Page 108 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place

I glanced down at her. “I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid. And anyway, it’s none of my affair, is it?”

“Isn’t it?”

“All I can do is warn him,” I said. “If he chooses to propose to her, there’s nothing I can do to stop him. I wasn’t invited along. And he knows what I think, because I’ve told him, and if he refuses to listen to me, then that’s his problem. He needn’t bother to come crying to me about his unhappiness later.”

Constance tucked her hand through my arm. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to be rid of them. I guess they mean well—at least Uncle Maury does, I think, and I suppose Aunt Effie too, when she isn’t busy trying to arrange an advantageous marriage for Laetitia—but I really could have done without them this weekend.”

I could have, as well. Especially Laetitia. “This wasn’t how I wanted your engagement party to go.”

She sniggered and shook her head. “No. But it doesn’t matter. All I want is to marry Francis, and now we can get married with nothing whatsoever hanging over us.”

I nodded, even as I reflected that there were still plenty of things hanging over us. There was Uncle Herbert’s second love-child, and Laetitia Marsden, and I would still like to know how that trench club ended up in my room, if it came to that.

But Constance didn’t know about Uncle Herbert’s extramarital shenanigans, and she had better things to think about than Laetitia’s and Crispin’s romance, so I merely squeezed her arm and smiled warmly as I turned her towards the boot room to follow Christopher and Aunt Roz back into the house. “Let’s go inside and plan the most wonderful wedding ever.”

“That sounds wonderful, girls,” Aunt Roslyn said brightly over her shoulder, and tucked her arm through Constance’s as we entered the boot room. I relinquished Constance to her future mother-in-law and took the arm Christopher extended to me. “Everything all right with you?”

“Never better,” my best friend told me, and although it might not be strictly true, it was close enough for jazz as we closed the boot room door behind us and entered a quiet Beckwith Place.