Page 75 of Mischief at Marsden Manor
Which probably meant that he hadn’t been too distracted to put moves on Violet when the opportunity came along.
“Are you…” Aunt Roz hesitated, “involved with Lord Geoffrey, Lady Violet?”
Violet laughed. Harshly. “Good Lord, no. We all know better than that. It was just some fun last night.”
The silence that followed rang with something more than just the absence of sound, but I was outside the door and couldn’t tell what it was. It’s hard to make determinations based solely on the sound of someone’s voice and no cues beyond that.
“You both knew Miss Fletcher well,” Aunt Roz said. They both made confirmatory noises. “Why do you suppose she didn’t tell you who was responsible for her predicament?”
There was a beat.
“She didn’t know?” Violet suggested blandly.
“Is that likely?” Aunt Roz wanted to know. She was still soft-spoken and courteous. Had it been me in the family way without knowing who was responsible, her reaction certainly would have been a lot more shrill, but then she had no emotional attachment to Cecily Fletcher.
“No,” Olivia said, with—I guessed—a scowl at Violet. “She knew.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told us,” Olivia said.
“She told you who?—?”
“No,” Olivia said. “She didn’t tell us his name. But she said he was someone she couldn’t marry.”
“Someone she couldn’t marry? Or someone who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—marry her?”
“It’s the same thing,” Olivia said.
It most certainly wasn’t. Bilge couldn’t marry Cecily because he was already married to Serena, and Cecily couldn’t marry Bilge for the same reason. But that’s very different from not being able to marry Geoffrey because he was a cad or Dominic Rivers because he was—or had been—a dope dealer.
Crispin could have proposed to the girl he claims to be in love with at any point these last few months, as there was nothing actually stopping him from doing so, at least until he got engaged to Laetitia. The reason he hasn’t done, is because his father would disown him, and then he and his lady-love would have to crawl off to the Continent to live in squalor, and he doesn’t want to do that. He calls it that he can’t marry her, but in truth, he could if he wanted to. It’s the consequences that have kept him from proposing.
And now, of course, there was Laetitia.
But at any rate, there are lots of degrees between can and can’t, and Aunt Roz was absolutely correct in inquiring into which one this was.
Not that Olivia seemed inclined to acquiesce. “I told you both,” she said. “I don’t know who it is. She wouldn’t tell me. Just that they couldn’t be together.”
And there was yet another permutation of the same excuse. Couldn’t be together because he was married to someone else, or engaged to someone else, or in love with someone else, or because she was in love with someone else, or attached to someone else, or because her family would disown her, or his family would disown him, or because she couldn’t face the consequences of shacking up—in the literal sense—with Dominic Rivers somewhere in the squalor of—never mind the Continent—South London?
“Thank you for your time, girls,” Aunt Roz’s voice said from inside the room. Her footsteps were approaching the door, and I quick-stepped backwards, until I was standing outside my own door instead of outside Violet’s. By the time Aunt Roz stepped out into the hallway, I had my hand on the knob and the door halfway open, and was on my way in, innocently as you please.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You dirty little sneak,”Aunt Roz said, with no heat whatsoever, as she sat down on my bed and watched me peel out of my skirt and blouse. (Aunt Roz raised me, at least from the time I was eleven years old, so dressing and undressing in front of her is old hat.)
“I wanted to change anyway,” I answered, and let the skirt drop so I could step out of it. “I’ve worn these clothes all day.”
“It’s a bit early for an evening gown, isn’t it?”
“I thought I’d put on an afternoon frock for a few hours. Just to wear something different.”
Aunt Roz shrugged. “So how much did you hear while you were pressing your ear to the door?”
“The first thing I heard was Violet saying she couldn’t believe it. That Cecily would kill herself, I suppose. Or that she would take an overdose of pennyroyal on purpose.”
I dropped the peachy-pink frock over my head and yanked it down around my hips. It settled with a final shimmy. The current fashions are quite easy to manage. Nothing at all like the laced corsets and elaborate hairstyles of a few decades ago.
