Free The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

room.
    ‘What are you reading?’
    Richard flipped the fat pamphlet over to the other side of the table for her. Antiquarian literature usually worked as well fordiscouraging inquisitive young ladies as it did French spies.
    Amy strained to see in the dim light. ‘ Proceedings of the Royal Egyptological Society ? I didn’t know we had one.’
    ‘We do,’ said Richard dryly.
    Amy cast him an exasperated look. ‘Well, that much is clear.’ She flipped through the pages, tilting the periodical to try to catch the light. ‘Has there been any progress on the Rosetta Stone?’
    ‘You’ve heard of the Rosetta Stone?’ Richard knew he sounded rude; he just couldn’t help himself. The last young lady to whom he had delivered his Rosetta Stone soliloquy had asked him if the Rosetta Stone was a new kind of gemstone, and if so, what colour was it, and did he think it would look better with her blue silk than sapphires.
    Amy made a face at him. ‘We do get the papers, even in the wilds of Shropshire, you know.’
    ‘Are you interested in antiquities?’
    For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he was going to the bother of carrying on a conversation with the chit. First off, he had better things to do, such as plot the Purple Gentian’s next escapade. Daring plans didn’t just invent themselves; they took time, and thought, and imagination. Secondly, voluntarily entering into conversation with young ladies of good family was inevitably a perilous venture. It gave them ideas. It gave them terrifying ideas that involved heirloom veils, ten-foot-long trains, and bouquets of orange flowers.
    Yet here he was encouraging the girl to talk. Absurd.
    ‘I don’t really know much about antiquities,’ said Amy frankly. ‘But I love the old stories! Penelope fooling all of her suitors, Aeneas fighting his way down to the underworld…’
    It was too dark to read, reasoned Richard. And the girl didn’t seem to be flirting with him, so carrying on a conversation with her was a harmless and sensible means of passing the time. Nothing at all absurd about that.
    ‘I haven’t read any Ancient Egyptian literature, though. Is thereany? All I know about Ancient Egypt is what I’ve read in Herodotus,’ Amy went on. ‘And, really, I get the sense that about half of what he wrote about the Egyptians is pure sensationalism. All of that nonsense about sucking peoples’ brains out through their noses and putting them in jars. He’s worse than the Shropshire Intelligencer !’
    Richard managed to stop himself from asking whether she had really read Herodotus in the original Greek. Coming on the heels of his Rosetta Stone comment, it might seem a bit insulting. ‘Actually, we think Herodotus may have been telling the truth on that one. In the burial chambers of tombs, we found canopic jars with the remains of human organs.’ If the girl wasn’t genuinely interested, she was putting on a far better act than any Richard had ever seen.
    ‘We? Were you actually there, my lord?’
    ‘Yes, several years ago.’
    Questions tumbled out of Amy’s mouth so quickly that Richard scarcely had time to answer one before another rolled his way. She leant forward across the table in a way that would have had Miss Gwen barking, ‘Posture!’ had she been awake to see it. She listened avidly as Richard described the ancient Egyptian pantheon, interrupting him occasionally to compare them to the gods of the ancient Greeks.
    ‘After all,’ she argued, ‘there must have been some sort of communication between the Greeks and the Egyptians. Oh, not just Herodotus! Look at Antigone – that’s set in Thebes. And so are the myths of Jason, aren’t they? Unless, do you think the Greek authors used Egypt the way Shakespeare used Italy? As a sort of miraculous once upon a time where anything could happen?’
    Outside, the storm still splattered across the windows and rocked the little boat away from its destination, but neither Amy nor Richard