The Deception of the Emerald Ring pc-3

by Лорен Уиллиг

  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 dйcolletage. 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.

  It made no sense at all.

  Seeing that Jasper was safely occupied by Miss Gwen, Letty left Jane and Geoff to their faux flirtation and drifted toward the front of the box. Sliding into a seat covered in crimson moreen, she flipped indifferently through her program. The night's entertainment was Ramah Droog: Or Wine Does Wonders, which, the managers informed her, was a comic opera written by James Cobb, and produced "with a splendor and brilliancy that reflect additional credit on the Irish stage."

  Letty yawned and set the program aside. Splendid and brilliant it might be, but Letty could scarcely hear the singers over the conversation in the neighboring boxes. Below, an orange seller was giggling shrilly as she beat off the attentions of a bunch of amorous journeymen, her voice carrying far better than that of the soprano onstage. At the far end of the third tier, a pair of tipsy gentlemen were amusing themselves by casting gingerbread crumbs and bits of orange peel at a group of apprentices in the pit, unleashing a spate of profane commentary. Someone below cursed loudly as he stepped on a rotten apple, the sour juices blending with the debris of crumbs and orange pips already littering the floor. The theater had only been refurbished a few years before, but the painting of Apollo and the Muses on the ceiling was grimed with the effects of nightly candle smoke, and the king's arms above the stage had begun to flake at the edges.

  Letting her eyes drift downward along the tiers, Letty spotted Lord Vaughn and his cousin—the living cousin—in a box not far from the stage. Augustus Ormond looked even more untidy than usu
al, his cravat tied in an uneven knot and his shirt points wilting at the edges. Next to him, as though in reproach, Lord Vaughn was making a great show of shaking out the lace over his cuffs, his elegant hands adorned with three large rings that caught the light as he moved. He was dressed in full rig, with silver lace at his throat and cuffs and the glimmer of a sword hilt at his side, more in the manner of the past century than the present.

  Given the nature of the crowd in the pit, Letty couldn't blame him for coming prepared to fight his way down through the lobby.

  From the box next to Vaughn's, Emily Gilchrist, decked out in pink gauze, caught Letty's eye and waved frantically. Light scintillated off the beaded reticule dangling from her wrist as it swung back and forth. Letty smiled and nodded, but Emily's guardian, the soberly garbed Mr. Throtwottle, pulled his head-strong ward back behind the gilded railing before she could respond—or take a tumble into the pit.

  Tiring of the Throtwottle domestic drama, Letty shifted her attention to Lord Vaughn's box.

  It was empty.

  Lord Vaughn, Mr. Ormond—both had gone. Unless they were lurking in the back…Letty picked up Jane's discarded opera glass from the seat beside her. Vaughn and his cousin were definitely not in the box. Letty swung the glasses sideways. Nor did they seem to be paying calls on any of the neighboring boxes.

  It seemed an odd time to go for refreshments.

  Geoff would want to know, Letty decided. It wasn't that she was bored and looking for attention. Of course not. She was just being helpful.

  No one had ever told her right out that Lord Vaughn was somehow implicated in the rebellion, but whatever suspicions his appearance by Lord Edward's grave had piqued had been confirmed by her companions' behavior over the past week. When Lord Vaughn left the room, either Geoff or Jane tended to follow. It did make sense; if one cousin had espoused the Irish cause, why not the other? Lord Vaughn's idle disclaimers by his cousin's grave didn't fool Letty for a moment.

  Lord Vaughn's dark clothes blended easily with the crowd in the pit, but his ubiquitous accoutrements did not. As Letty scanned the theater, looking for Vaughn, a flash of light caught her eye. It was the head of Vaughn's cane, a silver serpent whose head reared over the ebony body of the cane, poised to strike. In the glare of the footlights, the serpent's fangs glowed an ominous red.

  "My lord!" Letty called softly, wafting one hand behind her as she kept her eyes fixed on that telltale silver serpent. "Lord Pinchingdale!"

  Behind her, Geoff broke off his conversation with Jane. "Yes?"

  "I need your help"—seized with inspiration, Letty fluttered her program in the air—"translating the lyrics."

  "I am, of course, always delighted to be of assistance. But the opera is in English."

  "Such a pity I never learned it properly," gabbled Letty nonsensically. Tugging on his sleeve to bring him down to her level, she hissed, "Look! Lord Vaughn!"

  Geoff looked straight toward Vaughn's box without having to ask which it was. Ha, thought Letty. She had been right. It was nice to be right about something after a week of uncharacteristic incompetence.

  Seeing the empty row of seats, Geoff cursed beneath his breath. "Did you see where he went?"

  Letty trained Jane's abandoned opera glass on the masses below. After a moment's scrutiny, she spotted the striking serpent at the very edge of the pit, just behind a group of rowdy journeymen milking every enjoyment they could out of their six-shilling tickets.

  "There." Letty pointed, handing the opera glass off to Geoff.

  His eyes still focused on the pit, Geoff blindly reached for the glass, his fingers closing over Letty's.

  Letty snatched her hand away.

  "Look!" she whispered hastily. "Vaughn's gone backstage."

  Even without the glass, she could see the brightly painted door at the side of the stage inch open and then closed again, so swiftly that she wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been following Vaughn's movements.

  "So he has," murmured Geoff.

  Letty glanced back over her shoulder, where Miss Gwen and Jane were taking leave of Cousin Jasper—prolonged by the fact that Miss Gwen's parasol had become tangled with Jasper's sleeve, to the irritation of both parties.

  "No," Geoff said, as though in answer to an unasked question. "Their plans have nothing to do with Lord Vaughn."

  "How did you know what I was thinking?" demanded Letty.

  Geoff just looked at her.

