Chapter 4

The drawing roomtakes up the entire ground floor of the new, hundred-year-old addition. It's a lovely room, open and airy, with tall ceilings, walk-out windows on two walls—the front and side of the house—and a dainty fireplace with a gray tile surround on the third. A picture rail two feet from the ceiling holds landscapes and family portraits in gold frames—one of them of my mother and Aunt Roz as children—while elegant rugs cover the wood floors.

It's also the biggest room in the house, and with everyone gathered there—except Francis, until he came back downstairs—that was useful, since we had quite a crowd.

The first person I saw when I came through the door was Laetitia Marsden. She was dressed in her usual black, and looked stunning.

She's an exceptionally pretty woman, I'm not going to deny that. Tall and slender, with jet black hair cut into a sleek pageboy, and bright blue eyes outlined with kohl. Her dress was a black crepe de chine with a ring of rosebuds embroidered around the neckline, and a scalloped edge circling her hips, while the skirt below fell to her knees in tiny pleats. She was wearing elegant T-strap shoes and pearls in her ears and around her neck, and her pink lips were curved in a self-satisfied little simper.

The reason for that was sitting next to her, perched on the arm of her chair, looking across at me—at us—with his usual supercilious smirk. "Afternoon, Darling. Kit. My, don't you both look windswept?"

It was probably supposed to be some sort of innuendo. What sort I have no idea, since everyone here, with the possible exception of the Marsdens, knew very well that Christopher and I hadn't stopped off in a hedgerow somewhere between Salisbury and Beckwith Place to do inappropriate things to one another. Crispin certainly knew it. If my hair was disordered, it wasn't because Christopher had had his fingers in it.

I resisted the temptation to smooth it down, which had probably been his aim. Some display of self-consciousness on my part. Instead I smirked back. "St George. How lovely to see you. Florence sends her love."

I crossed the floor towards him as I spoke, and had the pleasure of seeing apprehension flicker across his face.

"She asked me to pass it on personally," I added sweetly, as I stopped in front of him and lifted my hand.

He flinched. Perhaps he thought I was about to give him that slap he's been begging for with every word out of his mouth for the past twelve years, or perhaps he assumed Florence thought he was due one. Either way, it's disconcerting when someone flinches when you lift your hand around them.

I tucked the reaction away in the back of my head and did what I had intended to do all along: cupped my palm against his cheek gently. His eyes widened as I leaned in, and his lips parted. I have no doubt that the whole thing looked terribly intimate, especially since that was the impression I was going for. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Laetitia's eyes narrow into slits.

And that was when I halted two inches from his nose, and smirked at him. "But I've seen what Florence's love looks like, St George, and frankly, I wouldn't lower myself to put my lips anywhere where hers have been. So you're going to have to be satisfied with this, I'm afraid. Flossie says hello."

I distributed a brisk pat to his cheek before I straightened. And smiled at Lady Laetitia over his shoulder. "Pardon my imposition. He's all yours."

Behind me, Uncle Herbert let out a bark of laughter. Crispin didn't move for a second, just sat there, barely breathing. Until someone—I think it may have been his father—cleared his throat, and then his cheeks turned pink. "You're awful, Darling," he told me, with something that was perilously close to a pout.

Behind me, Christopher sniggered. "Serves you right, Crispin. Turnabout is fair play."

He snagged my elbow. "Come along, Pippa. That's enough excitement for both of you for one afternoon."

He towed me towards an empty chair and pushed me down on it, before he draped himself across the arm next to me. I scowled at him, but before I could protest, Aunt Roz had opened her mouth.

"What's this about turnabout, dear?"

She was sitting on one of the Chesterfields next to Constance, and like her husband, she looked rather amused by the whole episode.

"St George decided to practice his wiles on me last month," I told her, with a look at him. "He leaned close and looked deeply into my eyes and breathed my name in this very significant manner…" I shuddered exaggeratedly. "It was horrid."

Uncle Herbert smothered another bark of laughter. "Losing your touch, boy?"

Crispin flicked me a glance before he answered. "Just because Philippa can't appreciate my charms, Uncle, doesn't mean other women can't."

"St George," Uncle Harold rumbled, and Crispin's face closed.

