Лорен Уиллиг: The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Holding her breath against the stench of a recently emptied chamber pot, Letty ventured tentatively down the alley, following the soft snuffle of equine breath in what she hoped must be the direction of the carriage. Whoever thought a midnight elopement was a glamorous thing? wondered Letty sourly. Perhaps she would feel differently if it were her own elopement, but Letty rather doubted it. Love went only so far. Some smells were too strong to be ignored, even by the most ardent of Juliets.

"Lord Pinchingdale?" Letty stumbled her way to the coach. Bumping up against one of the rear wheels, she felt her way forward. "Lord Pinchingdale?"

There was no response from the shadowy interior.

Which meant, Letty admitted, that he probably wasn't there.

She didn't much like the alternatives. Lord Pinchingdale might have gotten bored and decided to scale the ivy—but wouldn't she have heard the thud? A new and terrifying possibility struck Letty. What if he and Mary had already fled, leaving the carriage standing outside as a decoy? They would lose precious time searching while the lovers were already tearing up the miles to Gretna Green in a well-sprung traveling chaise, smaller and lighter than the cumbersome coach.

Letty groped along the door, looking for the latch. "Lord Pinchingdale?" she whispered sharply. The restless scrape of the horses' hooves on the cobbles and the sound of the coachman shifting on the box above blotted out her words. Letty twisted the latch sharply, stumbling backwards as the stiff door unexpectedly gave. Catching her balance by dint of grabbing on to the door frame, she leaned head and shoulders inside the cavernous interior, which stretched before her like one of the bottomless caves of fairy tale, so dark she couldn't make out the difference between seats and floor, window or wall.

"You aren't here, are you?"

She realized it wasn't quite the done thing to talk to inanimate objects—or to people who weren't there—but if she didn't say something, she was quite likely to kick something instead.

If they were already gone, there was nothing she could do. She could send a groom after them, in the hopes of arresting their flight and hauling Mary back—but she couldn't see much point to it. The odds of not being seen, or of the groom not telling a friend who would tell a friend, were so slim as to pose no temptation to even the most hardened and reckless of gamblers. The story would be all over London by the time the maids opened the curtains and brought in the morning chocolate.

Behind her, a new sound interrupted the rustle of leaves and the snuffle of snores from someone's open window. At the crunch of booted feet on gravel, relief coursed through Letty, heady as strong tea. They hadn't left, then! Who else would be tromping about in their backyard? The servants were all asleep, worn out with a day that began before dawn. It had to be Lord Pinchingdale.

Extricating herself from the maw of the carriage, Letty swiveled to face the newcomer, prepared to tell him exactly what she thought of midnight elopements and those idiotic enough to engage in them. The words stilled in her throat as her gloom-adjusted eyes took in the apparition before her. Instead of a gentleman garbed for travel, a hunched, hulking thing shambled toward her. As Letty instinctively shrank back against the carriage, feeling around behind her for a weapon, her panicked eyes sought the creature's face. He didn't have one. Letty's eyes scanned for the usual appendages—mouth, ears, nose. Nothing. There was only darkness where his face should have been. Darkness and a pair of eerily light eyes that glittered disquietingly out of the surrounding emptiness.

The edge of the carriage floor bit into Letty's back.

Letty clutched tight to the sides, preparing to hitch herself up and flee out the opposite side. Not being prone to flights of fancy, Letty didn't think of faceless specters and the other stock characters of popular novels. They weren't out on the moors or on the grounds of a ruined abbey, but in the heart of London. Letty defied any specter, with the possible exception of those in the Tower, to make a go of haunting amid the grimy bustle of the metropolis. It just couldn't be done.

No, it was clearly a man, a rather large man with appalling posture, wearing something wrapped around his face and a hat pulled low over his ears. Letty's pulse thrummed with more mundane terrors—robbers, bandits, highwaymen.

"What do you want?" she asked sharply, readying herself to bolt.

The muffled man threw his arms into the air in a gesture of disgust. "What do I want?" he demanded, in a voice that even through the folds of cloth savored of John Knox and Robert Burns. "What do I want, she asks me?"

Letty hadn't thought it that unreasonable a question.

"Get along inside. Orders are I'm to take ye to the inn."

"Orders from whom?" asked Letty suspiciously, even though she had a fairly good idea.

The coachman muttered something generally uncomplimentary about the mental capacities of the other half of the species. "Who d'ye think? Lord Pinchingdale, that's who. Come along now. Himself'll be waiting for ye, and we dinna have all night."

And before Letty had the chance to explain that she wasn't at all the "ye" in question, a pair of large hands closed around her waist and boosted her high into the air.

"Up ye get."

"Put me down!" she hissed, wriggling in his grasp. "You've made a mistake!"

"No mistake," rasped her captor, grappling with her as though she were a particularly slippery fish just off the hook. Sounding aggrieved, he demanded, "Would ye hold still? I'm just tryin' to help ye into the carriage."

Since her arms were pinned uncomfortably to her sides, Letty did the only thing she could. She lashed out with one small, slippered foot, catching her captor squarely in the shin. Unfortunately, it was the same foot she had stubbed earlier. Pain shot up her leg, but it was almost worth it for the resulting grunt of pain from the coachman. But he didn't let go.

"What part of 'put me down' don't you understand?" Letty whispered fiercely, dealing him an elbow to the ribs.

"Women!" grunted the coachman in tones of intense disgust.

With no further ado, he tossed her unceremoniously into the carriage. Letty landed on her backside. Hard. Above the sound of the door slamming shut, she heard the coachman declare, in a voice that packed as much "I told you so" as one could muster through a scarf, "Orders are ye're to go to the inn, and it's to the inn you'll go." He didn't say, "So there," but the words were firmly implied.

Scrambling to her knees, Letty crawled toward the door, hindered by her cloak, which twisted around her legs as she went, pulling her back. "For heaven's sake!" she breathed, yanking her cloak out of the way. Something ripped. Letty didn't care. If she could just get out before the coach began moving…there were so many things she wanted to do that she didn't know where to begin. Lock Mary in an armoire. Give Lord Pinchingdale a piece of her mind about his staff and his morals.

Propping an elbow up on one of the seats, Letty made a grab for the door handle. With a crack like a gunshot, the coachman snapped his whip. Four horses burst into concerted motion, propelling the coach forward. Letty's hand swiped uselessly through empty air as she lurched sideways, banging into the bench. She couldn't scream. Any loud noise would alert the neighbors, bringing down on her head exactly the sort of attention she hadn't wanted. The coach swerved again, sending Letty jolting sideways—right into the other shoulder.

Clutching her wounded arm, Letty glowered helplessly in the direction of the box as the carriage carried her inexorably away toward her sister's assignation.

She knew she should have stayed in bed.