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England, September 1926
A weekend party at venerable Marsden Manor serves up annoyances big and small for Bright Young Thing Philippa Darling and her cousins, Christopher and Francis Astley.
There’s the scheming Lady Laetitia Marsden, and her death-grip on Christopher’s and Francis’s cousin (and Pippa’s personal nemesis) Crispin, Viscount St George.
There’s Laetitia’s brother, the handsy Lord Geoffrey, and his proclivity for trying to seduce anything in a skirt—by force, if necessary.
There’s their mother, Countess Euphemia, and her willful obliviousness to anything her children get up to.
There’s the general feeling of ill-will towards Pippa’s and Christopher’s new friend the Graf von und zu Natterdorff—including the tension between the Graf and Francis, left over from the war Francis fought against the Germans.
And then, of course, there are the nocturnal wanderings and the murder…
CHAPTER ONE
“No,” I said.
Christopher squinted at me across the tea table. “What do you mean, no?”
I scowled back. “I mean no, I am not going to spend a weekend at Marsden Manor watching Lady Laetitia flaunt the Sutherland diamonds. I’m also not keen to spend a weekend trying to dodge Geoffrey Marsden’s wandering hands. The man simply won’t take no for an answer. Nor will you, it seems.”
Admittedly, that was unfair of me, as Christopher has absolutely nothing in common with Lord Geoffrey Marsden. I was getting frustrated, however. It wasn’t the first time I had given him this same answer to this same question. The question being, did I plan to attend the engagement celebration at Marsden Manor in Dorset, for Christopher’s cousin Crispin, Viscount St George, and his intended, Lady Laetitia Marsden?
And the answer was, as it had been every time he’d asked, no. I intended to do no such thing.
“Do not compare me to Geoffrey Marsden,” Christopher said severely. “I would never squeeze a young lady into a corner of the sofa and try to kiss her against her will.”
Of course he wouldn’t. For one thing, he’s too much of a gentleman, and for another, he prefers young men to young ladies, although he wouldn’t force himself on one of them, either.
“That’s not what I meant,” I told him, “and you know it.”
“As for Laetitia and the Sutherland diamonds, that was your own fault.”
“Was not!”
“Was, too. If you hadn’t lost your temper with St George and told him to go ahead and propose because he and Laetitia deserve each other…”
I grimaced. “I didn’t imagine that he would actually do it. Although I maintain that they do deserve one another. She’s a cow, and he—”
“—is going to be unhappy,” Christopher said. “I thought you cared about his happiness, Pippa. Or aren’t you the one who has been telling him for months not to succumb to his father’s pressure?”
“I was angry,” I said. “And I had every right to be, you know. He said horrible things to me. Although I didn’t think he would actually do it, no matter what I told him. Why on earth would he do such a stupid thing?”
“I would have thought that was obvious,” Christopher said. And added, “I agree that you had every right to be upset with him. He was unkind. He should have kept his mouth shut, or rather, he should have kept himself from spilling his prejudices onto the stationary in front of him. He should certainly have refrained from sending it to you once he’d written it. Although in justice to him—”
“Don’t you dare defend him, Christopher!”
“He was upset,” Christopher said, going right ahead with the defense in spite of my protestation. “We did just fight a war against Germany, remember? One in which his cousin died? It’s understandable that we might all have a problem with you getting close to the enemy.”
Of course I remembered. None of us had forgotten, even if the whole thing was now eight years in the past.
“I know that,” I said. “He was my cousin, too. Nobody’s sorrier than I am, believe me.”
Not that any of it was my fault, but my father had been a German soldier, and had been in the trenches, and might have killed Cousin Robert. Not that I thought he had done, but the possibility did occasionally torment me during sleepless nights.
Just in the same way that cousin Francis, who had also been in the trenches, was occasionally tormented by the idea that he might have been the one who killed my father. I didn’t think that had happened, either, but either way, I didn’t hold it against either of them. It had been war, and they had all been conscripted, and had only done what they’d had to do.
