Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Olivia Barnsley?” I asked Christopher as the door shut behind Tom.

He removed his eyes from the now-closed door and smirked at me. “I’m Christopher, Pippa. Surely you know that?”

“Don’t toy with me, you prat. St George gets away with that, but you don’t.”

“And it really ought to be the other way around,” Christopher said, “since you say you love me more. Perhaps you ought to give some thought as to why that is, Pippa.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be difficult, Christopher. He said it wasn’t Aunt Roz—as if I thought there was a possibility of that…”

“Obviously not,” Christopher said.

I shook my head. “And he said it wasn’t me.”

“No. Not that anyone thought it was you.”

“I’m sure Uncle Harold hoped it was.”

He made a face, but it didn’t stop him from nodding in semi-reluctant agreement. “Laetitia, too, probably. And her mother. Although they must have known that you wouldn’t.”

“So Olivia Barnsley, then, do you suppose?” Who else was there, after all? “She was up there in Violet’s room with Violet and Aunt Roz, so she could have left the vial. And Cecily wouldn’t have been suspicious of a cuppa that Olivia brought her.”

Christopher nodded. “Also, she’s goofy about Reggie Fish.”

Yes, she was. And Reggie might have been the father of Cecily’s baby, at least in theory.

“Did he kill Dom Rivers, then, do you suppose?”

“I think she would have done it all,” Christopher said. “The second dose of pennyroyal—Reggie was responsible for the first, obviously, obtained from Rivers, although he probably wasn’t trying to kill her; that would have been Olivia’s idea.”

“There would have been no reason for Reggie to bring Dom here, though,” I said, “would there? They traveled down together. Reggie could have just obtained the dope from Dom in London. Dom himself wasn’t necessary.”

Christopher blinked. “I suppose that’s true, really. So perhaps Olivia did it all, and Reggie was simply the motive. Perhaps she got the dope from Rivers in the ballroom and put it all in the tea. No need for two doses if she did it all. Unless she wanted to spread it out, I suppose. Or unless she dosed Cecily once, and when it didn’t work immediately, she did it again.”

“Perhaps.”

“Then she shot at you from the woods, thinking you were Cecily, and then she killed Rivers and dosed Violet. They were sitting at the same table for tea. It would have been easy to pour the rest of the pennyroyal into Violet’s cup.”

“Right under the nose of the Honorable Reggie and Lord Geoffrey?”

“The Honorable Reggie might have looked the other way,” Christopher said, “and might also have engaged Geoffrey in conversation to make sure he didn’t notice anything going on.”

So he might have done if he were involved. “Would that make him an accessory, then?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Christopher said and pushed his chair back. “Shall we go and watch the fireworks?”

He put his hand on the back of my chair.

“I suppose we ought.” I let him pull it out and got to my feet. He presented his arm, and I rested my fingers on it.

The hallway directly outside the drawing room was empty, but as soon as we got there, we could hear raised voices coming from the direction of the entrance hall.

“Better hurry,” Christopher muttered, “or we’ll miss it.”

I nodded. I had spent all day racking my brain to try to determine what had happened and who was guilty, and I was not about to miss the big denouement now. “Let’s go.”

We went, and stood not upon the order of our going. My heels click-clacked rapidly down the marble floors of the corridor, past the doors to the library and the study, and into the open foyer.

Most of the others seemed to be gathered there, watching the spectacle that was taking place in the middle of the floor. Uncle Herbert had joined Aunt Roz, Francis, and Constance when Tom had let the uncles go earlier, and now the four of them were standing at the foot of the curving staircase. Aunt Roz seemed interested in the proceedings, her eyes big and bright as they moved from person to person, while Constance looked a bit concerned. She was holding on to Francis’s arm, perhaps so he wouldn’t be tempted to throw himself into the fray.

I looked around for Wolfgang, and saw him standing by himself on the other side of the foyer beside the front door. No need to worry about their animosity being the cause of any of this, then.

Uncle Harold had joined his future daughter-in-law and her parents, beside the entrance to the hallway on the opposite side of the foyer from where Christopher and I had emerged. He looked put out but not actively angry, and the Marsdens seemed more confused than anything else. The Earl had a vague sort of smile on his face, while Lady Euphemia was looking from her daughter’s betrothed to her son with a worried wrinkle between her brows. Laetitia was watching Crispin with the unblinking stare of a snake trying to hypnotize its prey.