"Sorry, sir."

Uncle Harold looked mollified, and Her Grace, Countess Marsden, tittered. "I can see why you have your hands full with that one, Harold."

Laetitia smirked. Uncle Harold gave his son and heir a look of displeasure. Crispin dropped his eyes to his lap while his lips tightened. I squashed a stab of guilt for putting him into a position where his father was unhappy with him, and surveyed the rest of the room.

This was my first experience with Laetitia's and Geoffrey's parents. They hadn't stopped by during the weekend we had spent at the Dower House, and while Uncle Harold and Aunt Charlotte may have hosted them before, Uncle Herbert and Aunt Roz hadn't.

The Countess looked like an older version of her daughter. Her face was a little more angular and her cheekbones sharper, the skin softer and less dewy. But she retained the same clear, blue eyes and black hair, in the Countess's case leavened with white streaks at each temple. Unlike her daughter—and the rest of us—she'd kept it long and swept back from her face into an elegant chignon at the back of her head. It wasn't a la mode, but there was no question that it suited her.

Laetitia and Geoffrey had both gotten their beauty from her, because the Earl was nothing to look at. Shorter than his wife, even while sitting down, he was a portly man with a white walrus mustache and calculating eyes. They flicked between me and Crispin and Lady Laetitia as if weighing us all.

"Miss Darling," Lord Geoffrey drawled. "Mr. Astley."

He was reclining in a chair to the side of the table, and like his sister, looked just as good as he had the last time I laid eyes on him. He may be a cad, but he's a handsome cad. Like his sister, he has sleek, black hair, bright blue eyes, and a perfect nose and teeth. Which were all on display right now, in a lecherous grin.

"Lord Geoffrey," I said politely. "How simply spiffing to see you again."

It wasn't, of course. If I never saw Geoffrey Marsden again for as long as I lived, it wouldn't be too soon.

At this point Francis came back from upstairs, and clapped Crispin on the shoulder as he crossed the floor towards Constance and the Chesterfield. "You're bunking with me, old chap."

Crispin's upper lip curled. "Charmed, I'm sure."

"It was me or Pippa," Francis told him, as he took his seat next to Constance and appropriated her hand. Crispin's gaze flickered to me for a second before settling back on Francis again, as the latter finished, "and we decided that her reputation is in safer hands with Kit than with you. No offense."

"None taken," Crispin said, "although given the way she just schooled me, I don't think there's any danger that I'd compromise her."

Francis chortled. "What did you do now, Pipsqueak?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just a bit of tit for tatting for something St George did to me last month."

After a moment I continued, "I've known you all since I was a girl, you know. I wouldn't worry about sharing a room with any of you."

Crispin's brows arched at this, and I added, "Yes, even you, St George. But Christopher and I are either misbehaving already, in which case that particular horse has already left the barn and there's no point in keeping us apart, or we're never going to misbehave, and it's safe to put us in a room together. You, on the other hand, have a bit of a reputation?—"

He looked somewhere between gratified and appalled.

"—and while you don't worry me, I'd rather not be known as one more of Crispin Astley's conquests. I'll just stick with Christopher if it's all the same to you."

"Delighted," Christopher said, as if this hadn't all been worked out a long time ago.

The Earl and Countess looked from one to the other of us as if we had all sprouted extra heads. I wondered whether they were so oblivious to their own children's lives that they had no idea that Geoffrey's reputation was at least equal to, if not worse than, Crispin's, and that Laetitia had long since lost any semblance of propriety, or whether they were simply pretending.

After a beat, Countess Marsden turned to Aunt Roz. "Roslyn, my dear…"

Aunt Roz blinked and then straightened. "Of course, Euphemia. I forgot you haven't met the rest of our children. This is my youngest son Christopher, and my niece, Philippa. Annabelle's daughter."

Her Grace's glance flickered for a moment to a painting on the opposite wall. I didn't turn to look at it, although Crispin did. "That's right. That's your mother, isn't it, Darling?"

When I nodded, he jumped up from the arm of Laetitia's chair—she pouted prettily—and skirted the Chesterfield with Francis and Constance on it for a closer look. "Which one?"

