“I don’t know,” I said, sticking my chin out, pugnaciously. “Would you?”
The smirk turned into a grin, one that curved his cheeks and made his eyes sparkle. It didn’t even look malicious, although I’m sure, somehow, it was. “I swear, Darling, sometimes I worry about you. Truly, I do.”
As I blinked up at him—what on earth didthatmean?—he snagged my arm again and pulled. “Come along, there’s a good girl. You can trust me, you know.”
I hadn’t much choice, of course—he was much stronger than I was—so perforce, I came along. And while my heart tripped a little, none of the rest of me did. We made it safely to the bottom of the staircase and onto the foyer floor. Crispin even kept his hand under my arm until it was time to enter the tea parlor. “After you, Miss Darling.” He let go and bowed me in.
“Thank you.” I crossed the threshold into the parlor, where Aunt Charlotte was presiding over the teapot in lone majesty.
I eyed the empty room. “I guess Christopher isn’t back yet?”
“Not yet,” Crispin confirmed, coming in behind me. “And Father and Uncle Herbert rode off to inspect the fences or some such thing.”
“Crispin, dear,” Aunt Charlotte murmured, in what I supposed was a very gentle admonition to not speak so cavalierly about the estate that would one day be his.
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mother.”
Aunt Charlotte smiled politely at me. “Tea, Miss Darling?”
“Please,” I said. “I don’t suppose they went armed, did they?”
Crispin’s eyes met mine for a second, startled, before he said, blandly, “Is there any reason they would, Darling? Surely there’s no danger of dangerous beasts in the wilds of Wiltshire?”
Of course not. “Just a thought,” I said, and reached for the cup of tea Aunt Charlotte had poured just as Crispin did the same. He knocked my hand out of the way, or perhaps I was the one who did it to him. The cup flipped over and splashed hot tea on my fingertips.
“Ow!” I yanked my hand back. Luckily it was the non-injured one, or the movement would have hurt. “What on earth, St George?”
“For God’s sake, Darling!” He stuck two fingers in his mouth and sucked the tea off them while Aunt Charlotte stared at the mess on the table. Luckily, the cup hadn’t cracked in two. It was hundred-year-old Spode, hand-painted in a puce and gilt floral pattern, circa 1820, and I would have hated to be responsible for its demise. Even if itwasjust as much St George’s fault as mine.
“What’s wrong with you?” he added, taking the fingers back out of his mouth and wiping them on a napkin while he fixed me with an outraged look. “I was trying to be polite, Miss Darling.”
“Well, perhaps that was your problem,” I said, snatching the napkin out of his hand and using it to wipe the tea off my own fingers. “You’re never polite. How was I supposed to guess you had turned over a new leaf?”
He rolled his eyes. “Humor. Har.”
I rolled mine right back. “You’re being ridiculous, St George. It’s my left arm that’s hurt, not my right. I don’t need your help lifting a cup of tea.”
“In that case—” He reached down, grabbed the pot out of his mother’s hand, filled another cup, dropped a sugar cube and a splash of milk into it, lay a spoon on the saucer next to the cup, and dragged the whole thing across the table until it was in front of me. “There you are, Darling. Pick it up yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, while Aunt Charlotte, abruptly brought back to herself by her son’s overbearing ways, got busy straightening up the overturned cup and saucer. “Will it be just the four of us for tea? Where is Francis?”
“Haven’t seen him today,” Crispin said, dropping into a chair on the other side of the table. “He’s either still in his room, sleeping off yesterday’s excesses…”
“It’s five o’clock in the afternoon!”
“As I was saying. Or he left while we were in Salisbury this morning, and hasn’t come back yet.”
“Would Scotland Yard let him do that?”
“They letusleave, didn’t they?” He shrugged. “I’m sure he’s somewhere. Here’s Aunt Roslyn now. You can ask her.”
I turned towards the foyer, just in time to catch Aunt Roz sweeping into the parlor. “Ask me what?” She headed for the chair next to me.
“Where Cousin Francis is,” Crispin said, before I could. At the head of the table, Aunt Charlotte began to prepare another cup. “We haven’t seen him all day.”
“Francis is resting.” Aunt Roz folded herself into the chair next to me and accepted the cup and saucer. “Thank you, Charlotte.”
“What’s wrong with Francis?” I asked, sipping from my own cup. I had no idea how Crispin knew how I liked my tea—dumb luck, probably—but it was perfect.
