Page 55 of Mischief at Marsden Manor
“A bit like thistle,” Collins said, “but less prickly. Spiky with pale purplish flowers.”
“We could take a stroll down the lane,” Christopher suggested, “and see what we see.”
I nodded. That was exactly what I wanted. The atmosphere inside wasn’t conducive to my peace of mind. Not between Francis being angry at me over Wolfgang, and Laetitia giving me attitude over Crispin, and Crispin himself being upset with me over Laetitia… although he was out here with us, and might choose to come on the walk, too, so I might not necessarily get away from him by strolling down the lane.
“I’d come with you,” he said, and I steeled myself, “but I suppose my fiancée is likely to be looking for me. I should go inside and do my duty vis-à-vis our guests.”
I had, perversely, my mouth open to tell him that he didn’t owe either the guests or Laetitia anything, but I shut it again when Christopher pinched me warningly. “That sounds like a good idea, old chap.”
“We’ll let you know if we come across anything that looks like it could be pennyroyal,” I told Collins, who nodded.
“I’d better get started on my search of the guest rooms. If you wouldn’t mind, Lord St George?”
He nodded towards the back door. Crispin glanced at Christopher, who gave him a reassuring nod—I have no idea what the reassurance was for, but they knew each other well enough to communicate wordlessly a lot of the time—and then they went off in one direction, into the back of the house, and we went off in the other, across the lawn and around the corner towards the lane.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“What was that about?”I asked Christopher a few minutes later, after we had reached the lane and were ambling in the direction of the village, with Marsden Manor behind us and the Dower House, Constance’s late mother’s house, looming up ahead.
He shot me a glance. “What?”
“That look you gave each other. I thought you and I were adept at speaking telepathically, but so are you and St George.”
“He’s worried,” Christopher said.
“Well, of course he is. If I had tied myself to Laetitia Marsden for the rest of my natural life, I’d be worried, too.”
He snorted. “Not about that. About the murder.”
“It might not have been a murder.”
He glanced at me. “That isn’t the impression you’ve been giving so far.”
I shrugged, eyes on the ditch beside the road where I was trying to spot something that looked like a thistle but wasn’t. “I have no idea what happened. But there are only so many scenarios that work. Murder is one of them.”
“One,” Christopher said, “she was pregnant and didn’t want to be, so she took the pennyroyal herself to restart her flow, and it had unintended consequences.”
I nodded. “Crispin told me that he didn’t think she would do that, but he could be mistaken. She might have given him that impression deliberately, so he wouldn’t do anything to stop her, or he might have simply misread her behavior. Or he could be lying, of course.”
“He’d have no reason to lie unless he was involved,” Christopher said, “and he can’t have been. You said it yourself: if he hasn’t been with her in six months…”
“He might have lied about the six months.”
“That wouldn’t change the fact that you already knew he’d had relations with her in the past. If he did it again, it’s not as if it would change your opinion of him.”
No, of course it wouldn’t. I had known St George for the cad he was for a while now, and finding out that he had bedded Cecily Fletcher in the recent past as well as half a year ago, would have made no difference to my opinion of him whatsoever.
“That wouldn’t be why he’d lie about it, though, Christopher. He doesn’t care what I think of him. But if the baby was his…”
“It wasn’t,” Christopher said. “He would never kill the mother of his unborn child, nor do anything to harm the baby.”
“He’s engaged to Laetitia…” I began, and got a jaundiced look for my trouble.
“That’s hardly his fault, is it?”
I sniffed. “It certainly is. Although I suppose I’ll accept a small part of the blame, too.”
Christopher nodded, satisfied, and moved on. “It would be different if he had proposed to Laetitia because he loves her. But he doesn’t. Nor does he—or did he—love Cecily Fletcher. But if that baby had been his, he would have done the right thing. And I don’t think he would have cared one way or the other whetherhe ended up marrying Cecily or Laetitia. Laetitia Marsden isn’t important enough to him that he’d commit murder over her. Certainly not the murder of his own heir.”
