Page 8 of Evil at the Essex House
“That doesn’t mean you’ll get to see me in them now. Go pour us a couple of drinks. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“And you’ll tell me what happened?”
“Nothing happened!” He took a breath and added, “Yes, Pippa. I’ll tell you what happened. Even if it was nothing. A Gin Rickey, please.”
“Fine.” I shut his door with a little more force than necessary and took myself to the sitting room, where I got busy at the bar cart. By the time Christopher came back into the sitting room in his stocking feet andsansjacket, I had a cocktail waiting for him on the table, and was sipping one of my own. “Tell me everything.”
“You’re like a dog with a bone, Pippa.” He sank down on the Chesterfield and folded one elegant leg over the other as he lifted the glass to his mouth. After taking a sip, he added, “And not one of those cute lapdogs, either. A bulldog or something like that. All possessive and growly.”
“I’m not possessive,” I said. In a tone that might have led someone to call it a growl.
Christopher sniggered. It was definitively a snigger this time. “Of course, Pippa.”
“I’m not! I’m just curious. First Tom sends you a note—and don’t bother denying it, I saw the signature—and then you rush out to ring up Crispin. You can’t blame me for being worried.”
“I don’t blame you,” Christopher said, “but there’s nothing to worry about. I swear. They’re not related. Tom’s note wasn’t about business. He canceled an appointment we had made for tomorrow. He had to go away. And it was my idea to call Crispin. I thought he would like to know about theGrafvon Natterdorff.”
“The…?” My eyes bugged out. “Why on earth would you tell him about that, Christopher? You know he can’t be trusted with that sort of information.”
St George would cling to it like a bad odor, and rib me about it every chance he got.
“I thought he’d like to know,” Christopher said.
Fine. I rolled my eyes. What was done was done, and it probably wouldn’t matter, anyway. I might never hear from Wolfgang Albrechtvon und zuNatterdorff ever again. “How is he, then?”
Christopher shrugged. “He’s bored. Stuck in Wiltshire with nothing to do and no one to talk to. I offered to visit, but he declined. Said his father would never allow it.”
“Why on earth not?” It’s not like Christopher’s a bad influence. He was hardly likely to turn Crispin queer simply by spending time with him—St George had absolutely no proclivities in that direction, so it would take a lot more than simply Christopher’s presence to accomplish it—and while he does have a tendency to want to seduce anything that moves (anything female, that is) he wouldn’t try to seduce me if I came along (which I certainly would). And since neither Christopher nor I have any particular inclinations towards dope or excessive drinking, or gambling or any of the other vices Crispin had a tendency to fall victim to, it seems as if Christopher and I are among the safest visitors Uncle Harold could introduce to the Hall to keep his son company.
“It all seems to be part and parcel of my uncle’s plan to get Crispin to do the right thing vis-à-vis Lady Laetitia,” Christopher said.
I arched my brows. “The right thing, is it?”
He made a face. “You know what I mean. The right thing according to Uncle Harold. He thinks it’s time Crispin settles down. Laetitia Marsden meets the requirements. And he did?—”
He drew quotation marks in the air with two fingers on each hand, “—ruin her earlier this year.”
I scoffed. “I hardly think that she’d agree with you that she’s ruined, Christopher. She was the one who seduced him, wasn’t she, and not the other way around.”
“So it seems,” Christopher said.
“It’s the nineteen-twenties, for goodness’s sake. We’re all very modern now.”
He didn’t respond to that, and I added, “And it’s not as if he got her with child, is it?”
“No,” Christopher agreed, “it doesn’t appear as if he did.”
No, it didn’t. “If they were together in January, she’d be as big as a Zeppelin by now.”
And she wasn’t. Or at least she hadn’t been as of a few weeks ago. Lady Laetitia had been as willowy and beautiful as always during my cousin Francis’s engagement party in July.
“That’s if he hasn’t been with her since,” Christopher said.
I stared at him for a second before I opened my mouth. “When would he have had the chance? They weren’t together during that weekend at the Dower House. We were there, and he spent every night in a room with you and Francis. And he said no to her during the weekend at Beckwith Place. She announced it right out loud, remember?”
“But Uncle Harold invited the Marsdens to stop at Sutherland Hall on their way back to Dorset,” Christopher said. “People do have relations when you and I are not around too, you know.”
“Of course they do, Christopher. But they’re not going to misbehave at the Hall with his father and her parents there, surely?”
