“You’re a corker, Pippa.” He squeezed my hand, where it lay in the crook of his elbow. “The best friend any chap could ask for. But I don’t want you to have to do that. We’ll figure something out.”
“We’ll manage,” I agreed. “We always do. But you know I would do it for you if I had to, Christopher. I’d do a lot more than that.”
“I know. And on that note, it was lucky Aunt Charlotte found the body when she did. Otherwise we’d be engaged right now.”
I shuddered. “Lucky, indeed. Just imagine having to pretend we’re planning a wedding. Aunt Roz would be devastated when she found out the truth.”
“Mum loves you,” Christopher said.
“I’m well aware. But she doesn’t want me to marry you. Or you me.”
He shook his head. “I imagine my mother has a better idea of what’s going on than most of our relatives.”
Probably so. “Aunt Charlotte seemed more invested in the idea than I would have guessed. I got the distinct impression, when we arrived this afternoon, that she disliked me.”
“Aunt Charlotte dislikes most women,” Christopher said. “I think it comes from being so much younger than Uncle Harold, and blond. She always has to feel like she’s the most attractive woman in the room.”
“Well, she’s certainly much prettier than I’ll ever be.” Blonder, too. “But I’m at least twenty years younger, and that has to be worth something.”
“Indeed,” Christopher sniggered, and sounded, for a moment, unnervingly like his cousin. “Maybe she’s afraid you’re going to vamp Crispin.”
I snorted, in a very unladylike manner. “No chance of that. St George’s disdain for me is only outdone by mine for him. I’ll marry Crispin St George when hell freezes over.”
Christopher had nothing to say to that, and I added, “It sounds like he has someone else in mind, anyway. I wonder whether the late duke’s demise might have helped with that.”
“Or hurt it,” Christopher said. “Uncle Harold might be more against it than Grandfather was. He sounded like he was frothing at the mouth during that conversation we overheard. For a moment, I was afraid he hit Crispin.”
I nodded. “I thought the same thing. You don’t think he did it, do you?”
“I’m sure he has at some point,” Christopher said. “You have to admit, Crispin is eminently hittable.”
Of course he was. But that didn’t mean I wanted his father to abuse him.
Christopher must have been thinking the same thing, because he squeezed my hand. “It’s nice to have parents who don’t care who we marry, isn’t it?”
They were his parents, not mine, but if he wanted to share them with me, that was very nice of him, so I squeezed his arm back and smiled. “It is.”
Of course, the moment of amity dissolved into thin air when I informed him that I intended to go with him to his clandestine meeting with Grimsby.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Pippa.”
“Why not? He knows I know. I was there when he extorted you.”
“I’m aware,” Christopher said. “However, I’d rather you stay inside the house. That way, if there’s a problem with me getting back inside—if someone locks the door while I’m outside in the garden—you’ll be able to let me back inside.”
That made a certain amount of sense. However— “You could always bring a key, you know.”
“I wasn’t planning to leave through the front door,” Christopher said. “Or for that matter the back door.”
“What, then? One of the secret passages.”
He nodded.
“They open from the outside, too, don’t they?”
“Not the one in the study,” Christopher said.
I squinted at him. “And does it have to be the one in the study?”
