"How did you get yourself into such a pickle, my Letty?" inquired Mr. Alsworthy kindly, as Letty lowered the tower of books to the floor with a decided thump.

"With the best of intentions," began Letty irritably.

Mr. Alsworthy wagged a reproving finger at his favorite child. "That should cure you of those."

"I thought we were being robbed."

Mr. Alsworthy grimaced at the dust furring the edge of his desk. "A most undiscriminating burglar, to be sure."

Letty had long ago learned that the only way to conduct a conversation with her father was to ignore his little asides. "Instead," she continued determinedly, "I found Mary packing for a midnight elopement."

"Unsurprising," murmured Mr. Alsworthy. "Unfortunate, but not unexpected."

"I went downstairs to talk some sense into Lord Pinchingdale," Letty hurried on before her father could interrupt again, "and was accidentally carried off. It was all a ridiculous mistake. And now…" Letty frowned at a battered copy of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Mr. Alsworthy steepled his fingers in front of himself. "Shall I begin for you? You," he said, "wish to remove yourself from this hasty arrangement. Oh, yes, it is hasty. There can be no two ways about that."

"And ill advised," replied Letty decidedly.

"I said hasty, not ill advised." Mr. Alsworthy contemplated the tassel on his nightcap. "The two are entirely different things."

"Not in this instance," Letty put in firmly, before her father could go off on a philosophical tangent about the merits of hasty action, as exemplified by the ancients. "This is entirely unnecessary. Don't you see? We'll just put it about that it was Mary in the carriage instead of me. Everyone knows how Lord Pinchingdale feels about her—goodness knows he hasn't exactly been subtle. It's far more believable than his being discovered with me."

"Truth is stranger than invention?" mused Mr. Alsworthy, who had developed the cheerful ability to turn any situation into an aphorism. "Be that as it may, it won't do. I take it you were seen?"

"By Percy Ponsonby," retorted Letty. "But Percy Ponsonby is a positive pea-brain. Everyone knows Percy Ponsonby is a positive pea-brain."

"Nonetheless, he was there on the spot, and that counts for more than intellect in such situations as these."

"This is the man who leaped out of a second-story window because he thought it seemed like a good idea!"

"It does make one wonder about the continued survival of the human race, does it not?" When Letty declined to follow him down that particular byway, Mr. Alsworthy recalled himself reluctantly to the situation at hand. "People are willing to believe anything that bears the promise of scandal. And you, my dear, have created rather a nice little scandal for yourself—I know, I know," Mr. Alsworthy said as he raised an admonitory hand, "with the best of intentions."

"Do you think I was in the wrong?" demanded Letty.

"I think," said her father gently, "that you reacted the only way that you could, being no other than yourself."

It wasn't exactly vindication. In fact, it sounded uncomfortably like a kindly worded condemnation.

"What else was I to do?" protested Letty, planting both hands on the desk as she leaned forward. "Let Mary elope? I couldn't."

"My point precisely," said her father. While Letty grappled with that, he added, "Pinchingdale is a good man and will deal with you fairly."

"Fairly! He wants to strangle me!"

"I often feel so about your mother, but, as you see, we've rattled on these twenty-odd years together."

Letty looked mutinous. "There's no reason to ruin three lives over a silly mistake."

Her father leaned forward in his chair, and, placing both hands on the desk, looked at her directly for the first time. The watery eyes, magnified by spectacles, weakened by reading by candlelight, regarded her kindly, and Letty found herself remembering a million other interludes before her father's desk, a million times she had come to him with a household problem or an amusing anecdote or just for the comfort of his gentle, detached voice after her mother's shrieks and Mary's mercurial moods. For all his vagaries and absentness, she knew he loved her, and she believed, with the last desperate hope of the child she had been, that Papa couldn't possibly let anything bad happen.

"Be kind to your brother and sisters when you are a vis-countess."

There were times when speaking with her father was quite as maddening as dealing with her mother.

"I am not going to be a viscountess."

"I don't see that you have much choice in the matter, my dear. When one marries a viscount, the title tends to follow."

"What about Mary?"

"In as much as bigamy continues to be frowned upon, one assumes that she will not be marrying the viscount."

"Papa!"

"Well, my dear, if you persist in wearying me with inconsequentialities in the wee hours of the night, you must resign yourself to being wearied in turn. Although I must say…"

"Yes?" Letty urged hopefully.

