The Deception of the Emerald Ring (30 page)

"Of course," Colin agreed. He seemed to be having trouble controlling the corners of his lips again. He glanced sideways from me to Jay and back again. "How do you two, er, know each other?"

At that point, I would have preferred to claim we didn't. But I was stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck. Hoist by my own petard.

"Our grandmothers are friends."

"Actually," interrupted Jay sententiously, "it's my mother who knows your grandmother."

"Right!" I said brightly. "Mitten."

"Muffin," Jay corrected.

At least I was close.

"Mm-hmm," managed Colin, in a way that suggested he knew just what was going on. I could tell he was dying to make a scone joke. I hoped he choked on it.

"But that's not all!" continued my big mouth, working overtime to correct the horrible assumption that I might, just might, be on a grandparent-assisted blind date. "My absolute best friend has been dating Jay's college roommate for absolutely ever!"

Two "absolutes" in one sentence. Next thing I knew, I was going to start spouting "like," probably coupled with "totally" and "ohmigod!"

"How convenient," said Colin. Before I could think of anything clever to say to that, he bestowed an avuncular smile on both of us in turn. "Well, I'll leave you to it, then."

"Nice meeting you." Jay reached into his jacket pocket and produced a business card. "If you ever need technical support services "

Colin gingerly accepted the card. It boasted blue and orange lettering and was cut on a slight diagonal, in a way that was probably supposed to look edgy, but more likely just made it difficult to fit into the proper wallet compartment.

"Cheers," he said, tilting the card in ironic salute. "Good to see you, Eloise."

Going, going, going Gone. My shoulders slumped as Colin turned and strolled back through the multicolored obstacle course of tables to his comfortable perch at the bar, his duty to his aunt's protégé discharged. His friends greeted him with raised glasses and pointed glances. Colin shrugged and said something that produced a laugh all around.

I felt my cheeks grow pink before I remembered that, wait, I was the one on a date. He was just there with a bunch of blokes.

My pride was salvaged. I had won the upper hand—so why did I feel so miserable?

A silver basket filled with warm bread materialized just below my nose, the long-awaited naan.

Jay began methodically dividing the naan, half for me, half for him, along precise, geometrical lines.

"Wait." I finished the wine in my glass in one long swallow and thrust it over to the waiter before he could escape. "I'll take a refill, please." If I could have, I would have made it a double.

It was going to be a long night.

They were late for the theater.

By the time their small party filtered into the box, a gentleman dressed as an Oriental potentate was already on the stage, belting out a complaint whose words were lost between the burr of rolled Rs and the chatter of conversation in neighboring boxes. It was already clear, however, that the main entertainment of the evening was not to be on the stage.

As Geoff struggled to untangle the ribbon of Gilly's opera glass, Jasper stole up behind Letty, cupping her shoulders. Letty could feel the imprint of his fingers through the fabric of her cloak, bearing down on her like a yoke.

"Allow me to help you with your cloak." Jasper's right hand slid from her shoulder to the front of her cloak, bypassed the clasp entirely, and veered straight toward Letty's bosom.

"I'm quite capable of managing," replied Letty, twitching out of his grasp. She would have slapped the roving hand, but that would have entailed touching Jasper voluntarily. Knowing Jasper, he would probably take it as encouragement.

"Surely you wouldn't deny your devoted cavalier such a small service?" Jasper's profession of devotion was only slightly marred by the fact that his eyes were fixed on his cousin as he uttered it.

"Enough, Jasper." Dropping Jane's opera glass unceremoniously in her lap, Geoff crossed the box in two long strides. Miss Gwen snatched the opera glass from Jane and promptly trained it on her companions in the back of the box.

Geoff plucked the cloak from Letty's shoulders.

"There," he said tersely, draping the wrap over his arm. "Shall we sit?"

Jasper grabbed the cloak back from Geoff.

"Confoundedly silly creatures," muttered Miss Gwen.

She was not referring to the actors.

Letty heartily seconded the sentiment. The ride to Crow Street had been an utter misery, with Jasper and Geoff exchanging barbed comments over her head. In a carriage meant for four and crammed with five, a little enmity went a long way. Letty could only be grateful that the use of swords as accessories had gone out of fashion or someone would have been skewered. As she was sitting in the middle, that person would probably have been her.

