It is why I pleaded with Bea and Kesgrave to join our party. Whatever horrors the Holcrofts might feel at my family’s faux pas would be leavened by the prospect of a connection to the illustrious nobles. Any number of gauche and mortifying incidents may be forgiven in the cousin of a duke.
On the journey here, I thought constantly about passing the test. While Mama complained and Papa grumbled, I focused all my attention on the singular goal, drawing up a list of the seemingly endless ways my family might embarrass me and deciding how I would respond. In most cases, I would apologize, smile ingratiatingly, and reference my distinguished relatives.
Did I conceive of the drawing room debacle?
No, I did not.
The depths to which Mama can sink are unknown even to me.
Even so, my catalogue of disasters was extensive, and yet despite my thoroughness, I never conceived of a scenario in which Sebastian would failmytest.
How could I have?
I did not have a test for him.
Why would I?
He is everything wonderful.
There is not a single category in which he falls short.
He is perfect.
Except he is not.
Like everyone else, he underestimates me.
I am a slightly dense bit of fluff to be soothed and humored and sometimes mocked.
My issue with the Altick episode is not that he lied to me, but that he lied to me so poorly. Rather than come up with crediblefabrications, he fobbed me off with increasingly facile excuses that heightened my anxiety, which convinced my family that I lacked a sense of proportion.
There goes Flora again, making mountains out of molehills!
The insult is in the flimsiness.
The sin is believing I amthatflighty.
It goes without saying but: Kesgrave would never treat Bea like that.
He would sooner chop off his right arm than insult her intelligence.
Not only does he have too much respect for her intellect, but he also recognizes the value of her contributions. It is her insights that have led to the apprehension of a dozen murderers, and although my insights have led to the apprehension of only one murderer, that is stillone murderer morethan Sebastian’s.
Ordinarily, I would not hold my accomplishments over his.
It is vulgar to compare numbers in any context.
But in dismissing an observation that is evidently central to solving the murder, he leaves me no choice.
Am I saddened by it?
Immeasurably so.
I do not know why he bothered apologizing for grossly underestimating me if he means to continue to grossly underestimate me.
But that is a question for another day.
The investigator’s code precludes indulging my sadness at the expense of justice for the slain.
