by Лорен Уиллиг
"You want to grasp the stock with both hands to distribute the weight," he said.
He handed the gun back to her, watching critically as she tried again. Letty's arms felt stiff and awkward in the unaccustomed pose.
"Bend your elbows a bit," Geoff suggested.
Letty's arms shot back into an immediate right angle, one elbow catching Geoff in the stomach.
Geoff winced. "Not quite that much."
Easing closer, he reached around her, rearranging her hands on the stock, one slightly above the other.
"Do you feel the difference?" he asked, jiggling the barrel slightly to make her flex her arms.
"Mm-hmm." Letty's mind, admittedly, wasn't entirely on the pistol. A large part of it had wandered off along far more attractive byways having to do with the pleasant scent of Geoff's cologne, and the intriguing way his muscles moved beneath the fitted seams of his coat as he rearranged her hands on the stock.
"Now sight along the barrel." Letty lifted the pistol, and Geoff's arms went with her. She could feel his cheek brush hers as he leaned closer to inspect her aim. "And pretend to aim."
"Like this?" Letty glanced up over her shoulder.
Geoff wasn't looking at the pistol, or the imaginary target.
"Exactly like that."
Letty forgot that she was holding a heavy pistol; she forgot that her neck was twisted at an odd angle, and that she had a blister on the back of one heel.
Geoff's hands tangled in her hair, pulling her face to his for a quick, hard kiss that sent Letty's ears ringing.
The pistol dropped forgotten from her hands, landing with a thud on the floor of his carriage. In some musty corner of her mind, Letty dimly realized that it was a very good thing that the pistol had not been loaded.
Geoff drew back, his hands possessively cupping her shoulders, and stared down into her face. A slight furrow formed above his nose, and his eyes scanned hers as though he were reading a book—a book in a foreign language without a convenient translation at hand.
Letty stared right back, silently willing questions at him.
She wanted to know whether she was more than a responsibility to him. Whether, when he kissed her, he saw her—or her sister. Whether they would go on like this upon their return to England, or whether all their hard-won intimacy would dissolve as soon as they set foot on English soil, like Shakespeare's insubstantial pageants, or fairy gold smuggled into the mortal world only to turn to ash in the harsh light of day.
The door was already open, the steps down, the coachman waiting.
Leaning over, Geoff restored her fallen pistol to her, stock first, putting into the gesture what he hadn't said in words. It smacked of respect—and farewell.
"Be careful," he said simply.
And that was all.
The carriage waited until Letty had mounted the steps to the front door before trundling away down the street.
Letty stood, one hand on the knocker, watching it go, wishing she had said something else. But what? "Be careful?" There was something rather ridiculous about her telling Geoff to be careful, an amateur advising a master. Besides, it was a very poor substitute for what she really wanted to say.
"Be careful" was no substitute for "I love you."
Only one extra word, but as impossible to frame as a word-perfect recitation of the entirety of a Homeric epic. She couldn't declare her love—not only did her pride protest at the notion, but it seemed a hideous sort of imposition to thrust her love unasked on someone who couldn't feel the same way about her. How could he, when he was in love with her sister? It was as ridiculous as a Shakespeare comedy, everyone enamored of the wrong person.
And there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing, except to go on, in a staid and sensible manner, taking what pleasure she could from their companionship and camaraderie.
Much like "be careful," camaraderie made a very poor substitute for love.
"Why didn't you knock?" A pale hand reached out and whisked Letty through the door, putting a pointed period to her unproductive reverie.
"Let's get you costumed, shall we?" said Jane.
Two painful hours later, Letty stood outside Lord Vaughn's Dublin residence, tugging at her cravat.
Like the other great houses that ranged around St. Stephen's Green, Vaughn's Dublin residence was an immense edifice of stone that shone whitely in the sun, new enough that soot had not yet dimmed the luster of the facade. It might not be quite so large as the neighboring Clanwilliam House, or the Whaley mansion, but it would have made at least ten of the little brick house on Henrietta Street.
