There wasn’t enough room for me behind the screen with Tom, or I would have suggested it. “I don’t suppose Sutherland House is built the way Sutherland Hall is, is it, with priest holes and secret passages everywhere?”
Crispin shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Darling. Different era altogether. There are the servants’ stairs, of course, but they’re not accessible from this room.”
No, I could see that they weren’t. There were a couple of tall windows on one wall, showing an angled view of the courtyard and the back half of the Hispano-Suiza in front of the stairs, and then there were the doors to the foyer and the one to—if memory served—another sitting room next door, but that was all.
I had my mouth open to suggest that I should lurk in the sitting room when Crispin spoke again.
“I suppose we could borrow a cap and apron from the staff room, and you could flit around the parlor pretending to be a housemaid. I’d quite like to see that.”
“I imagine you would,” I said. “What is it with you and women in uniform, St George? Last month it was WPCs. This month it’s housemaids? You even called me Sadie last night. Is there something I should know about?”
He eyed me down the length of his nose. “You know very well there isn’t. I only said that because I knew it was you, and I figured it would get a rise out of you. Which it did. So I was right. But as I have told you before, I have never seduced a housemaid, and I do not?—”
He bit back the rest of the statement—most likely a declaration that he did not have a particular interest in women in uniform—with a flush when Rogers came back through the door rolling a cart holding trays full of easily-managed comestibles. Deviled eggs, dainty cucumber sandwiches, that sort of thing.
I sniggered, but didn’t ask him to finish his sentence. I thought about it, but I didn’t. “That looks lovely, Rogers,” I said instead.
“Thank you, Miss Darling. Is there anything else I can do for you, my lord?” He looked at Crispin, who had returned to his usual color.
The scion of the Sutherlands shook his head. “No, thank you, Rogers. Just go wait for Mr. Rivers to arrive. I’ll see him in here.”
Rogers nodded. “Right away, my lord.”
He withdrew, and closed the door to the foyer behind himself.
“Deviled egg, Pippa?” Christopher asked.
Crispin muttered something, in which I thought I caught the word ‘fitting,’ and I smirked. “Yes, please.”
“Better take it to go,” Tom said. “He should be here at any moment.”
I nodded. “Put a few things on a plate, Christopher, and I’ll take it into the sitting room. Yes… I think that’s the motorcar now.”
There was the sound of an engine in the courtyard outside. We all turned to the windows, in time to see the bullet nose of a Morris Oxford pull up behind the Hispano-Suiza.
“Blanton’s car?” Tom muttered, even as he withdrew backwards from the windows and toward the telephone screen.
Crispin shrugged. “Perhaps not. Everyone who’s anyone has a red motorcar.”
“So why is yours blue?” I wanted to know.
He shot me a look. “Because I’m not like everyone else, Darling. Now take your deviled eggs and scarper before he notices you peering at him through the window.”
Outside, Dominic Rivers had turned off the engine of his—or perhaps Blanton’s—motorcar and was climbing out. I reversed away from the window the same way Tom had done. “I’ll be in the sitting room.” At least until Tom made his presence known. At that point I might present myself back in the parlor, as well.
The bell rang, and I ducked through the door into the next room at the same time as Rogers’s measured steps crossed the floor of the foyer. I heard the front door open, and then?—
“Dominic Rivers to see Lord St George.”
“This way, Mr. Rivers. His lordship is expecting you.” Rogers shut the door, presumably on Dominic Rivers’s heels, and added, “May I take your coat and hat?”
I imagined that Rivers unloaded them, and then Rogers’s voice came back. “This way, Mr. Rivers. His lordship is in the green parlor.”
Rivers muttered something, and even from this distance I could make it out as a variation of, “Must be nice.” Rogers, of course, being the consummate professional, didn’t respond in kind.
“Mr. Rivers, my lord,” he intoned instead, this time in the door to the parlor. I made sure I was tucked away out of sight from the doorway as Dominic Rivers made his way into the room. “St George.”
“Rivers.”
