Perhaps best not to mention, to Johanna or Lady Peckham, that my father had been German. He was killed in the war, too, but it would be better to be careful, I thought. Some things were still delicate, even eight years after the fighting stopped.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said politely.
Constance snorted, and I glanced at her, surprised. The girl I’d known at Godolphin wouldn’t have been that direct. “I saw the way you looked at her,” she told me. “You didn’t like her any better than I do.”
Likely not. “She’s just so very…” I hesitated, “obvious about it.”
Constance nodded. “You should try to live with her.”
I shuddered. “No, thank you.”
“I suppose I can’t convince you to come home with us after the funerals tomorrow, then?”
She tucked her arm through mine as we turned towards the house.
“Come home with you?” I echoed.
She nodded. “Mother wants to have a weekend party. I think she’s hoping that one of your cousins will meet me and fall in love, but I don’t see any signs of that happening.”
She gestured to where Crispin and Christopher had vanished into the house without giving her a second look before adding, “Although I suppose she’d probably be happy enough to have Johanna snag a duke’s grandson. Better if it were the viscount, of course.”
“That’s Crispin,” I said, “and she’s welcome to him. But she can’t have Christopher. I like him too much.”
Constance giggled. “I don’t know either of them well enough to say. I think I might have met Christopher once while you and I were at Godolphin together. I mostly know the viscount by reputation.”
“You and everyone else,” I said. “He’s not the kind of man I would wish on someone I cared about.”
And especially not someone as seemingly sweet and innocent as Constance. Crispin would have her in tears in five minutes flat, and with nothing worse than cold sarcasm.
Not that cold sarcasm isn’t bad enough, but he wouldn’t have to touch her, wouldn’t have to berate her, wouldn’t have to raise his voice, wouldn’t have to do anything but be his cold, distant self. For a sensitive, romantic soul, the undiluted effect of Crispin Astley, Viscount St George, would be more than enough.
And then there was the chance that he’d pour on the charm—which I knew he could do, having watched other girls succumb to it—only to withdraw after Constance was well and truly hooked. That would be even worse.
“Stay away from Crispin,” I told her. “If you want a husband, we’ll find you a nice, kind one.”
She brightened. “Christopher?”
“Perhaps not Christopher. He’s…”
I hesitated. The plain, unvarnished truth was that Christopher prefers men, but that’s not something one can just come out and say. Not even in the thoroughly modern year of 1926. And not to someone one doesn’t know well.
Besides, it wasn’t something I necessarily wanted to get out. It’s no one else’s concern, for one thing, and for another, the buggery laws are still in effect. In the end, I came up with a polite, old-fashioned euphemism I thought solved the problem nicely. “Christopher’s affections are engaged elsewhere.”
So were Crispin’s, if he were to be believed. (Although of course I didn’t. His supposed infatuation with some unsuitable girl his father wouldn’t let him marry didn’t slow him down enough for it to be remotely likely that he was telling the truth.)
Constance nodded thoughtfully. “I hadn’t heard that. But people don’t say much about Mr. Astley. They mostly talk about Lord St George.”
I’m sure they did. “Out of curiosity,” I said, “who do you know who travels in the same circles as Crispin?”
Because she really didn’t strike me as someone who had friends in the Bright Young Set that Crispin ran with when he was in Town. It was a very fast crowd, and Constance, although she was more spirited than I remembered from Godolphin, struck me as anything but fast.
“Oh.” She flushed. “The Marsdens live nearby. Do you know Lady Laetitia?”
I didn’t. Or not well, at any rate.
“By name mostly.” More specifically, her name had been on a list of women that Grimsby the valet-cum-blackmailer had assembled to give to the late duke two weeks ago. A list of women who knew Crispin, in the Biblical or some other way.
“She’ll probably be there this weekend,” Constance offered, “if you’d like to meet her.”
