“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

Feeling like I had hogged the conversation long enough, I quickly turned to Serena and asked her a question about the party her gallery was throwing for Valentine’s Day. Nick and Martin both pledged their attendance. I knew Serena had invited Pammy, too. This was going to get very interesting very quickly. I wondered, distractedly, whether Pammy might be rerouted to Martin. But he wasn’t really her type. It wasn’t that he wasn’t good-looking; he was pleasant enough with his close-cropped, curly dark hair and broad-shouldered build. But Pammy tended to go more for Masters of the Universe types, not Eeyore. As she was fond of saying, she didn’t take on reclamation projects.

I decided to table the whole question for later. It was still a good week till Valentine’s Day. I had time to sound out Pammy and lay my plans. In the meantime, I was just happy. Happy to be out on a sunny Sunday, happy to be with Colin, happy, happy, happy. It helped that I had had about seven cups of coffee at lunch. I was flying high on caffeine and contentment.

I hugged Colin’s arm close to my side as we strolled away from the restaurant. “That was fun.”

It was frigid cold out, but without having to arrange it between us, we set out to walk back to my flat. That was another thing we had in common, I thought happily; we both liked walking places. It would have been a shame to waste all that lovely sunshine by going down into the dark depths of the Tube. With Colin going back to Sussex tomorrow morning, I didn’t want to waste a single, golden moment.

“I hadn’t realized you were researching India,” he said, as we walked down a street lined with stucco town houses.

“I wasn’t,” I admitted. “But the last time I was up at Selwick Hall with you, I found a couple of letters from Penelope Deveraux.”

“From who?”