The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

粉紅康乃馨之謎#1

故事從一個運氣背到極點的哈佛研究生開始說起，Eloise在耶誕舞會發現被劈腿，感情不順學業也踫壁，她提出論文主題「想找尋19世紀初英國神秘的間諜Pink Carnation，她為了論文到英國研習，找資料卻毫無頭緒。情急的她只好聯絡當年知名的間諜的後代，試圖從第一任及第二任Purple Gentian留下的手札書信等，找尋蛛絲馬跡透露「康乃馨」的真面目…….

Leaving Harvard to complete her dissertation on the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian in England, Eloise Kelly discovers lost historical information that reveals the secret life of the most elusive spy of all time, a figure who single-handedly saved England from Napoleon's invasion. A first novel. Reprint.

Prologue
The Tube had broken down. Again.
I clutched the overhead rail by dint of standing on the tippiest bit of my tippy toes. My nose banged into the arm of the man next to me. A Frenchman, judging from the black turtleneck and the fact that his armpit was a deodorant-free zone. Murmuring apologies in my best faux English accent, I tried to squirm out from under his arm, tripped over a protruding umbrella, and stumbled into the denim-covered lap of the man sitting in front of me.
“Cheers,” he said with a wink, as I wiggled my way off his leg.
Ah, “cheers,” that wonderful multipurpose English term for anything from “hello” to “thank you” to “nice ass you have there.” Bright red (a shade that doesn’t do much for my auburn hair), I peered about for a place to hide. But the Tube was packed solid, full of tired, cranky Londoners on their way home from work. There wasn’t enough room for a reasonably emaciated snake to slither its way through the crowd, much less a healthy American girl who had eaten one too many portions of fish and chips over the past two months.
Um, make that about fifty too many portions of fish and chips. Living in a basement flat with a kitchen the size of a peapod doesn’t inspire culinary exertions.
Resuming my spot next to the smirking Frenchman, I wondered, for the five-hundredth time, what had ever possessed me to come to London.
Sitting in my carrel in Harvard’s Widener Library, peering out of my little scrap of window at the undergrads scuttling back and forth beneath the underpass, bowed double under their backpacks like so many worker ants, applying for a fellowship to spend the year researching at the British Library seemed like a brilliant idea. No more student papers to grade! No more hours of peering at microfilm! No more Grant.
Grant.
My mind lightly touched the name, then shied away again. Grant. The other reason I was playing sardines on the Tube in London, rather than happily spooling through microfilm in the basement of Widener.
I ended it with him. Well, mostly. Finding him in the cloakroom of the Faculty Club at the history department Christmas party in a passionate embrace with a giggly art historian fresh out of undergrad did have something to do with it, so I couldn’t claim he was entirely without a part in the