Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The Duke of Sutherland had made himself comfortable in our small two-bed flat.
When we let ourselves in and crossed the parquet floor of the foyer, we found him in the sitting room, with a glass of brandy and a cigarette, and his feet up on the coffee table.
Although he had, if nothing else, taken his shoes off.
He smirked at us over the back of the Chesterfield. “Afternoon, Kit. Darling.”
Darling is my name, an Anglicization of the German Schatz, and not an endearment.
Or so I had always believed. Until October, when Christopher sat me down and explained Crispin’s feelings for me, and I realized that perhaps every snarled and smirked, “Darling,” over the last five years had meant something different to him than they had to me.
“St George,” I retorted, and then thought better of it. I even managed a somewhat sardonic dip at the knees. If a curtsey can be sardonic, that is. “Your Grace.”
He swung his feet off the table and put his glass there instead. “Don’t you dare. You of all people—”
“I don’t know that I can bring myself to call you by your first name,” I demurred, “my lord.”
He made a face. “St George is fine. It’s not as if there’s another one of those.”
No, there wasn’t. The Viscount St George, Crispin’s title until a few weeks ago, was the heir to the Duke of Sutherland. While Uncle Harold was duke, Crispin had been viscount. Now that Crispin was duke, his son would be viscount, if he ever had one.
“I’m sure you’ll remedy that in no time,” I said sweetly. “Less than two weeks until your wedding night, isn’t that right?”
He grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”
“Don’t be cruel, Pippa,” Christopher admonished me. “Things are difficult enough without that, wouldn’t you say?”
I would, in fact, say that. Although I still maintained that Crispin’s predicament was mostly of Crispin’s own making and shouldn’t be our problem.
“Be a dear,” Christopher added, “and go to your room for a bit, so Crispin and I can have a chat?”
Go to my room? What was I, eleven?
“Oh, very well.” But only because I wanted to get out of my wet mackintosh and hat anyway. “How much privacy do you need?”
“I’m sure the time it’ll take you to change will be sufficient,” Christopher said and turned away from me. “Top off, Crispin?”
He headed for the bar cart as Crispin reached for his glass. I made my way into the hallway and from there to the door to my room. I could hear their voices pick up as I shut it behind me, but they spoke too softly for me to hear what was said.
It only took me a few minutes to change, of course.
I slipped out of street-clothes and into something more comfortable for sitting around the flat, and then I fluffed my hair in front of the mirror (brown bob, slightly wavy) and touched up my face before I decided I had waited long enough and made my way back to the sitting room.
They were both supplied with drinks by the time I got back, and were sitting in opposite corners of the Chesterfield, facing one another.
Crispin was holding a refreshed glass of brandy, while Christopher had outfitted himself with one of this favored concoctions: a mixed cocktail with little pearl onions and various garnishes.
“Where’s mine?” I wanted to know, hands on my hips as I eyed the empty table.
Or empty of drinks, anyway: there were several days’ worth of newspapers detailing the disappearance of Agatha Christie stacked there, along with an ashtray and various other paraphernalia.
The novelist had even managed to replace the new Duke of Sutherland on the cover of the Daily Yell, that was how big her story was.
Normally, Crispin and his doings take up all the available space in the tabloids—even more than usual now, two weeks after his father’s death and his sudden ascension to the title, and a week and a half before his nuptials to the beautiful Lady Laetitia.
“Sorry, Pippa,” Christopher said, and sounded it. “Other things on my mind.”
No doubt. I divided a look between them as I made my way to the bar cart. “Care to share?”
“Absolutely not,” Crispin said decisively, as Christopher shook his head. “But I have good news.”
“You do?” I got busy at the bar cart. “Did Laetitia elope with the butler so the wedding’s off?”
Neither of them said anything, so I turned back to look at them both. “What?”
“What’s with you and butlers, Darling?” Crispin wanted to know. “Tidwell is one thing—we all love Tidwell—”
I nodded. I do, indeed, love Tidwell. He’s the butler at Sutherland Hall, and I’ve always liked him. Much better than I’ve ever liked Crispin or his father, I might add. Tidwell was always the best part of visiting Sutherland Hall.
These days, I suppose Crispin is all right, although right up until the moment of his death, had I had to make a choice between who to save from a burning building, Tidwell or Uncle Harold, I would have dragged the butler out by his armpits before I bothered to spit on the late duke.
