He shook his head. “No vampire. And no one else has had her fingers in my hair.”
He sounded sincere about it, so I tilted my head and gave him another look. “Why would you do that to yourself?”
“Cecily is with child,” Crispin said.
He pronounced it so matter-of-factly that it took a second for the words to properly register. Then my jaw dropped, but before I could say anything, Crispin stiffened like a Pointer. The next second, he had wrapped his hand around the door handle and shoved my bedroom door open. A second after that, he had backed me into the room and pulled the door shut behind us.
“What on earth—” I began.
He flicked me a look. “Shhh.”
I stuck my hands on my hips. “Why should I? You have no business coming into my room. Besides, I thought you told me that you didn’t care if Laetitia found out that you were up here?”
“It’s not Laetitia I’m worried about. Now be quiet, Darling.”
It wasn’t? “Who?—?”
But he put a finger to his mouth and closed his eyes, the better to hear what was happening outside. Unless he just really didn’t want to look at me. At this point I had caught on, anyway, and I could hear what he had heard: rapid footsteps jogging up the stairs towards our level.
“Did you see who it is?” I wanted to know, although I kept my voice low. At this point I was no more keen on being found with him in my room than he was on being found with me.
Crispin shook his head. “I got us out of sight before whoever that is could see us. I didn’t get a chance to see him.”
“Him?”
“It sounds more like a man than a woman.”
I took a moment to listen, and decided that he was most likely right. The steps had entered the hallway, each one a decisive thump against the carpet runner. Not quick and light the way a woman’s steps would have been.
“It isn’t your fiancée,” I pointed out. “We don’t have to hide.”
He arched a brow. “Is that something you want, Darling? For someone else to see me come out of your room, looking like I’ve just been shagged?”
Probably not. I was grateful for the relative darkness, as it covered the flush in my cheeks. “Definitely not.”
“Then just wait until whoever is out there has gone into his room. Or into someone else’s.”
There was a moment of silence. The footsteps had stopped, but I hadn’t yet heard a knock.
“Maybe Cecily is entertaining someone else,” I said sourly.
Crispin shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised. It certainly isn’t my child she’s carrying.”
“Do you know that for a fact?”
He slanted me a look. “Yes, Darling. I haven’t laid a finger on her since February. She’d look like a zeppelin if it were mine.”
And she certainly hadn’t done earlier. The current tubular fashions are kind to any slight affluence around the middle, but if Cecily had sported anything more than a slight stomach bulge, it would have been visible.
“Why talk to you, then?”
“Why not? She spoke to everyone else.”
I supposed she had done, now that he mentioned it. Or to anyone who could possibly be involved, anyway. She had danced with most of the men in the ballroom earlier—save for Crispin, who’d been busy with Laetitia, and Francis, who’d been sulking, and Wolfgang, who was German and new to this crowd, and so, I presumed, no candidate for the father of Cecily’s baby. But I had seen her dance with Dominic Rivers and with the Honorable Reggie, and even with Christopher once, when he had been taken away from Francis and pressed into service. The odious Bilge had even abandoned his wife to take Cecily for a turn around the floor, while the lovely Serena had simpered at Dominic Rivers.
“Do you think one of them is the father?”
“Who knows?” Crispin said, and sounded like it didn’t much matter to him. And why would it, as long as he wasn’t on the hook? “I asked, but she wouldn’t tell me. Just said, when I told her she looked like a wilted tulip, that she was expecting and would I kindly keep my opinions to myself.”
