The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Chapter Ten

"Lord Vaughn!"

Mrs. Lanergan flapped the fringes of her shawl in the direction of a man who stood a few yards away. Unmoved by Mrs. Lanergan's cry, he carried on his aloof perusal of the assemblage, contriving to project disdain without uttering a single word.

With a complete want of propriety that put even Letty's mother to shame, Mrs. Lanergan caroled, "Lord Vau-aughn!"

Looking distinctly pained, the man slowly pivoted on one silver-buckled shoe, and trained his quizzing glass in the direction of the unseemly hullabaloo. A study in shadow, the strict adherence to dark evening garb that looked distinguished on Brummell bestowed upon Lord Vaughn an otherworldly air, like an enchanter newly descended from his tower. Subtle silver threads lent luster to the otherwise drab fabric of his frock coat and edged the lace at throat and cuffs, mirroring the shading of silver along the sides of his dark hair. The only color to enliven his ensemble was a single ruby, set precisely into the center of his elaborately tied cravat, that smoldered like the fire at the heart of a dragon's cave.

"Ah," he drawled, allowing the quizzing glass to dangle from fine-boned fingers. "Our estimable hostess."

Lord Vaughn made a courtly leg, his silver rings flashing in the light as his hands gracefully inscribed the air in an obeisance that smacked of mockery.

Mrs. Lanergan preened. "Why, Lord Vaughn, how gallant you are!"

"How could I be otherwise to the one who has gathered together such an…entertaining company?" Lord Vaughn trailed his quizzing glass in a lazy circle that began with the shrill girl at the pianoforte, passed over two inebriated soldiers arguing about whose horse was faster, and landed upon the floral tribute perched haphazardly on top of Emily's black curls.

Letty would have winced for her hostess, but she was preoccupied with worries of her own. Concentrating on being inconspicuous, she sidled away from the betraying glare of the candles. Hopefully, Letty thought, Lord Vaughn wouldn't equate Mrs. Alsdale, widow, with Miss Laetitia Alsworthy, reluctant debutante.

She didn't think he would recognize her—most men were in too much of a rush to get to Mary's side to take much notice of her little sister—but something about Lord Vaughn's quizzing glass made Letty distinctly uneasy. His attentions had been fixed on Lady Henrietta Selwick, but that hadn't prevented him from dancing some five or six times with Letty's sister, nor had it prevented Mary from doing her best to inveigle Lord Vaughn into a declaration more solid than dancing. An earl trumped a viscount, especially when the earl was rumored to have some of the finest family jewels in England, and a country estate larger than Chatsworth.

Either Mrs. Lanergan knew about the country estate as well, or the yacht had been enough to convince her. With a match-making gleam in her eye, she laced her plump arm through Emily's. "My lord, this is Miss Emily Gilchrist, newly come from school in England."

"How very edifying."

"And this," said Mrs. Lanergan, chivying Letty forward like a sheepdog with a particularly recalcitrant ewe, "is Mrs. Alsdale."

Lord Vaughn's heavy-lidded eyes conducted a knowing sweep of Letty's face, until she was quite sure he could have recited the location of every one of her freckles with unerring accuracy.

"Mrs. Alsdale, is it?" he inquired delicately, with an emphasis on the last syllable that made Letty want to climb inside the Chinese cabinet and stay there.

Letty knew she should have quietly slipped off while Mrs. Lanergan was introducing Emily. But where? It wouldn't do for her cad of a husband to see her wandering alone through the party. The thought was enough to make Letty toss her ginger hair and smile archly up at Lord Vaughn.

"Indeed, my lord."

"Quite amazing, isn't it, how many familiar faces one may encounter in a Dublin drawing room."

"Really?" inquired Letty brightly, wondering if it would look suspicious if she suddenly ducked behind Emily. Emily, unfortunately, had already drifted away in search of greener gentlemen. Letty was on her own. "I haven't found it so."

"I could have sworn that we two have met before, and not so very long ago. In London."

"Have we?" Letty modeled her simper on Miss Fairley. "I'm afraid I don't recall."

"Ah, but I do." Lord Vaughn's polished smile allowed for no denials. He flicked his wrist in the direction of Letty's mourning dress. "You were not so somber then."

"My circumstances have changed."

"So it would seem. Married and widowed in…three weeks? How very expeditious of you, Mrs. Alsdale."

"It was all quite sudden," replied Letty helplessly.

"There are many ladies in society who would be glad to learn that trick of you."

"Tell them to use hemlock," suggested Letty. "It's faster than arsenic."

