Page 5 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
“It’s not like he’d come on to you. You’re his nephew.”
“I’d still be able to tell. And thank you for putting that particular image in my head, Pippa.”
We both grimaced, since it had now made its way into mine, as well. Bad enough to consider Uncle Harold—who really was a particularly dry old stick—having relations with his wife, which he must have done at some point or Crispin wouldn’t exist. Much worse to contemplate him with another man.
“God knows where Crispin gets it,” Christopher added thoughtfully.
His proclivity towards being a cad, I assumed, since Crispin certainly had none of Christopher’s preferences for his own gender.
“Must be from Aunt Charlotte. Unless your grandfather was quite the lad in his day.”
“I tend to think of Grandfather as having always been a desiccated old mummy,” Christopher said, “but I suppose he might have been different when he was young. He was almost ninety when he died. What would that make it?” He counted on his fingers. “Eighteen-sixty or thereabouts when he was our age? Too long ago for me to have any idea what he was like back then.”
I wasn’t even a Sutherland, so I knew less than he did. “I don’t suppose there are family stories?”
“No,” Christopher said. “Youthful indiscretions aren’t something you want to pass down to your children and children’s children after you settle down, I assume. Do you plan to tell your children that their father was a rake before he married you?”
I slanted him a beady eye. “How do you know that my husband will be a rake? Maybe I’ll end up with a perfectly lovely gentleman who barely even kissed a woman’s hand before he met me.”
Christopher smirked, and I sighed. He said, “One of you ought to know what you’re doing, don’t you think?”
“I know what I’m doing. Or at least I know the theory. I had The Talk with Aunt Roz, too, don’t forget.”
He nodded. “Dad got around a bit before he met Mum, apparently. That’s why Grandfather married him off so young. And Mum was even younger. If you were her, you would be married and have Francis already.”
“I’m glad I’m not,” I said. “I’m not ready for a husband or babies.”
Christopher shook his head. “Nor am I.”
“Good thing little Bess doesn’t belong to either of us.”
Christopher nodded. “Just out of curiosity, did she…?”
“She looked enough like you to be yours.”
He made a face. “So she looked enough like Crispin to be his, too.”
“Or enough like Francis to be his,” I confirmed. “For that matter, she looked enough like all three of you to be Uncle Harold’s or Uncle Herbert’s. Not that that’s likely, I suppose.”
“Probably not,” Christopher agreed, “although I suppose theyareboth the grandsons of a Duke.”
“A very late Duke. When did your great-grandfather die?”
“Before I had a chance to meet him,” Christopher said, “but that doesn’t make him any less of a Duke. Or them any less his grandsons.”
No. But— “Surely you’re not thinking that Uncle Harold or your father would have seduced this poor waif and gotten her with child? They were both married last year. Aunt Charlotte was still alive. And I’m sure you’re not accusing your father of cheating on your mother?”
“Of course not,” Christopher said. “My father wouldn’t do that. And while I have no idea what Uncle Harold would or wouldn’t do, I don’t imagine it’s likely. She didn’t look like Aunt Charlotte, did she? The girl?”
“Abigail Dole,” I said. “And she looked more like Aunt Charlotte than Aunt Roz. Petite and girlish. But dark instead of fair. She looked nothing at all like Lady Laetitia Marsden or Johanna de Vos. Or for that matter like Millicent Tremayne or Lady Violet Cummings or the Honorable Cecily Fletcher or…”
“I get it.” He held up a hand. “You can stop. If you’re going to run down the entire list of Crispin’s conquests, we’ll be here all night.”
“We’ll be here all night anyway,” I told him. “We live here. At any rate, you have to admit he has a type.”
“And she wasn’t it?”
I shook my head. “She was small and dainty, pretty in an understated, old-fashioned sort of way. Not St George’s type at all.”
