Lowering her hand to her side, she leveled a long, hard look at Lucy, with her pretty face and discontented mouth and her dresses as fussy as the dressmaker could be persuaded to make them. Lucy had been on the marriage market for even longer than Mary, never quite seeming to grasp that her titters and flutters drove men away, even as Mary's beauty attracted them. For over a year, Letty had been forced to endure Lucy's jabs about her dress, her hair, her clothes, a million little snubs under the guise of being "helpful" to Mary's younger sister. And since there was nothing she could say without looking a shrew or causing a fuss, Letty had curbed her naturally blunt tongue and let Lucy jab.
Not anymore.
In a voice that sounded strange to her own ears, Letty said, "You're just upset that you didn't think of it yourself."
Lucy's mouth fell open in an entirely unflattering and gratifying way, and two round pink spots formed on her cheekbones. "Well, I never!"
"No, you didn't," agreed Letty, deciding that there were advantages to being ruined. "But it wasn't for lack of trying. I saw the way you tried to get Lord Pinchingdale out on the balcony at the Middlethorpes' ball. If you could have stolen him from Mary, you would have in a minute."
"I don't know how you can say such things," fumbled Lucy, tugging at the edges of her gloves in her anxiety. "Mama!"
"Because it's true," said Letty calmly. "You don't think Mary didn't realize? She found it amusing. Because she knew you couldn't possibly be a threat."
Lucy recoiled as though slapped.
Mrs. Ponsonby turned an alarming puce that contrasted unfortunately with her Nile-green frock. "Young lady ," she blustered.
Letty lifted her head high and looked Mrs. Ponsonby levelly in the eye, buoyed by champagne and a year's worth of pent-up indignation. In a voice as quiet as it was deadly, Letty asked, "Don't you mean, 'my lady'?"
Those two simple words proved too much for Mrs. Ponsonby.
"Lucy! We are leaving this house of of ill repute!" Mrs. Ponsonby grabbed her daughter, who was still desperately trying to explain to no one in particular just how Lord Pinchingdale had come to be on the balcony at the Middlethorpes' ball, and swung her in a wide circle.
Turning, she fired one last parting salvo at Letty. "You may be a viscountess, but you shall never be received in my house again!"
"I shall look forward to that," said Letty.
Behind her, Letty heard the low, rhythmic sound of someone clapping. Startled, she twisted around to find Lady Henrietta Dorrington, hazel eyes alight with glee, watching the retreating Ponsonby party with no little satisfaction.
"Well done!" applauded Henrietta. "I've been waiting for something like that for years. She looks just like a turtle from the back in all that green, doesn't she?"
Letty returned her smile, clasping her hands around the stem of her glass to stop them shaking. "I don't think I'm going to receive an invitation to Mrs. Ponsonby's next Venetian breakfast."
"Do you think if I stand conspicuously next to you, she'll stop inviting me, too?" asked Henrietta hopefully. "I would so love to be snubbed."
"Don't say that," said Letty soberly, feeling the energy that had buoyed her through her confrontation with Mrs. Ponsonby beginning to ebb away. "It isn't nearly as enjoyable as one might think. Except by the Ponsonbys," she added, with a valiant attempt at a smile.
Henrietta, who had only escaped a similar fate through the felicity of having committed her own indiscretions in another countryand the machinations of a mother whose ability to manipulate public opinion put Bonaparte's agents to shamemade a sympathetic face.
"I'm sorry. If there is anything I can do to help "
Letty felt unaccustomed tears prick her lids, and blinked them quickly away. Aside from her father's advice on earplugs, Henrietta's was the first kindly meant statement she had heard all day. At least, the first kindly meant statement that was truly kindly meant, when one discounted all the double-edged barbs that began with "you poor, dear child," and inevitably ended with cheering comments about ways in which she might possibly atone for her disgraceat some point in her declining years.
"I hadn't thought you would want to speak to me," Letty admitted. "You were friends with Lord Pinchingdale long before you knew me. And he can barely bear to speak to me after all that happened."
"What did happen?" asked Henrietta. "I certainly can't believe that either you or Geoff would behave in the way the scandal sheets claim."
"You've seen those?"
Henrietta looked a little guilty. "I only read them for the articles."
