Chapter 9

We werean uneven number at dinner, which is what happens when you have a family with a lot of sons and no daughters. Although Francis not turning up ended up for the best, since Aunt Roz was able to put Geoffrey Marsden to her left, with Constance beside him. Then came Uncle Harold, and then Euphemia, Lady Marsden. Uncle Herbert sat on the other end of the table with Crispin on his left. That was unorthodox, but it allowed us to maintain a man-woman-man formation for the rest of the table. Laetitia sat next to Crispin, Christopher next to Laetitia, and then there was me between Christopher and Laetitia's father, who was on Aunt Roz's right.

Speaking for myself, I was delighted with the arrangement. I was a bit too close to Lord Geoffrey for comfort, but I thought I could trust that he wouldn't try to play footsie with me practically under the eye of Aunt Roz and his father. The first time he accidentally kicked Aunt Roz or the Earl trying to get to me would hopefully put a stop to that. And I was also at a safe distance from both Uncle Harold, whom I still wanted to scream at, and from Lady Laetitia, who never failed to get on my nerves. I had Constance across from me, and Christopher on my right, and the Earl of Marsden turned out to be pleasant enough for the few minutes I was forced to converse with him.

"So you're Annabelle's daughter," he said. "And you went to the Godolphin School with little Connie."

I nodded. "I did, Lord Marsden."

"Call me Maurice, my dear. And how did you like Godolphin?"

We conversed on Godolphin—the school I had attended while Christopher and Crispin had been away at Eton—and then the next course was served and the Earl of Marsden—pardon me, Maurice—returned his attention to Aunt Roz and I returned mine to Christopher.

The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the fact that Francis was gone. "Any idea where he is?" I asked Christopher under cover of wiping my mouth with a serviette.

He slanted me a look. "I expect the village pub, since all of the motorcars are still here and he'd hardly attempt to bicycle all the way to London."

"Surely he wouldn't go to Town, anyway? Not with a house party and an engagement to celebrate tomorrow?"

"Not sure he was thinking straight when he left," Christopher said. "But at least if he's on foot we won't have to worry about him killing himself when he comes home, dead drunk, in the middle of the night."

No, we wouldn't. "I'm sure he's all right," I said, more for Constance's benefit than for Christopher's. She was sitting across the table and was hanging on our every word. "He'll be back later tonight, no doubt, and then tomorrow Abigail will wake up and give us a definitive answer about the baby's father, and then we'll move on from there."

Constance's mouth opened, and then closed again.

"What?" I asked.

She lowered her voice so far that it was hard to hear it across the table. "What if it turns out to be Francis's baby?"

"Then you'll either marry him, knowing that he had sexual relations with another woman before he knew you, or you won't, and he'll deal with it on his own. At least he didn't cheat."

Constance's jaw dropped at this rather brutal, but dare I say it, accurate, description of the situation. "But won't he want to…?"

"Oh, no." I shook my head. "She can't force him to marry her, you know."

I raised my voice a little on the last sentence, just to make sure that Crispin could hear me. "Francis loves you. If the baby is his, he'll have to provide for her, I suppose. But nobody can force him to marry someone he doesn't want to marry."

Lady Euphemia eyed me from down the table, where she was seated between Uncle Herbert and Uncle Harold. "Would you marry a man who had sired a child with someone else, Miss Darling? Someone who then left that woman to raise the child on her own?"

I think it was intended to be a trap. I'm fairly certain I was expected to return a negative answer. However, expectations often make me go out of my way to do the opposite, whether I actually agree with what I'm saying or not.

I eyed her back. "If I loved him, I suppose I would. Although if I loved him, he wouldn't be the sort of man who would abandon a woman he had gotten with child, would he?"

She hummed. "I don't know, Miss Darling. Would he?"

"I don't know, Lady Marsden. I guess we'll have to wait and see."

I hadn't meant anything by it, other than that I wasn't in love with anyone at the moment, and this was all a hypothetical situation, as far as I was concerned. But her nostrils flared as if I had said something significant. She exchanged a glance with her daughter, and then went back to her discussion with Uncle Harold. He gave me a cold sort of look, too. I guess he was still upset with me from earlier. Aunt Roz arched her brows questioningly.