Letty wondered how Geoff was faring and whether Miss Gwen was as adept with explosive devices as she seemed to think. Sometime after six, he had said, since Emmet was supposed to be dining out, along with his senior staff, at a house in Kilmacud. They would wait till the house was largely empty, and then slip in and detonate the rockets. All perfectly simple. Unless it wasn't.
Letty went back to abusing her cravat.
"Don't fuss with it," said Jane, managing her own hat and cane with the air of one born to them. Her stride was authoritative, her demeanor lordly, and her shirt points would have made Brummell choke with envy. In short, she was the very image of a pink of the ton, setting out for a late-afternoon stroll prior to the evening's dissipations.
Letty glanced down at her own pantaloons. Brummell might choke, but it would be with horror, not envy. Her short, plump figure took to men's fashion about as well as Miss Gwen to humility. Her hips might be suited marvelously well to childbearing but they did nothing for the fit of her pantaloons. Her coat, cut fashionably short at waist and hip before extending behind, did little to cloak the problem. As for other unmanly protuberances, Jane had used lengths of linen to flatten her breasts and thicken her waist, lending Letty's upper half the appearance of an animated barrel of ale.
Beneath her shirt, waistcoat, and coat, she could feel the binding rubbing uncomfortably against her chest, sticky with perspiration. Although the day was mild for mid-July, Letty sweltered beneath her unaccustomed layers and thought longingly of her wardrobe full of light muslin gowns and soft kid half-boots. The stiff leather boots Jane had forced onto her legs cramped her calves and bit into the skin just above her knee every time she ventured a step.
No wonder so many gentlemen preferred to pose nonchalantly against the mantelpiece if it was this painful to move.
"Just keep your chin down," Jane advised, fluffing up Letty's cravat and straightening her shirt points. "And if anyone speaks to you, grunt."
"Grunt?"
"Like this." Jane produced a noise straight from the diaphragm, somewhere between a grumble and a growl. "It is the common masculine coin of communication."
Attempting to emulate her, Letty managed something between a squeak and a cough.
Jane sighed. "Just keep your chin down," she repeated.
"Mmph," said Letty, surreptitiously rubbing her side, where the binding was biting into her flesh.
"Not quite," said Jane, "but an improvement. A marked improvement."
Rolling her eyes, Letty clambered stiff-legged up the front steps after her, wondering how she got herself into these things. Hers was an ensemble better suited to storming a castle than a peaceful afternoon call. In addition to the boots, binding, and shirt points so starched they could be used to patch the roof, the gun tucked into her waistcoat knocked against her ribs as she moved, and the vial of potion formed a lump just inside her sleeve. The paper of pins and paperweight had remained behind, but the tin whistle was attached to her watch chain and the point of the embroidery scissors teased her palm. Fortunately, the formfitting nature of her pantaloons didn't allow for a knife strapped to her thigh, or she was sure Jane would have handed her one of those, too.
Letty was only surprised that no one had given her a small cannon to take along, just in case. She could have disguised it as a dog and wheeled it on a leash.
At the top of the steps, Jane took the knocker
and let it fall with an emphatic rattle. Through the plate glass windows on either side, Letty couldn't discern the slightest sign of movement. In a house of such size, there ought to be a footman watching for visitors, ready to pop open the door. The echoes of the knock faded off across the green, unmatched by any answering noise from within.
Frowning, Jane pushed gently against the door with the head of her walking stick. The door fell easily open, revealing a polished expanse of white marble floor, and a staircase that seemed to stretch up forever, patterned on the underside with white stucco-work on a pale blue background. Following Jane, Letty ventured into the vast hall, feeling suddenly chilled. It wasn't just the eerie silence; it was the celestial cool of the endless motif of pale blue and white, like Olympus in the midst of a frost. The walls and ceiling had all been tinted the same pale blue, frosted with a design of urns and stylized acanthus leaves. The marble floor gleamed as pristinely pale as an untrodden field of snow.
"This is most unusual," murmured Jane.
Letty noticed that Jane readjusted her grip on her cane as she prowled across the hall, every step a measured act.