Crispin continued, “—but Laetitia is hardly likely to elope with Perkins, is she?”
It took me a second to remember that Perkins was the major domo at Marsden Manor, a frail specimen of advanced age with a bald head and a globular nose.
We had met him when we’d all been invited to attend the engagement celebration in Dorset in September.
And it was difficult to imagine anyone less likely to inspire passion in the gorgeous Laetitia.
Not that good looks are everything, of course, but still.
“I wasn’t thinking of Perkins,” I said. “I meant the chap at the Town house.”
The butler at Marsden House in London was a tall, rather distinguished individual of around fifty years of age.
Him, we had met when Laetitia’s bedroom had been burgled some two months ago, and the Sutherland diamonds had been targeted.
They were ostentatious, heavy things—a whole parure’s worth, although Laetitia had only been given the engagement ring and matching earrings so far; the rest of the parure would come to her as the rightful Duchess of Sutherland a week and a half from now.
“Thompson?” Crispin ventured.
I nodded. “That’s the one. Tall, good-looking bloke. He’s no Tidwell, of course, but if someone told me that Laetitia had eloped with him, I wouldn’t necessarily doubt it.”
Crispin made a face. So did Christopher, although in his case, it was amusement. “Don’t worry, Crispin. If Pippa had to choose between the two of you, she’d pick you over Tidwell.”
“Not certain that’s a compliment to me,” Crispin muttered.
I sniffed. “You can be certain it is not. Not only is Tidwell much nicer to me than you are, but he’s unattached, which you are not.”
Crispin rolled his eyes at that, but he didn’t protest.
“So if she hasn’t eloped,” I continued, bringing the conversation back to where it had originated, “and I’m certain we are not so lucky as to have had her succumb to a mysterious incurable illness overnight, what’s the good news?”
“Nothing to do with Laetitia at all,” Christopher said cheerfully. “Crispin has agreed to motor us to Surrey tomorrow.”
“Really?” I looked from one to the other of them. Christopher nodded brightly. Crispin looked sullen, but he nodded, too.
“Perhaps I would choose you over Tidwell after all,” I told him generously. “The Hispano-Suiza weighs in your favor, as does your willingness to play chauffeur.”
He snorted. “Much obliged, Darling.”
“It would be helpful if you weren’t already engaged to marry someone else, of course.”
He nodded solemnly. “Of course. Not much I can do about that at this late date, I’m afraid.”
“You could elope,” Christopher suggested. “Stick Pippa in the passenger seat of the H6 and run up to Scotland.”
“There speaks the historian,” Crispin told him fondly, without commenting on the fact that he and I would be eloping together.
“They haven’t performed weddings in Gretna Green in decades, Kit.
These days, getting married in Scotland requires the same process as getting married anywhere else.
Including time for the banns to be read. ”
“Besides,” I added—to Christopher, not Crispin, “I wouldn’t elope with him, anyway. Running off to get married in the face of being disinherited is one thing. Leaving a fiancée practically at the altar because you lack the courage to tell her you’ve changed your mind is quite another.”
There was a beat. Then—
“Are you calling me a coward, Darling?” Crispin’s voice was even, perhaps even a bit too much so. Christopher winced.
“If the shoe fits,” I said, and the wince deepened.
“Pippa—”
Crispin held up a hand. Christopher subsided, but he looked miserable.
I guess he could sense, as I could, that things were about to blow.
I wished, not for the first time, that I’d been born with the sense to be conciliatory.
I wasn’t. I challenge, and get challenged, and challenge right back.
There’s no part of me that’s comfortable with backing down, even when I see the cliff right in front of me.
“I’ll have you know,” Crispin said, “Darling—” and the disdain with which he pronounced my name ought to have disabused anyone of any notion that he nurtured fond feelings for me, “that the shoe does not fit. I know you think very little of me—”
He’d got that absolutely right, and I had my mouth open to tell him so, but he didn’t let me get a word in.
“—but I am not a coward. Just because I don’t see the sense in giving up a good thing—”
“A good thing?!”
My voice reached the approximate range that only bats could hear, and this time they both winced.
I shot Christopher an apologetic look—Crispin could look out for himself—but carried on.
“You’re talking about tying yourself to a woman you don’t love for the rest of your life!
In what world is that a good thing? Just because she’s willing to put up with you in exchange for the money and title—”