Or perhaps it wasn’t Crispin she was trying to hypnotize. Perhaps it was Olivia Barnsley. He was facing off with her in the middle of the foyer floor, and he wasn’t the only one. He had his future brother-in-law beside him, while the Honorable Reggie was standing on Geoffrey’s other side, wide-eyed and silent. Bilge Fortescue hovered a few steps behind—not quite inside the circle, but not quite outside of it, either—with Lady Serena clinging to his arm.

“—I promise you, Livvy,” Crispin said, and his voice was throbbing with sincerity; he was clearly in the middle of an impassioned defense of something or other—himself, as it turned out, “I wouldn’t. Not ever.”

I suppressed a sneer at the nickname as well as the overdone earnestness, and saw a similar expression cross Laetitia’s face. Olivia, on the other hand, didn’t seem softened at all.

“It had to be one of you,” she shrieked, as she looked from Crispin to Geoffrey to Reggie to Bilge, eyes wild. “Cecily is dead and Violet is dying! It had to be one of you!”

Reggie cleared his throat, and Olivia swung on him. “Don’t you dare, Reggie! Don’t you tell me it could be someone else!”

“I wasn’t going to, Liv.” Where her voice had been borderline hysterical, his was calm. Or at least as calm as one’s voice is likely to be when one is accused of murder in the middle of a crowd, with the police standing by to arrest the guilty party.

Unless they weren’t, of course. I looked around, but could see none of the local constables. Nor was Tom in sight, although I wouldn’t have put it past him to be standing at the top of the stairs listening, ready to swoop down and save the day when this confrontation ended. And I don’t mean that in a disparaging way whatsoever. I have hardly the room to complain about anyone else’s eavesdropping, do I?

“As St George said,” Reggie continued, with the faintest tremor to his voice and a glance in the latter’s direction, “I wouldn’t. And you know that I didn’t, Liv. I couldn’t have. You’ve been with me practically every second since I arrived yesterday.”

Yes, she had been. And Violet had tracked Geoffrey quite closely, as well. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed that until now.

Or rather, that I hadn’t considered what it meant.

“We wanted to make certain that you couldn’t get to her!” Olivia shouted, her face blotchy with rage. “We planned it before we came here! She wouldn’t tell us who it was?—”

Her eyes flicked from one man to the other again, and ended up back on Reggie, “—but we knew it had to be one of you!”

“Doesn’t sound like she’s ready to confess to murder,” I whispered to Christopher out of the corner of my mouth, “does it?”

He shook his head. “Clearly not.”

But if not Olivia, then who?

Olivia seemed to be thinking the same thing— if not Reggie, then who? —because she assessed Geoffrey before pinning Bilge, who was hovering uncertainly in the background, with a fulminating glare. “I haven’t forgotten you, you know!”

“Don’t, Livvy,” Serena said. Her hand was tight on her husband’s sleeve, but her voice was even. “He didn’t do it. I’ve been with him all day. I was with him all last night, as well. I know we talked about the possibility?—”

Bilge turned his head and fixed his wife with an appalled look. “You thought that I ?—?”

“Not now, Bilge,” Serena said, but I could see her fingers flex as she squeezed his arm. She added, calmly, “We weren’t even at your table for tea, Livvy. Neither of us had the opportunity to put anything in Violet’s cup. The only ones who did?—”

She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to, because Olivia’s head swung back to Reggie and to Geoffrey, the only two of them who had been at her and Violet’s table. I could practically see her tongue flick out to taste-test their guilt.

Reggie raised his hands. “I promise, Liv. I didn’t do it. I would never hurt Violet, and I never had anything to do with Cecily.”

Olivia stared at him, so intently that she appeared to be trying to look inside him. Whatever she found there, seemed to be enough to allow her to dismiss him after a final probing glance. Reggie deflated a bit, or at least his shoulders sank a millimeter or two once her attention was off him.

“You,” she said to Geoffrey, vicious as a viper.

He shook his head even as he gave her the sort of fatuous smile one might give to something very young and quite cute, not to be taken seriously. The equivalent of a patronizing pat on the head. “Now, Livvy…”

Olivia puffed up like an angry budgerigar, and her voice approached the range that only dogs can hear. “Don’t you ‘now, Livvy’ me, you bastard! You killed my best friend!”

Lady Euphemia winced, whether at the accusation, the epithet, or both.

