“I didn’t think you were,” I answered. “Although there was that period, the summer after we came down from Oxford, when you did a bit of experimenting, wasn’t there?”
“There was, which you very well know. But it never got to the point of getting anyone with child, or doing anything that might achieve that. I didn’t like any of them well enough, and Mum would have skinned me alive.”
“That was too long ago anyway,” I said. “My guess—not that I know much about it—is that the baby might be five or six months old.”
“So she would have been conceived…” He counted on his fingers, “—last spring or early summer. Sometime in the first half of last year.”
I nodded. “Six or eight months, at least, after we came down from university. You had finished your phase of experimentation by then.”
“Lucky for me.”
“I never thought for a moment that she was yours,” I said. “Not to mention, I’m sure you got The Talk at some point, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. Mum set Crispin and me down?—”
“Aunt Roz? Talked to St George about women?”
His eyebrows rose. “Surely you didn’t think Aunt Charlotte would have thought it appropriate to talk to Crispin about sex?”
Well, no. Aunt Charlotte had been rather Victorian on the subject. The last time we visited Sutherland Hall while she’d been alive, she had put me as far into the west wing as Christopher was into the east to keep us away from each other and any suggestion of impropriety. It had been a ten-minute walk to get from my room to his. Never mind the fact that we share a flat in London and can behave as improperly as we want the rest of the time.
Not that we do, of course. None of Christopher’s experimentation had been with me. Not only are we the next thing to siblings, but he wouldn’t incline my way if I were a total stranger. However?—
“I had rather assumed that Uncle Harold would have done the honors,” I said, “since he’d care the most about getting a legitimate heir. Or at least care the most about not getting an illegitimate one.”
“He might have done,” Christopher admitted. “I don’t know what Uncle Harold and Crispin might have discussed. But The Talk—the one about the birds and the bees—came from Mum. Didn’t she talk to you?”
Of course she had. But— “That’s rather different, don’t you think? I’m a girl, or was at the time. I assumed Uncle Herbert and Uncle Harold would have taught you and St George the facts of life.”
“Mum understands the facts of life better than either of them,” Christopher said. “She was the one who had to deal with the consequences. My mother carried and birthed three boys. My father just stood by and cheered.”
After a moment, he added, “Dad did sit me down one Christmas—I must have been fifteen or sixteen, I suppose; home for the holidays from Eton—and he explained about noblesse oblige and that I couldn’t go around sticking little Kit into things willy-nilly …”
“Little Kit?” I made a face.
“What would you have me call it?” Christopher wanted to know. “Or rather, what would you have my father call it?”
“Your father called it little Kit?”
“No, of course not.” His cheeks were pink. “He called it something much cruder than that, that I am not about to repeat in front of you. Mum was more clinical about the whole thing?—”
I nodded. “With me, too. So Uncle Herbert told you that noblesse oblige and you cannot poke women indiscriminately…”
He nodded. “That was it. I can’t go around poking women indiscriminately, because I don’t want to have to marry someone I don’t care for just because I can’t keep my flies closed.”
“A pity Uncle Harold didn’t have the same conversation with Crispin,” I said.
Christopher squinted at me. “How do you know that he didn’t?”
“If he had, do you suppose St George would carry on the way he does?”
“I don’t think Crispin carries on the way he does because he doesn’t know better,” Christopher said. “He’s well aware of how it all works. Mum made sure of it. Not that we didn’t both have a good idea already. But I guess she assumed Aunt Charlotte wasn’t going to get around to it, and she didn’t trust whatever Uncle Harold might say—not that Uncle Harold ever struck me as someone who was very interested in women, including his wife.”
No, he hadn’t struck me that way, either. Christopher’s aunt and uncle had been married almost as long as Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, and it had been years before they’d had Crispin, and then more years after that with no spare. There was either a medical problem, or Uncle Harold just couldn’t be bothered.
“You don’t suppose…?” I ventured.
“No,” Christopher said. “I think I’d be able to tell if my uncle was queer.”
