Page 74 of Peril in Piccadilly
Crispin glanced over at me and shook his head. “He’s not dead, Philippa.”
I cleared my throat. “How can you be certain?”
“Because I refuse to believe differently until there’s no other choice,” Crispin said. After a moment, he sighed. “I suppose I ought to ring up Marsden Manor and let Laetitia know where I am.”
“And how is Laetitia going to feel when she hears that you’re in London with me?”
I wanted to bite my tongue as soon as the words came out, since they skirted a bit too close to things I wasn’t supposed to know, let alone talk about. He didn’t seem to think anything of it, though, so perhaps I regularly said things without realizing how they sounded. “She’ll have a conniption, most likely. A rather good thing she’s in Dorset and I’m in London.”
“Or you could simply not tell her,” I suggested. “It’s not as if something’s going on that she needs to know about.” Or anything that she would object to, really, if she did know.
He sent me a dubious look. “If I don’t tell her and she finds out, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“What’s the worst she can do? Break the engagement? You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be a relief.”
He couldn’t, it seemed, or at least he didn’t. “I did propose of my own free will, you know,” he said instead. “I’m sure you would rather die than tie yourself to Laetitia Marsden for the rest of your life—not that you could do—but it probably won’t be so bad.”
“How can you say that?” I tried, but he wasn’t even listening to me.
“She’s beautiful, and blue-blooded, and she loves me, and I like her well enough?—”
Hard to imagine how anyone could. However— “You don’t love her, though!”
He shot me a look. “I don’t have to love her, Darling. I never expected to marry for love. My parents certainly didn’t, and I assumed that I would end up hitched to someone they decided on sooner or later.”
“That’s fine if there’s no one else you want to marry,” I said, “but?—”
“But the girl I want doesn’t want me, and isn’t likely to ever want me. So I might as well settle for someone I can have.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. I certainly couldn’t tell him that he was wrong, not when I knew very well—now—who he was talking about, and when there was no part of me that wanted to marry him.
“And as I’ve told you before,” Crispin added, “Father would never approve. We’d have to run away and live in squalor on the Continent?—”
“Some women would be happy to live in squalor on the Continent.”
He looked pensive. “Laetitia might actually do it, if I asked. She seems inclined to give me whatever else I ask for…”
“Ugh,” I said. “That’s vile, St George.”
“I don’t see why.” He grinned. “But if it offends you, perhaps we should discuss something else.”
Perhaps we should. Although, if nothing else, this topic had taken my mind off Christopher and his plight for a minute or three.
“Do you plan to ring up Laetitia, then?” I asked.
“Perhaps not,” Crispin answered. “You’re right. With luck, perhaps we’ll find Kit before the end of the day, and then I can go back home without anyone being the wiser. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, etcetera.”
“If you say so. I still have to ring up Beckwith Place and give Aunt Roz an update. She’ll worry more if she doesn’t hear from me than if I ring her up and tell her that we know nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Crispin reminded me. “He’s not in hospital, he’s not in jail, and he’s not in the morgue. That’s not nothing. And be certain to mention that Sutherland House stands ready to accept them should they decide to motor up to Town for a few days. We can phone from there if you’d like.”
“There’s a call box just down the street from the flat,” I said. “It seems easier.”
He nodded. “I’ll take you there, then.”
“After you take me home. I want to check with Evans that there’s no news before I phone anyone.”
“As you wish.” We reached Shaftesbury Avenue and veered right towards Bloomsbury.
