Page 83 of Death at the Dower House
“I don’t think it’s your cousin this time, Pippa.”
Constance was already on her way towards the door, bare feet pattering on the wood floors. I took the time to slip my own feet into a pair of quilted mules before I followed.
Nineteen
I contemplated snatchingmy hat pin from below the pillow in case there should be need of it, but in the end I decided against it. I didn’t want to accidentally stab anyone, and given the level of activity outside the door, that seemed a possibility.
By the time I caught up, Constance had got the door unlocked, and had flung herself through and into the crowd on the other side. “What’s happened? Is someone hurt? What’s all the screaming?”
I followed, doing my best to see. The landing was in the middle of the house, with only one window of its own at the top of the stairs, and no one, it seemed, had stumbled upon the idea of turning the light on in one of the surrounding rooms and letting it spill out through the door so we could see each other and get an idea of what was going on.
Then again, I hadn’t thought of it either, so it wasn’t as if I was any cleverer than anyone else present.
And before I could do anything about it—before I could do anything at all, except start to ask, “What’s going on?”—I ran into a male body, or it ran into me.
They were all male, except for Constance, whose nightdress I could make out as a faint, pale gleam in the dusk, and Lady Laetitia, who I could place, based on her now thankfully diminishing shrieks of terror, still inside her room.
I bounced back. A pair of hands grabbed my arms and held me steady, and I looked up into Crispin’s… no, Christopher’s… no, it really was Crispin’s face.
“Pippa?” he said. “Are you all right?”
He looked like Crispin. He sounded like Christopher, or at least the name he called me did. Crispin would have called me Darling. Although in the dark, it was difficult to be entirely positive.
Nor did it matter a whole lot, I decided. “I’m fine,” I said and took a step back, so his hands fell from my arms. “What’s going on?”
“Something seems to have happened to Laetitia.” He turned his head to look in the direction of her half-open door. From behind it, we could hear soft sobs and a male voice—Marsden’s, I assumed, although if I really was talking to Christopher, it might be Crispin—murmuring reassurances in soothing tones to calm her down.
The longer our conversation went on, the more certain I became that I was, in fact, speaking to Crispin, though. And if so, it was likely to be her brother in with Laetitia. None of the other men would have dared to breach that barrier, I thought.
Although perhaps it was best to make certain.
I crossed my fingers. “St George?”
I had time to realize that if it turned out to be Christopher, I would likely never live it down, before he hummed a response. It sounded affirmative. So at least I knew for certain which Astley I was conversing with (and Christopher would never know that for a moment or two, in the dark, I hadn’t been positive).
“When you were dancing with Johanna night before last, was she wearing a locket around her neck?”
He looked at me for a moment. “Yes?”
“And in the garden?”
He nodded. “Yes. Why do you ask?”
I wasn’t sure myself. Just— “Gilbert gave it to her. He gave them each one. Constance told me.”
Crispin’s eyebrow shot up, but before he could comment, another wail from inside Lady Laetitia’s room reached us, and we both flinched.
“You’re not planning to go in there,” I asked, “are you?”
“Good Lord, no.” After a moment he added, “Not unless she asks for me. If she does, I guess I won’t have a choice.”
“You most certainly do. Just because a woman crooks her finger at you, doesn’t mean you have to obey, you know.”
“Oh, really?”
That was when I remembered that I had, in fact, done just that to him this evening. Crooked my finger and expected him to come.
“That was different,” I said, while I was glad the darkness covered the blush that crept into my cheeks. “We’d planned that.”
