Page 22 of Peril in Piccadilly
“Not that,” I muttered. I had thought he had a better sense of self-preservation that that, frankly. I mean, we both knew he was in love with someone else, didn’t we?
“Do you mean to tell me,” I said for clarification, “that all those times when I told him he ought to man up and tell the girl he was in love with that he fancied her…”
Christopher nodded. “You were talking about yourself.”
“And when we discussed it with your mother and father before going to Dorset for the engagement party last month, and I suggested that we find her and put her wise…”
“Still talking about yourself.”
“And Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert knew it?”
“Of course they knew it,” Christopher said. “Everyone knows it, Pippa. Mum and Dad, Constance and Francis, Laetitia…”
That explained the animosity, at any rate. I had wondered about that.
“Uncle Harold?” I asked. “Aunt Charlotte?”
Christopher nodded. “Them, too. Grandfather, before he died. All the servants. Tom, of course. It’s not a secret.”
“So when we listened to Uncle Harold rant at Crispin that weekend in April…”
“Grimsby had just informed Grandfather of Crispin’s many failings,” Christopher said, “and Grandfather called both Uncle Harold and Crispin on the carpet. Crispin didn’t want to listen, it seemed, and his father followed him to his rooms to, I assume, try to talk some sense into him.”
And we had heard them screaming at one another when we came out of Christopher’s room to go outside for a walk.
“Uncle Harold called me a common chippy,” I said, thinking back, “and a foreigner to boot.”
Funny how I had never connected those words to myself. I had racked my brain trying to think of other women of Crispin’s acquaintance who might fit the criteria, and had mostly come up empty, at least after Johanna de Vos bit the dust. It had never once occurred to me that I fit the parameters myself.
Christopher nodded. “He also said that Crispin should marry someone else and keep you as a mistress. As I recall, Crispin didn’t like that much.”
No, he hadn’t. “So when Aunt Charlotte put me as far into the west wing at Sutherland Hall as she put you into the east wing…”
“It wasn’t me she was trying to keep you away from,” Christopher said.
“Would that be why she hid the pages from Grimsby’s notebook in my room, too, do you suppose? So I could see all of St George’s misdeeds in black and white, and I would detest him all the more?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Christopher said. “You’ve never pretended to like Crispin, but I suppose she thought it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that you continued to despise him.”
No doubt. I shivered, and then folded my arms across my chest to hide how the thought made me cold all the way down to the marrow. Never mind the fact that she had tried to kill me; what parent does something like that to her only child?
Then again, we were talking about the upper crust, weren’t we, with their titles and estates hanging in the balance, and it wasn’t as if Uncle Harold and Aunt Charlotte had been a love match, was it? I supposed they both felt that if they could deal with each other for the sake of the reputation and fortune of the Sutherlands, then so could Crispin.
And at least he was allowed to keep me as a mistress on the side, the lucky boy.
“Do you think he would have done it?” I asked.
Christopher squinted at me. The water had finished boiling now, and he was dealing with the strainer and tea leaves. “Done what?”
I made a face. Now that I had to deliberately articulate what had fallen out of my mouth more or less without input from my brain, I wished I had kept my mouth shut. “Married Laetitia and tried to keep me as a mistress.”
Christopher turned to me. His eyebrows rose. “Are you mad?” he wanted to know.
I opened my mouth and then closed it again when he continued. “Entirely aside from the fact that he’s in love with you, and that he wouldn’t insult you that way, or for that matter use you that way?—”
He had better not.
“—is there anything about your relationship with Crispin that would indicate that you would allow him to survive after coming to you with such a suggestion?”