I placed my napkin next to my plate. "May I be excused, Aunt Roslyn?"

"Go ahead, dear."

"Me as well?" Christopher asked.

His mother sighed. "Yes, Kit. Go on."

Constance didn't say a word, just watched with large, pleading eyes until Aunt Roz nodded. "You, too, Constance."

"Thank you, Roslyn." I waited for Christopher to pull out my chair. Geoffrey was gentleman enough to do the same for Constance.

"I expect you'll want to use the gramophone in the drawing room," Aunt Roz said. "I would be grateful if you'd close the door so the rest of us won't have to listen to the caterwauling you call music."

I had no plans of playing the gramophone and dancing, actually. Giving Lord Geoffrey that kind of proximity to me was the last thing I wanted. I had just desired to get away from the table and from the Marsden family, not to mention Uncle Harold. If the evening was warm, we might go out on the terrasse for a cigarette. But there was no need to say any of that, so I just nodded pleasantly. "Of course, Aunt Roz."

"Off you go, then." She waved a hand at us. Christopher offered Constance his arm. To my consternation, Lord Geoffrey hadn't sat back down at table, and now he offered me his.

"Miss Darling."

I forced a smile. "Thank you, Lord Geoffrey."

He leered down. "The pleasure is mine."

It certainly wasn't mine. If it had been up to me, I would have told him that I didn't need his help to walk out of the dining room and across the foyer. But he and his family were honored guests, and Aunt Roz would never forgive me if I caused a scene. The way I had addressed Her Grace the Duchess had been bad enough.

So I rested my fingertips—the very smallest part of me I could manage—on Geoffrey's arm, and let him escort me from the room. Behind me, I could hear the Countess tell her daughter, "Why don't you and Lord St George join the other young people, darling. It can't be any fun for you to sit here with us old relics."

Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert are certainly not relics. They're vibrant, engaging, smart people that it's fun to spend time with. I snorted.

"Gesundtheit," Geoffrey said.

I blinked. German? Really?

"Move along, Darling," St George's voice told me, before he gave me a nudge in the back to get me going again. "You're holding up the queue."

"Sorry, St George." I kicked back into motion. "There was no need for you to join us, you know. I didn't intend our departure to take you away from your supper."

"Believe me, Darling, I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been told to run along and play."

Yes, that had been the long and short of Lady Marsden's remark, hadn't it? Move along, children, and let the grownups talk business.

I wondered what the topic of conversation was going to be after we left the dining room. How to prevail upon Crispin to propose to Lady Laetitia, or how to determine who was responsible for the baby currently asleep in my aunt and uncle's room upstairs?

Or perhaps the whereabouts of the eldest son of the house, or the rudeness of the poor relation, who clearly didn't know her place?

I snorted again. And right on cue?—

"Gesundtheit," Geoffrey said.

Christopher turned to look at me over his shoulder. "Are you developing a cold, Pippa?"

"No, Christopher," I said. "I'm incredulous."

"Ah." His lips twitched, and for a second, I saw him glance over my shoulder to, presumably, share an amused glance with his cousin. Then he added, "Where to?"

"Where would you like to go?"

"This was your idea, wasn't it? If you hadn't asked Mum to excuse you, we'd all still be sitting in the dining room."

"I just wanted to get away from the table," I said. "As long as we're not there, I don't care where we are."

He nodded. "It's a nice evening. Terrasse?"

The terrasse seemed like as good a place as any, so we headed that way and ranged ourselves along the balustrade. Crispin lighted Laetitia's cigarette and then his own. And then turned to me. "Darling?"

"Please," I said.

It was a lovely night. One of those clear, starry ones you sometimes get in summer when the temperature is perfect, there's no moisture in the air, and the smell of the flowers in the garden pervade everything. It would have been romantic had it not been for Geoffrey Marsden, who insisted on standing too close to me, and his sister, who carried on a heavy-handed flirtation with St George to the point that all I wanted to do was tell her to get a room. We all understood that she considered him her personal property. She had made that part very clear. Neither Constance nor I was a threat to her ownership. There was no need to stake her claim quite so vociferously. Frankly, it was making her look a bit desperate.

