Page 2 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
I knew very well that she didn’t mean Christopher, and she doesn’t know Francis, but they are my only cousins, at least on the distaff side. I probably have other cousins in Germany, but these days, it’s just as well to forget that side of my family. Anti-German sentiment is still high less than a decade after the Great War, and besides, I feel pretty thoroughly English by now.
Flossie giggled and tossed her neck, making the brown curls bounce. “Don’t be silly, Pippa. You know I don’t mean Mr. Astley. Where has Lord St George been keeping himself?”
“Crispin’s in Wiltshire,” I said repressively. “If he’s been up to London in the past three weeks, he hasn’t stopped in.”
And small wonder. The last time he dropped by for a visit, he lost two friends to murder and two more to prison, and almost ended up arrested himself. (In addition to being almost devoured by Flossie in a corner of the lift.) By now, he probably thought of me as a jinx and we would never see him again. And while at one time I would have cheered for that prospect, these days I felt rather bad about it.
Not that IlikedSt George. Of course not. But Christopher is fond of him, and he had grown on me lately—like a fungus, in the event that he asked. I was at least able to put up with him for short periods of time without feeling an uncontrollable urge to strangle him.
“Well, if you see him,” Florence said, as the lift arrived and the automatic doors slid back. She grasped the grille covering the opening and pulled it aside so I could go in first, “—give him my love.”
I crossed into the lift box and made a face as Florence followed. “I’d really rather not.”
I had seen Flossie express her love, and there was no part of me that wanted to partake in passing it on.
She giggled, and pulled the grille back the other way. “Of course not, Pippa.”
The lift’s gears engaged, and we started to descend. Flossie added, quite sincerely, “It’s every woman for herself in the matrimonial stakes.”
“Oh, God,” I said, shaking my head. “No, Florence, you misunderstood. If you can snag him, you’re welcome to him. I certainly don’t want to marry him. Although you shouldn’t want to, either. He’s not a good prospect for marriage. He has discarded lovers all over England, you know. In fact?—”
In fact, there was a young woman downstairs right now, who might be in possession of the next heir to the Sutherland dukedom.
But the lift arrived at the ground floor before I could throw St George further under the bus, and the door slid away. Flossie got busy pulling back the grille. “Listen, Pippa,” she told me over her shoulder, “you don’t have to make up stories to keep me away from him.”
“I’m not. I assure you?—”
But that was as far as I got, because Flossie exited the lift, chiffon panels fluttering, and I followed, and now we found ourselves face to face with two other young women, probably no older than the two of us.
One must be Florence’s date for tea, I assumed. She was lavishly dressed—a bit too lavishly, if you ask me. The dotted dress was a bit too smart for her rather plain face, the blue too sharp for her coloring, and the sheer chiffon overcoat was too elaborate for afternoon. She had three strands of good pearls around her neck—they appeared real—and a matching cloche hat from under which she squinted at us.
It took me no more than a second to process all that, and to move on. To the other woman who stood a few feet away from the first, clutching a baby, under Evans’s watchful eye.
She had probably been pretty before childbirth and poverty took their toll. She had soft, brown hair and big eyes, and her afternoon dress, a sprigged rayon, was well made and must have been reasonably expensive when it was new. Now it was a couple of seasons out of date, and too large, as if she had lost weight since having the baby. Her hair was lank and could use a shampoo and set, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Unlike Flossie, there was no healthy pink in her cheeks.
The more eye-catching of the two was the baby, however. It was still small enough that I couldn’t say with certainty whether it was a boy or a girl, although I leaned towards girl. Either way, it was small and bright-eyed and had all the vigor its mother lacked. Its cheeks were rosy and it was bouncing on its mother’s hip, banging a closed fist against her collar bone. A tuft of blond hair stood up on its head, and it had a pink-cheeked, heart-shaped face with a small chin, large blue eyes, and a rosebud mouth.
Now, I will admit that it’s difficult to tell with babies. They have a look all their own, and often grow up to appear quite different from the way they did when they were small. But if I were pressed, I would have to say that this particular baby had a Sutherland look to it. In addition to the Astley blue eyes and the Sutherland fair hair, it also had the heart-shaped face and Cupid’s bow mouth that Christopher and Crispin share.
I have seen pictures of them both from when they were small, and I have to say that the resemblance was startling.
And of course Francis looks like an older, more muscular version of Christopher. So does his father, Lord Herbert. And Crispin’s father, the current Duke, is clearly cut from the same cloth, as well, even if he is taller and more slender than his brother.
Not that I suspected either uncle of being guilty of adultery. I just mention it as a point of fact. Crispin’s platinum hair and gray eyes notwithstanding, the Sutherland genes are strong, and all the men in the family look quite a lot alike. Crispin has the blood, so there was no reason to think he couldn’t have passed the traditional blue eyes and sunny wheat hair down to a child, even if he didn’t sport them himself.
Beside me, Florence’s jaw had dropped. She hiked it back up again. “Is that…?”
“It might very well be. That’s what I’m here to find out.” I brushed past her. “Good evening, Miss…?”
The girl’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. After a moment, she cleared her throat and tried again. “Dole. Abigail Dole.”
“Miss Dole.” I smiled graciously. “Won’t you and?—”
I eyed the baby.
Abigail clutched him or her a bit closer. “Bess.”
How deplorably common. I imagined my late Aunt Charlotte, Crispin’s mother, being faced with a grandchild named Bess, and could only be grateful that she—my aunt—was dead and would be spared the indignity.
