But I might sneak up later?”

“Any time,” I said, sliding into Colin’s desk chair. “We’ll be at the dinner, so the computer is all yours. You can ward off invaders for us.”

Cate brandished her clipboard. “Will do.”

“Don’t mind about the door. It”—there was a horrible squawking sound as she yanked at it—“sticks.”

“Sorry!” Cate’s voice floated back through the door panels.

My smile faded as I turned back to my e-mail. My open and maximized e-mail.

I might have just been careless and left the box open. But I didn’t think so. I was paranoid enough about Colin stumbling on that stupid 10B e-mail—not that it was really a secret, and I’d have to tell him eventually, anyway, but I’d rather tell him in my own time, once I’d figured out what I wanted to do.

Well, if Dempster had looked through my e-mails, he wouldn’t find anything of use to him, just details for my friend Alex’s engagement party, a few amusing forwards from Pammy, and those 10B e-mails.

I scrolled down the page. There were two new e-mails, one after the other. I’d shot off an SOS to two history department friends that morning, asking for advice. This wasn’t exactly the sort of dilemma with which I could go to my advisor. Archival issues, yes. Boy issues, no. Admittedly, this was a mixed issue of archive and boy, but it still smacked too much of the personal intruding onto the professional for me to share with anyone I wanted to take me seriously. So I’d appealed to Liz and Jenny instead.

Liz was my year in the history department, Jenny a year ahead of me. We had been dubbed the Triumvirate of Terror, not by the hapless undergrads to whom we had attempted to teach western civ, but by a colleague in the history department who had made the cardinal mistake of attempting to ask us each out, one after the other.

Our specialties were very different—Jenny did Charlemagne, Liz was all about madness in Renaissance Florence, and I had my thing for British spies—but we had formed a fast friendship that went well beyond complaining about undergrad essays and the lousy coffee in Robinson Hall. They were my favorite outlet shopping buddies.

They had both chimed in, Jenny from Cambridge, Liz from Florence, where she was on her research year. I checked the time stamp on Jenny’s e-mail. Wow. She really needed to stop getting up so early. Surely, Charlemagne could wait until a more civilized hour. He’d been dead about twelve hundred years, after all.

She wrote: My dearest Eloise, STAY IN ENGLAND! Really, why trade London for the joys of the Coop losing your book order and undergraduates whining that the B+ you gave them is the only thing standing between them and Harvard Law? Anyway, you found original documents. It is the Holy Grail of the historian. Stay and write them up! Boy or no boy, there will be plenty of time for teaching later. Liz and I will miss you, of course, but stay. Must run to Widener before it closes and then to Daedalus for drinks. More tomorrow. Love, Jenny

I regarded the e-mail with a warm glow. I love my friends.

I scrolled down through the e-mail chain to Liz’s feedback and my glow faded. Hey, snookums, wrote Liz. Is this about the boy?

Damn. She knew me way too well. I’d tried to couch it in neutral terms, making it out to be more about extra archival research than, well, Colin. But Liz was canny that way. She could smell ulterior motives on me like cheap cologne.

Funny, I’d expected her to be more pro, but the advice was decidedly pro-10B and anti-England. …don’t want to jeopardize your career for a guy…documents will still be there…brief research trips…if he really likes you, you can make it work long-distance.

Damn, damn, damn. One pro, one anti, and me still confused. I leaned my forehead against the heels of my hands, wondering how long I could reasonably put off replying to Blackburn. The sensible thing, of course, would be to talk it all through with Colin. He knew his archives better than I did. He could tell me whether there was sufficient material to make it worth my remaining an extra term—it didn’t need to be a whole year. I could go back to Cambridge for spring term and pick up my teaching duties then, even though it was unlikely a deal as sweet as the 10B head TF job would come along.

He could also tell me whether any of it was an option. He was, after all, a crucial part of the equation. Without a fellowship, my staying on would be predicated on his allowing me to live with him.

I thought of the poem Augustus Whittlesby had quoted to Emma Delagardie. “Come live with me and be my love.…”

Did Colin want me to come live with him and be his love and go through his archives? Or was that only for weekends and holidays, too scary to contemplate for daily use?

There was no way to find out except by asking him.

Like a petulant five-year-old resisting a nap, I didn’t wanna. Oh, I had any number of excellent excuses. Colin had enough on his plate, now wasn’t the time, I could wait until the film people left…But those weren’t the real reasons, sensible though they seemed. At base, I wanted Colin to say something without my having to. I wanted him to intuit what I didn’t want to ask. I wanted him to want me just because he wanted me, and not because it was a choice between inviting me to stay or my going thousands of miles away.