Geoffrey shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Nobody killed Violet, Livvy. Violet isn’t dead.”

Olivia stomped her foot on the floor. It made quite a satisfying sound, I had to say. “Not Violet, you pillock. Cecily! You dosed Cecily with pennyroyal, and you bashed Dom over the head, and you put poison in Violet’s tea so she couldn’t tell on you!”

Lady Euphemia gasped and Laetitia paled, but Geoffrey merely shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”

Olivia looked ready to kill him, and I sympathized. I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him until something useful came out, too.

“Well, if you didn’t,” she hissed, “who did?”

Yes, that was the question, wasn’t it? If it truly had been someone at their table, then it was either Geoffrey or the Honorable Reggie, Olivia or Violet herself.

Was it possible that Violet had dosed her own tea? If she had killed Cecily and Dominic Rivers, once Tom arrived and she realized that she wasn’t likely to avoid going to prison for it, could she have decided to take that way out?

But if so, who had put the empty vial in her nightstand? The pennyroyal would have been in it, I assumed, until it was in the cup of tea, and she would have had to have had it at the table, and she hadn’t, as far as I could recall, left the table during the time we had sat there…

“Let me try, Livvy,” Crispin’s voice said, and when I looked over, he had put a hand on Olivia’s arm and was tugging her away.

Laetitia’s eyes narrowed, and so did Olivia’s—probably for different reasons—but she stepped back. “I suppose of all of us, you speak his language,” she said viciously.

Crispin, who would have taken offence had I said the same thing to him, merely gave Olivia’s arm a little pat—“I suppose I do, old bean,”—before he turned to his future brother-in-law. “Geoffrey, old chap.”

Geoffrey beamed back at him. “St George. There you are.”

“Yes,” Crispin said, “here I am,” as if he hadn’t been standing right next to Geoffrey this whole time. “Tell me, Geoffrey, do you remember the last weekend in April? The Jungman sisters were having a Black and White party, and we played Nebuchadnezzar charades?”

Geoffrey nodded. “Of course I do, old chap. That was when you had to do the banana dance on top of the coffee table, wasn’t it? Jolly good bash.”

“Yes, it was,” Crispin agreed dryly, even as the top of his cheekbones burned. I snorted—Josephine Baker’s Danse Sauvage was a bit of a joke between us, and I would rather have liked to have seen the coffee table performance—and he flicked a glance my way before turning back to Geoffrey. “You went home with Cecily at the end of the night, didn’t you?”

Geoffrey opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “Did I?”

“You did, old bean.” Crispin sounded almost apologetic. “She was a bit unsteady on her feet, you know, and needed some help, and you said you’d get her home.”

Geoffrey chewed on his lip, while on the other side of the foyer, his mother gave a horrified bleat.

“Did Cecily tell you that she was expecting?” Crispin asked gently.

Geoffrey shook his head. “She didn’t, old chap.”

“Did someone else tell you?”

Geoffrey’s eyes flicked to Olivia, and then away again. “Violet mentioned something about it last night. I asked her why Cecily looked like a wrung out dishrag, and she said it was because she was having a baby.”

Olivia shifted on her feet, clearly offended on Cecily’s behalf, but she didn’t say anything.

“Cecily did look ill last night,” Crispin agreed, diplomatically. “But you didn’t know about it before then?”

Geoffrey hesitated. After a moment, he admitted, “I may have heard something. Not from Cecily.”

“From whom?”

“Letty,” Geoffrey said, with a glance at his sister. Laetitia looked thunderstruck for a moment, but then she tossed her head. The ends of her black bob swayed, and so did the ornate diamond earrings weighing down her lobes. They matched the Sutherland engagement ring, so Crispin must have handed over the ostentatious Sutherland parure in its entirety.

“It wasn’t a secret,” she said shrilly. “Nobody said I couldn’t talk about it.”

“I was merely curious why you hadn’t mentioned it to me,” Crispin told her, although none of us needed an answer to that, as the reason was obvious: Laetitia had been worried that Crispin was the father of Cecily’s baby, and if so, that she wouldn’t get to keep him.

And it seemed as if she had decided to keep him, as well as herself, in ignorance, rather than face the issue head on.

“I didn’t go near Cecily last night, old chap,” Geoffrey offered. “We danced one dance, but that was it, and it was in front of everybody. Violet hung on my arm the rest of the time. She even stood at her door and watched me walk to the top of the stairs when I took her upstairs at the end of the night. It would have been as much as my life’s worth to make a detour, I reckon.”

