Letty's hands closed around the curved wooden chair back. "Why did you ask me here? Not for coffee, I take it."
"No," agreed Miss Fairley, "not for coffee. For this."
With one graceful movement, she reached up and swept the entire mass of silver-blond curls off her head.
Letty didn't know what she had been expecting, but it wasn't that. Where Miss Gilly Fairley's foaming locks had been a moment before, shining pale brown hair had been coiled into a graceful knot that accentuated the classical planes of the woman's face. Without the elfin curls and gaily colored ribbons, her entire appearance was transformed. Instead of a flighty wood nymph, she reminded Letty of a marble statue of Minerva, intelligent and slightly alien.
"It does feel good to get that off," murmured Miss Fairley, dropping the wig with obvious distaste on the table next to the coffeepot. "The ringlets itch terribly."
The transformation made Letty's disguise seem decidedly amateur.
There were altogether too many people in disguise. Her own had been donned out of desperation, on a moment's impulse, but what about Miss Fairley? What excuse could she have? Suspicion trickled through Letty, as unpleasant as cold coffee, as she looked at Miss Fairley's serene countenance, all the more beautiful for being unadorned. She didn't look much like Mary—her hair was fair where Mary's was dark, her eyes almond-shaped where Mary's were round, her lips thinner and the bridge of her nose narrower—but there was a similarity that transcended the differences in coloring, a certain inherent stateliness and an underlying beauty of bone structure.
Letty rounded on her husband, who was watching Miss Fairley with an expression that she could only term grim resignation. Grim resignation, but not the slightest drop of surprise. If Lord Pinchingdale could come to Dublin and pay court to a young lady without revealing his prior marriage in London, couldn't it also work the other way around?
"Is there something I ought to know?" Letty asked sharply.
"The less you know," said Lord Pinchingdale, and although the words were ostensibly addressed to her, Letty knew they were really intended as a warning for the alien beauty sitting at the head of the table, incongruously attired in Gilly Fairley's frills and flounces, "the better."
"The better for whom?" demanded Letty. "For you?"
Lord Pinchingdale's lazy posture didn't change, but something in his face hardened. "Of course. Whom else?"
With the unforgiving light from the windows picking out the rich brocade of his waistcoat, glinting off the sapphire in his cravat, she saw him for what he really was, a pampered aristocrat who thought nothing of running amok through the lives of others in the pursuit of his own pleasure.
Loathing, pure and painful, rose through Letty like lava, bubbling up at the back of her throat, nearly choking her.
"You might try thinking of someone other than yourself for a change. Just for variety."
Lord Pinchingdale raised an indolent eyebrow. "As you do? I'm sure your appearance here last night was arranged entirely for my convenience."
"Why should I think of your convenience when you are so adept at doing so for yourself? How many other women do you have tucked away in far-flung bits of the world? One in Scotland, perhaps, to go with the grouse shooting? A harem in Paris?"
Lord Pinchingdale's lips twisted with amusement at a joke that eluded Letty. "Not of the sort you're imagining."
"I have no interest in hearing the sordid details."
"I do," interrupted Mrs. Grimstone, who had been listening avidly. "A harem would be just the thing."
"Mrs. Grimstone is engaged in writing a sensational novel," explained Lord Pinchingdale in a tone drier than the kindling in the hearth. Turning to Mrs. Grimstone, he added, "Do make sure to change the names. My reputation appears to be black enough already."
"Certainly I shall," sniffed Mrs. Grimstone. "Pinchingdale is an absurd name for a hero."
"I'm sure Mrs. Alsdale will vouch that it works excellently well for a villain."
"You do yourself too much honor," said Letty scathingly. "Villains, at least, have a certain grandeur to them. Reprobates have nothing to recommend them."
"How quickly the pot turns on the kettle."
"If you weren't so entirely debased yourself, you wouldn't be so quick to judge others by your own standards!"
"If you find yourself running short of terms of abuse, I suggest 'degenerate cad' for your next go. Or you can just slap me and get it over with."
"Only if I had a gauntlet to do it with!"
"Are you challenging me to a duel? I'm afraid that's not done, my dear."
"I forgot." Letty drew herself up to her full five feet, enjoying the sensation of being able to look down on Lord Pinchingdale. "You have no honor to defend."
"Well delivered!" exclaimed Mrs. Grimstone. "I couldn't have done it better myself."
"Before we descend any further into absurdity," Miss Fairley broke in calmly, sounding as unruffled as though she were supervising a philosophical discussion at the Bluestocking Society, "someone really ought to provide an explanation to our guest."
"What sort of explanation did you have in mind?" inquired Lord Pinchingdale. His voice was perfectly calm, but there was a bite to it that suggested he wasn't quite so blasй about slights to his honor as he might pretend.
"The truth."
"Fiction is so much more entertaining," mused Mrs. Grimstone. "Especially my fiction."
"But not necessarily conducive to domestic peace," countered Miss Fairley.
Lord Pinchingdale looked rather tight about the lips, in a way that suggested that he found the possibility of domestic peace just as unlikely a goal as Letty did. Not, thought Letty mutinously, that he had any right to look grim. After all, he was the one keeping a harem.
He folded his arms across his chest and nodded toward Miss Fairley. "Since this was your idea, Jane, why don't you do the honors?"
"Who," demanded Letty, rather shrilly, "is Jane?"
Miss Fairley flicked the wig fastidiously aside, and looked Letty straight in the eye. "My name is Jane."
"Not Gilly?" Letty knew there were other things she probably ought to be asking, but that was the first that rose to her lips.
Miss Fairley—Jane—smiled at her kindly. Too kindly. Letty hadn't seen an expression like that since the time the cook had been delegated to tell her that her favorite dog had died. "No, not Gilly."
"And you may address me as Miss Gwen," announced Mrs. Grimstone, whose Christian name was supposed to be Ernestine, which, as far as Letty could tell, bore no discernible relation to Gwen, by any stretch of linguistic acrobatics. "However, you may do so only in private, when there is no danger of anyone overhearing, or you will jeopardize the entire mission. Do you understand?"
"Mission?"
"We are all," Jane said gently, "agents of the Pink Carnation."
Chapter Fourteen
"Oh, for heaven's sake," said Letty. "You can't expect me to believe that."
It wasn't precisely polite, but, then, neither was taking off one's hair at the tea table.
Did they really think she was that naive?
Letty saw her husband throw Jane a quick, shuttered look, and felt her temper rise.
"Next you'll tell me you're all really missionaries, here to convert the heathen, or a troupe of traveling players, or—" Letty's imagination failed her. "Spies! It's unthinkable!"
"Well, start thinking it, missy," snapped Miss Gwen, or Mrs. Grimstone, or whatever her name might be. Letty didn't particularly care.
With her usual graceful efficiency, Jane unfastened the ribbon she wore around her neck and passed the bauble across the table to Letty.
"Will this serve to convince you?" she asked.
Acting automatically, Letty reached out to take the locket, wondering, even as she did so, how on earth a piece of jewelry could be expected to make her believe the most absurd sort of absurdity. Letters, perhaps. A signed statement from His Majesty's undersecretary of something or other, vouching for his agents. But a locket?