All right, so perhaps I staggered. That’s how Crispin described it to Christopher later, and I won’t say he was wrong. Although I did object to his further statement that I would have fainted dead away had he not taken hold of me. I would not have fainted, thank you very much. I do not faint.
But he did at any rate grab me by the arm, and yanked me over to one of the two benches in the clearing. There, he pushed me down and put his hand on the back of my neck. “Head between your knees. Breathe.”
There was absolutely nothing tender or concerned about any of it, by the way, although I will say for him that what he told me to do worked. I stared at the tweed fabric of my skirt, up close and quite personal, and breathed into it. After a couple of inhalations, I thought the desire to succumb to the vapors had passed, so I asked, “What happened?”
“Who knows?” Crispin said, with his hand still at the back of my head. His fingers had somehow wound their way into my hair. “I found him like that.”
“Is he dead?”
He snorted. “Of course he’s dead, Darling. Why else do you suppose he’d be lying there?”
I turned my head to the side, because talking to my knees was starting to feel ridiculous. This way, I could at least address my questions to Crispin’s knees in baggy gray flannels. “I suppose I thought there was a possibility he was drunk.”
“At nine in the morning? Not bloody likely, is it?”
Perhaps not. Not when he put it like that.
“You can let me up now,” I said, and when he untwined his fingers and removed his hand and I had raised my head, I added, “I thought perhaps he had been drunk last night—his employer died, after all, so it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that the servants would have decided to wake the old duke, too—and then he decided to sleep it off here.”
“No,” Crispin said. “He’s quite dead, I assure you.”
I risked another glance over at Grimsby, and contemplated the blood. There was rather a lot of it. Not so visible against the black fabric of his jacket, but the shirt underneath was red, almost all the way up to his collar, and there was also rather a lot of blood on the grass around the body.
My vision developed small bright spots around the edges, and I closed my eyes again. “Gah.”
“I should go get help,” Crispin said, rocking back and forth on his heels. “I was making sure there was nothing I could do for him, but he’s been dead for hours. We have to call the constabulary.”
He turned towards the path out of the maze, and I snatched at his sleeve before he could move away from me. “Don’t you dare leave me here with… with him!”
He sniggered. He’d been pale when I’d first stumbled upon him, but the opportunity to annoy me seemed to have put him back in countenance, because his cheeks showed a hint of color again. “He’s not going to rise up and attack you, Darling.”
“I didn’t think he would,” I said, “but I still don’t want to be left alone with him.”
He raised a shoulder. “Fine by me. No one has to stay here and mind the body. He’s been lying here all night, as far as I can tell. If someone was going to cart him off, they would have done it by now.”
“Then let’s go.” I held out a hand. It might have been the first time I had willingly accepted Crispin’s help with anything, let alone actively asked for it, and the arch of his eyebrow showed that he knew it. But he took my hand and hauled me to my feet. And then he kept a hand under my elbow while I found my footing and made sure I wasn’t going to develop another bout of dizziness. I seemed to have gotten over the instability I had felt earlier, so I nodded to him. “Lead the way.”
“You know the way out of the maze, Darling.”
“Don’t antagonize me,” I told him. “I came out here to apologize, but if you upset me again, I might forget to do it.”
Both his brows rose this time. “You? Came to apologize to me?”
I grimaced. “Christopher convinced me I had misjudged you.”
He laughed. Not just sniggered, but actually laughed. Out loud. “That was kind of Kit, but I assure you, you haven’t. I’m everything you think I am, and more.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes, but just barely. “Whatever else you are, apparently you’re not someone who would shag the parlor maid on the grass in the hedge maze.”
“No,” Crispin agreed, as we made our way along the shady paths between the yew hedges. “I suppose that’s one thing I’m not.”
“And as such, I shouldn’t have suggested you were. I’ve heard stories about your escapades, so you’ll forgive me for believing you capable of practically anything.”
“Of course.” His voice was perfectly bland and courteous, in spite of the rather hair-raising things I was saying. “Just out of curiosity…”
“No,” I said. “I’m not repeating them. You have a reputation, as I’m sure you know.”
“I’m aware.” He smirked, even as he tugged me around a corner of the maze, just as comfortable with the right and left turns of it as I was. “I didn’t realizeyouwere.”
