“Good enough to eat! I heard him. Edible, he said! Crisp and tart and—”
The Astley brothers smothered another round of laughter.
“That means you look good,” Constance insisted, as if I wasn’t fully aware of exactly what it meant.
“If someone else had said it, it would have been a compliment. When it’s St George and I’m wearing apple green, it’s an insult.”
I threw another scowl over my shoulder at him. He didn’t notice, of course. Just kept making cow eyes at Johanna.
And then someone new turned up in the doorway of the parlor, and Gilbert sounded pleased. “Looks like the Marsdens are here. Excuse me.”
He moved away from us and towards the door, where a beautiful young woman stood, flanked by an extremely good-looking young man.
I had met Lady Laetitia Marsden before. Mostly in passing, since we’re not friends and not likely to become so. She’s deep into the very fast set of Bright Young People that Crispin spends his time with when he’s in London, while Christopher and I, who are in London all the time—except when we’re not, like now—stay more on the fringes of the fast crowd. When you live in London and there’s a party going on almost every night, you tire of it a lot more easily than when you have to make the trip from Wiltshire—or Dorset—on occasional weekends when your parents aren’t overseeing you too closely. Crispin spent more time at Sutherland Hall than he did in Town, and when he did come up to London, he made every minute count. So, I assumed, did Lady Laetitia.
She’s a beautiful woman. Tall and slender, as dark as Johanna was fair, with shiny, black hair cut in a precise, angular bob, and eyes of the same bright blue as Christopher’s. And her dress gave the Poiret a run for its money.
It might, in point of fact, have been a Poiret.
She was wearing black, and wearing it extremely well. Sheer chiffon at the top, then chiffon over crepe satin down to the dropped waist, where there was shiny satin the rest of the way, except for a flouncy overlay of chiffon that stopped well short of the skirt’s hem. The whole thing was pinned with a bright pink cabbage rose at one hip. She was carrying an ostrich feather fan—black, of course—with elbow-length, black gloves, and her shoes were also black, with three dainty straps across the instep. The only things that were not black, were the sparkly earrings dangling from her lobes—with the way they sparkled, they had to be real diamonds—and the slash of hot pink on her mouth.
She surveyed the room with a bored expression. Until she saw Crispin, and then she gave a delighted little squeal and raced over to attach that pretty, pink mouth right onto his. And kept it there as the seconds dragged on. And on.
Her hand started on his cheek, before creeping up to his ear—she ran her finger around the outline of it—before curling around the back of his neck to keep him in place.
As the kiss went on, Johanna’s expression grew stonier and stormier. Mine, I’m sure, grew sour. Francis looked like he wanted to burst out laughing, and Christopher was clearly embarrassed, probably on his cousin’s behalf. Constance was just embarrassed, period. Her cheeks were as pink as Laetitia’s lips, and she was averting her eyes from the—frankly disgraceful—display.
It was Lord Geoffrey, Laetitia’s brother, who put an end to the show. Cheeks hot, he put a hand on his sister’s shoulder and yanked. “For God’s sake, Laetitia. Let the boy breathe.”
The reference to Crispin as a boy was rather rude, I thought. He was a few years younger than Lord Geoffrey—three or four, maybe—but he’s well past his majority.
However, Marsden’s rudeness got the point across. Laetitia stepped back with a titter, and Crispin blinked his eyes open, looking dazed.
While Laetitia and Johanna stared daggers at each other, and while Marsden and Peckham exchanged guarded looks, I crossed the room and snatched Crispin’s linen square out of his breast pocket and dragged it across his mouth before I dropped it into his hand. “Soul still intact, St George?”
“Seems to be.” He closed his hand around the handkerchief.
It was my opportunity to smirk at him, so I took it. “The pink is quite becoming, actually. Who knew you’d look so good with lipstick on, St George?”
He glanced at me over the square of linen. “You knew, I imagine, Darling. You’ve seen Kit…” He hesitated, “Kitty that way often enough, haven’t you?”
I had, now that he mentioned it. I just didn’t usually consider how much they looked alike. Their personalities were so different that they didn’t look alike to me. But yes, Crispin smeared with Laetitia’s lipstick didn’t look too dissimilar to Christopher smeared with his own.
“Let me know if you’d like to borrow my dress,” I told him. “Apple green would be quite fetching on you, with your coloring. You’d look positively edible, too, I imagine.”
And then I smirked. “Oh, wait…”
He shook his head with a wince. “Don’t say it, Darling.”
I sniggered. “I’ll do you a favor, St George, and refrain. But do try to look a little bit less delicious, would you? The rest of us can only handle so much of what we just witnessed before we all sick up our supper.”
I flounced off toward Christopher, Francis, and Constance again, leaving Crispin to stand there, still passing the handkerchief over his mouth, under the combined eyes of Laetitia, Johanna, Gilbert Peckham, and Geoffrey Marsden.
We werean uneven number at dinner again, although Gilbert figured out the seating to his satisfaction, even if he—like Uncle Harold—took some liberties with the placement in order to do so.
He sat himself at the head of the table, just as Uncle Harold had done, and put Laetitia in place of honor at his right—as he should, as she was a female guest, and one with a title, which I didn’t have. Johanna was at his left. That ought rightly be Constance’s place, as a true daughter of the house, or perhaps mine, as the second female visitor, but Constance was on the other side of the table next to Francis, which I’m sure she liked better, and I was across from her, next to Christopher, which I certainly preferred.
Unfortunately—for Constance, I mean—she had to deal with Crispin as a dinner partner for the first course, since Peckham had placed him between Constance and Lady Laetitia, surely to get him away from Johanna. She had Geoffrey Marsden next to her. He was a viscount, too, of course, and couldn’t really be shoved further down the table when neither Christopher nor Francis had a title, although I’m sure Gilbert would have preferred to put one of them next to Johanna. Someone who wasn’t interested in her at all, and someone in whom she had no interest, either. I was next to Lord Geoffrey on his other side, and then Christopher was next to me. At least we made for a symmetrical crowd.
