Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

Breakfast was laid on in the breakfast room the next morning, in a come-and-go fashion. By the time I made it down there, the room was practically empty. Bilge Fortescue and his wife were sitting across from one another enjoying a post-breakfast cigarette and cup of coffee, while Constance, Francis, and Christopher were grouped around a table at the other end of the room with their heads together. Other than that, the room was empty.

Francis looked faintly green, a similar shade to Cecily’s pyjamas, while Christopher was gesticulating with one hand and waving a cigarette around with the other. Or gesticulating with both, while holding a fag. Francis must not have been able to stomach the idea of food, because the only thing in front of him was a cup of coffee. There was also a plate of buttered toast, but it was untouched, and pushed in front of the chair no one was sitting on.

I snagged a scoop of eggs and a rasher of bacon before they disappeared, and took the empty seat. “Thanks for the toast.”

“Don’t mind if you do, Pipsqueak,” Francis said, with a baleful eye towards my eggs. Constance, meanwhile, was nibbling on kippers, but that didn’t seem to bother him much at all.

“Feeling poorly this morning?”

“Sick as a dog,” Francis said succinctly.

I nodded. “Cecily Fletcher, as well. I ran into her coming out of the toilet last night—I was going out, she was coming in—and she didn’t even wait for me to leave, just dropped to her knees in front of the commode and proceeded to empty her stomach.”

“At least I wasn’t in bad enough condition to have to worship the porcelain god,” Francis commented, while Constance added, concernedly, “Is she all right?”

“Expectant,” I said, with my mouth full of egg.

“Come again?”

I swallowed. “I don’t want to say it again. I said I wouldn’t talk about it. But I’m certain you heard me the first time.”

They all eyed me in silence for a moment.

“It’s not—?” Christopher began.

I shook my head. “They both said no.”

“You saw Crispin last night?”

“As he left her room. He looked a bit like Francis does now.” Pale and drawn, faintly green. “I thought I ought to ask what was wrong.”

“But it’s not…” Christopher hesitated, “his problem?”

“He said not. And so did she.”

“Whose problem is it, then?” Francis wanted to know.

I stabbed my fork into the eggs. “I didn’t want to ask. None of my affair, as long as it doesn’t involve anyone I hold near or dear.”

“And that includes Lord St George?” Constance inquired.

I eyed her. “Well… he’s near, anyway. But one would hate for anything to get in the way of the happy nuptials in December.”

“Of course.” She went back to her kippers.

I grabbed a piece of Francis’s toast. It was cold by now, and the butter a bit too congealed, but I chewed and swallowed determinedly anyway. “I took her back to her bedchamber and put her to bed. I even asked if she wanted me to stay.”

And I was fairly certain that I deserved a medal for that bit of empathy.

“And did she?”

I shook my head. “I told her to come find me if she needed help, or to yell loudly if she couldn’t make it out of bed?—”

“She looked bad enough for that?” Christopher asked.

I nodded. “She looked awful. Pale and shivery, with circles under her eyes. I had to practically carry her from the lavatory to her room. She must have been all right, though, because I didn’t hear from her again.”

I took another bite of egg and added, “Her door was shut this morning, but so was everyone else’s, so I suppose she might have left already. I didn’t knock, just in case she was still asleep.”

The teacup had been gone, at any rate.

“I haven’t seen her,” Christopher said, with a look around the mostly empty room, “but we haven’t been here long.”

“Are the others getting ready to ride out?”

“Pheasants,” Christopher said with a grimace. “What harm did they ever do to anyone?”

Francis snorted, but all he said was, “I’m staying here. The last thing I need is shots going off in my ears.”

Yes, I couldn’t imagine that being healthy for anyone suffering from shellshock. But Francis might be the only one here with that problem, unless Crispin was correct and Bilge Fortescue had served on the Front during the War. I shot a look in their direction. Bilge was making eyes at his wife across the breakfast table, and making no moves towards getting up, so perhaps they were staying put, as well.

“I suppose everyone else is riding out?” I asked.

“We’re not,” Christopher said, and Constance nodded. “Stay with us, Pippa. We’ll watch from the terrasse.”