I crushed out my cigarette on the balustrade and prepared to get up and go inside, since I'd had all I could take of both Marsden siblings. But before I could get the words out, Constance's head rose. "Someone's coming."

We all quieted, Lady Laetitia a few seconds after the rest. "—so happy…"

I sharpened my ears, and after a moment I could hear what Constance's sharper ears had picked up on. Shuffling footsteps, or at least the passage of something or someone up the driveway and into the bushes at the corner of the house.

A muffled curse.

"Francis!" Constance jumped up from the parapet and ran for the stairs.

Down at the edge of the croquet lawn, in the shade of the house and the bushes, a many-legged creature appeared. It took a second for it to resolve itself into two figures, closely entwined, matched in height and breadth of shoulder. It wasn't until they came a bit closer that we could make out Francis on the left and Wilkins on the right. The twin rows of shiny buttons on the latter's uniform was a dead giveaway once the light hit them.

Constance hurried over and tucked herself under Francis's other arm. He beamed down on her with the easy affection of the extremely drunk. "Hullo, Connie!"

"Hello, Francis." She wrapped an arm around his waist and let out a soft grunt when he transferred his weight from Wilkins to her. Christopher headed down the stairs to help them.

"What happened?" he asked as he traded places with the chauffeur on Francis's other side.

Wilkins retired a few steps to the side and rotated his shoulder and then his neck. Francis was no lightweight. Then again, nor was Wilkins. "His Lordship having indicated that he wouldn't need my services for the rest of the evening," he said, "I retired to the village pub, where I've taken a room. When Mr. Astley expressed a desire to leave, I offered to drive him up the hill."

Translation: Francis had been drunk enough that Wilkins was worried he might end up face down in a ditch on his way home, and had thought to spare him that.

"Thank you, Wilkins," I said. "We'll take it from here."

"Yes, Miss Darling." He turned and headed towards the driveway.

"Wilkins?" I called after him.

He turned around. "Yes, Miss Darling?"

"Any news on the girl?"

"No, Miss Darling."

"No talk in the pub? Doctor White didn't come in for a nightcap and let anything slip?"

He shook his head. "No, Miss Darling."

"All right," I said. "Thank you, Wilkins. Sleep well."

"Yes, Miss Darling."

He disappeared into the bushes. After a moment, we could hear his footsteps on the driveway and then, eventually, there was the sound of the Crossley starting. By then, I had turned my attention to the threesome making their slow way up the stairs and across the terrasse. "There's simply no way we'll be able to get him up three flights of stairs to the attic."

Christopher shook his head. He was out of breath, but not as severely as Constance. Francis must be leaning quite a lot of his weight on them both. "I say we put him in the library," he told me. "It's the closest, and no one's likely to enter at this time of night."

"Fine by me." I moved to get the door, but Crispin got there ahead of me.

"He's all right, isn't he?"

"Drunk out of his mind," Christopher panted, stepping through the doorway first and dragging his brother in behind him, "but not hurt otherwise. He must have refrained from picking a fight at the pub, at any rate."

"Does he often pick fights in pubs?" Constance managed, staggering through the doorway behind them.

Christopher shot her a glance over Francis's bowed head. "It's been known to happen. Not much lately."

"More when the war had just ended and he was trying to adjust to civilian life," I added, as I slipped past Crispin and into the house behind them. "Thank you, St George."

"Don't mention it, Darling."

He shut the door behind the rest of us and followed me down the hallway as Christopher and Constance navigated Francis through the door into the library. "Someone should fetch a bucket," he added dispassionately from behind me.

I eyed him over my shoulder. "Do you think he'll need it?"

He gave me a look. "Better safe than sorry, I'd say."

True. "I'll check the kitchen." I moved down the hallway while the others passed through the door into the library.

By the time I came back with one of Cook's enameled buckets, Francis had been lowered onto one of the library sofas, and was resting with his head on an embroidered pillow. His eyes were closed and his breathing slow and even.