"Aunt Roz is on the left," I said, "my mother on the right."

Aunt Roslyn was born in 1874 and my mother a couple of years later. The painting was from circa 1890, when they were both young ladies in proper Victorian dress. Aunt Roz's hair was long and piled on top of her head with little curls framing her face—not too dissimilar to the way she looked now, actually, with her bobbed brown locks—while my mother's hair fell around her shoulders in fat ringlets from each side of a center part. They were both dressed in ruffled summer frocks with tiny waists and puffed sleeves, and they both stared out of the canvas with identical blue eyes and solemn expressions.

"We had to stand still for hours," Aunt Roz told Crispin, with her eyes on the portrait, "and Annabelle hated it. She wanted to run and climb trees and wade in the brook and poke wasps' nests…"

Crispin sniggered. "Sounds like you, Darling."

I thought about making a face at him, but he was right: it did sound like me. I'm not terribly fond of sitting still even now, and I had done my best to keep up with him and Christopher, and with Francis and Robbie, when we were younger.

"You look like her," he added after a moment, eyes back on the portrait. "At least what I can remember from this age."

Aunt Roz nodded. "Very much so. Although you have your father's eyes, Pippa. Annabelle's were blue."

And mine are green. Not blue-green, either, but the verdant side of hazel.

The Countess cleared her throat delicately. "So sad, what happened to Annabelle."

I could see an almost imperceptible tightening in my aunt's lips, but her voice was perfectly even when she said, "Thank you, Euphemia. The influenza epidemic stole so many lives, especially just after the war had already taken such a toll on our families."

From the expression on the Countess's face, I deduced that my mother's death during the influenza epidemic of 1919 wasn't what she had been referring to. It was more likely to be the scandal of my mother's mad dash to the Continent some twenty years prior, and her subsequent marriage to a very unsuitable commoner with no title and no fortune—and a German to boot, which became a sin punishable by death a decade and a half later, when the war started.

She—the Countess—had sense enough not to push the issue, though, not after Aunt Roz shut her down, but her eyes landed on me for a second with an expression of dislike.

Crispin cleared his throat. "You were lovely," he told Aunt Roz sincerely. "Both of you."

Aunt Roz beamed at him. "Thank you, Crispin. Such a sweet boy!"

Crispin arched a brow at me as he turned away from the portrait, smirking. See, Darling? he told me—silently, but as clearly as if he'd said the words out loud, some people appreciate me.

I rolled my eyes. "Think I'm lovely, do you, St George?"

"Of course not, Darling." He made his way back over to Lady Laetitia's chair without looking at me. "I was talking about your mother and your aunt. There's nothing lovely about you."

"You horrible man," I told him, "did you or did you not just say that my mother was lovely, not two minutes after you told me how much I look like her?"

It was his turn to roll his eyes. "Beauty is as beauty does, Darling."

He perched himself on Laetitia's arm again, and she put a possessive hand on his knee. I eyed it for a moment, wondering whether I ought to make a snide remark, but before I could, Christopher leaned down to murmur in my ear. "You're doing it again, Pippa."

I abandoned the spectacle of Laetitia staking her claim to peer up at him. "Doing what?"

"Flirting," Christopher said. "Or your version of it."

I scoffed. "I am not!"

Although to look at the rest of the room—Francis looked amused, Lady Euphemia speculative, Geoffrey fatuous, and Laetitia like a thundercloud—I couldn't prove it by them, clearly.

"We're bickering," I added, for Christopher's ears only, "just as we always do."

"Mmm." Christopher made a noise that absolutely wasn't agreement. "You know, Pippa, one of these days you're are going to wake up and realize what the rest of us have known for years."

I bristled. "And what is that, pray tell?"

"That the two of you?—"

The statement was brought up short by a, "Kindly keep your mouth shut, Kit," from Crispin's side of the room.

Christopher flicked him a look, but didn't say anything.

"Don't be ridiculous, Christopher," I sniffed, with a dismissive glance in that direction. "I abhor St George. You know that."

"The feeling's mutual, Darling," Crispin tossed back.

I tilted my nose up. "I'm well aware of it, St George. Which is why it's patently ridiculous for people to accuse us of flirting."

