The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Chapter Sixteen

The effect, Letty was sure, was quite deliberate.

"Good day," she said tartly, all the more tartly for her momentary descent into superstition. For a moment, she had half expected the lid of the coffin to clank open, and a shrouded form to rise—and do what? she demanded of herself irritably. Recite poetry? Dance a sailor's hornpipe? Surely the dead had better things to do than entertain the living.

If he noticed the asperity of her tone, it had no effect on the cane's owner. Lord Vaughn turned in Letty's direction with an unhurried movement that was nearly an incantation in itself.

"My dear Mrs. Alsdale, you do appear in the most unlikely places."

"I could say the same of you, my lord," replied Letty, deliberately moving forward to block Jane from Lord Vaughn's view. Since Lord Vaughn was nearly six feet tall and Letty just over five, it didn't work quite as effectively as she had intended. "Unless you make a practice of inhabiting crypts."

"Delightful places, aren't they?" Lord Vaughn's gesture encompassed the looming stones of the roof, the smoky shadow on the wall, the dark bulk of the coffin in front of him. "So restful."

Letty looked at the coffin and shuddered with a distaste that was entirely unfeigned. "Not precisely the sort of rest I aspire to."

The torchlight lent a demonic aspect to the silver streaks in Lord Vaughn's hair, limning them with infernal fire. "It comes to us all in the end, whether we seek it or no."

No…no…no… echoed the stone arches mournfully.

Letty's voice drowned out the echoes. "There's no need to hasten the process."

"You wouldn't fling yourself into the grave like Juliet?"

"Certainly not for Romeo."

Eo…eo…eo… caroled the echoes in funereal descant.

"For someone else, then," said Lord Vaughn softly.

Letty bristled. "Dying for love is a ridiculous notion. Only a poet would think of it."

"'The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, of imagination all compact,'" quoted Vaughn lazily. "You would prefer to die for something else, perhaps? A cause? An ideal?" He paused, holding up his cane so that the silver serpent at its head blazed in the light. "A country?"

"You left out old age," replied Letty.

"How very unambitious of you, Mrs. Alsdale."

"Alexander the Great died in his bed."

"Not so Caesar," countered Lord Vaughn, adding, with peculiar emphasis, "or Brutus."

Rather than bandy Romans, with whom her acquaintance was strictly limited, Letty resorted to changing the subject. "You never told me what brought you down here. Was it merely a philosophical endeavor?"

"Meditations on the meaning of mortality? No." Lord Vaughn's elegant hand rested briefly on the lid of the coffin in a gesture that was almost a caress. "You might call this more of a social call."

Lord Vaughn's rings glinted incongruously against the dark casket, a reminder of earthy vanities against the grim inevitability of the grave.

"You've put it off a bit long, haven't you?" said Letty, regarding the coffin with distaste. There was no plate on the coffin, no insignia, no name, merely a series of lightly incised lines scratched into the surface. Letty could barely make out the marks.

"Five years too long," said Vaughn.

His gloved fingers traced the scratches. One long stroke, followed by three short ones. An E. Followed by another long stroke. Then…

"Alas, poor Edward. I knew him well."

Letty's throat felt very tight as she watched Lord Vaughn trace the final two prongs of the second initial. Edward was a common enough name. But for the last name to begin with an F…

"Edward?" she repeated.

Vaughn gazed meditatively at the coffin, like Hamlet surveying the skull of Yorick. "Lord Edward Fitzgerald."

So that much, at least, of Jane's story had been true.

"This is the coffin of Lord Edward Fitzgerald?" she announced as loudly as she dared, wondering if Jane already knew, or cared.

"Poor Edward. He cared so deeply for his causes," said Lord Vaughn, in the tone of one marveling at a fascinating incomprehensibility.

"Who was he?" asked Letty, trying to angle herself in such a way that Lord Vaughn would have to move away to speak to her, and leave the field clear for Jane. Perhaps if she moved a little to the left…Lord Vaughn remained stubbornly where he was, squarely in front of Lord Edward's coffin.

"My cousin." Lord Vaughn's lips curled in amusement at Letty's involuntary expression of surprise. "You really don't know your Debrett's, do you, Mrs. Alsdale? A lamentable oversight in any debutante."