"I'll stay with him," Constance said, and sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs with her hands folded in her lap, quite as if she planned to spend the rest of the night there.

"At least go get yourself a blanket," I told her. "And change into something comfortable. If you're going to spend the night in a chair, you don't have to do it in a beaded gown."

"Someone ought to tell Mum and Dad, too," Christopher added. He was standing next to the sofa with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on Francis. "I'm sure Mum's worried. She's got other things on her mind, but she'll want to know that Francis is all right."

"You go ahead," I told him. "Constance, you go on upstairs and get ready. Bring a blanket for Francis, too. I'll stay with him until you get back. And then we'll all leave the two of you alone."

Constance nodded, and headed out, followed by Christopher. I perched on the chair and told Crispin, "Take a look at him, St George, if you don't mind."

He arched a brow, but squatted next to the sofa, the better to peer at Francis's face. "What am I looking for?"

"Anything to indicate that he isn't all right."

He shot me a quick look over his shoulder. "No, Darling. He's perfectly fine. Marinated to the gills, but otherwise in tip-top shape."

"No sign of anything else?" Anything other than alcohol, I meant. Veronal, opium, cocaine… all the other things that Francis had been known to indulge in to keep the darkness at bay.

Crispin shook his head. "Not that I can see."

"His brat, is it?" Geoffrey asked genially, while Crispin rose to his feet.

I fixed him with a stare. Lord Geoffrey, I mean. Crispin had actually been helpful, so there was no point in glaring at him. "If you had been paying attention, you'd know that we don't know whose baby it is. At this point, it could be anybody's."

"Anybody in the family," Geoffrey clarified.

"Obviously. Unless you'd like to confess. She has blue eyes. So do you."

He sniggered. "Not it."

No, that would be too easy. I'd positively adore it if Handsy Geoffrey were to blame for Abigail's predicament, but blue eyes aside, that fair Sutherland hair was hard to dismiss.

"Crispin…" Laetitia whined and reached out. I rolled my eyes, but he moved obediently in her direction and allowed himself to be gathered in. When she had a tight grip on his arm, she turned to me. By now, her voice was crisp and cool. "What do you think, Miss Darling?"

I thought she was a horrible cow who ought to be taken outside and… well, no. Not shot. But I thought she was a horrible cow. That was not, however, likely to be what she meant.

"I think we don't know enough to make a determination. After all, anyone can say they're the grandson of the Duke of Sutherland, can't they?"

"Is that what happened?" Geoffrey asked. He looked like he was thinking deeply. I hoped I wasn't giving him ideas.

"That's what we surmise happened. She hasn't actually been awake to tell anyone anything. But she started with St George, then she came to see Christopher, and now here she is, where Francis lives."

"So it's not Crispin," Laetitia said, and in her favor, she actually sounded relieved.

I flicked him a glance. "He says it isn't."

"But if she moved on…"

"That's if she decided he isn't the baby's father. She could equally well have moved on because he denied her, and now she's trying to drum up sympathy in other quarters, so she can have support for when she nails him to the wall."

Crispin winced. "Thanks a lot, Darling."

I smirked. "Just telling the truth the way I see it, St George."

"But you said she came to see Christopher Astley after seeing St George," Geoffrey said.

I nodded. "And she took one look at me and ran, without telling me anything at all."

"So you don't know that Mr. Astley isn't the baby's father." Laetitia grasped hold of this idea in the manner of someone who's looking for something—anything—solid in a storm.

Her brother chuckled, but before he could voice whatever inanity had come to his mind, I told her, "I know that Christopher isn't, if he's the Mr. Astley you're referring to. But there's no proof of that, any more than there's proof for or against anyone else. And clearly some Mr. Astley or other is responsible."

Laetitia opened her mouth, but before she could say anything else, there was the sound of rapid footsteps in the hallway outside. A moment later, Aunt Roz swept through the door to the library, followed by Uncle Herbert. Christopher trailed behind them. I looked beyond him, in case Uncle Harold or the elder Marsdens had chosen to come along, too, but they must have decided to stay in the dining room, or wherever else they were gathered at this point.

