Christopher waited, but when Grimsby didn’t take the opportunity to explain what that word might be, he said, “I suppose now is not a good time?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Astley.” Grimsby’s voice was perfectly polite and unassuming. “His Grace is waiting. And it’s something that would be better discussed in private.”
Christopher opened his mouth, seemed unable to come up with anything to say—although I could see his complexion turn pale—and closed it again.
“I’ll come to your room, if I may,” Grimsby said blandly, “after your talk with His Grace, and we’ll have our own chat.”
Christopher blinked. I did the same. It was, at the same time, so very polite and so egregiously brazen that it was hard to find words.
By now we had reached the top of the stairs, and the upper corridor in the main wing of the house. I glanced at the door to the Duchess’s Chamber, unused since Christopher’s grandmother died some ten years before, and stopped. “I’ll meet you in your room after your visit with your grandfather, then, Christopher?”
Christopher nodded. “Yes, Pippa. Please.” He hesitated. “That is… if Grimsby doesn’t…?”
Clearly he wasn’t used to worrying about whether the valet would object to me being in his room or not. Nor was I, if it came to that.
Grimsby looked bland. “It is entirely up to you, Mr. Astley, if you want an audience for our discussion.”
He continued on towards the Duke’s Chamber while Christopher and I exchanged a look behind his back. It had sounded quite ominous. Then I squeezed Christopher’s arm in support before I dropped my hand and headed in the other direction, towards the door to the Duchess’s Chamber. Christopher went to meet Grimsby, who was lingering in front of the duke’s bedroom door.
I heard a brisk knock and then Grimsby’s voice, “Your Grace? Mr. Christopher Astley to see you,” before I was too far into the Duchess’s Chamber to hear the response. A moment later, Grimsby’s steps came back down the hallway towards me. For a moment, I was concerned that he would open the door and order me out, but then the steps continued down the staircase, and I started to breathe again.
And just to have it said: I know I’m not a child anymore, and it wasn’t Grimsby’s job to order me about. But with the high-handed way he was behaving, it was difficult to guess exactly what he might do, and I felt off-balance.
Although he was gone now, and I could yet again concentrate on the task at hand.
I couldn’t hear anything that was going on inside the duke’s bedchamber. There were two dressing rooms between me and where Christopher was standing right now, in front of his grandfather’s bed. But there was a way for me to get closer.
Or rather, there were two. Now that Grimsby had descended to the ground floor, I could go back out into the hallway, sneak down to the duke’s door, and press my ear to it. But if I got caught, by Grimsby or by someone else, I would look very silly trying to eavesdrop in plain view in the main corridor of the house, and it would also be uncouth in the extreme for me to do so.
That was why I had ducked into the Duchess’s Chamber in the first place. Because I knew, from childhood memories of playing in Sutherland Hall, that there was a not-so-secret passage running between the Duke’s and Duchess’s Chambers, along the exterior wall of the manor behind the two dressing rooms. The original duke, who had been responsible for building the hall back in the mists of time, must have wanted a way to visit his wife for congress without traversing the main hallway with his candle at night. Every time we had played hide-and-seek as children, we could usually find someone—most often Crispin, who knew the Hall best—hidden in the passage between the Duke’s and Duchess’s Chambers, or in one of the other out-of-the-way passages or stairwells tucked away against the outer walls of the manor.
In this case, I made my way past the obvious door into the duchess’s (now empty) dressing room and over to the paneling in the corner of the room, where the semi-secret entrance to the passage lay. Slipping my fingers into the small crevice that hid the latch was a matter of a second’s work, and then part of the paneling swung out and exposed the narrow stone passage. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see Crispin at the end of it, ear close to the wall of his grandfather’s bedroom.
He lookedup when the door opened, either because the paneling had made a sound swinging into the room or because the light from outside suddenly flooded the usually gloomy narrowness of the passage.
For a second we stared at one another. I’m not sure whether it took that long for him to recognize me, or whether he was just surprised that I’d disturbed his eavesdropping. Either way, it gave me that moment or two to calculate the situation and my choices.
From where I was standing, I figured I had two. I could join Crispin at the other end of the passage, and listen to what the duke had to say to Christopher along with him. I wanted to know what that was, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
On the other hand, it would put me in close proximity to Crispin, where I didn’t want to be.
And also, it would give him the opportunity to continue to eavesdrop on what the duke had to say to Christopher, and I’m sure neither of us—Christopher or I—wanted that to happen. We didn’t know the exact reason why Christopher had been called here—we had discussed it on the train down—but we were both certain it couldn’t be for anything good. The duke might have found out about Christopher’s proclivities for dresses, makeup, and drag balls, which would be disastrous, or he might simply object to Christopher’s choice to live with me in our own service flat in London, and not at Sutherland House, the duke’s Town residence. If he insisted that we move into the ancestral town house, most of Christopher’s freedom and all of his choices would be gone, and so would most of mine.
In the end, it only took that one second to make the decision. The choice was obvious once I thought about it. Christopher would certainly tell me what the conversation had been about if I wasn’t in a position to hear it myself. Crispin, on the other hand, had his entire life ahead of him to cause trouble. Long after the duke was dead and buried, Crispin could continue to be a thorn in both our sides if he learned any of Christopher’s secrets now.
And so I scrambled down the uneven stone floor of the passage, wrapped my fingers around his wrist, and tugged.
“You horrible sneak! Get out of here!”
Crispin sniggered, but didn’t budge. “Quiet, Darling. They’ll hear you.”
“I don’t care if they hear me,” I hissed, yanking on his arm. “At least that way they’ll know you’re in here, eavesdropping. Come out immediately, or I’ll cause a scene and make sure your grandfather knows what you’re doing!”
Crispin smirked. “Maybe he knows already. Maybe he put me here so I would overhear.”
I faltered for a second. Was that a possibility?
It might be, actually. Although if the duke had wanted Crispin to hear his conversations with the other family members, surely he would have kept him in the bedroom instead of having him hide in the secret passage? No reason not to keep that out in the open, was there? Not if you were the head of the family and could do whatever you wanted?
