Page 12 of Death at the Dower House
It wasn’t a question, since I was absolutely certain she was. Word had got around, and almost anyone our age, or a bit younger or a bit older, was familiar with Crispin’s escapades.
As she must have been, because she gave a nonchalant little shrug. “Boyish exuberance.”
“He’s twenty-two,” I said. “Almost twenty-three. Hardly a boy anymore.” While she was surely at least a few years older, and clearly ready to settle down. “Although he did just lose his mother. Perhaps he’s looking for a substitute.”
That hit home, anyway. Her lips flattened.
I held up a hand in a gesture of peace. It would have been both hands, but I was carrying the yellow gown with the other. “Listen, Miss de Vos. I’m trying to do you a favor. He’s in love. He wants a woman he can’t have, and because he can’t have the woman he wants, he uses every other woman he comes across who’ll let him. You can certainly let him use you if you want—you won’t be the first or the last; if you’re familiar with his reputation, you already know that—but he won’t marry you. If he can’t get his father’s permission to marry the girl he’s in love with, he won’t get his father’s permission to marry you.”
She was just as foreign, after all, and presumably just as penniless and without prospects as Crispin’s ladylove.
“But feel free to waste your time on him anyway,” I told her, magnanimously. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I left her standing there, and flounced down the hall to Constance’s room. By the time I let myself in, Johanna was still standing where I’d left her, staring after me with an expression that ought to have left me as nothing more than a wet smear on the floor of the hall.
Four
Constance looked rather fetchingin my yellow gown, and I didn’t look too bad in her brown one. There’s nothing particularly sparrow-like about me, so I could carry it off much better than she could, and with a whole lot more attitude, too, especially when I remembered my suspicion that Johanna had talked Lady Peckham into buying it for the sole purpose of making Constance look drab so Johanna could shine more brightly.
Additionally, because I had a few inches on Constance, I got to flash a little more leg, too, which is never a bad thing. I have it on good authority—Christopher’s—that my legs are excellent, so I don’t mind a chance to show them off.
Of course, there was absolutely no way for either of us to outshine Johanna. Certainly not in borrowed gowns. The Golden Goddess wore flame-colored crepe de chine with flounce upon flounce of beads, clearly straight from Paris. She had paired the gown with a golden headband and gold strap shoes, and I knew I was beaten as soon as she walked into the room.
Aunt Roz’s eyebrows disappeared up her forehead. “Well, well.”
I nodded. “I know. That’s Lady Peckham’s ward, Johanna de Vos. Here to snag a husband, clearly.”
“Couldn’t be much clearer,” Aunt Roz agreed. “I suppose I ought to make sure she knows Herbert is taken.”
“I don’t think she’s interested in Uncle Herbert. She has her eye on Crispin, I think.”
“Good Lord,” Aunt Roz said, and turned her attention to her nephew, who was standing behind his chair on the other side of the table, elegant in black tie evening kit. For some reason, it made him look younger rather than older. “She’d eat him for breakfast.”
“I think he’s more than capable of holding his own,” I told her dryly. “He’s not without experience, you know.”
Aunt Roz had to acquiesce to that. Nonetheless, she shook her head. “He’s not equal to that, surely. She’ll have him hogtied and halfway to the altar if we’re not careful.”
“They’ve invited us to a weekend party at the Dower House,” I told her. “We’re to go directly there the day after tomorrow.”
Aunt Roz looked serious. “You’ll have to make sure she doesn’t compromise him, Pippa.”
“Compromise him?” I stared at her. What were we, Victorians? “I hardly think he can be compromised, Aunt Roz. Not considering the kinds of things he gets up to every time he goes up to London. Which reminds me, Laetitia Marsden is going to be there, too. And you know he’s already dallied with her before.”
“So it’ll be a pitched battle between the two of them,” Aunt Roz said brightly. “Now I’m rather sorry I wasn’t invited.”
I rolled my eyes. “Just what we’d all like to see, I’m sure. Two women squabbling over St George like he is the last, dried-up cucumber sandwich on the tray.”
“Just keep an eye on things,” Aunt Roz told me. “We can’t let someone like that get her hooks in him.”
She tilted her head sideways to take in the golden glow of Johanna. “Just look at the way she’s smiling at Harold now. Indecent is what it is.”
It was, actually. Aunt Roz clicked her tongue. “I’d better go rescue him. Lady Peckham clearly isn’t going to do it.”
No, she wasn’t. She simply stood there, beaming, as Johanna turned all her youth and beauty on the grieving widower, whose wife wasn’t even in the ground yet.
“Looks like your new ladylove is looking to trade up already,” I told Crispin across the table as Aunt Roz set off. He had been watching Johanna, too, so there was no need to explain what I was talking about. I did it anyway, of course. “Why bother with the viscount when she can go directly to the duke?”
It was intended as a rhetorical question, not something that required a response, but I wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t resist the bait. There was even a hint of offended color in his cheeks. “Perhaps she’s just getting to know her future father-in-law, Darling.”