  "Never mind," said Letty.

  Behind them, Miss Gwen and Jasper had finally become disentangled. At any moment, Jasper would be free. Free to pester Letty, that was.

  "Will you be all right if I leave you here with Jasper?"

  Letty would have liked to say no, but that would have been untrue. Seized with a sudden inspiration, Letty tilted her head toward the row of boxes on the opposite side of the theater. "I'll make him take me to visit Emily Gilchrist."

  Geoff looked over his shoulder at Jasper and frowned.

  "I'll be fine, really. Go!"

  "Good girl."

  With a quick, approving smile, Geoff pressed her hand and departed. He disappeared so rapidly that if it hadn't been for the residue of his touch, Letty would have wondered if he had ever been there.

  Gathering up the opera glass and her program, Letty stood, feeling oddly dispirited. She knew she shouldn't be. She had done her bit for the war effort. She had even gotten credit for it. Good girl. Like a pet dog.

  Letty let out an irritated breath, glancing out over the edge of the box. Time to make good on her word, like the reliable creature she was, and seek out Emily Gilchrist and Mr. Throtwottle. An evening with Emily would be penance for her sins—although what sins those were, Letty was having a hard time putting into words. Silliness, she concluded. That was her fault. Engaging in extreme silliness without the slightest provocation.

  Aside from that moment with the opera glass…

  Oh, for heaven's sake! Behind her, she could hear Jasper's heavy tread, and while she suspected that Jasper would be less likely to press his attentions on her without an audience, it wasn't a chance Letty wanted to take. She didn't doubt her ability to fend him off, just the limits of her temper. If she was very lucky, maybe Emily would flirt with Jasper, and Letty wouldn't have to talk to either of them.

  There was just one problem: Emily Gilchrist wasn't there. And neither was her guardian. Their box was as empty as Lord Vaughn's.

  As she frowned at Emily's empty box, the heavy crimson velvet curtains came sweeping down, wreathing her world in red. Letty stumbled backward, coughing at the dust as the fabric unfurled, cutting off their box from the rest of the theater as effectively as a wall.

  "Alone at last," said Jasper.

  Chapter Nineteen

  By the time Geoff reached the pit, Lord Vaughn had long since disappeared backstage. Trusting that the audience was more interested in the ingenue's legs than in a stray gentleman on the prowl, Geoff put a hand to the painted panels that masked the stage door and slid around the edge, allowing the door to fall gently shut behind him.

  On the other side of the door, the bright paint and proud gilding of the public parts of the theater gave way to unrelieved gloom. In contrast to the glitter of the galleries, the narrow corridor was dimly lit, cluttered with shrouded shapes and bits and pieces of scenery propped against the wall, waiting their turn onstage. Ducking under a rope that dangled from the beams overhead, Geoff moved cautiously down the dingy corridor. Above, exposed beams webbed the ceiling, hung with ropes, sandbags, and the other effluvia of the theater. Breaks in the wall gave onto the stage on one side and onto yet more narrow and torturous passages on the other, like the catacombs below a cathedral. To Geoff's left, a flat painted with the image of a gazebo gave an illusion of pastoral pleasures, while the flames of hell waited for the unwary Don Giovanni farther down the passageway.

  There was no sign of Vaughn near either scene, no conveniently dropped handkerchief or lost shoe buckle to give Geoff a hint o
f his direction. It was no use listening for a stealthy footstep or a whispered conversation; the wings bustled with stagehands hauling flats and furniture, while actors darted on-and offstage, neatly navigating around the spare scenery and one another. Geoff ducked behind the gazebo as a group of ballet dancers, dressed in a costumer's fantasy of Turkish dress, padded flat-footed to the wings, chatting in low voices as they waited for their cue to enter.

  Vaughn kept in good trim, but no man's legs were that good.

  Slipping past the unwitting dancers, Geoff took a left onto one of the side corridors, away from the stage, hoping that the feint backstage hadn't been merely a blind to draw attention while his quarry slipped through a back door and out to a waiting carriage bound elsewhere. It was a ploy that Geoff himself had used on more than one occasion.

  Being led on a fool's errand was one thing, but being tangled backstage while his reprobate of a cousin pressed his heavy-handed attentions on his wife was another matter entirely.

  Geoff looked back, a useless gesture since the stage door stood between him and the galleries that fronted the stage. Damn Jasper, a thousand times over. Why couldn't he have stayed in London and gambled away what remained of his inheritance?

  Thank God Letty was too sensible to be taken in by him.

  Geoff was conscious of a guilty sense of relief that it was Letty in the box instead of Mary. Well, naturally. He had been in love with Mary. How could a man in love stand to see someone else press his attentions upon his beloved? It was the stuff of jousts and duels and ruined kingdoms. It was a perfectly sensible explanation—except that it wasn't true. When it came right down to it, he just didn't trust Mary to have defended herself—or to have had the common sense to see Jasper's attentions for what they were. Whereas Letty did.

  Geoff stepped over a coil of rope, ducked beneath a sandbag, and made a neat turn into one of the side corridors, automatically slinking back against the wall as he went, without the slightest awareness of where he was going.

  Geoff tried to conjure up Mary's image, but it was as one-dimensional as the scenery propped against the walls. When he tried to remember just what it was he had loved about her—did love about her—all he could come up with was the graceful tilt of her head, the serene beauty of her smile. Storybook images, all of them, like the maiden waiting in the tower at the end of a quest, never half so important as the adventure itself. He had plotted and schemed for her dances, spent hours gazing longingly at her across a multitude of unmemorable ballrooms, and scraped the limits of the lexicon for words to describe her beauty in verse—but he couldn't remember one memorable word she had uttered, or have said with any certainty whether her favorite color was green or blue.