He smirked.

“So we heard,” Crispin said, with a flicker of a look at Olivia. She stared back, belligerent.

“I told you. We knew that one of you was responsible, and we were worried that something would happen. Cecily said that the chap, whoever he was, wouldn’t be happy.”

The glare she leveled at the four men was fulminating.

“Not it,” Reggie said again, his hands up in the universal signal of surrender. “You know I’m not, Livvy. I was with you all night. I couldn’t have done anything to Cecily.”

“But you brought Dom,” Olivia said bitterly. “Him and his paraphernalia.”

Reggie shook his head. “I only motored down with him, Liv. It wasn’t me who invited him. That was St George’s doing.”

“I may have made the suggestion,” Crispin said, “but the formal invitation came from someone else. And I certainly didn’t ask him to bring anything for Cecily.”

He waited a moment before he added, “I spent the evening with Laetitia. All of you watched me. The only time I spoke to Cecily was when she made her felicitations when she and Violet arrived. I did make it to her room by the end of the night, but that was the first I heard about the pregnancy.”

In the silence that followed that pronouncement, we could hear Laetitia whimper softly while her mother cooed and shot daggers at Crispin.

“Bilge was with me all night,” Serena said. “He danced with Cecily once, but unless she died of trampled toes, he’s not to blame.” She smirked, and then added, more seriously, “Neither of us went near the kitchen for any cup of tea.”

“Whoever did that,” Bilge added, showing a modicum of intelligence for the first time this weekend, “must have done Violet, too. That couldn’t have been us, either. We weren’t at her table for tea.”

And thus we were back to Reggie, Olivia, and Geoffrey. The three people who had shared Violet’s table and who had had access to Violet’s teacup.

“It was him,” Olivia said, indicating Geoffrey. “It had to be. It wasn’t me, and I’ll swear that it wasn’t Reggie. I watched him all night last night. And besides, if Crispin is right and Geoffrey took Cecily home after the Jungman sisters’ bash…”

Then he was almost certainly the father of her baby. The timing worked, and who was responsible for this weekend’s tragedy, if not the man who had taken her to bed?

“Violet watched me last night,” Geoffrey said again, stubbornly. “And we sat at the same table for tea today, Livvy. Did you see me put anything in Violet’s cup?”

She hadn’t, of course. She couldn’t admit it, so she didn’t shake her head, but she sank her teeth into her bottom lip and refused to look at him, or at anyone else. Her anger about it was practically palpable.

And that was that. We had reached an impasse. It was clear that Olivia thought Geoffrey was guilty, or at least that she wanted him to be. But even if he had seduced Cecily, or had taken advantage of her when she was sozzled, and even if her predicament had been his fault, if we couldn’t put the pennyroyal in Geoffrey’s hand, and if no one had seen that hand hovering over Cecily’s or Violet’s tea, there was no way to pin it on him.

Besides, it was still possible that Olivia was the guilty party, the way Christopher and I had posited in the drawing room, and she was simply very good at shifting suspicion away from herself.

“What we need,” I said, “is someone who had access to the tea this afternoon, and to Violet’s room, and who knew where the pennyroyal grew, and who could come and go in the kitchen, and who could give Cecily a cup of tea without raising suspicion; someone who wasn’t under scrutiny last night…”

As I spoke, everyone’s attention shifted onto Olivia. It took her a second to realize it, and then her eyes widened. She shook her head frantically. “No! I wouldn’t. They’re my best friends. I’ve lost both of my best friends today. I wouldn’t!”

“I wasn’t talking about you,” I said.

Olivia opened her mouth to ask me who I had been talking about, but before she could, footsteps on the stairs made us all turn in that direction. And at that point the question answered itself.

“Well done, Miss Darling,” Tom told me, as he descended the staircase from the first floor, with his hand wrapped around Nellie’s upper arm. Collins walked on the other side of her, his face impassive. “Means and opportunity before motive.”

“Motive still matters, though,” I answered, with my eyes on the maid. She looked as put-together and lovely as always, with not a hair out of place under her cap. “I know she could have done it. She’s the maid, and nobody ever pays attention to the maid. What I want to know, is why.”