And that wasn’t what we had been talking about anyway.
“You seem to be forgetting,” I said, “that I am the enemy.”
Christopher scoffed, and I added, “No, seriously, Christopher. It’s not all that long since the Countess Marsden told Aunt Roz what a pity it is that my mother ran away and married a German. The fact that I’m half German is likely to follow me around for the rest of my life. And St George was there for that conversation. He ought to have remembered that when he disparaged Wolfgang’s heritage, he disparaged mine, as well.”
“So he ought to have,” Christopher agreed. “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s gotten caught up in his own spitefulness. You know he didn’t mean it.”
“I know no such thing,” I said, offended. “If he didn’t mean it, he should have sent an apology, and—”
“You told him not to write again.”
“Well, I—”
I stopped myself before I could say that I hadn’t meant it, because I had, in fact, meant every word. I hadn’t wanted to hear from St George again, at least not right away. I was upset and angry and yes, hurt. Crispin and I had been getting along better lately, after more than a decade of being at one another’s throats, and I hadn’t expected him to throw the land of my birth in my face via letter. I had wanted time to process my feelings before I had to deal with him again, and yes, maybe I had wanted to hurt him back, too, at least a little bit.
It was no more than he deserved, after all.
So while I had, as Christopher had so kindly pointed out, told St George to go ahead and propose to Lady Laetitia Marsden because they deserved one another—because he deserved to be unhappy, essentially—I hadn’t actually thought he would do it. I had assumed that he would take a couple of days to get over his anger, while I did the same, and then we would figure out a way to get back on an even keel again. As even as the keel ever is between two people who heartily despise one another and never let a chance go by to let the other know how they feel.
“Well, you’re going to have to deal with them both next weekend,” Christopher said, lifting the heavy piece of stationary that had precipitated the rehashing of this conversation. “She invited Natterdorff.”
I blinked at him. “Laetitia Marsden? Invited Wolfgang to her engagement party? Why?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Not to me. “How does she even know he exists?”
“I imagine Crispin told her,” Christopher said. “I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have told everyone he knows about Natterdorff’s existence.”
“Surely not. Why would he tell his intended about another man? Especially one he clearly dislikes?” And one who, furthermore, was not only better-looking, but also higher up the aristocratic scale?
German aristocracy, mind you, which is worth less than the paper it’s written on in Germany these days, since the Weimar Republic did away with their nobility in 1919, but which still counts for something in England.
“Because he’s upset,” Christopher said, “and when Crispin’s upset, he spews vitriol to anyone who’ll listen. Laetitia listens to him. That’s part of the problem.”
I grimaced. “Well, if Crispin told her, that’s no more than I asked him to do, I suppose. Go cry on Laetitia’s shoulder, and propose while he was at it. He probably regurgitated it all. Including how much he despises Wolfgang. Which doesn’t seem like a good reason for Laetitia to include him in their engagement celebration…”
“But which makes perfect sense if you consider the people involved in this farce,” Christopher said. “At any rate, I wouldn’t let Lord Geoffrey behave as he did at the Dower House. Nor would Natterdorff. Or, for that matter, Francis. And as for Crispin—”
“Laetitia will have him on a short leash,” I said. “He’ll be lucky if she lets him say boo to any of us.”
Or to me, at least. She hadn’t liked me before this, and she surely liked me less now.
Unless my having essentially thrown St George at her had disposed her more kindly towards me, of course. She had gotten what she had been working towards for months, after all. The Sutherland diamonds, and Crispin’s hand—and title, and fortune—in marriage.
And all because I lost my temper and told him to kindly go self-destruct, and he had chosen to listen.
“She’ll certainly keep him far away from you,” Christopher agreed. “And that’s where Natterdorff comes in, I expect. Him and Geoffrey. You’ll be beating them both off with sticks.”
“All the more reason to stay home.”