"I have frequently wondered why they are commonly called 'wee,' when these nocturnal hours always seem to stretch on longer than all the rest put together. Have you ever considered that, my dear?" Her father beamed innocently at her over his spectacles.

"No, I haven't," Letty said bluntly, shoving back her chair. "If you'll excuse me, I believe it's well past bedtime."

Why had she, after all, thought this occasion would be any different from any other? Her father lived in a dreamworld of books and philosophers, far more real to him than the demands of household and family. Hertfordshire or London, it was all the same to him. And whether it was repairing the roof or a daughter about to be rushed into an imprudent marriage, his reaction never varied: if it required any effort, he wanted nothing to do with it. Not even for his favorite child.

Letty wasn't numb enough that she didn't feel the sting of it.

"If you won't think of me," she said bitterly, "think of yourself. Who will keep you in candles?"

"Ah," said her father. "Think how selfless I am being. I don't know how we'll get on without you. Your mother will spend us into the poorhouse within the year, and your sister will undoubtedly find some new scandal to visit upon herself. As for your younger siblings, I have no doubt that they will contrive to find some way to bring the house down about our ears. Such a pity, but it can't be helped."

For a moment, Letty harbored a host of mad fantasies. She could flee far from London and find employment in a rural inn as a maid of all work. Of course, that fantasy discounted the fact that she hated scrubbing things and her accent would give her away in two seconds as a—what was the slang word for it? A "toff"? A "nob"? Something like that. How could she hope to pass as a serving wench when she couldn't even speak their language? As for running away and joining the gypsies, she wasn't at all sure they would have her. She couldn't play the guitar; her idea of fortune-telling was to say, "If you don't pick that up, you'll trip on it"; and she would look ridiculous in a kerchief and gold bangles.

Recognizing the stubborn set of her chin, her father warned, "Don't think to take matters into your own hands."

"What else am I to do?"

"Marry him," said her father bluntly. "He'll serve very well for you, my Letty, very well, indeed."

"You can't really mean for me to go through with this?"

Her father's only response was to blow out the candle.

Letty exited the study, head held high, determined to prove her father—and Lord Pinchingdale—wrong. All they had to do was make sure that the story didn't get out. How hard could it be?

Chapter Five

By noon the following day, no fewer than twenty-eight versions of what was popularly being called the Pinchingdale Peccadillo were making the rounds of the ton.

By the time Geoffrey trudged down the hall of the War Office, the number had escalated to fifty-two, complete with several minor variants. There was even a rollicking ballad that was being sung in the coffeehouses to the tune of "Greensleeves." Not to be outdone, the printers of broadsheets, loath to miss out on a lucrative bit of libel, had rushed into action, publishing some of the more lurid versions of the tale, complete with crudely tinted illustrations. As he made his way from Doctors Commons to Crown Street, Geoff had spied no fewer than five cartoons. One, subtitled "How to Chuse," featured a leering Geoff with an Alsworthy in either arm, each in a considerable state of dishabille. Geoff knew it was meant to be him because the author had considerately labeled it, just in case there might be any mistakes as to the intended identity. Another would-be wit had put out a tinted woodcut, with the heading "All's Worthy in the Dark," that left little of what might be considered "worthy" to the imagination.

Geoff's only consolation, if consolation it could be called, was that the pictures in the cartoons looked nothing like any of them. He had been able to slip entirely unnoticed through the gossiping throngs in which his name was being bandied about with unabated gusto.

"You," pronounced Wickham, without looking up from the letter he was signing, "are late."

Geoff refrained from reminding Wickham that his relationship with the War Office was conducted on an entirely voluntary basis. Back in the old days, before Richard had decamped for the pastoral pleasures of life in Sussex with his bride, the League of the Purple Gentian had operated autonomously from their base in Paris. Geoff plotted and planned; Richard undertook the more dashing sorts of escapades, the ones that called for black cloaks and mocking laughter; and Miles served as their contact with the powers that be back home, to ensure that they trod on no official toes. The War Office occasionally nudged them in one direction or another, but, on the whole, the League merrily went its own way, freeing prisoners from the Temple Prison, filching secret documents, and generally doing everything in their power to harry the assistant to the minister of police into a precipitate decline. They had their own web of contacts, their own personnel, and, most important, they were all the way across the Channel, too far for Wickham to snap his fingers and expect them to come running.