"I was never terribly good at being a debutante," admitted Letty. "I'm much better at balancing accounts."

Lord Vaughn held up one long-fingered hand. "I shan't ask. For your edification, my ignorant young lady, Edward was the son of Lady Emily Lennox. Lady Emily Lennox married James Fitzgerald, the Earl of Kildare. Lady Emily's father was the Duke of Richmond, who was, in turn, first cousin to my grandmother."

"Which makes you…?" inquired Letty, trying desperately to untangle the mesh of titles.

"Exactly as I am," replied Vaughn, extending an arm. "Shall we rejoin your party? They seem to have strayed."

"Unless," retorted Letty, anxious to divert attention from Jane, who was poking into the foundations of the vault with more antiquarian fervor than one might expect from Miss Gilly Fairley, "we are the ones who have strayed."

"An estimable young lady like yourself?" replied Vaughn, turning her words into something else entirely as he drew her inexorably in the direction of Jane, Miss Gwen, and the beleaguered curate. "Never."

"I was wondering where you had got to!" exclaimed Jane. "Oh, do come look, Mrs. Alsdale, darling, at these wonderful pillars! Can't you just imagine hideous Count Alfonso walling lovely Dulcibelle into just such a crypt as this? I know I shall have nightmares for a week!"

"How lovely," said Letty weakly.

"And a sepulchre!" Jane darted past Lord Vaughn, and stretched out both hands to Lord Edward's humble casket in a gesture of exaggerated rapture.

Within the space of a moment, she had run her hands over the top, peered beneath the base, and come up beaming. Beaming, Letty noticed, and empty-handed. Lord Vaughn's presence precluded a more thorough investigation, but, even to Letty's untrained eyes, the inspection appeared perfunctory. Reflexively, Letty's head tilted back, up to the vaulted roof, above which Lord Pinchingdale was…doing what?

"How gloriously gruesome!" Jane enthused, patting the top of Lord Edward's coffin like a much-beloved pet. "I do prefer the word 'sepulchre' to 'coffin,' don't you? It's just so much more…"

"Dramatic?" supplied Lord Vaughn.

"…horrid!" finished Jane triumphantly, brushing dirt off her gloves.

"Or horridly dramatic," murmured Vaughn.

"My dramatics are never horrid!" protested Jane, batting her eyelashes at Lord Vaughn. She put a finger to her cheek in exaggerated perplexity. "Or do I mean that my horrors are never dramatic?"

"I find it horrifying that we haven't yet been introduced." Lord Vaughn looked to Letty.

"Lord Vaughn," said Letty, since there was little else she could do, "allow me to present you to Miss Gilly Fairley."

"Gilly." Lord Vaughn rolled the silver head of his cane meditatively between his fingers. "An unusual name."

"Short for Evangeline, but I do think that's so dreadfully dull and stuffy, don't you agree, my lord?" Jane simpered up at Lord Vaughn from under the brim of her bonnet. "My mother called me her little Gillyflower. Isn't that ever so sweet?"

"A sweet name for a sweet lady." Lord Vaughn offered Jane his arm, pointing her toward the stairs. "Where I grew up, gillyflowers went by another name. We called them 'pinks.'"

"How charming!" Jane scooped up her long skirt to navigate the narrow steps, which Letty took to mean that Jane was quite finished with the crypt. Letty fell in behind the two of them, relieved to be heading back to daylight. "Pink always has looked very well on me."

"Or sometimes," Lord Vaughn said as he took Jane's elbow to guide her up the stairs, "carnations."

"Are they pink?" Jane asked vacantly. "I must confess, my lord, I'm not the least bit botanical."

"Isn't a carnation supposed to be red rather than pink?" Letty barged in, hurrying up the steps behind them. "I seem to remember some line or other about blood turning the seas incarnadine."

"I've never been to Carnadine," fluttered Jane, pausing at the top of the stairs to look back at Letty. "Is it in Scotland?"