As far as Letty was concerned, being fought over had little to recommend it, especially when it was blindingly apparent that their bickering had nothing to do with her charms, and everything to do with thirty thousand pounds a year and an estate in Gloucestershire. Jasper Pinchingdale cherished for his cousin an antipathy that made England's Hundred Years War with France look like a minor squabble between friends. The only reason Jasper was laying clumsy siege to her was because she belonged to Geoff—at least, in the eyes of the law and their three hundred wedding guests. What Geoff had, Jasper strove to take. And what Jasper strove to take, Geoff moved to protect. It was as simple as that. She was the equivalent of a dilapidated border fortress that nobody wanted until another monarch tried to grab it.

If it had been Mary

Letty trampled on that thought before it could spread its poisonous blooms. What was the use of comparing herself to Mary? She wasn't Mary. Growing up with Mary, Letty had always felt a bit like a sturdy daisy incongruously planted in the same tub as an orchid. It wasn't just the perfect cheekbones or the willowy waist that so perfectly suited the same high-waisted gowns that turned Letty into a dumpling. No, it was the indefinable art of fascination that Mary had honed to a point more deadly than Cupid's arrows. Mary knew how to tilt the head to convey admiration, and when a smile would serve better than speech. Letty had never mastered the knack of gazing charmingly up from under her lashes; when she walked, her feet quite definitely touched the ground; and, while she could certainly hold her tongue if she had to, she had never seen the point of mimicking a mute to win a man's admiration.

That, Letty told herself firmly, was entirely beside the point. Deeper emotions had never been part of the bargain—any bargain.

Over the past week, she and Lord Pinchingdale had achieved an entente that, if it wasn't quite friendship, might at least be termed camaraderie. True to his promise of truce, Lord Pinchingdale—Geoff, as he had given her leave to call him—had made no reference to botched elopements or forced marriages. There had been no veiled slights, no barbed double entendres, not even a resentful glower when he thought she was looking the other way. Every now and again, she would catch him eyeing her the way she imagined a naturalist would a particularly baffling specimen, like a caterpillar missing a leg. And once, as he handed her down from the carriage, he had paused as though he might say something—but Jane had called out to them, and the moment had fled.

Ever since that moment on the steps of St. Werburgh, when Jasper had interrupted them, Geoff had gone back to treating her as he had a million years ago in the ballrooms of London. Kind. Patient. Detached.

Until Jasper joined them.

"Fine," Geoff was saying, his lips a tight line. "You take the cloak, and I will take the lady."

"I have no objections to that," put in Letty, feeling that, as one of the objects under discussion, she ought to have some sort of say in her ultimate disposition. Her husband acknowledged the point with a wry, sideways glance that didn't do much to mollify Letty.

Jasper jostled his cousin aside. "Miss Fairley might object. You don't want her to doubt your affections, do you, coz?"

"I take responsibility for all the members of my party," said Geoff repressively, placing a hand on the small of Letty's back in a gesture as possessive as it was meaningless.

"Oh, is that what they're calling it now?" enquired Jasper.

"Don't we have an opera to watch?" asked Letty pointedly, squirming away from Geoff's hand, irritated by the intimacy of a gesture where no real intimacy existed. "Unless," she added, folding her arms across her chest and glowering at each man in turn, "you would rather go on squabbling. Don't let me interrupt you if you're enjoying yourselves."

Jasper let his eyes drop to her bosom, pushed into prominence by her crossed arms. "I'm sure we can find more lively entertainment."

Geoff moved to block Jasper's access to Letty. "Don't even think of it."

"Why shouldn't I?" asked Jasper, a dangerous glint in his cobalt eyes as he locked gazes with his cousin. "If you have any claim on Mrs. Alsdale, I'm sure Miss Fairley would like to know."

It was blackmail, pure and simple. Next to her, Letty felt Geoff tense, Jasper's bolt hitting home more effectively than he knew. If Jasper revealed their marriage to "Miss Fairley," Jane would have no choice but to effect a public break with Geoff—what innocent young lady would do otherwise? And if Jane broke with Geoff not being privy to all of their plans, Letty couldn't say just how much havoc it would wreak, but she knew enough to be quite sure that it would be a Bad Thing.

