He did the same. “I don’t know, Darling. Am I?”
He might be, actually. As usual when I got into it with Crispin, I had forgotten everything else in the effort to win the current disagreement. But now that I had been recalled to myself, I remembered that he did, in fact, know things, about both Christopher and myself, that I didn’t want to get around. So yes, he might be threatening me. Or at least he was reminding me of the trouble he could cause, if he chose to.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do my best to forget everything I heard you and your father say yesterday afternoon. Although I fail to see what the big deal is. If you’ve fallen in love with someone, it’s hardly something to be ashamed of. I honestly didn’t think you had it in you, so—”
“That!” He pointed at me, or more accurately came within an inch of poking me in the nose with the tip of his index finger. “Thatis what I don’t want to happen. It’s none of your business what feelings I’m capable of, or for whom, and I don’t want you to stick your nose into them. My feelings are my own, and absolutely none of your concern. You are a menace, Darling, and always have been, and if you find out anything about this—”
He seemed to recall himself, and took a few seconds to get his breathing and voice back under control before he added, much more calmly. “I would take it as a very great favor if you would keep your pointy little nose out of my private affairs, and for that to happen, I need you to forget everything you heard. And if you can’t do that for me, then perhaps I’ll just happen to accidentally let it slip that I know you and Kit weren’t together last night.”
“Blackmail!”
“Not at all,” Crispin said. “A simple case of one good turn deserves another. I don’t want your nose in my private business, and you don’t want my nose in yours. This way, we both get what we want.”
He was right, of course. However—
“I don’t know why you’re making such a big thing out of this, St George. It’s not like I’m going to go find your girlfriend and tell her what I really think of you. She probably wouldn’t believe me, anyway. She probably thinks you’re the bee’s knees and the fly’s thighs, everything that’s lovely, although I can’t imagine how anyone who knows you could have gotten that impression…”
“Just because you bring out the worst in me,” Crispin said, “doesn’t mean that other women don’t see my value—”
“Your title and your money, you mean.”
“Just because that’s allyoucan see, Darling—”
“Oh, will you stop calling me that? It’s the most annoying thing in the world, and you keep doing it.”
“It’s your name, Darling, and besides, it’s not like you’d appreciate it if I—”
“No, I definitely would not. You’re right about that. Nor would I want to—”
“Exactly. So—”
“I’m going to my room.” I yanked the door to the hallway open and kept talking to him over my shoulder—and over his words—as I crossed the threshold. “I don’t want to see you again for the rest of the day. If you see me coming, I want you to turn around and walk the other way, and I’ll do the same. Or I swear to God, St George, Grimsby’s won’t be the only murder here this weekend.”
“I don’t think Grimsby’swasthe only murder here this weekend,” Crispin said with a smirk, “but I get your point, Darling. I’ll stay out of your way if you’ll stay out of mine.”
“Deal.”
He nodded. “All right, then. Have a lovely afternoon, Darling.”
“Oh, for…” I shook my head. “Goodbye, St George.”
I desperately wished I could have appended a ‘forever,’ to that sentence, but since I’d have to see him again for supper or there’d be questions, I simply left the door open and took off down the hallway towards the west wing. Behind me, Crispin shut the door to the Duchess’s Chamber with exaggerated care, and wandered off in the other direction. When I turned to look back just as I reached the end of the central wing, it was to see him disappear around the opposite corner towards his suite of rooms. He was not looking back at me.
“You changed,”Christopher said when he was finally released from downstairs and arrived in my room. His fingertips were still black from ink, and I waved him towards the basin in the corner before I ran my hands down the blue and white dress I was wearing, again.
“I had to. Your cousin left ink on my sleeve.”
“Crispin?” Christopher dipped his fingertips into the water and held them there.
“Do you have any other cousins?”
“I have you. And any other little bye-blows Uncle Harold might have sired along the way.”
“I didn’t ink my own sleeve, Christopher. I was careful. And if I had, I would have admitted it.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed my ankles. “Do you think your uncle has other children out there? Wouldn’t they be banging down the door for consideration when he’s a future duke? Or present duke now?”
“Depends,” Christopher said, wiggling his fingers in the water. “I would hope he had better sense. But he’s older than my father, and my parents had Francis and Robert before they had me. Crispin is younger than I am, if not by much. So there were ten years there, when Uncle Harold could have been sowing his wild oats before Crispin was born.”