"Near enough," said Lord Vaughn dryly, reaching down a hand to help Letty up the final steps. "I believe the line in question comes from the Scottish play—Macbeth," he specified for Gilly's benefit. "Yet another case of treason and skullduggery immortalized in verse. Have you noticed, my dear Miss Fairley, that the villains get all the good lines?"

"I'm not very fond of the theater," replied Jane, blinking her eyes woefully beneath her bonnet. Letty's own eyes smarted in the unaccustomed sunlight, but Jane's expression was more design than nature. "All that prating and running about with toy swords. It's quite fatiguing. I much prefer a dance."

"I am sure many men would be delighted to dance to your tune, my dear Miss Fairley."

"Oh, no," averred Jane, falling into pace with Lord Vaughn as they processed around the side of the church. "I play only indifferently."

Lord Vaughn's head bent attentively toward Gilly's. "I would imagine that that depends upon the game."

"I am told," said Jane demurely, "that I play wonderfully well at charades."

"Lord Vaughn!" intervened Letty. The pair turned back to look at her with identical expressions of inquiry. Letty would have loved to ask Jane what she was playing at, but Jane wore Gilly's slightly daft mask, all wide eyes and parted lips.

"How does your cousin?" Letty finished lamely.

Lord Vaughn's eyebrows lifted. "I don't believe his condition has changed."

Flustered, Letty scurried to catch up with them. "I meant the other cousin. Mr. Ormond."

"Augustus occupies himself," Lord Vaughn said blandly. He smiled down at Jane. Since Jane was only a few inches shorter than he, he didn't have far to look. "He, too, enjoys charades."

Letty decided that she didn't enjoy charades. Not one bit. Letty had never liked playing games she couldn't win. Whatever game Jane was playing, it wasn't one to which Letty knew the rules.

As if to complete Letty's discomfiture, Lord Pinchingdale chose that moment to stride down the steps of the church, looking more self-assured than anyone had a right to be. Every fold of his cravat was neatly in place; his cane swung from his hand at an angle Letty was sure was as geometrically correct as the latest mathematics could make it; and his hat sat just so on his brow, casting just enough of his face into shadow to eliminate any hope of reading his expression.

There wasn't so much as a look exchanged between Miss Gwen and Jane, but, within seconds, Miss Gwen had Lord Vaughn by the arm, while Jane moved smoothly toward Lord Pinchingdale, waving and trilling his name.

"You must help us settle this dispute, my lord," Miss Gwen said imperiously. She jerked her head in the direction of the curate, who was looking mournfully after Jane. Catching the curate by the arm, she dragged him ruthlessly into the discussion, leaving Jane and Lord Pinchingdale to their privacy, like any good matchmaking chaperone. "He claims the Lord chose to smite the Ammonites with fire and sword. Sheer nonsense. Why would our Lord wield a sword when there were plagues to be had?"

Letty didn't wait to hear Lord Vaughn's opinions on the proper procedure for obliterating one's enemies. Instead, she drifted as insouciantly as she could after Jane, pretending to be absorbed by the impressive facade of the church.

As she let her eyes roam unseeingly up the massive Ionic pilasters toward the tower, she heard Jane ask, with the merest breath of sound, "And?"

Lord Pinchingdale's eyes flicked to Letty before he answered, equally softly, "Yes."

And that was all.

It was enough to make Letty wonder why they bothered to lower their voices at all. What did they think she was going to discern from a simple, muttered "yes"? Yes, it's a lovely day? Yes, please pass the mutton? Yes, we still don't trust that Letty creature?

Jane leaned closer, murmuring something meant for Lord Pinchingdale's ears alone. Both pairs of eyes flicked to Letty, and she knew, with hideous surety, that they were talking about her. Whatever Jane was saying to Lord Pinchingdale, he didn't like it. Letty looked miserably away, feigning an interest in the emblems carved above the door. She would have been willing to hazard a guess as to the nature of the conversation. Jane, in her sensible Jane voice, would be urging Lord Pinchingdale to swallow his personal revulsion for the good of the country.

As for Lord Pinchingdale…well, his feelings were clear enough. There was no need to humiliate herself further by putting them into words.

