Лорен Уиллиг - The Deception of the Emerald Ring

"No, he doesn't," put in Letty.

"'Wish' might not be exactly the right verb, but it will do for lack of a better. I believe our daughter is compromised, my dear," explained Mr. Alsworthy mildly. "You should be very proud."

Mrs. Alsworthy flung herself at her daughter with a delighted squeal that made the crystals in the chandelier quiver.

"My dearest daughter! My very dearest daughter!"

"Mmmph," said Letty, whose head was buried beneath her mother's ruffles.

"Oh, so many things to do!" Mrs. Alsworthy clutched her new favorite daughter to her beribboned bosom. "The wedding clothes…the guest list…an announcement in the Morning Times …Oh, it is too much happiness!"

"Mother…" Letty fought her way free of the clinging ruffles.

The movement was a mistake, since it brought her into full view of Lord Pinchingdale's face, stiff with revulsion. It was enough to make her wish herself into indentured servitude in the farthest antipodes. She wasn't quite sure whether they had indentured servants in the farthest antipodes, or even quite where the farthest antipodes were, but she was sure they must need servants.

Letty fought a craven urge to hide in her mother's bosom. It might not be the antipodes, but at least it was there.

Mrs. Alsworthy released Letty long enough to grasp her by both shoulders and hold her at arm's length. "My daughter." She sighed on a wave of maternal pride. "A viscountess!"

With a strength borne of ambition, she wrenched Letty around to face the silent men. "Viscountess Pinchingdale! Doesn't it sound well?"

"My dear"—Mr. Alsworthy's voice filled the uncomfortable silence—"before you exclaim any further, be so kind as to give the rest of us a moment to adjust to our extreme rapture."

"All this rapture," managed Letty, wriggling out of her mother's grasp, "is decidedly premature."

Mrs. Alsworthy, with the word "viscountess" ringing in her ears, was incapable of hearing any others. She brushed off both her daughter's and husband's demurrals with equal inattention. Both hands extended, she advanced on Geoff. "You must think of me as a mother now, my dear boy."

Geoff backed up several steps.

"I have commitments that demand my attendance abroad within the week," said Geoff rapidly, directing his words at Mr. Alsworthy. "We will be married as soon as I can procure a special license."

"No!" Mrs. Alsworthy's alarmed cry shook the chandelier. "But the lobster patties! Think of the lobster patties! You cannot possibly have a wedding without lobster patties!"

"My dear," interjected Mr. Alsworthy, "I don't believe the world will topple off its axis for lack of lobster patties at our daughter's wedding breakfast."

"Have a wedding without lobster patties! I'd as soon have a turban without feathers!"

"And so you ought," murmured Mr. Alsworthy.

Mrs. Alsworthy plunked both hands on her hips. "Do you mean to imply, Mr. Alsworthy, that you do not approve of my headgear?"

"I merely mean to say, my love, that the birds might approve if you left them a few of their feathers to fly with."

"Ooooh! If you understood the first thing about fashion—"

Letty ended the discussion by dint of marching between her parents.

"This," she said firmly, "is ridiculous."

"I should say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Alsworthy. "My bonnets are exceedingly becoming!"

Letty could feel the last fragile threads of patience beginning to snap. "Can we all just speak reasonably!" she demanded. "For five minutes? Is that too much to ask?"

It was. As Letty plunked her hands on her hips and glowered at her parents and her accidental abductor, a new voice entered the fray. A soft voice, pitched just loud enough to carry, with a plaintive note that whispered around the small foyer like an enchantress's charm.

"Geoffrey?" ventured Mary.

Mary must, thought Letty cynically, have taken the time to change out of her traveling clothes when she heard the hullabaloo downstairs, because she was impeccably garbed for bed, her white linen night rail entirely wrinkle-free and every black lock falling in gleaming perfection along her lace-frilled shoulders.

"Oh, Mary!" exclaimed Mrs. Alsworthy. "Your sister is to be married. Isn't it above all things marvelous?"

"Look and learn," added Mr. Alsworthy. "A bit more practice and you, too, could be compromised, my girl."

Mary's deep blue eyes widened in a way that suggested the concept of being compromised was entirely foreign to her. In a gesture worthy of Mrs. Siddons, one elegantly boned white hand extended toward her former lover, halted, and, as if the retraction caused her extreme pain, dropped again to her side. Mary's eyelids drooped and her lightly parted lips quivered in a way meant to suggest passionate emotion nobly contained.

It was a masterful performance.

Lord Pinchingdale's throat worked in a way that wasn't feigned at all. Turning abruptly on his heel, he addressed Mr. Alsworthy in a rapid monotone. "I will call on you tomorrow to make the arrangements. Your servant, ladies."

And with a brief nod in the direction of the center of the room that never quite made it as far as the white-gowned figure on the railing, he achieved the door and was gone, leaving an unhappy hush behind him.

From her position on the stairs, Mary raked Letty with a long, appraising gaze. "I never knew you had it in you."

Letty stared at her sister. "But I never meant…This wasn't any of my doing! Mary…"

Letty held out a hand in mute appeal.

Mary narrowed the midnight blue eyes her admirers had compared to sapphires, velvet, and the water off the coast of Cornwall. Currently, they were as hard as agate, and as dark as a scoundrel's heart.

"Who asked you to interfere?"

Flinging her glossy tresses over her shoulder, Mary retreated up the stairs with all the dignity of an exiled queen. In the painful silence, Letty could hear the swish of her hem sweeping across the steps like a train, until a door thudded shut on the story above and even that small sound was blotted out.

Letty's mouth opened and closed but Mary wasn't there to argue with anymore. All the reasons that had seemed excellent two hours ago turned to dust at the back of Letty's throat.

"Wait!"

Lifting the hem of her cloak, Letty scrambled up the stairs after her sister, slipping and skidding on the treads. It was as if twelve years had rolled back, and she was a roly-poly little six-year-old again, scrabbling after her older, more interesting sister, desperately wanting to be allowed to do whatever Mary did, play whatever Mary played.

But no matter how she tried, she was always the one stumbling after, the one with tears in her dress and scrapes across her knees. Always the one running behind.

On the landing, Mary's door was closed. Letty barreled into it, scarcely taking time to turn the knob before tumbling into the room. Inside, all the candles were lit, branches and branches of candles, burning like little stars against the dingy wallpaper. The wallpaper had once been white with blue stripes, but time and indifferent care had faded the whole to a dull pewter. The room bore the signs of hasty action: Mary's traveling dress lay strewn across the unmade bed, and a portmanteau slopping over with scarves slumped next to the window. Letty could see the corner of Mary's silver-backed brush sticking out of one corner, smothered beneath a length of spangled gauze.

Mary stood by her dressing table, which, like the wallpaper, had once been white. Her perfect profile was averted, staring fixedly at nothing in particular, or, rather, nothing that Letty could see. Her stillness terrified Letty more than a dozen screaming rages.

"Mary?" she whispered.

At the sound of Letty's voice, Mary's head slowly lifted, her spine straightening. By the time she turned, moving as deliberately as an actor in a court masque, she was once again entirely in command of herself, her face as composed as a porcelain fig-urine, and about as warm.