Violet’s mouth shut suddenly.Then she turned and left.
Chapter twenty-four
London
ForCrispin,thequietevening in the bosom of his family had an air of unreality.It was a cold evening, and his father was readingThe Timesby the fire.Penny had surprised them by lingering instead of disappearing to a meeting.She sat in the corner, studiously pasting articles into a scrapbook.
His mother would soon come in from her little painting studio at the back of the garden, smelling of turpentine.
None of them knew that everything had changed.
Crispin hadn’t bothered going back to the office in the afternoon.Instead, he had got on a tram and rode around London in a daze.
All around him were people, utterly ordinary people, just as he himself had been before he’d been singled out by Destiny.
How strange to think that he had sat making little marks on paper all day long, quite content.Could he ever be happy going back to it now?
And what would the life of a spy be like?
Lonely, certainly, but he had always been lonely.
Without fame, certainly, but he had never expected to gain any real measure of that.
Short?But he had lived in the shadow of death all of his life.
Then he asked himself what he really had to hope for if he accepted.
But there his heart answered for him, skipping a beat as it had when the Home Secretary, a man of many famed exploits, had looked straight at him and had said that Crispin was wanted.
He, Crispin Fairweather, had been measured and found not wanting, butwanted.
“The devil!”his father exclaimed, just as his mother wandered in, trailing the long kimono she liked to paint in.
“I do hope you aren’t referring to me, darling,” she said mildly.Even at the end of a long day, she looked as if she were modelling for a picture by Leighton.Which, come to think of it, she had done in the old Grosvenor Gallery days.
“Not you, dear, the ruddyDaily Mail!They’ve got their dirty hands on something that ought to have remained private!”
Penny looked up briefly, dipped her brush into her paste, and went back to her clippings.Crispin noted this.
Stephen spread out the broadsheet for all to see, glaring.Crispin got up to look at the headlines.
DRAGON HEIRESS ATTACKED BY DISGUISED RUFFIAN
KIDNAP ATTEMPT FOILED BY BRAVE DRAGON
WHO IS BEHIND THE PLOT TO KIDNAP THE ORMDALE BEAUTY?
To crown it all, there was a reproduction of the very same drawing Crispin’s father had confidentially shown him.
“How—“ his father sputtered, before an expression of dreadful realisation came over his face.
Crispin took a step backwards, cutting off Penny’s escape route.She had almost made it to the door, clutching her scrapbook.
“Oh,Penny,“ groaned Stephen.
Crispin crossed his arms and did not flinch under Penny’s scowls.
“I do hope you are not responsible for the inelegant headlines, Penny,” said their mother, taking the last piece of toast from the supper tray.