Oh, she wanted to be home! Not her hired lodgings in Dublin, not the stuffy ballrooms of London, but real home, where she belonged, where she was useful and needed and always knew exactly what she was meant to be doing. Letty would have given anything to run howling back to Hertfordshire like a homesick child.

But she didn't belong there anymore, either. Married women didn't return to their parents' homes and pick up where they had left off. It just wasn't done. And even if she did go home, in defiance of all the conventions, it wouldn't be the same. Miss Letty could sit in a tenant's kitchen, with butter dripping off a fresh crumpet, and discuss crops and cows; Viscountess Pinchingdale couldn't. She would be curtsied straight back to the manor house, condemned to a sterile life of genteel uselessness.

Letty swallowed hard, fighting back a sudden wave of tears. Images of her future, without a real home, without a real purpose, eternally on the fringes, danced about her like goblins, jabbing and jeering at her. She could remain in Dublin, on the fringes of a conspiracy she didn't understand, with people who didn't want her there anyway. Or she could return to London, to hover on the edges of her family's existence. Whichever way she chose, she would be a superfluity, like an extra woman at a dinner party where there weren't enough men to make up the numbers.

"Italianate classicism at its best," said Lord Pinchingdale's voice, just above her shoulder.

Letty started. "I beg your pardon?"

"The facade," he clarified.

"Um, yes," agreed Letty, who had received nothing more than a blurry impression of stone. Her voice sounded suspiciously coarse to her ears, thickened with the residue of unshed tears. Taking care to pronounce each word clearly, she added, "It's quite lovely. Not as grand as St. Paul's, but very, um, symmetrical."

"It certainly is that."

Letty waited for the sting, but Lord Pinchingdale's countenance revealed nothing more damning than pleasant interest. Letty wondered if this meant their truce had begun. Weren't they supposed to shake hands, or sign terms, or some such thing?

"Did you see anything interesting inside?" she asked awkwardly, doubting she would ever get the knack of holding an ordinary conversation with a double meaning. He and Jane did it so easily. As for Lord Vaughn, he had elevated the practice to a positive art. But the double-weighted words felt uncomfortable and clumsy on Letty's tongue. "Anything of note, I mean?"

She suspected she had leaned too heavily on the words "of note," and she was sure of it when Lord Pinchingdale's expression became, if anything, blander than ever.

Without looking away from his leisurely contemplation of the skull and crossbones carved above the door, Lord Pinchingdale said reflectively, "The Eucharistic emblems over the reredos are quite fine. And some of the carvings on the pulpit were extremely…interesting."

Just when Letty was quite sure that she had imagined the peculiar emphasis on the last word, Lord Pinchingdale looked down at her with a slow, sideways glance that ran through her more potently than brandy.

Letty's formerly depressed spirits did a crazy zigzag into joy, like a tipsy angel winging back to heaven. Whatever Jane had said to him…oh, Letty didn't even care. No matter what persuasion it had taken, this sudden amity offered a reprieve from her nightmare vision of perennial exile. Letty could have jumped up and down and hugged him. But she didn't. She might not be fluent in double meanings, but she did understand that much about discretion.

Besides, she still hadn't quite forgiven him for that nasty remark in the carriage.

"The pulpit," Lord Pinchingdale added casually, as if in answer to an unasked question, "is located directly above the crypt."

"Ah," Letty said breathlessly, the pieces falling into place. If the pulpit was above the crypt, it was above Lord Edward's coffin. And if a group of patriotic rebels wanted to use their fallen leader as a posting point, they would find the pulpit far easier to access than the torturous route through the trapdoor into the crypt. "I do so love an interesting pulpit!"

That hadn't come out quite the way she had intended.

Clearly, Lord Pinchingdale didn't think so, either. He fixed her with a long, considering look that made Letty want to fiddle with her hair, preferably in a way that would cover most of her face.

"You really haven't any talent for dissembling, have you?" he said, at last.

"No," admitted Letty dispiritedly, absently drawing the string on her reticule open and closed. It pained her to admit incompetence at anything, especially with their truce so new and raw. "I never really had any need for it. Before."

"Letty." Her name sounded absurdly intimate coming from Lord Pinchingdale's lips. But, of course, what else was he to call her? He couldn't call her Miss Alsworthy anymore, and she had already shown that she was incapable of remembering to respond to her alias.

