Page 38 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
Aunt Roz had nothing to say to that. Nor did Uncle Herbert. They exchanged a glance.
“Do you need us for anything?” Christopher asked as he got to his feet.
His mother shook her head. “No, Christopher, dear. You two go on upstairs and rest. Supper at eight in the dining room. Black tie.”
Christopher nodded and held out his hand to me. “Come along, Pippa.”
“Coming,” I said, and let him pull me to my feet.
CHAPTERNINE
We werean uneven number at dinner, which is what happens when you have a family with a lot of sons and no daughters. Although Francis not turning up ended up for the best, since Aunt Roz was able to put Geoffrey Marsden to her left, with Constance beside him. Then came Uncle Harold, and then Euphemia, Lady Marsden. Uncle Herbert sat on the other end of the table with Crispin on his left. That was unorthodox, but it allowed us to maintain a man-woman-man formation for the rest of the table. Laetitia sat next to Crispin, Christopher next to Laetitia, and then there was me between Christopher and Laetitia’s father, who was on Aunt Roz’s right.
Speaking for myself, I was delighted with the arrangement. I was a bit too close to Lord Geoffrey for comfort, but I thought I could trust that he wouldn’t try to play footsie with me practically under the eye of Aunt Roz and his father. The first time he accidentally kicked Aunt Roz or the Earl trying to get to me would hopefully put a stop to that. And I was also at a safe distance from both Uncle Harold, whom I still wanted to scream at, and from Lady Laetitia, who never failed to get on my nerves. I had Constance across from me, and Christopher on my right, and the Earl of Marsden turned out to be pleasant enough for the few minutes I was forced to converse with him.
“So you’re Annabelle’s daughter,” he said. “And you went to the Godolphin School with little Connie.”
I nodded. “I did, Lord Marsden.”
“Call me Maurice, my dear. And how did you like Godolphin?”
We conversed on Godolphin—the school I had attended while Christopher and Crispin had been away at Eton—and then the next course was served and the Earl of Marsden—pardon me, Maurice—returned his attention to Aunt Roz and I returned mine to Christopher.
The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the fact that Francis was gone. “Any idea where he is?” I asked Christopher under cover of wiping my mouth with a serviette.
He slanted me a look. “I expect the village pub, since all of the motorcars are still here and he’d hardly attempt to bicycle all the way to London.”
“Surely he wouldn’t go to Town, anyway? Not with a house party and an engagement to celebrate tomorrow?”
“Not sure he was thinking straight when he left,” Christopher said. “But at least if he’s on foot we won’t have to worry about him killing himself when he comes home, dead drunk, in the middle of the night.”
No, we wouldn’t. “I’m sure he’s all right,” I said, more for Constance’s benefit than for Christopher’s. She was sitting across the table and was hanging on our every word. “He’ll be back later tonight, no doubt, and then tomorrow Abigail will wake up and give us a definitive answer about the baby’s father, and then we’ll move on from there.”
Constance’s mouth opened, and then closed again.
“What?” I asked.
She lowered her voice so far that it was hard to hear it across the table. “What if it turns out to be Francis’s baby?”
“Then you’ll either marry him, knowing that he had sexual relations with another woman before he knew you, or you won’t, and he’ll deal with it on his own. At least he didn’t cheat.”
Constance’s jaw dropped at this rather brutal, but dare I say it, accurate, description of the situation. “But won’t he want to…?”
“Oh, no.” I shook my head. “She can’t force him to marry her, you know.”
I raised my voice a little on the last sentence, just to make sure that Crispin could hear me. “Francis loves you. If the baby is his, he’ll have to provide for her, I suppose. But nobody can force him to marry someone he doesn’t want to marry.”
Lady Euphemia eyed me from down the table, where she was seated between Uncle Herbert and Uncle Harold. “Would you marry a man who had sired a child with someone else, Miss Darling? Someone who then left that woman to raise the child on her own?”
I think it was intended to be a trap. I’m fairly certain I was expected to return a negative answer. However, expectations often make me go out of my way to do the opposite, whether I actually agree with what I’m saying or not.
I eyed her back. “If I loved him, I suppose I would. Although if I loved him, he wouldn’t be the sort of man who would abandon a woman he had gotten with child, would he?”
She hummed. “I don’t know, Miss Darling. Would he?”
“I don’t know, Lady Marsden. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
I hadn’t meant anything by it, other than that I wasn’t in love with anyone at the moment, and this was all a hypothetical situation, as far as I was concerned. But her nostrils flared as if I had said something significant. She exchanged a glance with her daughter, and then went back to her discussion with Uncle Harold. He gave me a cold sort of look, too. I guess he was still upset with me from earlier. Aunt Roz arched her brows questioningly.
