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London, October 1926
Someone is out to get Pippa Darling.
Or perhaps not. The tumble down the stairs into the underground involved a lot of people, all of whom said someone pushed them, and all of whom, no doubt, had wronged someone, somehow, at some point.
And the Hackney cab that jumped the pavement and tried to run Pippa and her flat-mate Christopher down on their way home… well, it might have been after Christopher, mightn’t it?
It might even have been after Lady Laetitia Marsden. She wasn’t there, of course, but she looks rather a lot like Christopher in drag, and he was dressed as his alter-ego Kitty Dupree at the time.
Neither Christopher nor Pippa would mind very much if Laetitia were to be run over—it would save Christopher’s cousin Crispin from having to marry her—but of course it wasn’t either of them in the Hackney. They were too busy getting out of the way of the tires.
If Laetitia was the intended victim, the jewelry theft at Marsden House might have had something to do with it. The Sutherland engagement ring is gone, right out from under Laetitia’s nose. She even saw the man who took it. Not to recognize, of course, but perhaps he doesn’t know that. So yes, it might have been Lady Laetitia in the headlamps of the Hackney.
Or it might have been Christopher. Or it might have been Pippa.
EXCERPT – somewhere in Chapter 1
The waiter had just served the cheese course when the door to the street opened, and in swept the Viscount St George, resplendent in black tie, with his fiancée hanging on his arm.
My eyes narrowed, and I had to focus on opening them to a normal size again.
Lady Laetitia Marsden is quite possibly the best-looking woman I have ever set eyes on. Or perhaps not: the now-dead Johanna de Vos was also stunningly lovely. But she certainly puts me, and most everyone else, to shame. Tall and willowy, she carries the current tubular fashions off to perfection, while her face is the exact proportion of curves to angles, with big, long-lashed eyes under curved brows, high cheekbones, and full lips.
Just as every other time I have seen her—including at her own engagement celebration—she was wearing black: a slinky gown with a plunging V-neck and diamanté embroidery under a black velvet cloak decorated with fake fur around the neck and wrists. The ostentatious Sutherland engagement ring weighed down her left hand, and the matching diamonds sparkled in her ears.
And just as at her engagement celebration, I was wearing the ivory gown Christopher had talked me into for that occasion: the one that had made Crispin inquire whether I was in mourning over his engagement—apparently the Chinese mourn in white; I have no idea why he would think that I would, since neither of us is Chinese—and which had caused Laetitia to comment that she was surprised that I had left off the orange blossoms. Apparently I looked like a bride. I’m still not certain whether Christopher had done that on purpose or not.
They stopped just inside the door while Crispin handed off his topper, gloves, and walking stick, and while Laetitia surveyed the restaurant for, I assumed, familiar faces.
For the record, I would have been quite happy to ignore their presence entirely, and so, I thought, would Crispin.
He saw us, of course. He met my eyes for a moment before he turned his attention to the back of Wolfgang’s head—his lip curled—and then he looked away. It was Laetitia who stuck her hand through his elbow and towed him across the floor to stop beside our table. “Miss Darling.” She gave me the most condescending smile you could imagine, only helped by the fact that she was standing and I was sitting. Wolfgang, of course, had gotten to his feet, as any gentleman would when presented with a woman of breeding next to his table. “Graf von Natterdorff.” She fluttered her lashes up at him. He’s tall, several inches taller than Crispin, who surely felt like just as much of a child as I did at that moment.
Wolfgang bowed over Laetitia’s hand, while I managed a smile, or rather a grimace I hoped might pass as one. “Lady Laetitia.” I flicked a look at her fiancé. “St George.”
He nodded. “Philippa.”
My brows arched. I can count the times he has called me by my given name on the fingers of one hand, at least the times it has happened in the past few years. When we were children, yes. But he stopped sometime around the time he left Eton and went up to Cambridge. Since then, it’s been a sneered—or occasionally smirked—“Darling,” the way one would address the maid.
“Really,” I intoned, “Crispin?”
His given name didn’t feel any more comfortable in my mouth than mine did in my ears. And it must have been obvious, because I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. He didn’t comment, however.
“It has been brought to my attention that I’ve been improper,” he said instead, blandly.
“Of course you’ve been,” I agreed, since I had pointed it out to him myself on more than one occasion, “although that never stopped you before, did it?”
“I know better now.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Someone told you to stop, I imagine.”
And not because his addressing me as Darling was discourteous to me, even though it was, but because his new fiancée wouldn’t want him calling someone else something that sounded like an endearment.
“Be that as it may,” Crispin said, without confirming or denying, “from now on, I will have to address you by your given name, I’m afraid.”
“Of course. I expect you’d like me to do the same?”
It only seemed fair, didn’t it?
And no, I didn’t want to do it. I would much rather have him continue to address me by my last name so I could address him by his title—this given name business was more familiar than I was comfortable with—but I was damned if I would let Laetitia get away with telling him how he could speak to me. If she wanted to stop him from addressing me too informally, she could damn well put up with me returning the sentiment.