Page 10 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
Perhaps. That would make everything simple, anyway. “Where will she stay in the meantime? There’s not enough room in the house, is there?”
Francis opened his mouth, but before he had the chance to respond, Uncle Herbert’s voice cut through the still summer air.
“Pippa!” he called, from the door into the boot room. “Kit! What are you doing, standing around? Come along inside!”
“We’re coming, Father,” Christopher called back, as he lifted the weekender bags from the back seat of the Crossley. As we approached the house, he added, in less of a shout, “Just discussing what to expect this weekend.”
Uncle Herbert nodded. “Well, we’ll have to budge up tight.”
He stepped back as we all three filed past him into the mess that was the boot room. “The Marsdens are here, all four of them, and so of course is my brother and Crispin. With the five of us and the six of them, it’ll be a full house.”
“Francis said that Hughes is here, too,” I said, “from Sutherland. Where are you going to put everyone?”
“Francis has given up his room to Harold,” Uncle Herbert said. “It’s the big front bedroom, so it was either the Duke of Sutherland or the Earl and Countess of Marsden.”
“And where are the Earl and Countess of Marsden going to bunk down?”
“In the room where Christopher used to sleep,” Uncle Herbert said, “above the new addition.”
The new addition was roughly a hundred years old, but since it had been built after the rest of the house, it was still called the new addition.
“Constance has agreed to allow her cousin to share her room?—”
I made a face. I could only imagine how Constance felt about that. She didn’t like Lady Laetitia any better than I did. “What about her brother?”
“Lord Geoffrey,” Uncle Herbert said, “will sleep in your old room.”
I gagged, while Christopher winced and Francis smothered a bark of laughter. Uncle Herbert twitched a brow, but didn’t inquire. “That leaves the three of you, and Crispin.”
“And we’re going into the rooms in the attic,” Francis said, “I suppose.”
Uncle Herbert nodded. “I’m afraid so. Unless you can think of a better division of rooms? We can’t have His Grace, or the Earl or Countess Marsden, or even Lord Geoffrey, sleeping in the attic.”
“But it’s all right to put Crispin there?” He was just as much a viscount as Geoffrey Marsden. Even more of one, actually, since a duke trumps an earl, and so, presumably, the duke’s son would trump the earl’s son, too.
“He’s family,” Uncle Herbert said, waving this concern off as if it were a buzzing fly. “The boy won’t mind.”
He probably wouldn’t, actually. In some ways, he’s quite easy to deal with. He hadn’t minded sharing with Christopher and Francis at the Dower House two months ago, either.
However—
“Those rooms are quite small,” Francis pointed out before I could. “I don’t know that I and Kit and Crispin can all squeeze into one of them.”
Uncle Herbert smirked. “I guess you’ll just have to draw lots to figure out which of you gets to share with Pippa.”
Oh, Lord. “I’ll share with Christopher,” I said.
Nobody in the family would think anything of it if I shared a room with Francis, of course. But we couldn’t expect the Marsdens to be aslaissez faire. Consanguineous marriage is legal in England, and it was probably best if the newly engaged man didn’t share a bedchamber with his unattached, female cousin.
And as for sharing with Crispin… well, he’s neither my cousin nor engaged to someone else, and given his reputation, I certainly wasn’t about to ruin what was left of my own by spending the night with him.
Uncle Herbert nodded while Francis grimaced. “Thanks a lot, Pipsqueak.”
“Does he snore?” I wanted to know. “Talk in his sleep? Wake up screaming? You know I can’t share with him, Francis. It would absolutely ruin the few shreds of my reputation that aren’t already in tatters?—”
“What’s wrong with your reputation?”
“I’m living with Christopher,” I said, “aren’t I? At least half the people of our acquaintance think we’re living in sin.”