"Letty," he repeated insistently, "what happened that night?"

He didn't have to explain which night he was referring to.

Dry-mouthed, Letty asked, "What happened to our truce? No recriminations, letting bygones be?"

"I'm not trying to attack you." Lord Pinchingdale leaned a hand against the wall above Letty's head, his gray eyes intent on her face in a way that did funny things to Letty's ability to breathe properly. He was so close that tendrils of her hair caught on the dark fabric of his sleeve, so close that Letty could see the tired circles under his eyes, and the shadows left on his cheeks by the fine lines of his cheekbones. He needed feeding up, and a few good nights of sleep. "I just need to know. What happened?"

He seemed sincere—but he had seemed sincere before. And, after witnessing his performance with Jane, Letty didn't place much trust in seeming. The stone of the wall biting into her back, Letty eyed him warily.

"Why now?" she asked. "Why not before?"

"Because—"

"Hallooo!" a voice hailed them.

With the utmost reluctance, Geoff let his hand fall from the wall behind Letty's head. He knew that voice. All too well.

Moving very slowly, in the hopes of warding off the inevitable, he turned in the direction of the voice. There, on Werburgh Street, a tall figure in bright regimentals was swinging down from one of the low-slung carts that served those who preferred not to waste their coin on a hackney. The bright blue tunic and scarlet facings of the Horse Guards uniform made an almost comical contrast with the weathered wood of the noddy, just one step removed from a farm cart.

At least, it might have been comical if it had been anyone else. Miles. Wickham. Bonaparte, even. Anyone but this.

"I see I've come just in time," Jasper Pinchingdale said heartily.

Geoff had learned long ago that the easiest way to be rid of Jasper was to give him money. The more money one gave him, the faster he went.

Geoff reached into his waistcoat. "How much do you need this time, Jasper?"

Jasper shouldered past him, making directly for Letty.

"You wrong me, cousin. I'm not here for lack of funds, but for the charming company of a beautiful lady."

Just in case anyone might be in any doubt as to that beautiful lady's identity, he bowed deeply toward Letty, ending with a little flourish just by her feet. Letty automatically stepped back, closer to Geoff. She looked, Geoff noted, no more pleased to see him than Geoff did.

"I had hoped to persuade you to reconsider our drive," Jasper murmured in an intimate tone that sent Geoff's right eyebrow straight up to his hairline, and made Letty long to fling something, preferably at Jasper.

"I never agreed to go driving with you," Letty said sharply. Turning to Geoff, she added forcefully, "I didn't."

Neither man paid the slightest bit of attention to her.

"In that?" Lord Pinchingdale inquired, gesturing to the ram-shackle conveyance Jasper had left waiting on Werburgh Street. Letty had seen several of them in the streets since her arrival, two-wheeled carts drawn by a single horse. The driver smiled and nodded, drawing placidly on a villainous-looking pipe.

Jasper's brows drew together until they met over his nose. The cousins didn't look much alike—Jasper was fairer and broader, Geoffrey darker and taller—but Letty perceived a faint family resemblance in the similarity of their scowls.

"We can't all of us afford a high-perch phaeton, cousin," clipped Jasper.

"I don't own a high-perch phaeton." Lord Pinchingdale's eyebrow had climbed so high that Letty was afraid he might do himself permanent damage.

"You could if you chose to."

Lord Pinchingdale looked distinctly unimpressed with Jasper's tale of pecuniary woe.

"So could you, if you hadn't gambled away your inheritance. That was a nice little estate in Wiltshire you came into, Jasper. Would you like to explain what became of it?"

Jasper favored his cousin with such a look of undiluted hatred that Letty took an instinctive step back, closer to Lord Pinchingdale.

Turning to Letty, Jasper bared his teeth in an unconvincing attempt at a smile. "Pay no mind to him, fair lady. He is simply trying to blacken me in your sight."

"Generally," said Lord Pinchingdale, "you do that all by yourself."