“Lord Geoffrey,” Tom said, as the threesome stepped off the staircase and onto the foyer floor. Perhaps he thought that that cleared it up, or perhaps he simply wanted Geoffrey’s attention. If so, he didn’t get it. Geoffrey was staring at Nellie, his eyes wide and his mouth open. I was pretty certain I could see fear flickering in his eyes.

“But I asked you,” Constance burst out. “I asked you whether Geoffrey had been a bother.”

“And I told you,” Nellie said, with her head held high, “that he hadn’t. Geoffrey has never been a bother.”

She sent a saucy wink Geoffrey’s way. Geoffrey’s mother moaned, and Geoffrey’s jaw clenched. “You… but you…”

I met Constance’s eyes across the foyer and knew she was thinking the same thing I was. I had always found it strange that Nellie had been here as long as she had without running afoul Lord Geoffrey and his attempts at seduction. I knew from before that Mrs. Frobisher had a problem keeping female staff for longer than a month because of Geoffrey’s proclivities. It didn’t make sense that Nellie hadn’t been targeted. But now it turned out that all along it had simply been a matter of semantics, and of Nellie twisting the meaning of the words to make us think something that wasn’t true.

Yes, of course Geoffrey would have pursued Nellie immediately. She was young and pretty and available, right under his nose. Precisely his type.

“You got the vial from Mr. Rivers before supper,” Tom told Geoffrey, “and you passed it on to Nellie. She used it on Miss Fletcher last night, and then put what was left in Lady Violet’s cup during tea this afternoon.”

Yes, of course. It wasn’t just the people at Violet’s table who could have put something in Violet’s tea. It was the person who filled the cup, too. I should have realized that much sooner than I did. I had been looking at all the guests with suspicion, but had ignored the maid flitting about. I had even mentioned to Christopher earlier how easy it would have been for Nellie to do it all, but without seriously considering that she might have done.

I had watched her bring Constance a cup of tea in the ballroom last night, and still hadn’t put two and two together.

“But why?” I asked. “I understand about Cecily, I suppose. Geoffrey wanted the baby gone, and procured the pennyroyal, and then asked you to put it in her drink or food that night…”

Nellie smirked. “It was easy. She was tired and out of sorts after the dancing. I offered to make her a cuppa to settle her stomach and help her sleep. Geoffrey—” She glanced at him from under her lashes, as lovely a sight as one could wish for, “—only wanted to get rid of the baby. But I thought it would be better to get rid of the girl, too.”

The obvious conclusion— less competition for me —was left unsaid, but I think we all heard it. Lady Euphemia made a sound like something that was trodden on: not a squeal, but a gentle sigh, as if all the air left her body.

“And then you killed Dominic Rivers,” I said, “I suppose because he was the one who sold Geoffrey the pennyroyal?”

“That,” Nellie said, “and he saw Geoffrey come out of my room late last night.” She gave him a look from under her lashes. “I thought it would be better if he didn’t have a chance to tell anyone.”

That explained Rivers’s smirk when he had caught Crispin coming out of my room, anyway. What was it that he had said? People popping out of rooms all over the place , wasn’t it?

“That’s how you knew that the vase was broken,” I said. “You weren’t supposed to have been up on the second floor, but you knew to come upstairs with a replacement.”

This time it was Tom who nodded. “Thank you for pointing that out earlier, Miss Darling. Without that bit of evidence, this might have taken a lot longer.”

“Her fingerprints were on it,” I said. “Constable Collins asked about them.”

“Yes. But as she pointed out, she dusted that vase every week. Of course her fingerprints would be on it.”

“But not on the vial.”

Tom shook his head. “She had to wipe Lord Geoffrey’s fingerprints off that. And of course make sure that her own didn’t get on it. Everyone knows about fingerprints these days. But she wasn’t able to get Violet’s prints onto the vial. She had to take it upstairs while Violet was still at table.”

He flicked a glance at Nellie, who made a face, before turning back to me. “Any other questions?”

“Just one,” I said. “Whatever did Violet do to be sentenced to death? She wasn’t expecting anyone’s baby, and she didn’t know about the affair or the pennyroyal or Dominic Rivers or anything. Why kill her?”

“She wouldn’t leave him alone,” Nellie said before anyone else could answer, her eyes possessive on Geoffrey’s face. “I watched her last night, clinging to his arm and making eyes at him. She had to go, too.”

I stared at her, appalled. “She was simply trying to protect her friend, you nitwit. She wasn’t interested in Lord Geoffrey!”