"People accuse us of flirting?"

"These people do," I said, indicating the room.

Crispin eyed them all, one after the other. Francis smirked. Constance did too, but with a blush. Aunt Roz gave him a fond look, and his father contributed a hard stare. Crispin turned his attention back to me. "Absurd."

I nodded. "Glad you agree, St George."

"Of course, Darling. How could I not?"

Christopher snorted. Francis turned a bark of laughter into a cough. Constance patted him on the back, but her eyes were dancing.

"Hello, Constance," I told her, since I had been too preoccupied thus far to have greeted my old friend when we came in. "We were so happy to receive your telegram last week. Welcome to the family."

"Thank you, Pippa." She smiled demurely. "I'm delighted to be here."

"And we're delighted to have you," Aunt Roz said, and distributed a pat to the back of Constance's hand. "We were starting to despair of Francis ever settling down."

She bent a fond look on her eldest son.

If you asked me, the problem had never been Francis settling down. Crispin settling down, yes, but Francis had never had a habit of flitting from flower to flower, at least not as far as I knew.

Abigail Dole's face—and that of little Bess—rose unasked (and unwanted) in my mind, and I pushed them down and turned back to Constance.

"It'll be lovely to have a sister. I've been surrounded by boys all my life."

The Countess cleared her throat. "You're German, Miss Darling. Is that correct?"

There was a general feeling of stiffening spines around the room. Mine certainly tightened, and both Christopher and his mother sat up straighter. Uncle Herbert's brows lowered.

Lady Laetitia's lips curved, although I'm not sure Crispin noticed, as he, too, was looking at the Countess and at me and then back again.

"I'm English," I told her calmly. "I've spent the past twelve years in England. I'm an English citizen. My mother was English, and so am I."

"But your father was a German."

There was a moment of silence while I thought about what to say. Was I supposed to denounce my parentage? Lie and say no, my father hadn't been German?

Obviously not, since we all knew the truth, and anyway, he'd been my father. I didn't remember him well anymore, but that didn't mean I was willing to pretend he hadn't existed, or that my mother hadn't fallen for him and chosen to settle in Germany to be with him.

I straightened my shoulders, but before I could get the words out, there were footsteps on the floor of the sitting room next door, and then Hughes's form appeared in the doorway between the two rooms.

"Tea is served on the terrasse, my lady."

"The old cow,"Christopher muttered as he tucked my hand through his arm to escort me from the sitting room.

The Countess had already been ushered out to the terrasse by Uncle Harold, and her husband had trailed behind them, content to make his own way there, unaided by Aunt Roz. She walked with Uncle Herbert, while Lord Geoffrey ambled after, hands in his pockets. He had slanted a glance in my direction, but must have thought better of approaching when Christopher and I both responded with looks of loathing.

Crispin, meanwhile, was taken in hand by Laetitia and swept through the door with no more than a glance over his shoulder at us. He looked concerned, but there was very little he could do about it without bucking Laetitia's grasp on his arm, and he seemed unwilling or perhaps unable to do that.

So it was me and Christopher, and his opinion of the Countess of Marsden.

"Like mother, like daughter," I said philosophically as I let him escort me out of the drawing room and through the sitting room to the hall. Laetitia was still close enough to us that she could probably hear me, but if she did, she didn't react. "It's no problem, Christopher. Yes, I'm half German. We all know it. I'm certainly not going to pretend I'm not, just because some old crone has decided to put me on the spot."

"Trying to make her daughter look better by making you look bad," Christopher grumbled.

I shook my head. "That's ridiculous. Is this about your peculiar notion concerning me and St George again?"

"Is it peculiar if the Countess Marsden got the same impression and moved to make you look bad because of it?"

The look he slanted me was victorious. I rolled my eyes. "I can't help it if people get the wrong impression, Christopher. There's nothing going on with me and St George, and you know it. We simply like to bicker. He's clever, and I enjoy matching wits with him. I can't help it if other people read something into that. But Laetitia Marsden is welcome to him. Or Flossie Schlomsky. Or Abigail Dole, if she can snag him. Or Millicent Tremayne or Violet Cummings or… Thank you, St George."

