Robin had been properly introduced to Mrs. Belinda Walcott—née Courcey—and her laconic and elegantly moustachioed husband, Charles, along with a handful of their friends. William—“Call me Billy, everyone does”—Byatt was a densely freckled sandy-haired chap hovering in Charles Walcott’s shadow, and the smile he gave seemed amiable enough. Then there was Francis Miggs, a stout fellow with a reddish complexion who looked at Robin with a beady gamester’s eye, as if thinking of placing a bet on him. The only other woman was Trudie Davenport, the sharp-featured brunette with a da Vinci nose and an actress’s high laugh, who even on ten seconds’ acquaintance gave off the air of a marble set loose in a bowl—always trying to return herself to the centre of things.
“I didn’t realise Bel was having one of her parties,” Edwin said to Robin. “I thought it’d be quieter.”
“You should have telegraphed!” Belinda’s angelic face was rendered decidedly less so by the jut of her lower lip. “Really, Win, it’s too thoughtless of you. My numbers were already thrown off because Laura’s ill and Walt’s up from town with Father, and now you’ve dragged another fellow up here, too, when you never bring guests.” She eyed Robin with frank curiosity. “If you’d only let Mother and Father know you were coming, I’d have told Charlie to invite his cousins. Ghastly simpering bores, the pair of them, but at least they’d have balanced the table. And you could have amused them for me, I suppose.”
“Myself being equally boring,” said Edwin in a colourless tone.
“Precisely!” said Belinda, and bundled the two of them off upstairs to dress for dinner, with a parting shot of: “Not that way, Win—I’ve put Miggsy in your room; the view’s much the best on that side of the house—wasn’t expecting you—never mind, you’ll do very well in the south corridor. I suppose you’d better take the willow rooms.”
Robin was following Edwin up the stairs and so had a perfect view of the way Edwin’s knuckles paled in a fist by his side, quickly released.
“Of course” was all Edwin said.
“Win,” said Robin, after a moment. His theory held: the knuckles whitened again. “Or not,” said Robin easily, “if you don’t care for it.”
A pause. “No, I don’t.”
“I’m surprised it’s not Eddie.”
They’d reached a landing; the footsteps of the servants transporting their bags were already receding down the corridor on the next level. Robin admired an Oriental-style vase in blue-and-white porcelain set atop a wooden display stand. He added, “Charlie, Trudie, Miggsy, and Billy. I’ll be lucky to escape the weekend without being Robbied or Bobbyed.”
“I did warn you.”
So he had. The aggressive informality was odd, like plunging right into a cold pool at the public baths, but Robin much preferred it to the alternative. None of them had shown the least intention of Sir-Roberting him yet.
The willow rooms were a pair of matched bedrooms tucked down the end of a corridor. The furniture was modern and thin-limbed, the walls painted a pale green from waist height down and papered above that in a pattern of willow boughs.
In the room assigned to him, Robin ignored the bustling of the upstairs maid who was clearly doing her best to prepare a room on five minutes’ notice, and went to run his hands over the wallpaper.
“This is William Morris.”
“Yes, sir,” said the maid, somewhat unexpectedly. She was—Robin blinked hard—lighting a fire in the grate, by magic. She cradled like Robin’s attacker had: with no string at all. She blew the sparks into shy flames and looked over her shoulder with a smile. “Most of the rooms here are done up with it. Mrs. Courcey wouldn’t hear of anything else.”
Mrs. Courcey. Robin wondered that Edwin’s mother hadn’t come out to play hostess herself, but perhaps she was one of those women who took an hour to dress for dinner.
Which was what Robin was meant to be doing, he realised. Country hours and all that.
“Thank you, ah . . .”
“Peggy, sir.”
“Peggy. Can you finish this later? I don’t want to be late for dinner.”
She stood. “D’you want me to fetch one of the footmen, sir? Mr. Courcey’s man, Graves, is the only proper valet in the house, but he’s—”
“I’ll manage,” Robin assured her. “Though I will need these trousers mended. I’ll leave them on the clothes-stand, shall I?”