The latter’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Yes,” he growled. “There are three of us.”
Constance put a hand on his arm, clearly trying to calm him down, but instead of responding favorably, Francis merely took a step closer to Wolfgang and leaned into his face. He was a bit shorter, but it didn’t stop him from looking like he would be capable of breaking Wolfgang into little pieces should he decide to do so. Francis’s face was livid, and his voice shook with anger when he added, “There used to be four. But our brother never made it home from the Continent in 1918.”
Wolfgang’s eyes flashed with something—it might have been contempt or compassion, there was no way to tell—but it was gone again in an instant. He opened his mouth, but then his eyes flicked to me, and the sight must have made him think better of whatever he had planned to say, because he closed his mouth again without utterance.
Francis straightened, but not before he had poked the index finger of his free hand into Wolfgang’s chest—hard. “Stay away from my family.”
“That will be hard to do—” Wolfgang began, but then a hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed, and he shut up.
One might have expected it to be Christopher, who had been standing silently next to me during the whole exchange, but no. It was Crispin who had walked the couple of yards from the fireplace—leaving his fiancée standing there alone—to interfere.
Francis looked at him for a moment, before flicking a glance at me, and then another at Wolfgang, before he sneered andstepped back. Constance pulled him away from the fray, and the whispers that had quieted at Crispin’s arrival picked up again.
“My fiancée invited you here,” Crispin told Wolfgang, his voice as cold as ice. “It wouldn’t have been my choice, but this is her home, not mine. But if you think for a moment that your presence here?—”
He would have gone on, of course, but Wolfgang twitched his shoulder out of Crispin’s grasp and turned to him. “I am well aware of your feelings, Lord St George.”
He practically sneered Crispin’s title, and Crispin’s lips tightened. Wolfgang, being aGraf, is a slight step up the aristocratic ladder from a Viscount, and they both knew it.
Of course, once Uncle Harold pops off and Crispin comes into the title, the Sutherland dukedom beats Wolfgang’s earlhood, but until then, Wolfgang delights in trying to make Crispin feel young, short, and inferior. He continued, silkily, “But as you say, your fiancée invited me. Please allow me to congratulate you on your spectacular fortune. She’s lovely.”
He clicked his heels and made a perfectly executed bow, just on the edge of insolent.
Crispin pried his teeth apart. “Thank you.”
“Perhaps you would be so kind as to introduce me, so I may extend my congratulations?”
There wasn’t anything Crispin could say to that, of course, so the two of them took off for Laetitia, who was still standing in front of the fireplace, one foot tapping and arms folded across her chest. She managed to hide the latter feature somewhat by virtue of clutching a glass of champagne in one hand, while the other had come up to support the opposite elbow, but it was still, clearly, a petulant crossing of her arms.
I had once seen her slap Crispin’s cheek with her fan when he hadn’t obeyed her summons quickly enough. There was no fan this time, but I watched anyway, curious as to what form herdispleasure would take. He had abandoned her there, in front of the fireplace, after all. Surely she must want revenge. With any luck, perhaps I would get to see her throw the dregs of her champagne in his face.
But alas, no. She flicked her fiancé an absolutely fulminating glare when he got close enough to be blasted by it, but it turned to one of simpering welcome when he presented theGraf von und zuNatterdorff. Wolfgang bent over her hand, and Laetitia sent me a triumphant smirk over his bowed head. I rolled my eyes and turned away.
“That was unfortunate,” Christopher commented, as he watched Constance pull Francis to the edge of the room, amidst looks and whispers.
I nodded. “But surely you knew that would be coming? As soon as we knew that Wolfgang was invited, you must have realized that putting him and Francis in the same room would turn out to be a problem.”
“I thought it would be best not to upset the apple cart prematurely,” Christopher said, with another glance at his brother. “If we had told him about Wolfgang yesterday, we would have been exposed to twenty-four hours of nothing else. But in retrospect, it might perhaps have been kinder to let Francis know what to expect ahead of time.”
Francis and Constance had ended up by the wall on the opposite side of the room. He had his head bowed attentively towards her, and she was talking quickly, her hand on his arm and her eyes on his face. They were big and brown and beseeching. Francis’s complexion was still flushed and his eyes were angry, but he was nodding along with what she was saying.
“The War seems far away for us,” Christopher added, eyes still on them. “We didn’t fight, and we’ve already lived a third of our lives since it ended. But you know Francis is still struggling with it all.”
“Of course. Although I don’t think Wolfgang took part in the War, you know. Like you and me,” and Constance and Crispin, “he’s too young.”
“He’s still German,” Christopher said, and of course there was nothing I could say to that. Other than to, perhaps, remind him that so was I, but it didn’t seem like an opportune moment for that.
Things went downhill after that, not that the reason for this party hadn’t already been a downer. More people showed up, some I recognized, some I didn’t. A supper buffet was served, which we all ate standing up, balancing tiny plates and cocktail glasses, and then a gramophone started playing and the dancing commenced while the drinking continued. Laetitia circled the room in Crispin’s arms, tulle floating behind her, while the gaudy Sutherland engagement ring sparkled on his shoulder. More than once, a beam of reflected light caught me directly in the eye and made me squint. Laetitia’s expression was caught somewhere between indecent triumph and petulance, the latter because Crispin looked mostly bored, at least until she caught his eye and glared at him, and then he dragged a smile onto his face and gave her a spin. It only lasted until she looked away, and then his mask dropped off into weariness again.
“The poor sod looks miserable,” Christopher muttered. He and I were taking a turn around the floor too, and he kept twisting me around to keep them in sight.
I nodded. “And this is just the engagement party. Just imagine what he’s going to look like in December. Not to mention five years from now.”
Christopher looked at me. “That’s a bit callous, Pippa, isn’t it?”
“Is it? He made his own bed—quite literally. Perhaps it’ll be good for him to lie in it.”
Christopher hummed. A moment passed while he eyed me, and while I avoided looking at him. “How bad do you feel, really?” he wanted to know.