"Shall we sit?" blurted out Letty, a little too loudly. She grabbed Geoff's arm and tugged; beneath the tightly tailored fabric of his coat, his arm muscles were as taut as the gilded iron railings that fronted the box. "Look! We're missing the first act!"

"Well, cousin?" drawled Jasper, drinking in his cousin's discomfiture with vicious satisfaction.

"The opera?" demanded Letty, placing herself determinedly in between the two men. Since they were of a height, which put each of them a good head above Letty, the maneuver did little to further her cause.

"Stay away," said Geoff, very softly, "from Mrs. Alsdale."

"Why?" taunted Jasper, lips spreading over teeth that suddenly looked too large for his mouth. "She doesn't bear your name."

Geoff took a step forward. Not much, but just enough to convey a potent physical warning. Not to be outdone, Jasper mirrored the gesture. Sandwiched between them, a black waistcoat on one side, sea-blue brocade with burgundy flowers on the other, Letty had heard enough.

"Oh, for heaven's sake! Why don't you simply hit each other and have done with it?" she suggested irately, squirming out from between them. "I'll just get out of the way and let you have at it."

Geoff almost took her up on it, right there in the middle of the Theatre Royal, with the actors cavorting onstage below, and a dozen opera glasses sure to light on their box at the first sign of fisticuffs.

After a lifetime of Jasper, Geoff had thought he was immune to provocation—and that included the memorable incident where Jasper had "borrowed" Geoff's identity for a particularly sordid evening in a gaming hell. The men who had showed up in Geoff's bedroom the following morning to collect on their IOUs had been no more amused than Geoff. He had been months untangling that little escapade.

But something about the way Jasper had been slavering over Letty's more noticeable attributes acted on Geoff's acquired tolerance like vinegar on varnish. At that moment, nothing would have given him greater satisfaction than to knock the leer right off Jasper's face with a few well-placed right hooks.

Letty muttered something that Geoff couldn't quite make out, but by the tone, it wasn't complimentary. Geoff glanced down. Glancing down was a mistake. If Jasper hadn't been holding Letty's wrap, Geoff would have wrapped it firmly around her and tied it in a double knot.

"Don't mind us!" Jane bustled up in a frill of flounces, jarring Geoff's attention away from Letty's décolletage. Jane's was considerably lower, but it didn't have the same unsettling effect.

"Auntie Ernie and I are just off to pay some calls," Jane announced, just as a hand crept along Letty's waist.

It did not belong to her husband.

Letty took a hasty step forward. "I'll come with you."

"Oh, no!" protested Jane, with a mischievous smile that didn't seem entirely owing to her role. "I couldn't think of making you miss the rest of the first act."

"The entertainment leaves much to be desired," said Letty darkly.

"Speak for yourself!" smirked Miss Gwen, who had also noticed the roving hand. "I, for one, am excessively diverted."

"Hmm," said Letty noncommittally, because she didn't trust herself to say anything else.

Jane fluttered her handkerchief. It was embroidered about the edges with small, pink flowers—roses, Letty was relieved to note, not carnations.

"Have you seen how many of our lovely friends are here tonight?"

The comment was ostensibly addressed to Letty, but there was an underlying edge to it that was not. Jane gestured out at the tiers of boxes that lined three sides of the theater, and began rattling off names, mostly of young women. Letty suspected that Jane had made half of them up.

Letty wondered just which lovely friends Jane and Geoff were pursuing tonight. She couldn't blame them for not telling her—her first impulse, when anyone's name was mentioned, was to turn and stare. Her companions had learned that the hard way at a masked ball at the Rotunda two nights before. Geoff had been very good about including Letty in the more minor sorts of missions, although the major ones Letty could only guess at from the deepening circles under her companions' eyes and the occasional enigmatic comment across the coffee table.

She had never seen anyone think or act quite so efficiently as Geoff. He tackled mental puzzles with the same economy with which he moved, proceeding from problem to solution in a clear line. And then, just as he had reduced a complicated code to plain English, he would say something wry and funny—and Letty would find herself swamped with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.