Lord Vaughn's eyebrows lifted. "Remind me never to offer you the protection of my name."

"Never fear, my lord, you are too corporeal for my taste." Better for Lord Vaughn to think her husband imaginary, rather than merely misplaced.

He accepted the misdirection with an appreciative inclination of his silvered head. "You are, I believe, a very resourceful young lady."

"One does what one has to."

A whisper of a smile played about Lord Vaughn's thin lips. "Just as I said."

"There is nothing heroic about necessity," demurred Letty.

"There is," riposted Lord Vaughn, wagging his quizzing glass at her, "in retrospect."

"That doesn't help one much at the time, though, does it?"

"You, my dear Miss…pardon me, Mrs. Alsdale, are too much the pragmatist. You have the resourcefulness, but you lack the heroic mentality."

"I don't see anything heroic in gilding base actions with the passage of time."

"Base is it?" said Lord Vaughn. "What of Odysseus? Trick-ster, liar, philanderer…hero."

The list of attributes all too forcefully brought to mind a more modern man, who could not be conveniently closed away within the pages of a book, his sins lightly debated as an antidote to a dull party. It was impossible to distinguish his voice among the general chatter, but Letty could feel his presence behind her like a large burr in her back. A particularly prickly one.

"A hero conceived by a man," retorted Letty.

"My dear girl," drawled Lord Vaughn. "I find that highly unlikely."

"You don't think Homer was…Oh." Letty's cheeks rivaled Homer's wine-dark sea.

Having achieved his desired effect, Lord Vaughn quirked an inquisitive eyebrow. "You, I take it, would prefer the prudent Penelope?"

Letty pictured Penelope steadily stitching away as Odysseus cavorted with Circe, a Circe with silver-gilt curls and a come-hither way with a fan. Odysseus was a rotter who wasn't worth the waiting. At that rate, Penelope should have turned out the suitors, taken over the kingdom, and ruled Ithaca alone.

"That doesn't leave me much to choose from, does it?" said Letty with a grimace. "Either the philanderer or the woman foolish enough to wait for him."

"I suppose you don't approve of Patient Griselda either."

Letty had always thought Patient Griselda the worst sort of ninny. "Patience," she said in her best governess voice, "is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for."

Lord Pinchingdale most decidedly wasn't, any more than Odysseus had been, with his sirens in every port. What was she to do now? She could go back to London, to the spiteful conjectures of the ton. She could slink back to Hertfordshire, to her narrow childhood bed and quiet orchard. Neither option was terribly appealing.

Maybe that was why Penelope and Patient Griselda had persevered, not out of love, but from lack of alternatives.

Lord Vaughn spoke, uncannily echoing Letty's thoughts. "I have found that very few things are worth waiting for, Mrs. Alsdale." His face had settled into cynical lines, and Letty noticed, for the first time, the deep hollows beneath his cheekbones, and the lines on either side of his mouth. "That is why the prudent man takes and the fool merely anticipates."

"But then you simply have something not worth having a little earlier," said Letty, wondering where she had lost the skein of thought. "How is that any better?"

"Isn't the having better than not having? Asceticism is decidedly out of fashion these days." Vaughn's languid gesture took in the overly ornate room and equally overdressed guests.

His hand stilled with uncharacteristic abruptness just in front of a sallow youth, who was shambling over to them, scuffing his boots along the rug as he walked. In contrast to Lord Vaughn's elegant attire, the newcomer was positively unkempt, his mop of brown hair not so much fashionably windblown as simply unbrushed. Rather than attempt the intricate creases fashion demanded for the cravat, he had tied the cloth worker-style around his neck, tucking the edges under his limp shirt points.

No matter how unpleasant the newcomer, Letty couldn't help but be relieved to have been rescued from the tкte-а-tкte with Lord Vaughn. Her head ached with the effort of keeping away from the sharp side of his tongue.

"Ah, Mrs. Alsdale, I have a new pleasure in store for you." The way Vaughn drawled the word "pleasure" made it clear that it was anything but such a thing, and Letty felt a twinge of sympathy for the disheveled young man, who flushed and scowled at the design of vines on the carpet.

Lord Vaughn, reflected Letty, did seem to have that effect upon people.

Vaughn left only enough time for the sting to be felt, before continuing smoothly, "May I present to you my cousin, Augustus Ormond. But we like to call him Octavian. He is," commented Vaughn, with a sly, sidelong look at his cousin, "too early for empire."