“They’ll be in the woods,” I said, “won’t they? Will there be anything to see?”

“I can’t imagine there’ll be much. But it’s a nice day. We could set up a game of croquet on the lawn. I imagine there must be a croquet set somewhere.”

Christopher glanced around, as if mallets and balls were likely to materialize in the breakfast room.

“We used to play when I was younger,” Constance told him. “I’m sure there’s something in the carriage house.”

No doubt. “Just the four of us, then?”

“Ordinarily, Crispin might want to join,” Christopher said, “although I don’t think Laetitia will let him.”

No, probably not. “But surely, if everyone else is riding out, it doesn’t matter if he’s here with us?”

“You’ll be here,” Francis said. “And I’m sure Cecily Fletcher won’t be riding out, either.”

Probably not, now that he mentioned it. What if she fell off her horse?

Unless she was trying pretend that everything was fine and she was not with child, of course. Then riding to hounds might be something she’d risk. But otherwise…

“Perhaps she’d like to play croquet with us,” I said.

“It couldn’t hurt to ask,” Francis agreed. “You know, Pipsqueak, I could have sworn you didn’t like Cecily Fletcher.”

“I didn’t know Cecily Fletcher,” I said. “I still don’t. A few minutes of helping her vomit and then dragging her back to her bed doesn’t mean I know her. I suppose we must have met at some point—I recognized her in the drawing room yesterday evening, so I must have seen her before—but I don’t think we’ve ever exchanged more than a few words.”

Most of them had probably taken place at some point when I had had to remove her, forcibly, from Christopher. He’s not good about fending off matrimonial young ladies, and the women of the Bright Young Set don’t seem to have caught on to the fact that Christopher prefers their brothers to them, in a romantic sense.

Discovering that she was an old flame of Crispin’s hadn’t endeared her to me, either, of course, although that was beside the point.

“Croquet seems a nice, pleasant pastime for someone who’s expecting,” Christopher opined, just as Bilge and his wife got up from their table and headed for the door to the hallway. Bilge was dressed in full hunting kit: Tattersall shirt and checkered tweed suit, with breeks tucked into his Wellies and ducks in flight on his tie. And it appeared as if Lady Serena hunted, as well, because she was dressed similarly.

“Breeches,” Constance murmured as they approached. I nodded.

“Must be nice.”

“You can wear trousers if you’d like, Pippa,” Christopher told me. “You wear pyjamas instead of a nightgown. Why not?”

I’m certain he meant it rhetorically, but I answered anyway. “I don’t think society is quite ready for women in trousers, Christopher. We’re allowed them to play sports, or to sleep, but not in polite company. Perhaps one of these days. They’re much more comfortable than skirts for many things.”

“Glad I’m not Scottish,” Francis commented and gave a nod to Bilge as the latter reached the table. “Fortescue.”

“Astley.” Bilge nodded back. He gave the rest of us—well, Christopher and me—a sneer, but he was polite to Francis. “Not riding out, old chap?”

“I had my fill of shooting things in France,” Francis said blandly. “We’re getting up a party for croquet on the lawn. Would you like to join us, Lady Serena?”

Serena’s red lips curved in a smirk. “I’m riding out with my husband, Mr. Astley. But thank you.”

“More coldblooded than I am,” Bilge commented, with a look at his wife that was part proprietary, part indulgent, and part admiring. “And a crack shot, too. The Boche wouldn’t have known what hit them.”

“A shame we didn’t have you with us on the Continent, Lady Serena.” Francis managed a truncated bow from where he was sitting at the table. “Perhaps we could have made it home sooner.”

And with fewer casualties. He didn’t say it, but I’m sure we all heard it.

Serena simpered. “Enjoy your game.” She tucked her hand through Bilge’s arm and tugged him towards the door. We sat in silence until they had vanished, and then Christopher said, “Was it me, or was that condescending?”

“Bilge Fortescue has always been a prat,” Francis said calmly. “We went to Eton together, you know. And then we went to France together. He was a form below me, and one above Robbie.”

So nineteen, then, when conscription was instituted in January, 1916. The conscription that snagged both Francis at twenty, and Robbie, at eighteen, as well.