"Ah, Hen! There you are!" A large form bounded up, slinging an arm around Henrietta with a force that nearly knocked her off her feet. Letty prudently moved a step away. Belatedly noticing Letty, Miles mustered an unenthusiastic, "Oh, hullo."
"Where is Geoff?" demanded Henrietta, as Letty contemplated the best way to quietly fade into the background.
Miles tweaked one of his wife's curls. "You're meddling again, aren't you?"
"And you're trying to change the subject," riposted Henrietta, grabbing Letty by the arm before Letty could slip away. "Don't worry. Geoff will thank me for this later. Where is he?"
"It's a little difficult to say."
Henrietta just looked at him.
"Oh, all right! Geoff is gone."
"You mean he's gone out?" ventured Letty, automatically turning to look at the door of the ballroom.
"I suppose you could say that," mumbled Miles, studying his own reflection in the polished tips of his boots.
"To his club?" Letty prompted. All gentlemen had clubs, even her absentminded father. She doubted theirs was the same club, since the one to which her father belonged featured a membership on the older side of sixty, chiefly known for their ability to hold a paper steady and doze at the same time.
"Er, no," said Miles. He cast a look of wordless entreaty to his wife.
Not having the slightest idea what he was entreating, Henrietta returned the look with interest, and more than a touch of exasperation. "And?"
"He's gone away," elaborated Miles, looking slightly hunted. He gestured helplessly with his hands. "Really away. Away, away."
"Away, away?" repeated Letty.
"What is that supposed to mean?" demanded Henrietta.
Miles contemplated the floor. "It means," said Miles, looking uncomfortably from Letty to his wife and back again, "that Geoff has gone to Ireland."
"Ireland." Letty turned the name over on her tongue. "As in the country?"
Miles cast a wary look over his shoulder at the remnants of the chattering, jabbering guests, those who hadn't either collapsed beneath the furniture or decorously gone home.
"Perhaps we should all adjourn to Geoff's study," he said with forced cheerfulness. "Hen?"
"Exactly what I was going to suggest," agreed Henrietta, nodding emphatically in approval. She slipped her arm through Letty's, leaving Letty feeling like a very small trout being towed along by a pair of determined fishermen.
Miles led the way unerringly down a series of corridors, away from the madding crowd in the eception rooms. It didn't escape Letty's attention that both Mr. Dorrington and Lady Henrietta appeared to know her new home far better than she did. Or that they referred to Lord Pinchingdale familiarly and fondly as "Geoff."
"After you." Miles wrenched open a door to a small, booklined room, and set about lighting candles to alleviate the evening gloom, while Henrietta solicitously settled Letty into a large leather chair. The pale gauze overlay of Letty's hastily refurbished dress contrasted incongruously with the dark leather of the chair, a feminine intrusion into a masculine stronghold.
There was something rather unsettling about being in a room so clearly marked by her new husband's presence. His papers and books dominated the desk, all squared into tidy piles with the edges all lined neatly into place. The bindings on the books were as well-worn as her father's, if their placement more orderly, in a staggering array of subjects and languages. Letty made out the ornate, curled letters of the German presses, thin pamphlets in French, heavy treatises in English, and curious, narrow little books with Greek letters incised into the spine, the gilt letters glowing uncannily in the candlelight, like the aftermath of a wizard's spell.
Magic, indeed! Letty squirmed upright against the slick leather of the chair, determined not to fall prey to fancies. There was nothing at all magical about Lord Pinchingdale's departurejust something craven. Had he been planning, all along, to flee as soon as the vows were said? The study showed no signs of disarray; every drawer was neatly closed, every book in its place. Beneath a layer of indignation and champagne, Letty felt another emotion stir, an emotion that felt curiously like disappointment.
She would have thought Lord Pinchingdale many things, but not a coward.
"How long ago did he leave?" asked Letty, more sharply than she had intended.
"Half an hour. Maybe more," said Miles curtly.
Casting a reproachful look at her husband, Henrietta moved to stand protectively behind Letty.
Letty stared at the clasped hands in her lap, and rethought her question. "Why did he leave?" she asked.
Over her head, Miles and Henrietta exchanged a long look.
"He didn't even give an excuse, did he?" said Letty disgustedly.