"It is very hard being the youngest," said Letty warmly, trying to catch the boy's eye. Shamed out of all countenance, he continued to stare resolutely at the floor, his lips puffed out in an unattractive pout.

"I'm afraid your sympathies are wasted in that quarter, Mrs. Alsdale. Augustus may be young in looks, but he is old in sin."

"Looks are seldom any indication of character," responded Letty, her mind on her husband's ascetic features, the features of a poet or a philosopher, not a base philanderer who couldn't wait even a week after his wedding to pursue his amours.

Vaughn trained his quizzing glass on her abstracted face. "Do you truly think so, Mrs. Alsdale? I beg to differ. Unless, of course," he added, a slight smile playing about his lips, "a deliberate deception is employed."

"A deception upon others, or ourselves?" asked Letty bitterly.

"An intriguing point. The dandy, who seeks to convince himself that he is better than he is. The beauty, who is none. The widow…" Letty stiffened beneath her false mourning as Lord Vaughn's voice dwelled meditatively on the word. Lord Vaughn smiled pleasantly, inclining his head in the direction of Letty's dark dress. "But far be it from me to impugn another's honest grief."

Hamlet had used the word "honest" with Ophelia in just such a double-edged way. Right before he drove her mad. How apt, thought Letty irritably.

"You aren't going to advise me to get myself to a nunnery, are you?"

Vaughn acknowledged the point with a mild arch of the eyebrows. "How can I, when I am but indifferent honest myself?"

"And mad north by northwest, too, no doubt," muttered Letty.

"Tut-tut, Mrs. Alsdale. It's against the rules to borrow from a different speech."

"I wasn't aware there were rules," said Letty in frustration.

Vaughn's eyes glinted silver. "There are always rules, Mrs. Alsdale. It is simply more amusing to break them."

"Except for those who are left to pick up the pieces," drawled a new voice, from somewhere just behind Letty's left shoulder.

Letty started, unintentionally bumping against the man who had moved silently behind her. His sleeve brushed against the bare skin between her glove and sleeve. It was an inadvertent touch, but Letty felt the shock of it all the way down to her slippers. The faint hint of bay rum cologne clung to the fabric, redolent with memory.

Letty looked down at her gloved hands, not willing to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his presence. The Pinchingdale betrothal ring glowered back at her, the dark surface of the cabochon-cut emerald seeming to swallow rather than reflect the light, an ill-omened ring for an ill-omened marriage.

"Ah, Pinchingdale!" Vaughn greeted the new arrival. "What an unmitigated…surprise."

"Vaughn." Lord Pinchingdale acknowledged the greeting with an almost imperceptible inclination of his dark head, moving forward slightly, so that he stood between Letty and Vaughn. "What brings you from London this time of year?"

Vaughn lazily raised his quizzing glass. "I might have asked you the same, my Lord Pinchingdale. Such an unfashionable time of the year to be in Dublin. One might have almost thought you were running away from something. Or someone."

Lord Pinchingdale shot Letty a hard look. Safely out of range of Vaughn's quizzing glass, Letty softly shook her head in a silent denial.

Vaughn missed the movement, but caught the direction of Lord Pinchingdale's gaze. "But I forget my manners! Have you made the acquaintance of the charming Mrs. Alsdale?"

Lord Pinchingdale bowed over Letty's hand. Under the guise of the seemingly impersonal touch, she could feel his fingers dig hard into hers through the kid of her gloves in a quick, warning squeeze.

As if she needed to be reminded!

"Mrs…. Alsdale and I are some little bit acquainted," said Lord Pinchingdale, which was, as Letty reflected, true as far as it went. Aside from the tenuous formality of the marriage vow, they might as well be strangers.

"We have mutual friends," elaborated Letty, smiling innocently up at Lord Vaughn. "Percy Ponsonby, for one…Ouch!" Lord Pinchingdale's fingers had clamped in a viselike grip around the bare skin just above Letty's glove.

"Mrs. Alsdale," he drawled, "may I interest you in some lemonade?"

Letty shook her head sadly. "I find there is very little to excite the attention in a glass of lemonade. It is so uniformly yellow."

Lord Pinchingdale's lips smiled, but his eyes didn't. "If you object to yellow, perhaps we can find you a beverage of a different color."

"And if I don't want a beverage?"

Lord Pinchingdale's grip tightened in a way that convinced Letty that acquiescence was decidedly the better part of valor.

"I find I am suddenly seized with an intense longing for a beverage."

"I had thought you might be," murmured Lord Vaughn. "Enjoy your refreshments, Miss…pardon me, Mrs. Alsdale."

