For the first time it occurred to me to wonder how that whole situation was going to play out once Wolfgang got here. (Or he might be here already. I hadn’t heard his voice in the buzz down in the entrance hall, and he has a distinctive accent, but he might have been there and simply been quiet.)
Christopher and I hadn’t mentioned Wolfgang’s existence to Francis, or for that matter to anyone else in the family. Crispin knew, of course. Christopher, for reasons known only unto himself, had decided to let his cousin know about Wolfgang’s existence as soon as the latter introduced himself over tea at the Savoy last month.
Or not quite as soon as, but it was only a few hours later that he went out of his way to find a call box and ring up St George at Sutherland Hall. And then, of course, Crispin had hared off to London at the first opportunity to get a look at Wolfgang himself.
We hadn’t told anyone else, however. Crispin might have done, but St George’s relationship with his father was already fraught, and I didn’t think His Grace, Uncle Harold, would have been receptive to his son’s complaining. Besides, if Crispin had told his father that I was being courted—or so it seemed—by a German nobleman, I couldn’t imagine that the news wouldn’t have made its way from Uncle Harold to Uncle Herbert and Aunt Roz. And neither of them had said a word about it in the pasttwenty-four hours. So chances were they didn’t know, nor did Francis.
And that begged the question of how he was going to react once he found out.
As it turned out, I didn’t have all that long to wait. But before we got to that point, I told Perkins that if bedchambers were a problem, I would be happy to share with Constance. We had done so before, at the Dower House. It wouldn’t hurt me to spend another two nights in the same room as my cousin’s fiancée.
But no, Perkins said that if the young gentlemen would just consent to bunking together, that would solve the problem, and then Christopher and Francis followed Perkins down the hallway for a look at their shared room, while Constance and I went into Primrose.
It had pale green walls and ivory bed hangings, with a sunny yellow counterpane. I looked around and nodded approvingly. “Very nice.”
“I’ve always liked Primrose,” Constance agreed, sitting down on the bed and folding her hands in her lap, “although Wisteria is lovely, too. Gray and lilac, with touches of green. The rooms on the second floor are all smaller than this.”
I nodded. It was the same at Beckwith Place, so nothing new about that at all.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I said, and Constance looked up at me with bright, brown eyes.
She’s a small girl, a bit on the plump side, with soft, brown hair and a round face. If I wanted to be unkind, I could say that she looked like the human equivalent of a brown sparrow, but that’s only a derogatory statement if you don’t like sparrows. I would personally rather one of them than a peacock or parrot or anything of that nature.
Constance isn’t the loud and flashy sort, is what I mean. She isn’t shy, but she has always been quiet and thoughtful instead of forward. Not the type to draw attention to herself. We hadn’t been close at Godolphin—I always found her a bit too meek for my taste—but I have grown to appreciate her over the past few months. It helps that Francis adores her, of course, and she him, but she’s also a bit more sly and sarcastic than I remember. She might have grown into it as she has gotten older, or perhaps she had simply hid it better back in our boarding school days.
“A few weeks ago,” I began, “I met this man. We were having tea at the Savoy, Christopher and I, and he came up to the table and introduced himself…”
“So that is why Lord St George suddenly decided to propose to Laetitia,” Constance said when I had finished the tale, adding two and two together with admirable speed.
I nodded. “We argued back and forth by letter, and he was rude and dismissive of Wolfgang, which obviously extends to me, as I have the same faults as Wolfgang does. I told him to go cry on Laetitia’s shoulder, and propose while he was at it, since they deserve one another.”
“That was remarkably unkind of you,” Constance said placidly.
I made a face. “I didn’t think that he would actually do it. If I had done…”
I trailed off, and started over. “At any rate, Laetitia has seen fit to invite Wolfgang to the party this weekend.”
“Oh, dear,” Constance said.
I nodded. “I don’t know what she was thinking. Crispin despises him, so for his sake alone, she ought to have left it alone. And Francis is here, and perhaps a few other men, too, who served in the trenches during the War. And you know that your Aunt Euphemia has no love for Germans—she made thatvery clear when she met me at Beckwith Place two months ago?—”
“In justice to Aunt Effie,” Constance said, with a twitch of her lips, “I think that may have been influenced by the way you greeted Lord St George on that occasion.”
Well, yes. Perhaps so. He had been sharing a chair with Laetitia when Christopher and I walked into the drawing room, and I had ignored her presence to pass on love from a neighbor in London. Florence Schlomsky—or the woman we’d thought of as Flossie Schlomsky—had had a bad habit of pushing St George into the corner of the lift in the Essex House Mansions and snogging him, so I knew very well what passing on love from Flossie was supposed to look like.
Not that I did that. Of course not. Crispin and I are not on kissing terms. But I did put my hand on his cheek and stared deeply into his eyes for long enough that he might have expected something more than he ended up getting, and neither Lady Laetitia nor her mother had appreciated it. Nor had Crispin, for that matter.
I drew myself up. “Be that as it may, your aunt isn’t a fan. Nor is Crispin, nor will Francis be, once he finds out. So I need your help with keeping Wolfgang and Francis away from each other.”
“That won’t be easy if the man is courting you,” Constance pointed out.
I made a face. No, it wouldn’t. Perhaps I should have stuck with my initial plan, and refused to be here this weekend.
Christopher had been right, though: if I didn’t turn up, the ladies of the Bright Young Set would swarm Wolfgang, and then one of them might turn his head.
Being courted for a weekend wouldn’t be too painful, I supposed. He was handsome, certainly—aside from Lord Geoffrey Marsden (and the late, great Rudolph Valentino, may he rest in peace), he was probably the best-looking man I hadever seen. And besides, it was likely to annoy St George to distraction, which is always enjoyable when I can manage it. Being monopolized by Wolfgang might also help to keep Lord Geoffrey away from me, which was all to the good.
Constance nodded when I said as much. “My cousin is horrible. Yours is too, of course, but at least he’s engaged to Laetitia now. But this weekend is just the sort of occasion Geoffrey lives for. Lots of young women, and wedding bells in the air.”
