It came from upstairs, and increased in volume as it came closer. With the shrillness of the delivery, it was difficult to make out the words, but eventually they isolated themselves into the same three syllables, over and over. “Dead! He’s dead! Dead!”
FIVE
It wasAunt Charlotte who was screaming, and who subsequently rushed through the door. By that point, Christopher had given up on whatever it was he’d been doing, and I had put the tea and saucer on the table next to the sofa and gotten to my feet, too. So had Aunt Roz. But it was Crispin who was first across the floor, and who scooped up his mother before she could collapse into a heap on the Bokhara.
“Dead,” she told him, as she clutched the lapels of his jacket, peering up into his face like the overwrought heroine in some desert drama. “Stone dead!”
And then her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped. Crispin blinked, but held on. For a moment we all stood there gaping, then Aunt Roz pulled herself together.
“Here.” She shooed her son and me away from the sofa. “Put her here, Crispin. Brandy, Christopher.”
I stepped out of the way as Christopher hurried off to the bar cart and as Crispin hauled his mother over to the sofa and dropped her, none too gently, onto the sage green damask. She made an “Oof”-sound when her back hit the rather firm cushions, so perhaps she wasn’t as overcome as it had seemed.
“Match,” Aunt Roz snapped out, and Crispin obligingly lit one and blew it out, before handing it over so Aunt Roz could wave it under Aunt Charlotte’s nose. Christopher, back with two fingers of brandy in a glass, hovered uncertainly on the other side of the sofa while Aunt Charlotte’s eyelids fluttered.
“There, now,” Aunt Roz said briskly—she has never been one to suffer fools gladly; probably the result of raising three boys and then an orphan girl. “You’re all right, Charlotte. Have a sip of this—” She grabbed the glass Christopher held out, and raised it to Aunt Charlotte’s lips, “and tell us what happened.”
“Dead,” Aunt Charlotte said. Another sip restored a bit of color to her cheeks, and seemed to have prodded her brain out of the track it had been in, into one with a few more words. “I brought the tea up, and found him.”
“And he was dead,” Aunt Roz clarified.
Aunt Charlotte nodded, clutching the glass.
“Henry?”
Another nod. Christopher drew in a sharp breath, and Crispin blanched. It’s hard to tell, admittedly, because he’s so pale to begin with—Aunt Charlotte is, too—but all the color vanished from his cheeks, leaving him like an alabaster statue, all white skin and colorless eyes.
“St George,” I said, and it was hard to get the words out, both because my lips felt weirdly stiff and because it was now truly his title, used properly for the first time. “Perhaps you should go upstairs and look?”
He eyed me, and then Christopher, and then me again. And then, finally, Christopher. “You’re older.”
“Two and a half months,” Christopher said. “You’re the heir.”
“You’re just as much his grandson as I am.”
“But this is your home, not mine.”
“Go together,” Aunt Roz said, “and stop behaving like children. I’ll take care of Charlotte.”
Christopher and Crispin glanced at one another again, and then moved as one towards the door. Since I hadn’t been told to stay, and since I felt no compunction to take care of Crispin’s mother, I only hesitated for a moment before I scurried after them. “I’ll be back,” I told Aunt Roz over my shoulder.
She waved me off. “I’ve got it under control. Go hold their hands. They’re both clearly unequal to the task.”
I wasn’t sure I would say that, exactly. They were both moving steadily towards the staircase now, even if Crispin was still too pale and Christopher practically green. He looked like he was trying to keep himself from vomiting. When he heard my heels clacking on the floor behind him, he glanced over his shoulder. “Pippa?”
“I’m coming with you. Dead body, remember?”
The corner of his mouth twitched before he got it under control again. “You don’t have to.”
“I don’t mind,” I said, as they started up the stairs with me two steps below. “Unless you don’t want me there. He wasn’t my grandfather, after all.”
And there had never been much love lost between us. Like Aunt Charlotte, and to a lesser degree Uncle Harold—and of course Crispin—the duke had never seemed to like me much. I probably didn’t have the correct feelings about this situation. Mostly, I had been angry with him today, for telling Christopher he had to marry me when he didn’t want to marry anyone. I certainly had no feelings of loss at the news of his death.
But he had been Christopher’s grandfather, and Christopher was my best friend. He had been there for me when I got the letter saying that my mother had died, and I wanted to be here for him now. I even felt a tiny bit bad for Crispin, to be honest. Not that I planned to act on that in any way. I just knew how hard it is to lose family.
“Don’t be silly, Pippa,” Christopher said and reached a hand back for me. “Of course we want you.” His fingers wrapped around mine. They were a bit cold, but steady. I curled mine back around his, for support.
He turned to Crispin. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance your mother is mistaken, is there?”