"Are you sure we have the right house?" Letty asked, lingering by the door. Even the sunlight seemed to shy away from entering the icy room.
"Quite sure."
Jane drew to a halt, her eyes fixed on an invisible spot on the marble floor. Invisible to Letty, at least. With one fluid movement, Jane went down on one knee, touching a gloved finger to the floor. Frowning, she rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, examining the result with all the absorption of a botanist confronted with a rare new specimen.
"Mud. And still damp. Someone—someone wearing boots," Jane amended, squinting at the marks on the floor, "walked across this hallway not long ago."
"That's not exactly remarkable in a house of this size," Letty pointed out pragmatically, reluctantly shutting the door behind her. "The staff must number in the dozens."
"This wasn't a servant," Jane said decisively, rising to her feet.
She had been about to expound further, but any explanation was cut off by a sudden clatter from a nearby room, the unmistakable sound of something fragile shattering.
"Quick," said Jane, pointing her cane like a baton. "The small salon!"
With her boots squeaking, Letty took off after her. Jane, she deduced, must have visited Lord Vaughn before; there was no way the size of the rooms could be determined from their closed doors, and Jane moved with the unerring surety of someone who knew exactly where she meant to go.
Without checking her stride, Jane flung open a pair of double doors frosted with more gleaming white stuccowork.
"Well, well," said Jane softly, coming to an abrupt halt in the doorway.
Skidding to a stop behind her—her boots were new, and the marble hall slippery—Letty leaned sideways to try to see around her. At first, all she saw were fragments of china, scattered across a pastel patterned rug. The china must have been Japanese Imari work, tinted deep red, blue, and black; the fallen fragments looked like flecks of dried blood against the paler shades of the carpet.
There, in the midst of the mess of porcelain shards, a blot stood out against the pale weave. Two blots, arms' width apart. The very pair of boots Jane had predicted in the entryway, smudged about the toe and sides with smears of mud. The boots belonged to Lord Vaughn, who stood among the bits of broken china, his face as pale and set as the plaster frieze lining the walls. Wordlessly, Jane crossed the room toward Vaughn, and Letty finally saw what her companion's body had been blocking.
On a small blue-and-yellow settee, flanked by two low chairs and a small table, reclined Teresa Ballinger, the ci-devant Marquise de Montval.
She was dressed in the stained pantaloons and ill-fitting frock coat of Augustus Ormond, her rough attire an affront to the pristine pastel perfection of the parlor. But it wasn't her clothing that had brought Jane up short.
A thin trickle of blood formed a rusty goatee beneath the marquise's lips, and her eyes were raised to the plasterwork of the ceiling in the unseeing stare of death.
Chapter Twenty-seven
It was altogether too many dead bodies for one week, as far as Letty was concerned.
Jane moved swiftly past Vaughn to kneel next to the recum-bent form on the settee.
"Dead," pronounced Jane, reaching for the woman's wrist with a practiced hand. "And recently, too. Her skin is still warm."
There could be no doubt as to her identity this time. Whatever the means of death had been, it had left her face unmarred. The marquise's head was tilted back, fixed in an obsidian stare of perpetual venom in the direction of her killer. Her unruly wig had tumbled free, revealing a tight coil of black hair pinned close to her head, the severity of the style lending her an oddly chaste appearance. The combination of black hair and colorless skin had the stark simplicity of a nun's habit.
Without the hairpiece, her face looked thinner and older than it had during her appearances as Augustus. Letty could see the violet shadows in the delicate skin under her eyes, the hollows burred beneath her cheeks, the thin indentations incised between nose and lips. Along the corner of her slack lips oozed a dainty trickle of blood, as rust-red as the fragments of porcelain on the rug, and as finely drawn.
There was something repellent about the very delicacy of it. Driven by an impulse she couldn't quite explain, Letty took a corner of the dead woman's cravat and tried to wipe the blood from her face. Already drying, the rusty stain resisted removal.
