"Your role is really quite simple. And harmless," Jane added, with a sidelong glance at Geoff. "Miss Gwen has kindly agreed to occupy the rector while Geoffrey and I search the premises." Given the avid gleam in Miss Gwen's eye, Geoff couldn't help but feel sorry for the rector. "However, we cannot discount the possibility that there might be other persons present."
"I'm simply to talk to them?" said Letty.
"Only if you see them showing an inordinate interest in our activities," put in Geoff, watching Letty closely.
Letty earnestly processed the information, looking very young and entirely guileless. Young, Geoff would grant her. As for guileless…
"It sounds simple enough."
"That's what you think," retorted Miss Gwen. "It takes talent to distract someone subtly. Talent and practice."
"Mrs. Alsdale is no stranger to deception."
It took Letty a moment to remember that she was supposed to be Mrs. Alsdale. When she did, a slow flush stained her cheekbones. "I've certainly never had this much practice before."
"Not nearly enough, from the looks of it," pronounced Miss Gwen disparagingly. "Any spy who cannot remember her own alias deserves to be caught."
Letty squared her shoulders and looked full at Geoff. "That would solve a problem for both of us, wouldn't it?"
"Don't worry." Jane touched one finger reassuringly to Letty's arm. "It will all soon become second nature. Don't you agree, Geoffrey?"
"It all depends on one's temperament."
"In which case," replied Jane meaningfully, "I believe our Mrs. Alsdale will suit very well."
"Hmph," said Miss Gwen, in a way that amply echoed Geoff's own feelings on the matter.
From the expression on Letty's face, in this, at least, they were in complete accord.
For someone who had managed to dupe her way into matrimony, she seemed to have remarkably little facility for masking her emotions. Then again, Geoff reminded himself, her stunt in stealing her sister's place hadn't required subtlety, merely audacity. And that Letty Alsworthy clearly possessed in spades.
And yet…Geoff's eyes narrowed on Letty's face, as if he might be able to glean the truth from the tilt of her chin or the pattern of freckles across her nose. She had seemed entirely confident in her own defense at Mrs. Lanergan's the previous night. He could still remember, with painful clarity, her evasions when he had asked her where Mary was, complete with all the transparent signs of guilt. Last night, there had been no telltale pause, no stutter, no flush, none of the classic signs of dishonesty, nothing but pure, undiluted indignation, as though she had been the one wronged, rather than he.
That was an idea too silly to even entertain.
As if she felt his scrutiny, Letty developed a deep interest in the seams of her gloves.
Jane, meanwhile, looked from one to the other with an enigmatic smile reminiscent of the Sphinx at its most annoyingly smug.
Miss Gwen, mercifully, was not watching anyone at all. She was too busy staring out the window, maintaining a running commentary on the inadequacies of their driver. He was driving too quickly. He was driving too slowly. Had he deliberately driven over that pothole?
By the time the carriage drew to a halt before the classical facade of St. Werburgh's, it was unclear who was most grateful to be free of the coach: Letty, Geoff, or the coachman. Geoff swung down first, handing out Miss Gwen, who descended as regally as a dowager duchess on her way to the Court of St. James's, then Jane, who fluttered to the ground in an animated pile of flounces.
Letty peered tentatively through the door like a turtle considering an outing from its shell, clearly looking for a way to descend without requesting his aid.
Geoff impatiently held out a hand. There was no reason for her to treat him like a leper. She was the one who had been so unnaturally eager for a closer union, after all.
"We can at least observe the usual courtesies, if nothing else."
Framed in the doorway of the coach, Letty regarded him warily. "Are you quite sure?"
"I believe I control my baser urges."
Letty flushed, a red stain spreading from the bodice of her muslin dress straight up to her hairline. "Those weren't the ones I was worried about."
Nor had Geoff, until she mentioned it. But their situation was eerily reminiscent of another night, another coach. A moonless midnight in High Holborn with a well-rounded figure in his arms and a pair of lips warm and eager against his. If he propped a foot on the bottom step; if she leaned forward just a little bit more…
They would both be better placed to scratch each other's eyes out.
Geoff offered his hand, palm up. "You can take my arm, or you can stay in the carriage. The choice is yours."
"Choice?" To Letty, it seemed about as much of a genuine choice as the others she had been presented with lately. Marriage or ruin. Silence or the fall of the British Empire. For a moment, she was tempted to elect to stay in the carriage, just to see the look on his face—but she didn't particularly want to twiddle her thumbs alone in a musty carriage.
"Oh, fine," capitulated Letty, none too graciously, and took the offered hand.
Once she was on the ground, the hand didn't let go. Letty gave a slight tug. When that had no effect, she tugged harder. Looking up, primed for acerbic commentary, she found her husband regarding her with a furrow between his dark brows.
"We can't go on like this," he said.
"That," replied Letty, freeing her hand, "is the most sensible thing I have heard all day."
"All this bickering does neither of us any good."
Letty nobly refrained from pointing out that he had started it. She, after all, had been perfectly pleasant—perfectly—until he had made that crack about her skill at deception in that supercilious, drawling way he had. "What are you proposing?"
Lord Pinchingdale's lip curled, as though at a private and particularly unpleasant joke. "Marriage would be redundant."
Supercilious didn't cover the half of it.
"An annulment might be more to the point."
"But difficult to obtain. For now, I suggest a truce."
Letty wasn't quite sure which to regard with more suspicion, the ominous qualification "for now," or the offer of a truce.
"If you won't do it for my sake," continued Geoff, with a fine edge of sarcasm, "do it for England."
"Far be it from me to resist a patriotic appeal," replied Letty, matching the edge in his voice with her own. "So we let bygones be from this point on? No recriminations, no ill will?"
"Something like that."
It wasn't exactly a wholehearted endorsement.
"Oh, Mrs. Alsdale! Mrs. Alllllsdale!" Jane descended on them like a whole horde of banshees, everything that could flutter fluttering.
This time, Letty just managed not to look over her shoulder before responding, "Yes?"
Jane grabbed Letty's arm and dragged her away from Lord Pinchingdale, toward the steps of the church and a towheaded man in the sober, dark suit of a clergyman.
"You must come and meet the ever-so-charming curate of this ever-so-lovely church!"
As Jane propelled her ever so rapidly forward, Letty thought that she saw Jane's head jerk infinitesimally to the left. Given the constant motion of her curls, it was impossible to tell, but she was sure of it when, behind them, Lord Pinchingdale moved softly to the left, up the stairs to the sanctuary. If Letty hadn't been so preternaturally aware of his presence, she would never have noticed.
The curate clearly didn't. He was a very young clergyman, with a round, open face, his white stock slightly wrinkled, as though he were accustomed to tugging on it; Jane's hand on his arm caused his Adam's apple to bob up and down in an ecstasy of incoherent admiration.
Letty glanced sideways at Jane suspiciously, wondering if her tales of rebel correspondence in the crypt had been just that—fairy stories, designed to distract an unwanted third party while the real activity went on above. Letty reconsidered Jane's request for aid in the coach. There was something quite clever in the notion of distracting an inconvenient observer by enlisting her to distract someone else.