"Don't mention it," Crispin said with a smirk as he held the hall door open for me to pass through. "Do go on, Darling. Millicent Tremayne or Violet Cummings or…?"

"Cecily Fletcher. Or that woman with the artistic grandfather you dallied with last year sometime. Or the waitress you mentioned last month, the one who prevented you from getting back to Sutherland Hall in a timely manner the day after Freddie Montrose died. They're all welcome to you, singly or together. And I, for one, hope that when the competition is over, they've torn you into tiny pieces and scattered them across the landscape so that none of us have to deal with you anymore."

I swept past him with my head held high. He sniggered and fell into step with Christopher as we headed down the hallway through the back of the house towards the terrasse doors.

It wassome ten or fifteen minutes later, just as the sun was dropping below the tops of the aspens to the west, that Laetitia stopped with a cucumber sandwich halfway to her mouth and asked, "Who's that?"

We weren't sitting at the same small wrought-iron table on the terrasse. Of course not. For a moment, when Crispin attached himself to Christopher and me at the door, I had been afraid that I was destined for tea with him and Laetitia. But the Countess Marsden swooped down and whisked them off to a table for four with herself and Uncle Harold on the north end of the terrasse. Her husband ended up with Aunt Roz, Uncle Herbert, and Geoffrey—I breathed a sigh of relief at that, at any rate—and Christopher and I sat with Francis and Constance, which made for a very comfortable and happy meal for us. The only thing worth notice was when Hughes, who was helping Cook with tea, approached Lady Marsden to inquire whether the Marsdens had heard anything from Lydia Morrison.

"Lydia Morrison?" I repeated, with a glance at Constance. "Who's she?"

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it. And what would make Hughes think that Lady Marsden would know, anyway?

Constance answered in the same soft tone so we wouldn't overpower the conversation at the other table. "My mother's lady's maid."

"The one who left without giving notice a couple of months ago?"

Constance nodded. "Hughes asked me about her, too, when she arrived this afternoon. But of course I've been here at Beckwith since shortly after Morrison left. I told Hughes to ask Lady Marsden or Laetitia instead."

Over at the other table, Lady Marsden had finished looking down the length of her nose at Hughes, and deigned to inform her that no, no one at Marsden-on-Crane had heard from Lydia Morrison since she'd left Lady Peckham's employ in late April. The Countess's tone indicated deep offense that Hughes had dared to address her.

"Thank you, Hughes," Aunt Roz said pleasantly. "Go on inside and get your own tea, if you would. We'll be fine here."

Hughes murmured her thanks and withdrew, looking chastised, although I'm fairly certain that the tightness in Aunt Roz's voice was in response to the Countess's behavior and not Hughes's. Aunt Roz is invariably polite to the staff.

"How does Aunt Charlotte's maid from Sutherland know your late mother's maid at the Dower House?" I wanted to know, as Lady Marsden returned her attention to Uncle Harold and to Crispin.

"It's like I told you, Pipsqueak," Francis said. "They switched places at one point."

"Truly?"

Constance nodded. "Hughes worked for my mother at Marsden, and Morrison worked for your aunt at Sutherland Hall. And when one of them wanted a change, the other agreed to a swap."

"Interesting."

Constance shrugged. "It was a very long time ago. Morrison worked for Mother my whole life. I never saw Hughes until today. She told me Mother had promised to bring her back to the Dower House after the funerals, but…" She trailed off.

"But your mother died," I nodded, and then winced, appalled at my own insensitivity. "Sorry."

Constance didn't respond, and I added, "And you haven't heard from Morrison since she left?"

She shook her head. "But I didn't expect to. Mother gave her her wages, and there'd be no other reason why she'd contact me."

"Not even to offer her condolences after your mother's and Johanna's deaths?"

And there I went, stuffing my foot in my mouth again.

"Never mind," I said, and it was at this point that Lady Laetitia lifted a cucumber sandwich to her mouth and stopped halfway.

"Who's that?"

We all turned in the direction she was staring, in time to see a slender figure in a sprigged rayon frock, with a fair-haired baby on her hip, stagger out of the bushes onto the croquet lawn and promptly crumple into a heap on the grass.