“Do you know his wife?”

“Just to look at,” Francis said. “I heard that old Bilgy had married her. It must have been two or three years ago now. But we’ve never been close.”

And two years ago, Francis hadn’t been in any kind of shape to celebrate a friend’s nuptials anyway, even if he and Bilgy had been friendly.

“Out of curiosity,” I said, “what sort of name is Bilge?”

Francis chuckled, and even Constance cracked a smile. “His name is William. We called him Billy, but it became Bilge after a while, since he had a tendency to talk a lot of rubbish.”

“Such as?”

“Oh.” Francis shrugged. “How special he was, how much money his family had, how the Boche would run had it been him on the Continent…”

He shook his head. “This was before we were conscripted, of course. I don’t think he acquitted himself any better than anyone else in the trenches.”

Likely not. He seemed like the kind of bloke who was all talk and very little action. All hat and no cattle, as Hiram Schlomsky would have said. Although his wife had seemed pleased enough with him, I supposed, considering the way she had chivvied him out of there.

“So…” I asked, “croquet?”

“Fine by me.” Francis got to his feet and pulled out Constance’s chair. “Kit?”

“I’m in.” Christopher stood, too. “Do you want to go and ask Miss Fletcher if she wants to join us, Pippa?”

“I might as well,” I said. “Would you like to come up with me, Constance?”

Constance nodded. “I have to go upstairs anyway. Don’t want to ruin my new shoes on the lawn.”

They were lovely, I have to say: a mix of patent leather and suede with a dainty Cuban heel that was sure to sink into the grass. The dew wouldn’t do the suede any favors, either.

“You can put them back on later,” I told her, as I got to my feet. “You’ll be more comfortable in brogues once we get outside.”

“We’ll hunt up the mallets and wickets,” Francis said. “Which part of the lawn should we use, my dear?”

Constance pointed him in the direction of the carriage house and the bit of lawn where the game of croquet usually took place, and then the men headed for the back door and the great outdoors while Constance and I took the main staircase up to the first floor.

I waited until we had gained the next story before I leaned towards Constance. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Francis?—”

Francis’s fiancée gave me a jaundiced look out of the corner of her eye.

“—but have you seen Wolfgang this morning?”

His room was on the second floor, as far as I knew, somewhere in the vicinity of my own, but I hadn’t wanted to go knocking on doors this morning. I didn’t want the noise to disturb Cecily, for one thing—she could probably use all the rest she could get, both with her condition and after the disturbed night she had had—and for another, it’s not proper for a young woman to knock on the bedroom door of a young man to whom she has no familiar or romantic ties. I didn’t want to give anyone, including Wolfgang, the wrong idea.

We were cousins, strictly speaking, and I suppose I wasn’t opposed to entertaining the idea of marrying him, should he decide to float a proposal, but there was a chance that that suggestion would include relocating to Germany, and I certainly wasn’t open to that, or to anything else that would include my leaving Christopher behind and returning to the land of my birth.

At any rate, I had assumed that Wolfgang would be downstairs in the breakfast room and I would see him there, but it seemed as if he had either breakfasted in his room or had come and gone early.

Or done without food, I suppose.

“I saw him for a moment,” Constance said. “He was in the breakfast room when we came down. But as soon as he saw Francis, he got up and left.”

That was considerate of him. “I don’t suppose you happened to notice what he was wearing?”

“Not tweed,” Constance said.

“I don’t think the Germans are as enamored with tweed as we are here.” And then something occurred to me, and I shot her a look. “Surely he wasn’t wearing short trousers?”

She gave me a look back. “Of course not.”

“In Bavaria they do. Even the grown men.” I remembered that much from my first decade of life. Men in lederhosen with suspenders and bare knees, with Loden jackets and hats with Gamsbart hair on top.

Constance shook her head. “He wasn’t wearing anything out of the ordinary. Brown wool breeks, a gray and green jacket with silver buttons, and a hat with feathers in the band. And tall boots.”

A German version of the traditional British hunting gear, then.

“He looked good,” I said, “I assume?”

“Good enough that Laetitia deigned to flutter her eyelashes at him,” Constance answered.

