Most likely not. “I’ll see you in a moment, then.”
Or not, as the case may be, since I certainly wasn’t keen on getting an eyeful of St George in his underthings, no matter how modern and flippant I tried to sound. Yes, I had in fact seen Christopher in his unmentionables, but that was very different from seeing Crispin in his. They might look the same, but they were two different people. I knew what he’d look likesansclothes, because I knew what Christopher looked like without most of his—chest hair notwithstanding—and that was good enough for me.
So I scurried down the hallway past the door to the washroom and knocked on Christopher’s door. “Kit? It’s me. I need to come inside.”
I didn’t wait for him to answer, just turned the knob and pushed the door open. Farther up the corridor I could hear St George move from my bedroom to the lavatory, and before I could fall into temptation and sneak a peek over my shoulder, I ducked into Christopher’s room and pulled the door shut behind me.
“What’s going on?” my cousin asked sleepily from the bed. “Is it Tom?”
“Worse. I need to borrow some of your clothes for St George.”
“Take whatever you want,” Christopher said and waved a hand towards the wardrobe. “What can be worse? Rivers and Hutchison?”
“Worse than that, too. It’s the Duke.”
“The what?”
“Your Uncle Harold,” I said, while I flipped through the shirts in the wardrobe. “Crispin’s father.”
“Uncle Harold’s here?” Christopher sat up with a jerk. “Why?”
“I have no idea.” I pulled out a white shirt and draped it across the bottom of the bed before I went back for more. “Somehow, he must have figured out that Crispin’s here, because the first words out of his mouth were, ‘where’s my son.’”
I grabbed a pair of flannel bags and tossed them after the shirt, before I turned to Christopher with both hands on my hips. “More accurately, it was ‘whereismy son.’ He pronounced every word. Very distinctly. And in a very cold sort of voice, as if he thought I was hiding him.”
I turned back to the wardrobe. A pair of socks and a waistcoat followed the trousers. And then a tie. “He can use his own cufflinks, I assume? And his own suspenders.”
“I’m sure he can,” Christopher said. “So Uncle Harold is upset.”
“He’s…” I hunted for the appropriate words. He wasn’t upset, exactly. He’d been quite cool and collected. “—displeased. With Crispin and with us. Or at least with me. I have no idea what I’ve done to get on the wrong side of your aunt and uncle, but Aunt Charlotte would look at me like I had crawled out from under a flat rock while she was alive, and now Uncle Harold is doing the same thing.”
“I don’t imagine it’s anything you did,” Christopher said. “Other than simply being here, and breathing. I think it’s more likely to be something?—”
A knock on the door derailed the sentence, and when I crossed the floor and opened it, I was presented with that eyeful of St George I hadn’t wanted.
“Gah!” I clapped my hands to my eyes. “Good grief, St George. Have you no sense of modesty whatsoever?”
“You’re not so brave when it’syoufaced with something you don’t want to see,” Crispin said maliciously, “are you?”
He stepped through the door and to the side before flapping his hands at me. I could see them through the gaps in my fingers. “Shoo, Darling. I’ll dress in here. Go to your own room and get out of your jimjams, there’s a good girl.”
“I hate you, St George,” I told him, as I made my way through the door with my hands still covering my eyes. “Your clothes are on Christopher’s bed. Or pick something else out of the wardrobe if you’d rather. And don’t make your father wait any longer than necessary.”
“No, Darling. Off you go.” He shut the door on my heels. I stuck my tongue out at it before I ran back up the hallway and into my own room to—as he put it—get out of my jimjams.
We facedUncle Harold as a united front. Christopher had gotten up along with Crispin, and we were all dressed and mostly presentable when we bearded the Duke in his—or our—sitting room. Crispin had slicked his hair back into its usual smooth helmet—it was rather a shame to see those flyaway wisps disappear—and so, of course, had Christopher. In their flannel bags and sleeveless jumpers, standing side by side in front of the Duke, they looked as much like twins as they had back in the Eton days, when I’d first landed in the family.
We all looked a bit the worse for wear, I’m afraid. We could brush our teeth and I my hair, the boys could slick their flyaway strands back against their skulls, and I could put on makeup to brighten my face, but there was nothing we could do about the bloodshot eyes from too much champagne and not enough sleep the night before.
Uncle Harold looked at us all, up and down, from where he sat ensconced on the Chesterfield, while we stood in a row in front of him like three misbehaving school-children.
“Well,” he said. And stopped. Expectantly.
I didn’t say anything. He wasn’tmyfather, nor was he properly my uncle. The title was only a courtesy, and I already knew that he didn’t like me much, even if I didn’t know why. I could perhaps guess that it was my German heritage—my late father had been German, and that wasn’t a positive association, even so many years after the Great War—but that was a guess, nothing more.
When no one else spoke up either, His Grace, the Duke, continued. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
There was a beat of silence. “Are you speaking to me?” Crispin wanted to know. “Or to Kit or Pippa?”