Standing over the body, Letty could see what she had missed before. The silver knob protruding from the wrinkled brown cloth of the dead woman's coat was not a stickpin, but the head of a stiletto, driven with unerring precision straight into her heart. Vaughn must, realized Letty, have been standing just where she was standing, behind the settee, perfectly poised to hold the marquise still with his left hand while he drove the blade home with his right.
Rising from her position before the settee, Jane confronted Vaughn.
"Why?"
"The more apt question would be who."
Lord Vaughn's fingers trailed lazily around the edge of a small gilt table as he circled it, closing the space between himself and the settee. And Jane.
Sliding a hand casually into her waistcoat, Letty felt for the handle of her gun. Every movement felt painfully obvious, but Vaughn's attention was focused unwaveringly on Jane. Letty's fingers closed carefully around the wooden handle. She had, as Jane recommended, inserted the barrel into the binding wrapped around her waist at a diagonal for easier removal, but the weapon seemed to be caught on something—the binding itself, most likely.
Jane met him stare for stare, head tilted back in an age-old expression of challenge. "Not you, then."
"Do you really think it?" asked Vaughn softly, coming to a stop just in front of her. Jane did not shrink back, but from her vantage point behind the settee Letty saw Jane's fingers tighten on the head of her cane.
Letty tugged gently at the pistol and felt the wrappings tighten against her side in response. Drat. Whatever it was snagged on was caught fast. If Jane was armed, she had given no indication of it to Letty.
"The situation tells against you," Jane said, as calmly as though she were discussing the weather.
Vaughn arched an aristocratic eyebrow. "Circumstance is seldom proof."
"Aphorism," said Jane sharply, "is never answer."
"On the contrary"—Vaughn spoke softly, but there was an undertone to the simple words that made the fine hairs on Letty's arms prickle with atavistic instinct—"sometimes the truest answer lies in tergiversations."
Below her, Letty could see the eyes of the marquise, fixed in an eternal sneer. With one last, desperate pull, Letty yanked the pistol free. The fabric gave with a noise like a hundred cats sharpening their claws, drawing startled glances from the duelists on the other side of the settee.
Bracing her weapon, Letty leveled it at Lord Vaughn.
"Step away from Miss Fairley
," Letty commanded, hoping that she made up in firmness of tone what she lacked in weakness of wrist.
Lord Vaughn looked as unimpressed as the marquise. But he did step away, and that, Letty reminded herself, was all that counted. Fragments of china crackled beneath his boot heel, ground to expensive dust against the weft of the carpet.
Vaughn nodded lazily toward Letty's weapon. "It's not loaded, is it?"
Letty concentrated on holding the pistol level. It was considerably harder without Geoff's hands beneath hers. "Would you care to wager your life on that point?"
Vaughn polished his quizzing glass with a corner of his cravat and examined the results. "In this instance? Yes."
Drat. It was going to have to be the sleeping potion.
"Perhaps," suggested Letty, waving the pistol in the direction of a chair suitably far away from Jane, "we should all sit down and discuss this over a nice cup of tea."
Jane glanced back at Letty over her shoulder with a quirk of the lips that suggested she knew exactly what Letty was about.
"I don't think tea will be necessary." Jane flipped her coattails and arranged herself neatly in a chair by the settee, next to the table that must have once borne the Japanese bowl. Her calm post next to the corpse presented a macabre tableau, a tea party straight out of Dante's Inferno.
"Indeed." Vaughn turned his back on Letty and her pistol, moving toward a table set with a decanter and set of glasses. "I could do with something stronger."
Murdering someone could have that effect on a person.
Letty kept the empty pistol trained on Vaughn as he tilted amber liquid into his glass. There was something rather comforting about holding the man at gunpoint. Even if she knew there was nothing in the gun, the weapon still provided a spurious sense of protection.
In a mockery of a toast, Vaughn raised the glass toward the trio ranged around the settee.
"Gentlemen?" Vaughn's voice was as delicately weighted with irony as a well-balanced sword. "Would you care to join me?"
"An explanation would be more to the point. Unless you have more old adages you would care to share with us?" There was an edge to Jane's voice that belied the tranquillity of her expression.