“Or we could ask Flossie,” I added. “Maybe she’d lend it to us.”
“We’d never be able to pay her back,” Christopher protested. “And then I’d probably end up having to marry her eventually anyway, because I’d have no other choice.”
“So Aunt Roz?”
“It will probably have to be,” Christopher said morosely. “Francis doesn’t have any more money than I do. You don’t, either. Nor does Crispin, for that matter, although he could probably raise some on his expectations. Grandfather isn’t going to live forever. But he wouldn’t do that for me. Why would he?”
No reason at all. “So Aunt Roz.”
“Or your version of an engagement. It’s worth thinking about.”
“Then give it some thought,” I told him. “If you decide to propose, let me know. Or not. It might be better if I look surprised.”
Christopher said he’d keep that in mind, and we walked on in silence as he—presumably—gave it some thought. Or pondered how he might come up with a thousand pounds to pay off Grimsby. Which was the same thing, really.
We went back insidebefore tea and separated at the top of the stairs, for Christopher to go into the east wing and me to go into the west. For some reason, which was especially inexplicable now that we shared a flat in London, Aunt Charlotte had seen fit to put us on entirely opposite sides of the house. My room was as far into the west wing as Christopher’s was into the east. It would be a ten minute walk to get from one to the other should we decide to visit one another, and it would have to be done along the main hallway, since there was no secret passage leading from the west wing to the east.
At any rate, I trudged along to my room, where I removed the skirt, blouse, jacket, and shoes I had traveled and walked in, and slipped into an afternoon dress I thought Lady Charlotte might not object to. It was a navy blue and white crepe de chine, with a floppy bow on one hip and a big, flouncy collar, and it reached below my knees, so wasn’t too terribly daring. I paired it with pale gray stockings and blue strap shoes with gray trim, and since I wouldn’t be wearing a hat inside the house, I tucked a jeweled bobby pin into my hair just above one ear, turned back and forth in front of the mirror, and called it good.
There didn’t appear to be anyone else rooming near me, or at least I heard no voices as I walked the corridor towards the central branch of the house. Francis was next to Christopher in the east wing, I assumed, across the hall from Crispin’s set of rooms, and I knew Uncle Harold and Aunt Charlotte had rooms over there, too. Uncle Herbert and Aunt Roz took the matching rooms on this side when they were visiting, and in the old days, when we’d all come to Sutherland Hall together, all three of the boys—Francis, Robert, and Christopher—had been in the rooms surrounding mine. Now I was the only one left. If I screamed in the night, no one would hear a thing.
Not that I was likely to scream in the night, I told myself. That kind of thing only happened in detective novels.
The main hallway was just as empty as the west wing had been, and I made my way to the top of the central staircase and started down. I could hear a murmur of voices from the salon, and the clinking of porcelain and, possibly, crystal. Whatever else had been going on today, everyone seemed to be getting along now.
My heels clacked across the marble floors, and then I appeared in the doorway, to see that there was a good reason for that. Uncle Harold was missing, and so was Aunt Charlotte. Francis was likewise gone. Christopher and Crispin were engaged in a low-voiced conversation on one side of the room, while Aunt Roz was manning the teapot. She glanced up when I walked in, and gave me a smile. “That’s a lovely dress, Pippa. Tea?”
“Yes, please.” I looked around. “I expected there to be more people here.”
Over by the fireplace, Christopher and Crispin both turned at the sound of my voice. The former gave me a sweet smile, and the latter a sneer. I rolled my eyes and turned away, but not before contemplating, again, how different two men can be when they look so much alike.
Christopher and Crispin were born within a couple of months of each other, and of course they share the same last name, even if Crispin adds an Honorable to the front of his. When they went to Eton as part of the same year, everyone thought they were siblings. And not just brothers, but twins. Perhaps even identical twins, who aren’t truly identical if you look at them closely, but certainly fraternal twins.
They’re the same height, and probably the same weight, too. Their features are almost identical, with the same heart-shaped face, slightly pointed chin, and wider cheekbones. Christopher’s nose is perhaps just a shade longer, while Crispin has a scar above his left eyebrow where he ran into a tree at one point and cut his skin open. His hair is a shade lighter, more ashy than Christopher’s, due to Aunt Charlotte being a silvery blonde, but that difference isn’t terribly easy to spot when they both keep their hair slicked back. And of course his eyes are a cool gray, whereas Christopher’s are a warm sky blue.
And that’s really where the difference lies. Their features are mostly the same, but the expressions they put on them are vastly different. Christopher looks warm and friendly and approachable. Crispin, like his mother, looks like he’s constantly enduring a bad smell. At the moment, he was eyeing me like something that had crawled out from under a flat rock.
“Honestly,” I told him across the room, “if you’re not careful, your face will stay that way, and then what will you do? You won’t get a girl to like you if you look like you can’t stand to be in the same room with her, you know.”
Aunt Roz smirked, but kept her face averted from her son and nephew while she poured and doctored my tea. Milk and one sugar.
Crispin rolled his eyes. “I’ve gotten plenty of girls to like me, Darling. Which you know perfectly well, as you brought it up earlier. All on your own, too. Pretty much the only girl who doesn’t like me, is you.”
“Well, that’s certainly true,” I told him. “And small wonder, really. What’s wrong with the way I look, exactly? Why are you looking at me like that?”
His face immediately turned bland. “Like what?”
“Like I smell and you don’t like my new dress. Or my shoes or my ankles or my stockings or my calves.”
I stuck out a foot and wiggled it. He flushed, which would have been endearing in anyone else, and was frankly laughable in someone with his reputation. But before I could tweak him about it, Aunt Roz handed me the cup and saucer. “Here you are, Pippa. Why don’t you find yourself a seat? I’m sure the others will be along shortly.”
It was an order more than a request. I was pushing Crispin, and she wanted me to stop.
When Aunt Roz asks something of me, I tend to do it, so I abandoned the quarrel and headed for one of the sofas, where I crossed one leg over the other and stirred my tea without making the spoonclinkagainst the inside of the cup while I waited for something to happen.
When it did, it wasn’t what I expected. After a few seconds, Christopher muttered something to Crispin—“Watch this,” maybe—and came over to me. But instead of sitting down beside me so we could converse, he dropped to the floor in front of me instead. “Philippa Darling,” he intoned, and from somewhere else in the room—Crispin, or more likely Aunt Roz—I heard what was surely a quickly indrawn breath.
But that was as far as any of us got, because now the proposal—if that was what it was going to be, and I assumed, from the fact that he was down on one knee in front of me, that it was—was interrupted by a lot of noise from outside the room.
