Page 4 of Evil at the Essex House
Christopher nodded. Fervently.
“Better not let Tom see you look at another bloke like that,” I told him, and he flushed.
“Tom and I are friends, Pippa.”
“Of course you are,” I said fondly. “At any rate, I’m sure I did meet him when I was a child. It’s so long ago that it’s no wonder I don’t remember. And it might not have been a very momentous meeting.”
“Unlike when you met us.”
He smirked. I smirked back. “Quite unlike.”
The meeting between myself and the family that was to become my own had taken place on the passenger docks in Southampton in the very early days of August 1914. Things took some time to get going after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand at the end of June of that year. Kaiser Wilhelm II went on vacation to Norway for the best part of a month, and it wasn’t until he came back—and was unpleasantly surprised at the war machine that had been gearing up in his absence—that things really got going.
Wilhelm, in justice to him, did try to avoid the whole mess, but when war was declared between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in late July, there was very little choice, especially when Russia came down on Serbia’s side. Germany declared war on Russia on August 1stand sent troops into Luxembourg on August 2nd. They declared war against France on August 3rd, and England declared war on Germany the following day, after Germany invaded Belgium overnight.
After that, as the saying goes, it was just one damn thing after another. Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia on August 5th; Serbia on Germany on August 6th;Montenegro on Austria-Hungary on August 7thand on Germany on August 12th. France and Great Britain declared war on Austria-Hungary on August 10thand August 12th, respectively. Japan declared on Germany on August 23rd, Austria-Hungary on Japan on August 25th, and on Belgium on August 28th.
By then, I was installed in a room at Beckwith Place in Wiltshire, after the infamous meeting on the Southampton docks earlier in the month. My mother had taken me as far as Bremerhaven, and had put me on a steamship bound for England, while she returned to Heidelberg to await news about my father.
Uncle Herbert and Aunt Roz had a bigger motorcar back then, a seven-passenger Pierce Arrow Touring Car with room for the entire family. When I came down the gangplank, still wearing the same clothes I had left Heidelberg in three days earlier, everyone was on the dock, holding flowers and flags and a banner that readWELCOME HOME, PIPPA!written in several colors and different hands. Christopher was waving the Union Jack, and Robbie—home from Eton between Summer Term and Michaelmas, along with Francis—had a horn he was blowing into, the next best thing to my own marching band.
I burst into tears, of course. I was eleven years old, and had just spent two and a half days alone on a steamship, after having left my father and mother and the only home I had ever known. I was frightened and overwhelmed and exhausted and sad, and it was the first time anyone had called me Pippa, and this woman I didn’t know, who looked a bit like the mother I had left behind but not enough to make me actually comfortable, just stared at me as if she had seen a ghost—I didn’t learn until much later that I looked very much like my mother had done when she was my age—and there were people everywhere, and noise, and everyone spoke in a language I wasn’t used to hearing, and eventually it was Christopher, little, scrawny Christopher, who took the first step forward and bowed and offered me his handkerchief as he told me, formally, “Good afternoon, Philippa. I’m your cousin Christopher.”
Francis woke up after that, and so did Robbie, and so, eventually, did Aunt Roz. Francis called me Pipsqueak—a nickname that has lingered to this day, I’m sorry to say—and he and Robbie hauled my trunk to the Pierce Arrow and fastened it to the luggage rack in the back, and then they all bundled me into the rear of the vehicle with the three boys and we started on the long drive home to Wiltshire, while Robbie occasionally blew his horn at other motorcars on the road.
I shook the memories off and smiled at Christopher. “Definitely nothing like that. Nothing like when I met St George for the first time, either.”
That had been a few weeks later. We had been invited to Sutherland Hall, I assume so Duke Henry could get a look at the upstart German girl his youngest son had been saddled with, thanks to his daughter-in-law’s unruly sister—not that I realized any of that at the time. I had managed to settle into the family a bit by then. I still missed my parents, but my aunt and uncle had done a good job of making me feel welcome, and I had formed a fast friendship with Christopher. He was just a few months younger than I was, and he delighted in showing me his world. His older brothers both adored him, and they transferred that feeling to me with no questions asked, but they were both old enough to do things, and to be interested in doing things, that Christopher couldn’t do, so Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert were happy to provide him with a playmate of his own age, one who would be around more permanently than Crispin was.
Upon arrival at Sutherland Hall, the latter eyed me narrowly, and then suggested to Christopher that we should play hide-and-seek. Christopher said yes, and that experience set the tone for most of my interactions with St George from then on. He coolly informed Christopher that he, Christopher, wasit, and then, when Christopher covered his eyes and began to count to a hundred, Crispin grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him into the hedge maze.
I suppose I trusted him because he looked so much like Christopher, and because everyone else in the family had proved themselves to be lovely. I soon learned different. The yew hedges of the maze went by in a blur, and I had no hope of remembering the left and right turns he pulled me around with lightning speed, until we were in the middle of the maze, where he pointed to a wrought iron bench, said, “Wait there,” and ran off again.
And didn’t come back.
By the time Christopher found me, I was sobbing. I can still see Crispin’s smirk, and the malicious satisfaction in those cool, gray eyes.
“Bastard,” I said half-heartedly.
Christopher chuckled. “Hasn’t he ever apologized for that?”
“You know, I don’t believe he has. He may have uttered the words, ‘my apologies, Darling,’ at some point, but that’s hardly the same, is it?” Not when there was nothing sincere whatsoever about the drawled delivery.
Christopher shook his head.
“Not too long ago,” I added, “he informed me that it’s been a long time since he did anything truly awful to me, so I assume I’m supposed to let bygones be bygones, but I’m not sure I ever received an apology, no.”
“You’ll have to rectify that,” Christopher said with a smirk of his own, and I rolled my eyes.
“Enough, Christopher. I’m sick and tired of everyone insinuating that there’s something going on between me and St George. I wouldn’t have him gift-wrapped with a bow around his neck, and you know it.”
“It’s less about that—” Christopher began, and I shook my head.
“Spare me. Lady Laetitia is welcome to him.”
“No, she isn’t,” Christopher said.
No, she wasn’t. There was no part of me that wanted Laetitia Marsden as part of the family, and it wasn’t because I wanted Crispin for my own, to be clear. She had been told that he was in love with someone else, and she was determined to wed him in spite of it. One of these days I was concerned that she’d succeed in wearing him down. His father was rooting for it, and so, of course, was her mother. The rest of us thought it a fate worse than death, but if he wouldn’t stand up for himself, there was nothing any of us could do to prevent it.