Jasper continued to smile determinedly at her, as though his cousin had not spoken, but Letty had never seen anything quite so cold as his eyes. "If not a drive, perhaps an outing? The countryside is very beautiful this time of year."

"Flowers make me sneeze," Letty lied shamelessly. "Someone sent me a bouquet once and I had to take to my bed for a week."

"Indoor pursuits, then," Jasper persevered.

"Not under your roof," replied Lord Pinchingdale pleasantly.

"What of the theater?" Jasper continued doggedly. "Dublin is known for its theater."

"A new opera opened at the Crow Street Theatre this week," put in Lord Vaughn helpfully, strolling up to their little group with Jane on his arm and Miss Gwen stalking behind. He waved a languid hand. "Ramah-something-or-other."

"What a charming idea!" exclaimed Jane, who seemed to have forgotten that she disliked the theater. "We shall make a party of it! This next week is so frightfully busy but I believe we have Friday free, haven't we, Auntie Ernie?"

"Perhaps Mrs. Alsdale would prefer to attend sooner." Jasper made one last attempt.

"I wouldn't think of going without Miss Fairley," said Letty firmly.

"Oh, aren't you too sweet!" exclaimed Jane. "I just knew we were going to be the best of friends the moment I saw you, didn't I, Lord Pinchingdale?" Without waiting for him to respond, she tilted her head to one side, in deep thought. "If Lord Pinchingdale escorts me, and Captain Pinchingdale escorts Mrs. Alsdale…then, Lord Vaughn, you shall escort darling Auntie Ernie!"

Jasper was the only one who looked pleased with the arrangements.

He sent a look of smirking triumph at Lord Pinchingdale, like a child awarded sole use of a disputed toy. Lord Pinchingdale didn't return the compliment; he smiled and bowed to Jane as though he had no other desire in the world but to make a part of her party at the theater—but his attention was on Lord Vaughn as he did so. Letty wondered where Lord Vaughn fit into the equation. Friend, foe, innocent bystander? The latter seemed the least likely, if the tenor of his conversation with Jane in the crypt was anything to go by. On the other hand, he had contrived to sound just as obscurely portentous with Letty last night at Mrs. Lanergan's, turning simple sentences into a maze of hidden meanings. He might be exactly as he seemed: a bored gentleman with a habit of attaching more significance to his words than they deserved. But why was Jane so eager to attach him to their party?

There was Vaughn, and then there was Jasper. Letty would have been willing to stake her dowry (what was left of it, at any rate) that the antipathy between the two cousins was genuine. But…he had asked Jasper to be his groomsman. And, last night, she would have been equally eager to wager that Lord Pinchingdale had amorous designs of the worst sort on Miss Gilly Fairley. Could the animosity between the two cousins be as much of a blind as Jane's silver-gilt curls?

Trying to sort out who was pretending what—and to whom—was beginning to give Letty a headache.

Lord Vaughn looked equally pained, but for different reasons. Faced with the prospect of an evening with Miss Gwen, Lord Vaughn chose flight over valor.

"Although it plunges me into the deepest agonies of regret to refuse such an honor as the company of Mrs. Grimstone, I promised young Augustus I would make one of his party next Friday."

Miss Gwen emitted a noise that sounded suspiciously like, "Coward."

Unmoved, Vaughn eyed her dispassionately through the lens of his quizzing glass. "My dear Mrs. Grimstone, sometimes cowardice is merely another word for common sense."

Miss Gwen considered for a moment. "Pithy," she said at last. "I'll give you that."

"I am, as ever, humbly grateful for any gift at your disposal," replied Lord Vaughn, with an elegant mockery of a bow.

"Ha!" said Miss Gwen. "You were never humble in your life."

"We were all young once."

"And probably the worse for it, too." Confident in having achieved the last word, Miss Gwen smirked at the company at large.

Jane quickly intervened, moving to mollify Lord Vaughn with a speed that confirmed all of Letty's suspicions—or, at least, some of them. "My Lord Vaughn, you simply must come, or I shan't ever forgive you."

"How could I refuse anything to such a fair flower?"

As Jane turned to smile at him, a chance shaft of sunlight struck the gold locket at Jane's throat, lighting it like a beacon.

Letty sneezed.