"You look overheated, Mrs. Alsdale," said her husband blandly, steering her forcibly across the room. "Let me escort you toward the window."

"What of my lemonade?" inquired Letty, just to be difficult.

"I'm sure you will find the fresh air far more bracing," replied her husband in a tone even nippier than the climate.

Letty pulled back against the iron grip on her arm, all but digging her heels into the carpet as he dragged her inexorably toward the darkest corner of the room. "The night air is reputed to be very bad for your health."

"That," muttered her husband, yanking her into the relative privacy of the window embrasure, "isn't all that's bad for your health."

"Was that a threat?" demanded Letty.

Geoff smiled charmingly. "Given the company you keep, consider it more of a prediction."

"At the moment, that would be you." Letty bared her teeth right back at him, using the opportunity to deliver a sharp jab in the rib with her elbow. "Would you kindly loosen your grip? I lost all feeling in my arm about five minutes ago."

"We've only been speaking for three."

"Funny, it feels like much longer."

Hidden beneath the crimson swags of Mrs. Lanergan's draperies, the two glowered at each other in untrammeled enmity. Geoff found himself grimly amused. Well, they were agreed in this, at least; neither of them wanted to be anywhere near the other. Which was more than he could say for his shameless wife's tкte-а-tкte with the highly suspect Lord Vaughn. A few inches closer, and the old rouй would have been crawling in her bosom, like the asp to Cleopatra.

Leaning an elbow against the windowsill, Geoff demanded abruptly, "What were you discussing with Vaughn?"

"Certainly nothing of the nature you were discussing with Miss Fairley," Letty shot back.

"That," replied Geoff sharply, "is none of your affair."

"No, it's your affair, isn't it?"

"Coming over the jealous wife, my dear?" enquired Geoff, in a tone that could have corroded the iron railings around the door. "Don't you think that's a bit unconvincing under the circumstances? You're playing it a bit too brown."

"I'm not playing it, as you so eloquently put it, any way at all. Which is more than I can say for you! 'We're some little bit acquainted,'" Letty mimicked in a passable imitation of her husband's urbane drawl.

"While you were being entirely aboveboard, Mrs. Alsdale?"

Letty flushed, and Geoff felt a childish pleasure at having scored a hit.

Taking a corner of her black-dyed sleeve between his fingers, he rubbed the fabric. "What are you in mourning for, Mrs. Alsdale? Your lost freedom? Or were you planning to kill me off, and merely donned the black as an anticipatory measure?"

"For that sort of joyous occasion, I would have worn crimson." Letty jerked her sleeve out of his grasp, inexplicably angered by the intimate gesture. She glared mutinously up at him. "You should be thanking me for traveling under another name. Or you might have some explaining to do to your Miss Fairley. A wife would certainly get in the way of your courtship, now, wouldn't she?"

That wasn't all that a wife was likely to get in the way of. Any residual pleasure he might have derived from baiting Letty abruptly dissipated as the true consequences of her appearance struck him. All it would take was one injudicious word from Letty—to Lord Vaughn, perhaps—and the entire underpinning of the mission would come unmoored. Oh, there were undoubtedly ways around it; Geoff frowned as he tried to think of one. After their display of amorous intentions, it was too late to pass Jane off as a relative. Having her play his mistress would deny her and her chaperone entrйe into the drawing rooms of Dublin, effectively cutting off one of their most reliable sources of information. Miss Gilly Fairley and her aunt could conveniently disappear, to be replaced by some other combination of persons, but it was too late in the game for such a transformation. Her abrupt disappearance would raise questions, and a new persona would take time to develop, time they didn't have.

All of Geoff's frustration crackled through his voice as he rounded on his inconvenient little wife and demanded, "What in the devil possessed you to come out here?"

"I had something to tell you." She looked up at him, lips pressed together into a mask of self-mockery that made her look much older than her nineteen years. "It doesn't matter anymore. None of it does."

Geoff crossed his arms across his chest. "You're with child, aren't you?"

"What!"

Geoff's eyes lingered insultingly on Letty's lush bosom, which needed no help from ruffles to fill out the bodice of her dress. "Why else would you be so eager to seek the protection of my name? You needed a husband in a hurry, and I was there."

The words came out with much less conviction than Geoff had originally intended. It might have had something to do with the way Letty was staring at him, as though he were newly escaped from Bedlam.

"You think I'm with child?"

"That was the theory, yes," said Geoff, beginning to wonder how he had lost control of the conversation. This wasn't at all how he had envisioned her reacting. Tearful denials had been more the thing.

