Page 12 of Evil at the Essex House
I sighed. “Of course.”
He made to push up. “Guess I’d better go ring up the Hall again.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Don’t be stupid, Christopher. I could understand it if you wanted to ring up Beckwith Place to let Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert know that a German count is sniffing around me. That’s something your parents might actually want to know. But Crispin won’t care.”
“Shows what you know,” Christopher said. “Although you’re right. I should ring up Beckwith Place and let Mum and Dad know.”
“Not until afterwards, Christopher. Please. It’s dinner with a gentleman I barely know in a public setting. Nothing to worry your parents about.”
“He’s German,” Christopher said.
I refrained from reminding him that so was I.
“That will only upset Francis,” I said instead. “There is no need to let them know. Not now. Please, Christopher.”
My cousin stuck his lower lip out and folded his arms across his chest, mutinously. “Fine. But if he asks you out again, I’m phoning home. And you will absolutely tell me everything that happens tomorrow. Every word, every gesture, every look.”
I promised I would, since I didn’t expect there to be anything very exciting to report. As I had pointed out, it was supper in the Savoy’s dining room, in full view of everyone there, with someone I had no recollection of meeting before. It was hardly an intimate occasion.
“And I’ll help you decide what to wear,” Christopher added. “And do your face.”
“I can do my own face, Christopher.”
“Not as well as I can,” Christopher said, which was true. “I won’t have anything to do tomorrow anyway. Not unless Tom makes it back from Sussex or Surrey or wherever it was he went. The least you can do is distract me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Very well, then. You can do my makeup. And pick out my frock. And make sure I look presentable for theGraf.”
“Thank you, Pippa.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “This will be fun.”
It wasn’t,of course. It was an hour of agony, sitting in front of my mirror while Christopher painted my face and fluffed and curled my hair and made sure every aspect of my appearance was as perfect as it could be. He picked out my frock—green silk with diamante accents, the same frock his deviousness, the Viscount St George, had once informed me made me look like a Bramley. A frock I could not now wear without hearing his voice in my head.
Christopher shook his head, as he leaned into me with an eyebrow pencil in his hand and the tip of his tongue sticking out as he concentrated. “You look nothing like a Bramley, Pippa. Besides, what Crispin said, at least according to Constance, was that you looked edible. Crisp and tart and good enough to eat, wasn’t it? Which is?—”
“Rude,” I said. “Completely improper. Indecent, even.” Lewd, to make a rhyme of it.
The corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk worthy of his cousin even as his eyes stayed on my eyebrows. “Oh, certainly. But it’s a compliment, isn’t it? ‘You look like a Bramley’ is no compliment. But saying that you look good enough to eat means that he’s not opposed to a taste?—”
“Ewww!” I made such a face that Christopher had to stop drawing and lift the pencil away from my skin. I flapped my hands at him. “That’s vile, Christopher. Disgusting. Horrid! As if I’d want St George’s mouth anywhere near my person. God only knows where it’s been!”
He sniggered. “God and Crispin, I assume.”
If the latter remembered everything he’d done with that mouth, and I doubted it. “I can’t believe you’d say something like that to me,” I said. “That’s repulsive, Christopher. How can you suggest such a thing?”
“I wasn’t the one who suggested it. He did.”
He leaned in with the pencil again and motioned to me to shut my eyes.
“He absolutely did not.” But I closed my eyes obediently. “That may have been what he said, but it wasn’t what he meant.”
“It was one hundred percent what he meant,” Christopher said, the strokes of the pencil light against my skin.
I wanted to shake my head, but refrained, since I didn’t want to end up with a streak of black across my forehead. “He can’t be that stupid.”
He let out a puff of laughter. It was warm against my face and smelled of cloves. “Oh, of course not. He knew you’d respond the way you did. But it was absolutely what he meant.”
“So why say it?”
“Because he knew it would get under your skin,” Christopher said. When I slitted my eyes he was peering intently at my eyebrows. I closed my eyes again, but not before I had seen the corner of his mouth tilt up. “Just look at you. It’s three months later, and you’re still thinking about it. He got what he wanted.”
