I sighed. Of course I wanted to know. But it was galling to have to ask Crispin for the information. “Is something bad going on?”
“You could say that,” Crispin said, with what I can only describe as a snigger. “Cousin Francis has a drug habit. Aunt Roslyn has been selling gossip to the London tabloids to pay for it.”
I scowled at him. “That’s hardly a laughing matter.”
“Of course it is,” Crispin said. “Aunt Roslyn selling her friends’ secrets for money? News about who’s sleeping in separate rooms and whose piles are acting up? How can you say that isn’t funny?”
Of course that part of it was funny. Or perhaps not so funny to the people with the piles who were dealing with the separate rooms. But that wasn’t what I’d been referring to, and Crispin knew it.
He took in the look on my face, and added, “Oh, come off it, Darling. You’re no more concerned about Francis than I am. Besides, it’s not like it’s news. Anyone who knows him, and knows anything about self-medication, can tell what he’s been up to. It’s been going on for years.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?”
“It’s none of my affair,” Crispin said, “is it? If Cousin Francis needs something to help him cope with what happened in the war, who am I to get between him and his crutches?”
“But…”
“We all cope in our own ways, Darling. Francis is a grown man. If this is how he chooses to deal with his problems, it’s his concern.”
“But that’s unkind! It’s unhelpful!”
“He has the right to go to hell in his own way,” Crispin said coolly. “And I have problems of my own.”
I snorted. “Let me guess. A balance at Fortnum & Mason? Some girl you talked into thinking you care, who won’t leave you alone now that you’ve gotten what you want from her?”
He leaned closer, teeth gritted. “Listen, Darling…”
But before he could continue, something behind my shoulder snared his attention, and he straightened, the sneer dropping off his face in favor of bland nothingness. “Kit.”
“Crispin.” Christopher glanced from me to him and back. “I heard you all the way down the hall.”
Crispin took a step back and shot his cuffs. Christopher waited another moment to see if he was going to say anything else, and when he didn’t, turned to me. “We have to go, Pippa. Meeting with Grimsby, remember.”
I nodded. “Did everything go all right next door?”
He was a little pale, to be honest, as if the conversation had been more taxing than expected. Or perhaps it was just a reaction left over from the events of last evening. Late night, early morning, exciting escape from a raid in the company of someone tall, dark, and dangerous.
Or perhaps it was the prospect of talking to Grimsby, whose demeanor had certainly come across as ominous. I thought I saw a glint of interest in Crispin’s beady eye, but it was easily extinguished when I glared at him. He arched a brow my way, but didn’t say anything.
“Fine,” Christopher said. “We’ll see you later, Crispin.”
He took my arm. Crispin murmured something polite and non-committal, and stayed behind in the Duchess’s Chamber when Christopher towed me through the door and into the hallway.
“He’s going to go back into the passage as soon as we’re out of the way,” I informed Christopher when I thought we had traveled far enough that Crispin wouldn’t hear me. “That’s what he was doing when I came in.”
“Hard to blame him for that when you were planning to do the same thing, isn’t it?”
He didn’t look at me as he said it, just kept pulling me along towards the bedroom he usually stays in when we’re visiting the hall.
“He must have been up there for a while,” I said. “Long enough to hear about both Francis and Aunt Roz.”
Christopher slanted me a look. “Something going on with my mother and brother?”
“Francis has a drug habit,” I told him, “and apparently your mother is supporting it by unearthing secrets about the upper classes and selling them to some tabloid in London. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but that’s what Crispin said was going on.”
“My mother is keeping my brother in illicit drugs by exchanging gossip for money?”
Christopher turned the corner into the east wing of Sutherland Hall, tugging me along.