Letty shook her head disjointedly, looking anywhere but at Geoff. "This can't be happening," she muttered. "This just can't be happening. This isn't real life. It's…it's a Drury Lane melodrama!"

"So was your maneuvering me into marriage at the expense of your sister. Which play did you steal that from?"

"I most certainly did not…. May I point out that your coachman was the one who kidnapped me?"

"He couldn't have kidnapped you if you hadn't been there."

"An irrefutable piece of logic if ever there was," scoffed Letty.

"Fine," clipped Geoff. "Then you tell me what you were doing next to my carriage in the middle of the night."

"I was trying to protect my family's good name, which some people were doing their best to sully!"

"Oh, that makes sense. Save your family's good name by loitering about half-clothed in the wee hours of the morning."

It didn't help Letty's temper that the same objection had occurred to her. Several times. But what else was she supposed to have done under the circumstances? Roll over, go back to bed, and let Mary ruin herself? Blast it all, if he hadn't had the hare-brained notion of eloping with her sister, she wouldn't have been in that predicament in the first place.

"I—oh, why am I even bothering? What do I care for the good opinion of a philandering reprobate?"

Geoff itched to refute the charge, but when it came to a choice between the moral high ground and England, self-justification would have to wait. It galled him to be tarred with her brush, philanderer to her schemer, but there was nothing he could bloody well do about it.

That realization did nothing to improve his temper.

"An excellent point," he drawled, experiencing an entirely unjust satisfaction as Letty bristled at the insouciant response.

"Tell me," Letty demanded, "did you ever intend to marry my sister? Or were you going to carry her off and discard her when you tired of her?"

England was all very well and good, but some things were too much to be borne.

Geoff's hands closed into fists at his sides. He took a step closer, so close that the frill that edged her bodice brushed the folds of his cravat, and said, in the sort of implacable tone that preceded thrown gauntlets and swords at dawn, "I loved your sister."

"It didn't take you long to forget her."

"I—" Geoff broke off, hating the look of triumph on Letty's face at the telltale pause.

He hadn't forgotten Mary. He just hadn't thought about her much over the past week. The two were not the same thing. And whose fault was it that Mary had been driven from his mind? Not Miss Gilly Fairley's, certainly. Not even Napoleon Bonaparte's. It was all the fault of a stubborn woman with reddish hair, who persisted in turning up at the most inconvenient times and places and driving him utterly, bloody mad. Fine for her to twit him for forgetting Mary, when she was the one who had torn them apart. Geoff could feel his self-control beginning to fray, like a rope in the hands of a malicious child with a knife.

"At least I didn't steal my sister's betrothed," he snapped.

"You don't have a sister," flung back Letty.

"That," replied Geoff, a muscle beginning to tic dangerously in his cheek, "is not the point. The point is—" Geoff froze, arrested by a sound from outside the window.

"Ha!" retorted Letty triumphantly. "You don't even have a point, do you?"

"Shh!" Geoff flung up one hand to quiet her.

There it was again, a regular rhythmic tapping. With a muffled curse, Geoff whirled toward the window. Sure enough, there, just outside the glow cast onto the street by Mrs. Lanergan's brightly lit windows, a man with close-cropped dark hair was tapping his cane against the cobbles, deep in thought. And he was walking away.

"Don't you dare shush me!" Letty planted her hands on her hips. "I haven't even begun to tell you what I think of you."

"You'll have to begin again tomorrow," said Geoff, moving her rapidly aside. "We can finish our discussion then. Your servant, madam."

And with a bow so brief it was barely a nod, he was gone.

"What do you think you're—"

Letty bit off the angry words, partly because Lord Pinchingdale was already halfway across the room, but mostly because it was clear to the most intellectually challenged village idiot exactly what he was doing. He was leaving. Again.

How dared he run away just when she was winning the argument!

This time, she had had enough. She wasn't going to allow it. They were going to have it out here and now, or her name wasn't Letty Alsworthy…Alsdale…well, Letty.

Without pausing to grapple with the difficulties of identity, Letty wiggled and shoved her way through the crowd with a great deal less finesse than her perfidious husband. Mumbling, "Pardon me," and "I'm sorry," in a continuous monotone, she fought free of the crush, grabbing on to the handles of the drawing room doors with a huge gasp of relief.

Ha! She would show Geoffrey bloody Pinchingdale that he couldn't run away from her!

With a deep breath, she flung the portal wide and plunged into the hall—straight into a blue-and-scarlet mountain that grabbed her by the arms and wouldn't let her go.