I snorted. “I can only imagine how St George responded to that.”

“From the look of him, I would say that Lord St George would be only too happy to have the Graf von Natterdorff take his fiancée off his hands.”

I could well imagine it. Or at least it would be my own inclination, had I been the one to ill-advisedly get myself shackled to Laetitia Marsden.

“Serves him right,” I said.

Constance made a moue and pushed open the door to Primrose. Only to stop on the threshold. “Oh. Nellie.”

“Miss Constance.” Nellie made a quick curtsey.

“I was just going to change my shoes.” Constance headed for the wardrobe. I stayed where I was, in the doorway, and watched as she unbuckled the strap-shoes, tucked them away in the bottom of the wardrobe, and pulled out a pair of brogues.

When she perched on the edge of the divan to tie the laces, I turned my attention back to Nellie. “Have you been upstairs yet, Nellie? Or is there another maid doing the rooms up there?”

“No, Miss Darling.” Nellie ran her hands over the counterpane to smooth out the wrinkles. “I’ll be doing the rooms upstairs once I’m done down here.”

“You can leave mine alone,” I said. “I made my own bed. And Miss Cecily Fletcher might still be in bed, when you get up there. She wasn’t feeling well last night.”

Nellie nodded. “Yes, Miss Darling. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Just be careful when you knock on her door. If she’s still unwell, just leave her be.”

“Yes, Miss Darling.” Her hands were careful as they smoothed out Constance’s counterpane.

“I’m ready,” the latter said, getting to her feet.

I nodded. “We’re going out on the lawn for a game of croquet, Nellie, if anyone asks.”

“Yes, Miss Darling.”

We headed out of the room and along the hallway to the small staircase, the way I had done last night. “Did you sleep well?” I inquired as we entered the stairwell and started up.

“Well enough,” Constance said from behind me. “Nothing happened to me like what happened to you. I was worried that Francis was going to wake up screaming—he does that sometimes, when something happens that reminds him of the War?—”

Like coming face to face with Wolfgang, I assumed. “But he didn’t?”

Constance shook her head. “Or if he did, I didn’t hear him. Christopher must have taken care of it if anything happened.”

“You can call him Kit, you know. He’ll be your cousin before too much longer.”

“You don’t,” Constance said, as we emerged into the upstairs hallway.

I stopped to wait for her so we could walk side by side towards Cecily Fletcher’s door. “I do sometimes. But when I first met him, on the docks at Southampton when I was eleven, he introduced himself as Christopher. I don’t think he minds when people call him Kit?—”

Tom Gardiner did, in addition to Francis and Crispin and of course his parents.

“—but I got in the habit of calling him Christopher because that’s what he told me to call him, and I suppose I never got out of it.”

Constance nodded and flicked a glance at my door. “How did you enjoy Wisteria?”

“It was lovely,” I said, although between getting in late last night and having to drag myself downstairs after an uneasy night this morning, I hadn’t paid it too much attention. “The bed was comfortable.”

“Which is Miss Fletcher’s room?”

I pointed. The little plaque, that I hadn’t noticed in the middle of the night, said Honeysuckle.

“Pale pink, yellow and green,” Constance said.

“Quite so. I didn’t get a chance to see the décor in the middle of the night. She ran out of the room and left the lights off. And I was more concerned with getting her back into bed safely than with what the walls looked like.”

Constance nodded. “I suppose we knock?”

“It seems indicated.” I applied my knuckles to the wood and waited. When nothing happened, I did it again.

“She might have come down before Francis, Christopher and I,” Constance suggested, looking around. “We hadn’t been in the breakfast room very long when you arrived.”

“Bilge and his wife were there. And you said you’d seen Wolfgang and Laetitia. Who else did you see?”

Constance surveyed the hallway as she thought about it. “Lord St George, as I mentioned. He came down with Laetitia. Or I suppose more accurately, she brought him down with her.”

I nodded.

“The three of them left together when we came in. Lord St George?—”

“Crispin,” I said. “He’s practically your cousin. There’s no need to stand on ceremony.”