And he wasn’t interested in Nellie, as anything other than a convenient shag. Just the way he had gone through all the other Marsden Manor maids.

I didn’t have it in me to explain it to her, though. Not now, and not in front of everyone. The reality of it would catch up to her soon enough, I reckoned. Probably when Geoffrey started to shift as much of the blame as he could off himself and onto her.

Any moment now, most likely.

Tom ignored the exchange. He had already turned away from me. “Lord Geoffrey? Perhaps you wouldn’t mind accompanying us down to the village? We have a few questions we would like to ask in a more formal setting.”

It was phrased as a question, and sounded reasonably polite. It was, in fact, an order, and non-negotiable. Geoffrey paled. “But I didn’t do anything. It was all her!”

“As it turns out,” Tom said, “that’s not entirely true. She’ll certainly spend the rest of her life behind bars for murder. But there’s a separate charge for procuring drugs or other means to cause an abortion, and by Nellie’s statement, you’re guilty of it.”

He let that hang for a moment while Geoffrey opened and closed his mouth, apparently speechless. When nothing came forth, Tom added, “It comes with a prison term of three years. After you, Lord Geoffrey.”

He gestured Geoffrey towards the front door. Collins preceded them, with Nellie’s arm still in a tight grip—the bow at the back of her uniform still swayed invitingly with every step—and Tom brought up the rear.

The moment the door shut behind them, Lady Euphemia turned to her husband with a wail. “Maury…!”

Lord Maurice nodded and patted her hand. “I’ll go ring up Eustace, shall I?”

“Please, Maury. We have to get him out of there, the poor boy.”

I rolled my eyes. Lord Maurice headed across the foyer towards the study and the telephone. “Pardon me,” he muttered as he skirted us and kept going.

Christopher arched his brows. “Barrister?”

I shrugged. “I assume so. Or the Chief Constable, perhaps. Someone who can do something to get Geoffrey out of the police station in one piece.”

“Can anyone get Geoffrey out of the police station in one piece, do you suppose?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “He didn’t plan to kill anyone, so he shouldn’t have to worry about a murder charge, but there’s still the Section 59 issue.”

On the other side of the room, Laetitia sniffed, offended, and put out a hand. “Darling?”

“Yes,” I said, eyeing it.

Crispin smirked. He was standing a few feet away from us, and had been since the showdown began. “I imagine she means me, Darling.”

“Yes, of course she does. Don’t let me keep you.”

I flapped a hand at him. He inclined his head and started across the floor. As soon as he was within reach, Laetitia latched onto him. Olivia, meanwhile, had allowed Reggie to take hold of her. When he steered her away from the rest of us towards the hallway to the study and drawing room, it became a sign for everyone else too, and the rest of the gathering broke up into small, chattering groups. His Grace the Duke of Sutherland patted Lady Euphemia’s hand sympathetically, and Laetitia kept a tight hold on Crispin as she pulled him over next to them.

“Shall we?” Christopher inquired, eyes on his parents, and on Francis and Constance next to them.

I nodded, but before I could take more than a single step, Wolfgang stepped up next to me.

“Philippa.” He clicked his heels together. “May I have a word?”

I smiled. “Of course you may. Go on, Christopher. I’ll catch up in a moment.”

Christopher nodded and let go of my hand, but not without a look back over his shoulder. I waited until he was outside the range of hearing before I added, “What can I do for you, Graf von Natterdorff?”

Wolfgang smirked, but didn’t comment on my use of his title. “That was very impressive, Freulein Schatz.”

“Thank you,” I said, “but I didn’t do much. It was just a matter of putting the information together at the last moment, and?—”

He shook his head. “You are an impressive girl, Philippa.”

“Thank you,” I said again, “but?—”

He reached out and put a finger across my mouth. “The kind of girl any man would be proud to call his own.”

That managed to shut me up, anyway. My eyes widened, and while I still thought the words— Thank you, but —I couldn’t utter them, not with his finger holding my mouth shut.

And then he took what remained of my breath when he added, “I would be honored if you would consent to be my wife, Philippa Marie Schatz.”

For a second, it felt as if the world stopped. Behind me, someone squealed. I couldn’t tell whether it was Christopher, Constance, or Aunt Roz, or perhaps someone else entirely. All I could do was stare deeply into Wolfgang’s eyes while he stared deeply into mine, and while the words echoed in my head.