"Francis!" Aunt Roz made for the sofa.

Francis opened his eyes to slits. "Mum?"

"What have you done to yourself, silly boy?"

She perched on the sofa next to him and pushed the hair out of his face.

"Got drunk," Francis muttered.

Aunt Roz's nose wrinkled. "So I smell."

Uncle Herbert smothered a laugh.

"Constance wants to stay here with him," I said. "She's gone upstairs to change into her night clothes and to bring down a pair of blankets. I don't see any reason why she can't, personally. He's in no condition to take advantage of anyone, and if he were going to, chances are he would have done it already."

"I'm not sure the Marsdens will agree with that reasoning, Pippa," Aunt Roz said, with a sideways look at Laetitia and Geoffrey, "although I suppose Constance is of age and can make her own decisions."

I nodded. "That's what I assumed." And let's be honest, it wasn't as if Lady Laetitia or Lord Geoffrey had any claim to chastity. To demand that Constance behave like a lady while they carried on however they wanted seemed like the height of hypocrisy.

"Let's just not mention anything about it to them," I said. "What they don't know can't hurt them and all of that. And as you said, Constance is of age."

Aunt Roz nodded. "We'll just let you deal with it and go back to our guests. Sleep well, son." She patted Francis on the shoulder before sweeping out of the library with Uncle Herbert right behind. He winked at me on his way past.

"We'll go to Mummy and Daddy, as well," Laetitia said and made to follow. The personal pronoun seemed to include Crispin, because she took him with her. "Come along, Geoffrey."

She made her exit with both young men in attendance.

"Good God, Christopher," I said, when I thought she must be far enough down the hallway that she wouldn't be able to hear me, "please say it isn't just me. I know I roll my eyes a little extra hard because it's St George, but please tell me she really is as insufferable as I think she is. It can't be just me, surely?"

"She's a trial," Christopher said. "So is he, of course, in his own way."

"She's already taken possession of him, you know. She acts as if it's a done deal."

Christopher nodded. "Perhaps it is."

"If he has proposed, I haven't heard anything about it. Surely we would. She wouldn't be able to keep her mouth shut, would she? Nor would her mother, I bet."

"I would expect us to hear if my cousin got engaged," Christopher agreed, "although with everything else that's going on here this weekend, who knows?"

That was a fair point. "He'd tell you, though. Wouldn't he?"

"Again," Christopher said, "I would expect him to. But?—"

He stopped talking at the sound of soft footsteps in the hallway. It was only Constance, though, arrayed in a dressing gown, with quilted slippers on her feet and a pillow and two blankets in her arms.

"We'll let you get to it," I told her. "Lock the door behind us if you don't want to be disturbed."

She nodded. "Are you going back to the drawing room?"

Christopher nodded. I shook my head. "I've had enough for tonight. If I have to deal with one more imbecilic comment from Lord Geoffrey—no offense, Constance…"

"None taken," Constance said, dropping the pillow and blankets on the chair before draping one lovingly over Francis's still form. A corner of his mouth turned up, even in sleep, and he snuggled in underneath it. Constance straightened and glanced at me. "I didn't choose him."

"Well, I have listened to enough of Geoffrey's inanities, and have watched Laetitia do her worst vis-à-vis St George, for long enough today. I'm going to bed. I'll see you upstairs, Christopher."

"Since Francis is down here," Christopher said, with a glance at him, "I'll share with Crispin."

"Since Constance is down here, St George might not come upstairs. Laetitia may drag him into Constance's room with her."

"If she has relations with him in my bed," Constance said, "I will absolutely tell Aunt Effie about it."

Good. If Laetitia had relations with St George in Constance's bed, she'd deserve a dressing down by her mother.

"I'll see you both in the morning." I made my own way towards the door. "If St George proposes to Lady Laetitia—or vice versa—in what's left of tonight, you have my permission to wake me, Christopher, so I can give the happy couple my felicitations."

"I'll make sure to do that, Pippa," Christopher said. "Sleep well."