CHAPTERONE
It was justafter ten o’clock when Evans rang up from the lobby and ruined what was left of my evening.
“Miss Darling? Lord St George to see Mr. Astley.”
“Christopher’s out,” I said, since my flat-mate and cousin had dressed up as his alter ego Kitty Dupree and gone off to his monthly engagement—a drag ball—an hour ago.
After the police raid the last weekend of April—a raid Christopher had escaped by the skin of his teeth, and only because someone who knew it was going to happen had yanked him out of there just in time—the arranger had taken new precautions, and the event had moved from the last Friday of the month to the first Saturday of the next, and so here we were, on Saturday the 5thof June.
As soon as the date registered, I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess, Evans. He’s sozzled?”
“Absolutely potted,” Evans confirmed. “I don’t know if it’s safe to allow him to go off on his own, Miss Darling.”
No, it definitely wasn’t. The Honorable Crispin Astley, Viscount St George, Christopher’s other cousin (on the spear side) and heir to the Sutherland dukedom, had recently—as in within the past year—managed to wrap his previous automobile, a Ballot 2 LTS racing car, around a light pole in the West End. He had walked away from that mishap with no worse injury than a bump on the head, but the Ballot had been a complete loss. Now he was driving a Hispano-Suiza H6, with the same engine that Barnato had used for the speeding record at Brooklands in 1924, and I dreaded to think what trouble he could get up to with it in his current condition.
“Better send him up,” I told Evans. Against my better judgment, I might add. I’m slightly more fond of Crispin than I used to be—he had rescued me from a rather handsy gentleman at a weekend party last month, so now I had to be grateful—but he was still not my favorite person in the world (that honor would go to Christopher). In his current state, he would undoubtedly prove to be even more of a nuisance than usual.
However, needs must and all that. If I let him leave and he actually died, I’d be sorry. “I’ll meet the lift,” I added.
“Very well, Miss Darling.”
Evans disconnected. I unlocked the front door to the flat—Christopher and I share a service flat in the Essex House Mansions in London—and proceeded down the hallway towards the lift. I could hear the gears engage, but not until I was standing in front of it. It must have taken Evans all that time to maneuver St George into the box and push the button for our floor, I assumed.
I had expected to see St George’s pretty face smirking at me through the grille in his usual impudent fashion when the door slid back, but there was no sign of him. From my vantage point, the lift appeared empty. I wrinkled my brows before pulling the grille open and sticking my head inside. “St George…? Are you—? Oh, for God’s sake!”
There was a titter, and then Florence Schlomsky, our resident American manhunter, turned away from Crispin, whom she had backed into the corner of the lift next to the button panel. “Hullo, Pippa!”
“Florence,” I said severely. “Would you mind unhanding St George so I might have him?”
She had a palm against his chest, keeping him in place, and there was quite a lot of her lipstick—carmine red—on and around his mouth.
He must not realize it, because he smirked. “Evening, Darling. You want me? I thought you’d never ask.”
“I’m not asking now,” I told him. “You look ridiculous, St George. Wipe your face and come along.”
I had to physically enter the lift and push Florence out of my way to appropriate him, which I did by grasping him by the lapel and tugging him after me. He came along as docilely as a lamb, although Florence pouted. “Not fair, Pippa. I saw him first.”
“I saw him when he was eleven,” I said, “so no joy, I’m afraid. Besides, he was on his way up to see me. Hands off, Florence. Not yours to play with.”
“He didn’t seem to mind.” She glanced at him from under her lashes as she followed us into the hallway.
Florence is not unattractive—she has a wholesome, American face with pink apple cheeks and more than the usual number of teeth, exceptionally straight and white—but she’s not the shy and retiring type. Her father has money, and she’s in England specifically to barter those dollars for a British title. She would love to snag St George, who is already a viscount at twenty-three, and who will eventually become a duke. It doesn’t hurt that he is, in addition to that, both young and handsome, unlike a few of the other specimens of unmarried British nobles, who are neither.
“He never minds,” I told her. “He’s an incorrigible flirt. I’m doing you a favor, really, by keeping him away from you. He can’t be trusted around women.”
She gave him another playful glance. “I don’t mind.”
“You would if you married him and he kept trifling with other women. He just can’t help himself, it seems.”
The look I gave him was less commiserating than critical, since I absolutely think he can help himself; he just doesn’t want to.
“Not getting married,” Crispin announced. “Not ‘till you say you’ll marry me, Darling.”
He grinned at me, loose and uninhibited. “We’d have to go off and live in squalor on the Continent, though, ‘cause I’d have to renounce the title and estates.”
‘Renounce’ gave him a bit of trouble, I was happy to note. It took him a few tries to get it out.
“That’s all right,” I told him, since tying myself to St George for the rest of my life was close to the bottom of the list of things I wanted to do. I might accept a proposal if he were dying and it was the only way to save his life, but not otherwise, and I can’t guarantee I would do it then. “Keep the title and fortune. I don’t want them, or you.”
