Colin was back in London.
Chapter Thirteen
The following afternoon, Letty stood on the stoop of a pleasant redbrick house on Henrietta Street, itemizing all the things she would rather be doing than taking tea with Miss Gilly Fairley. Tooth extractions ranged high on the list, along with being dragged by wild horses, kidnapped by bandits, and forced to listen to recitations of epic poetry in the original Greek. Actually, the last wasn't all that alarming, but Letty was beginning to run out of ideas, and the brass knocker loomed large before her shadowed eyes.
Letty's face, hideously reflected in the polished brass of the knocker, looked indecisively back at her, all immense nose and strange, squinty little eyes. How did one tell a woman that her suitor's intentions were dishonorable? She couldn't very well walk in, take a biscuit, and say, "Do forgive me for interfering, Miss Fairley, but Lord Pinchingdale happens to be married to me. Just thought you ought to know, and thanks so much for the tea."
Perhaps she should just shove an anonymous note under the door and run in the other direction.
Feeling like Joan of Arc mounting a pile of kindling, Letty reached for the knocker and rapped smartly at the door, as if she could compensate for the weakness of her purpose with the firmness of her knock.
Inside, a scurry of footsteps signaled an immediate response, cutting off her last hope of retreat. A maid opened the door, bobbing a curtsy, and ushered Letty inside. Letty might have been small, but she was very effective. Letty was in the hall, and the door closed behind her before Letty had a chance to flee.
Letty caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the hall as she loosened her bonnet strings. She looked like a Mrs. Alsdale in her black walking dress, like a respectable widow of reasonable but not excessive means. Even her rebellious hair had been tamed into a semblance of order for the occasion, smoothed with water, and twisted into a braided knot before it could escape again. There was something very unsettling about seeing herself so convincingly tricked out as someone else, as though the real Letty, the Letty of figured muslin dresses that had been turned one too many times, the Letty whose hair was always falling down and who was generally too impatient to hunt for her gloves or bonnet, had been entirely subsumed within the quiet, modest figure of Mrs. Alsdale, whose gloves were perfectly tidy and whose hair stayed where she had put it.
Letty caught herself wishing she had worn something more flattering, and made herself stop. It wasn't a competition. And if it were, she thought ruefully, as she followed the maid up a narrow flight of stairs to the first floor, she would lose.
"Right through here, miss," said the maid, turning the knob on one of the two doors that opened off the narrow landing, stepping out of the way to let Letty pass.
After the dark hall, it was an unexpectedly pleasant parlor, if somewhat old-fashioned, decorated with a pale paper patterned with green lozenges. A heavy wooden dresser stood against one wall, boasting a few precious pieces of French porcelain, surrounded by examples of more homely stoneware, with scenes of local interest painted in blue on a white background. From her vantage point in the doorway, Letty could see Miss Fairley, seated at a small round table facing the door, addressing a remark to someone just out of Letty's line of vision. It couldn't be Mrs. Grimstone, because that lady was sitting to Miss Fairley's left, haughtily inspecting the contents of her cup as if the beverage displeased her. Due to the angle of the door, Letty couldn't make out anything of the third person, not so much as a hand on the table or a corner of a flounce; the only evidence of her presence was a third cup, sitting slightly askew on its blue-and-white saucer, a dark ring of coffee staining the sides.
If Miss Fairley had other guests, Letty couldn't very well apprise her of Lord Pinchingdale's dishonorable intentions, could she? Letty knew she shouldn't feel relieved, but she couldn't help it.
"Ah, Mrs. Alsdale!" Miss Fairley broke off, and half rose from her place at the table to beckon Letty in, ribbons and curls bobbing. "You are wonderfully prompt. Do come in."
The brisk words were entirely at odds with the gushing Miss Fairley of the night before, but Letty only barely noticed. All her attention was fixed upon the mysterious third party, whose cup rattled on its saucer as he pushed his chair abruptly back from the table.
"Lord Pinchingdale?" stammered Letty.
Her husband appeared incapable of speech.
Not so Miss Fairley. "I believe you are already acquainted," said Miss Fairley pleasantly, looking calmly from one to the other.
Lord Pinchingdale's gaze narrowed on Miss Fairley.
"I did not agree to this," he said levelly.
"No," Miss Fairley acknowledged, in a voice that wasn't like Miss Fairley's at all. "But if you weren't going to be reasonable, you had to be made to be reasonable. Hence this afternoon's arrangement."
"Perhaps I should go," suggested Letty, inching her way backward. She stumbled as her heel came into painful contact with the lintel of the door, catching at the doorframe for balance. "I wasn't aware you had other guests…. Some other time, perhaps…"
"Not at all." Miss Fairley's voice was still pleasant, but there was a note of command in it that arrested Letty midflight. "Do sit down, Mrs. Alsdale."
Letty moved away from the door, but refused to take the chair her hostess indicated. She felt safer standing. There were strange currents making themselves felt across the table; Mrs. Grimstone was looking superior, Miss Fairley determined, and Lord Pinchingdale displeased. And all of them knew something Letty didn't.
That alone was enough to make Letty refuse the chair.
"I am quite comfortable as I am," Letty declared, ruining the effect by shifting her weight off her throbbing heel.
"As you will," Miss Fairley said equably, pausing to take a sip from her almost-full cup. "I suppose you won't take any coffee either?"
Letty shook her head in negation, anxious to hasten the strange interview to its close. The whole scene made her oddly uneasy. Miss Fairley's sudden, unexpected poise. The malicious gleam in Mrs. Grimstone's black eyes. Lord Pinchingdale's air of watchful expectation, as he leaned back in his chair, lips pressed tightly together, and arms folded across his chest. He looked as though he were waiting for something…. They were all waiting for something. But for what?
Half a dozen scenarios straight out of the annals of sensational fiction presented themselves to Letty's rapidly whirring mind, as she stood impaled in the center of the circle of eyes, like a hart in a medieval tapestry. There were ways of getting rid of an unwanted wife, weren't there? A drug in the coffee, a quick trip to a mental asylum to have her declared incompetent. Not long before she left London, Charlotte Lansdowne had pressed one of Richardson's novels on her, in which a virtuous young lady was tricked into residence in a brothel under false pretenses, driven to degradation and eventually death by the vindictive madam. Mrs. Grimstone, with her cold eyes and grasping hands, would make an excellent bawd.
But such things didn't happen outside of fiction; it was too strange, too sensational—wasn't it?
Despite the sun slanting through the long windows, Letty shivered. She knew no one in Dublin, no one except Emily Gilchrist and Mrs. Lanergan, and they didn't even know her under her proper name. As far as her family was concerned, she was on an extended honeymoon trip. What better time for Lord Pinchingdale to divest himself of an inconvenience? He could return home, the grieving widower, and pick up just where he had left off, philandering his way through London's ballrooms. And no one would ever suspect…