Page 57 of Miss Dramatic
“Yes,” Caroline said. “You are. It’s what you do. We don’t mean you are leaving Crosspatch again. We mean you always have an excuse to go elsewhere. You must hack out on Roland—twice a day, Gavin, every day, rain or shine, without fail. You must meet with the steward. You must call on Vicar. You must see to the accounts. You used to have time to be our brother.”
Diana could not have launched such a salvo with just that blend of pique and wounded pride. Perhaps Caro harbored thespian tendencies too.
Gavin set his ball to the left of the spot. “We grow up, Caroline. Diana is poised for her come out. You will soon follow in her footsteps. I have more on my mind than teaching you lot birdcalls.”
Gavin could be testy or a touch ironic, but he was never, ever mean. He wasn’t being mean now. He had the same holding-on-by-a-thread look in his eyes that Lissa and Mama had had the whole time he’d been gone. Something or someone had rattled him badly.
Not Mrs. Roberts. She’d been rattled as well, by Gavin’s exquisite—and slightly distant—good manners.
“Gav,what’s going on?”
He chalked the tip of his stick. “Why does anything have to be going on? Anything other than the oddest house party in the history of the entire blighted institution? The usual unbridled curiosity of the neighbors? The equally predictable long-windedness about an approaching harvest that will arrive whether we discuss it or not?”
Caro let forth a harrumph worthy of Grandmama on the subject of Prinny’s financial excesses. Give the child credit, she otherwise held her tongue, another masterly tactic borrowed from Grandmama’s arsenal.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin said, eyeing the table and looking very gloomy indeed. “I am out of sorts, and I do apologize for my short temper.”
“You are haring off again,” Diana said. “Retreating into good manners and masculine condescension. If you don’t nip away to the Arms—and to some of Mrs. P’s best summer ale—you will claim it’s time to ride a horse who could use a day off every now and then.”
Gavin winced. “I’m conditioning Roland. He’s done too much resting in his short life.”
Caroline pushed her specs up her nose. “You are not your horse, Gav, which is fortunate, or we’d never be able to close a window when you were in the room.”
That shot provoked a wan smile. “I am not my horse, but I am the de facto manager of Twidboro Hall. Why don’t you two enjoy a game?”
He proffered the cue stick, and a year ago, maybe even six months ago, Diana would have taken the bait and been pleased to indulge in a generally male and grown-up diversion.
“Why don’t you tell us what’s the matter, Gavin DeWitt? We’re your sisters. We want to help.”
He put the cue stick on the table. “I know you are my sisters. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I really must be going.”
Caroline sent Diana a look, part exasperation, part panic. Very well. Diana would haul up the sororal artillery.
“Be off with you, then,” Diana said, taking up the cue stick. “We won’t bother telling you that we saw Lady Iris rifling Mrs. Roberts’s effects as we went down to lunch. Mrs. Roberts’s room has the best view of the Twid on that side of the house, and we meant to peek out her window to see if you were coming up the path. Lady Iris was in the dressing closet.”
Gavin was no longer eyeing the door. “Go on.”
“We thought she was a maid,” Caro observed. “She was going through the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe, like a maid counting linen. We didn’t see her at first, and she apparently didn’t see us. She wore a mobcap and long apron, which struck me as very odd accessories to an afternoon dress.”
“The bell had rung,” Diana added. “Why wasn’t she on her way down to the buffet?”
Gavin had gone very still, staring at the neat trio of balls on the table, the red ball waiting, waiting, for the opening shot.
“Lady Iris was loosely disguised as a maid, and she was rifling Mrs. Roberts’s linen?”
“When she noticed us,” Diana said, “she held out a rolled-up pair of stockings, smiled like a guilty schoolboy, and said, ‘Found them!’ As if one pair of summer stockings would stand out from all the rest. Then she was out the door that opens onto the corridor. She said nothing about it at luncheon.”
“She wasn’t wearing the apron or mobcap at luncheon either,” Caro said, walking around the whole table, as Gav had taught them to do when preparing for a game. “She did go on without ceasing about the medicinal properties of green tea, as if anybody cares to know about that.”
“Precisely the point.” Gavin took the cue stick from Diana and passed it to Caro. “Any sane person would avoid becoming the audience for such a discourse and forget entirely that Lady Iris had been late to the meal.”
“She was,” Diana said, pleased that Gavin was thinking about something besides ledgers, summer ale, and his flatulent horse. “Not horribly late, but slipping into the line when some of the guests were already seated.”
Caroline positioned her ball on the right side of the table. A wise choice when the afternoon sun was pouring through the windows facing the left side.
“Lady Iris is good at slipping in and slipping out,” Caroline said, gaze on the table. “She left the library last night as the tables were forming for whist.”
Gavin looked thunderous at that news. “Where did she go?”