“He looked like he wanted to stay with us, and let his fiancée leave with your friend, but she brought him to heel.”

I made a face. “I wish you wouldn’t say it like that.”

“That’s how it was,” Constance said, and I gave her a look.

“You were a lot meeker at Godolphin.”

“I was a lot more cowed as a child,” Constance said, and continued, “Geoffrey came down, in full hunting kit. So did the other two gentlemen.”

“Dominic Rivers and the Honorable Reggie?”

She nodded. I tried to picture Dom Rivers in houndstooth and Tattersall, and failed. He looked so extremely cosmopolitan that it was difficult to imagine him in anything other than evening kit, or at most, a nice afternoon suit. But tweed and plus-fours, no.

“The girls arrived eventually, too,” Constance added. “Lady Violet and Olivia Barnsley.”

“That’s everyone, then. Isn’t it?” I knocked on the door one more time and raised my voice for good measure. “Cecily? Are you in there?”

“Other than Aunt Effie and Uncle Maury,” Constance agreed and reached for the doorknob. “The older generation relatives won’t be arriving until this afternoon.”

She twisted the knob and pushed the door in.

The first thing I saw was that the drapes were still drawn. That became obvious as soon as the door swung open. The room was dusky. Not as dark as it had been last night—sunshine crept in around the edges of the curtains—but dark enough that it was difficult to see.

“Cecily?” I took a step across the threshold, with Constance right behind me. “Are you awake?”

There was a lump under the covers, but it didn’t move at the sound of my voice or my approach. She must still be exhausted from last night, I supposed.

We stopped at the edge of the bed and looked down at the part of Cecily we could see above the blankets. Her face was exposed, and twisted in a grimace of pain.

“Cecily?” I put my hand out and, after a moment of hesitation, rested it on her forehead. Her skin was cool under my palm, and a bit clammy.

“She’s breathing,” Constance said. It ought to have been a confident statement, although it sounded more like a question than anything else.

I nodded. “Yes.” Cecily was indeed breathing. Shallowly and with some difficulty, but she was taking in air.

“Open the curtains,” I said, and Constance scurried to obey. The curtain rings rattled along the drapery rod, and a flood of sunlight illuminated Cecily’s pale face. “Thank you.”

Constance came back to my side, wringing her hands. Her face was worried as she peered down. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. Something clearly was. No matter how tired—or how pregnant—she might be, our voices and my touch and the flood of light ought to have done something to wake her. “Cecily?”

I reached under the blankets and found her shoulder, and shook it. “Wake up.”

Cecily’s body moved with my action, but her eyes didn’t open.

“This isn’t good,” Constance said.

I shook my head. “One of us should fetch Francis. He might know what to do.”

He had had quite a lot of experience with dope of various sorts, after all. Overdoses and otherwise. And that was what this looked like. An overdose of something.

“I should try to find Dom Rivers, too,” I added. “If he gave her something, it would be helpful to know what it was.”

Constance nodded. “I’ll stay with her. You go, and hurry.”

I hurried, out into the hallway, down the back stairs to the first floor, down the hallway to the main staircase, and then down that and across the foyer to the hallway and the back door.

There were two of them, one beside the storerooms just outside the servants’ wing on the west side of the house, and the other between the boot room and game room on the east side. This latter was the one I aimed for, and I saw no one until the moment I burst through the door onto the lawn and spotted Christopher and Francis in the distance, setting up the wickets for a friendly game of croquet.

“Francis!” I let the door slam behind me and started across the grass at a run. Francis straightened from driving wickets into the lawn to peer at me. “I need you!”

Christopher straightened too, and started moving towards Francis, if at a more decorous pace than the one I was employing. In the distance, I could hear the sound of shots, and the beating of wings and of hooves.

“Francis,” I panted as I skidded to a stop a few feet away, and then stumbled forward when my momentum carried on. “Oof! Francis, we need help.”

Francis stiffened. “Constance?”

“There’s nothing wrong with Constance. I left her in the room?—”

And that was when another shot rang out from within the trees, close enough to us that I could hear the whistling sound the bullet made as it moved past me with but a few inches to spare and embedded itself in the gray stone wall of the manor with a thwack .