"He doesn't really owe you one, does he?" said Miles, folding his arms across his chest like a Roman gladiator staring down a particularly uppity lion. "Not after the trick you played on him."
Letty grasped the arms of the chair and hauled herself upright. "The trick I played on him?"
"That's right," said Miles, nodding. "He told me all about it."
"What trick?"
"Oh, so you deny it."
"How can I deny it if I don't even know what I'm denying?" Letty paused and frowned, running back over the words in her head. There was something wrong with the sentence, but there was so much wrong in general that syntax and the possible odd double negative were the least of her worries.
"You mean to say that you didn't arrange for Geoff to be" Miles paused in his role of Grand Inquisitor to cast a quizzical glance in the direction of his wife. "Dash it, Hen, what's the male equivalent of 'compromised'?"
"You think I compromised Lord Pinchingdale?" Letty's champagne-soaked brain boggled at the image.
Miles shrugged uncomfortably. "Something like that. So you can't blame old Geoff for haring off first chance he got."
"Why would I but how would I ?" Letty broke off and tried again. "But I didn't even know about the elopement until five minutes before!"
"I told you so," said Henrietta smugly, coming around to perch on the arm of Letty's chair.
"Told him what?" asked Letty anxiously.
"That you weren't a scheming adventuress," explained Henrietta.
"You all thought think I'm an adventuress? Me?" It was quite as absurd as her being perceived as a fallen woman, so miserably inapt that all Letty could do was gape.
"It did seem a little unlikely," Miles admitted, scuffing one booted foot against the red-figured Oriental rug.
Henrietta sent him a repressive look. "Not that you couldn't be a brilliant adventuress if you wanted to be," she said soothingly.
Miles rolled his eyes to the study ceiling at the vagaries of women, and went to uncork the brandy decanter. Laying the crystal stopper to the side, he poured amber liquid into a round-bottomed glass.
"I thought" After the past few minutes, it was hard to remember what she had thought, or that she was capable of thought at all. Letty shook her head to clear it, and continued, "I thought Lord Pinchingdale was sulking because I'd gotten in the way of his elopement. Because I had interfered with his plans."
She straightened and squinted a bit as Miles pressed a glass into her hand.
"Brandy," explained Miles. "You look like you need it."
Letty didn't entirely agree, but she took the glass anyway, curving her hand around the rounded bowl to keep it steady. Whether it was her hand or her glass she was attempting to keep from shaking, she couldn't quite say.
"How could he have thought I planned this? It doesn't make any sense."
"It made sense when Geoff explained it," muttered Miles, making a second trip to the brandy decanter.
"Men!" declared Lady Henrietta, swinging a slippered foot back and forth as she perched on the edge of Letty's chair. "Incapable of adding two and two, the lot of them."
"I say, Hen, that is harsh."
"It's no more than you deserve for leaping to conclusions," said Henrietta, entirely undermining her stern words by throwing a kiss.
Letty hastily looked away. She took a tentative sip from the glass Miles had handed her. Being of a lamentably healthy disposition, she had never had the opportunity to taste brandy before. Letty made a face as the first drops hit her tongue. It didn't taste nearly as pretty as it looked in the glass. It tasted almost salty. Letty took another small, diagnostic sip, and decided it wasn't nearly as bad the second time. A third sip rendered it almost pleasant, although she still couldn't understand why gentlemen seemed quite so enamored of it. But then, gentlemen were enamored of the oddest things. Cards, for example, and curricles, and punching one another for recreational purposes.
"Now that we've got all that straightened out," Henrietta continued, although Letty couldn't see that anything was straightened out at all, not even the chair, which persisted in swaying in a most alarming way, "where on earth is Geoff off to?"
Miles propped himself against the edge of Lord Pinchingdale's desk and took a fortifying gulp from his glass before venturing to respond.
"It was something to do with a horse."
Letty lifted the glass in her own hand so that the candlelight struck gold sparks off the pale liquid, and announced, "I don't think I've imbibed enough to believe that."
Miles grinned at her, a grin that both approved the sentiment and tried to make up for earlier mistrust. Letty appreciated the gesture, even if she did still feel as though someone had hit her repeatedly with a very large mallet. "Then you clearly need some more."