CHAPTER ONE
“No,”I said.
Christopher squinted at me across the tea table. “What do you mean, no?”
I scowled back. “I mean no, I am not going to spend a weekend at Marsden Manor watching Lady Laetitia flaunt the Sutherland diamonds. I’m also not keen to spend a weekend trying to dodge Geoffrey Marsden’s wandering hands. The man simply will not take no for an answer. Nor will you, it seems.”
Admittedly, that was unfair of me. Christopher has absolutely nothing in common with Lord Geoffrey Marsden. I was getting frustrated, however. It wasn’t the first time I had given him this answer to this question, and I was getting tired of repeating myself. The question being, did I plan to attend the engagement celebration at Marsden Manor in Dorset, for Christopher’s cousin Crispin, Viscount St George, and his intended, Lady Laetitia Marsden?
And the answer was, as it had been every time he’d asked, no. I intended to do no such thing.
“Do not compare me to Geoffrey Marsden,” Christopher said severely. “I would never squeeze a young lady into a corner of the sofa and try to kiss her against her will.”
Of course he wouldn’t. For one thing, he’s too much of a gentleman, and for another, he prefers young men to young ladies, although he wouldn’t force himself on one of them, either.
“That’s not what I meant,” I told him, “and you know it.”
“As for Laetitia and the Sutherland diamonds, that was your own fault.”
“Was not!”
“Was, too. If you hadn’t lost your temper with St George and told him to go ahead and propose because he and Laetitia deserve each other…”
I grimaced. “I didn’t imagine that he would actually do it. Although I maintain that they do deserve one another. She’s a cow, and he?—”
“—is going to be unhappy,” Christopher said. “I thought you cared about his happiness, Pippa. Or aren’t you the one who has been telling him for months not to succumb to Uncle Harold’s pressure?”
“I was angry,” I said. “And I’m not going to apologize for it. He said horrible things to me.”
“I know,” Christopher said sympathetically. “You had every right to be upset with him. He was unkind. He should have kept his mouth shut, or rather, should have kept himself from spilling his prejudices onto the stationary in front of him. He should certainly have refrained from sending it to you once he’d written it. Although in justice to him?—”
“Don’t you dare defend him, Christopher!”
“He was upset, too,” Christopher said, going right ahead with the defense in spite of my protestation. “We did just fight a war against Germany, remember? One in which his cousin died? It’s understandable that we might all have a problem with you getting close to the enemy.”
“I know that,” I said. “Robbie was my cousin, too. Nobody’s sorrier than I am, believe me.”
Not that any of it was my fault, but my father had been conscripted on the German side, and had been in the trenches, and might have killed Cousin Robert. Not that I thought he had done, but the possibility did occasionally torment me during sleepless nights.
“You seem to be forgetting,” I added, “that I’m the enemy, too.”
Christopher scoffed, and I added, “No, seriously, Christopher. It’s not all that long ago that the Countess Marsden told Aunt Roz what a pity it is that my mother ran away and married a German. And St George was there for that conversation. He ought to have remembered that when he disparaged Wolfgang’s heritage, he disparaged mine, as well.”
“So he ought to have done,” Christopher agreed. “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s gotten caught up in his own spite. You know he didn’t mean it.”
“I know no such thing,” I said, offended. “If he didn’t mean it, he should have sent an apology, and?—”
“You told him not to write again.”
“Well, I?—”
I stopped myself before I could say that I hadn’t meant it, because I had, in fact, meant every word. I hadn’t wanted to hear from St George again, at least not right away. I was upset and angry and yes, hurt. Christopher’s cousin Crispin and I had been getting along better lately, after more than a decade of being at one another’s throats, and I hadn’t expected him to throw the land of my birth in my face via letter. I had wanted time to process my feelings before I had to deal with him again, and yes, maybe I had wanted to hurt him back, too, at least a little bit.
It was no more than he deserved, after all.
So while I had, as Christopher had so kindly pointed out, told St George to go ahead and propose to Lady Laetitia Marsden because they deserved one another, I hadn’t actually thought he would do it. I had assumed that he would take a couple of days to get over his anger while I did the same, and then we would figure out a way to get back on an even keel again.
As even as the keel ever is between two people who heartily despise one another and never let a chance go by to let the other know how they feel.
