"No," he said, steering his friend out of the room. "Under the circumstances, I'd say the Ponsonbys and my wife are most likely happily engaged in an orgy of mutual congratulation. Let's leave them to it, shall we?"

* * *

"Well," said Mrs. Ponsonby, leaning her powdered cheeks uncomfortably close to Letty's. "You have made a spectacle of yourself, haven't you?"

There was really no justice, reflected Letty, in being accused of being a spectacle by someone who had seen fit to cram no fewer than three peacock feathers into her frazzled coiffure. The stem of the central one had broken, and the unmoored eye bobbed in Letty's direction like the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale's infamous lorgnette.

"I wasn't without help," said Letty, thinking of Percy. The Lord had been clearly having an off day when he created the Ponsonbys. Percy was dim, Lucy insufferable, and Mrs. Ponsonby…Letty could only describe her as an unfortunate cross between Grendel's mother and Lady Macbeth.

Mrs. Ponsonby flicked closed her impossibly feathery fan and regarded Letty with extreme displeasure. "You, of all people!"

Letty knew that roughly translated as: An insignificant little thing like you!

"How could you?" admonished Mrs. Ponsonby. "Stealing your dear, dear sister's beau like that!"

Translation: Why you and not Lucy?

"Poor Mary," sighed Lucy, getting in a bit of a gloat at the expense of her prettier, more popular friend. "How humiliating for her."

Letty and her sister might not always be on the best of terms, but she certainly wasn't going to let Lucy Ponsonby stick her hypocritical little claws into her. "Mary has assured me that her affections are attached elsewhere," lied Letty stoutly.

In fact, what Mary had said was, "Now that you've pinched Pinchingdale I shall have to bring someone else up to scratch within the Season," but Letty didn't see the need to elaborate.

"Putting on a brave face, no doubt." Mrs. Ponsonby's bosom filled with pleased pity. "But for Mary to lose her beau—to you! Who would have ever thought it!"

"Who, indeed?" tittered Lucy.

She directed a telling look at Letty's gingery hair, which was, as usual, escaping its pins. Letty caught herself tucking the stray wisp behind her ear, and forced herself to stop.

Lowering her hand to her side, she leveled a long, hard look at Lucy, with her pretty face and discontented mouth and her dresses as fussy as the dressmaker could be persuaded to make them. Lucy had been on the marriage market for even longer than Mary, never quite seeming to grasp that her titters and flutters drove men away, even as Mary's beauty attracted them. For over a year, Letty had been forced to endure Lucy's jabs about her dress, her hair, her clothes, a million little snubs under the guise of being "helpful" to Mary's younger sister. And since there was nothing she could say without looking a shrew or causing a fuss, Letty had curbed her naturally blunt tongue and let Lucy jab.

Not anymore.

In a voice that sounded strange to her own ears, Letty said, "You're just upset that you didn't think of it yourself."

Lucy's mouth fell open in an entirely unflattering and gratifying way, and two round pink spots formed on her cheekbones. "Well, I never!"

"No, you didn't," agreed Letty, deciding that there were advantages to being ruined. "But it wasn't for lack of trying. I saw the way you tried to get Lord Pinchingdale out on the balcony at the Middlethorpes' ball. If you could have stolen him from Mary, you would have in a minute."

"I don't know how you can say such things," fumbled Lucy, tugging at the edges of her gloves in her anxiety. "Mama!"

"Because it's true," said Letty calmly. "You don't think Mary didn't realize? She found it amusing. Because she knew you couldn't possibly be a threat."

Lucy recoiled as though slapped.

Mrs. Ponsonby turned an alarming puce that contrasted unfortunately with her Nile-green frock. "Young lady…," she blustered.

Letty lifted her head high and looked Mrs. Ponsonby levelly in the eye, buoyed by champagne and a year's worth of pent-up indignation. In a voice as quiet as it was deadly, Letty asked, "Don't you mean, 'my lady'?"

Those two simple words proved too much for Mrs. Ponsonby.

"Lucy! We are leaving this house of…of…ill repute!" Mrs. Ponsonby grabbed her daughter, who was still desperately trying to explain to no one in particular just how Lord Pinchingdale had come to be on the balcony at the Middlethorpes' ball, and swung her in a wide circle.

Turning, she fired one last parting salvo at Letty. "You may be a viscountess, but you shall never be received in my house again!"

"I shall look forward to that," said Letty.

Behind her, Letty heard the low, rhythmic sound of someone clapping. Startled, she twisted around to find Lady Henrietta Dorrington, hazel eyes alight with glee, watching the retreating Ponsonby party with no little satisfaction.

"Well done!" applauded Henrietta. "I've been waiting for something like that for years. She looks just like a turtle from the back in all that green, doesn't she?"

Letty returned her smile, clasping her hands around the stem of her glass to stop them shaking. "I don't think I'm going to receive an invitation to Mrs. Ponsonby's next Venetian breakfast."

"Do you think if I stand conspicuously next to you, she'll stop inviting me, too?" asked Henrietta hopefully. "I would so love to be snubbed."

"Don't say that," said Letty soberly, feeling the energy that had buoyed her through her confrontation with Mrs. Ponsonby beginning to ebb away. "It isn't nearly as enjoyable as one might think. Except by the Ponsonbys," she added, with a valiant attempt at a smile.

Henrietta, who had only escaped a similar fate through the felicity of having committed her own indiscretions in another country—and the machinations of a mother whose ability to manipulate public opinion put Bonaparte's agents to shame—made a sympathetic face.

"I'm sorry. If there is anything I can do to help…"

Letty felt unaccustomed tears prick her lids, and blinked them quickly away. Aside from her father's advice on earplugs, Henrietta's was the first kindly meant statement she had heard all day. At least, the first kindly meant statement that was truly kindly meant, when one discounted all the double-edged barbs that began with "you poor, dear child," and inevitably ended with cheering comments about ways in which she might possibly atone for her disgrace—at some point in her declining years.

"I hadn't thought you would want to speak to me," Letty admitted. "You were friends with Lord Pinchingdale long before you knew me. And he can barely bear to speak to me after all that happened."

"What did happen?" asked Henrietta. "I certainly can't believe that either you or Geoff would behave in the way the scandal sheets claim."

"You've seen those?"

Henrietta looked a little guilty. "I only read them for the articles."

"Ah, Hen! There you are!" A large form bounded up, slinging an arm around Henrietta with a force that nearly knocked her off her feet. Letty prudently moved a step away. Belatedly noticing Letty, Miles mustered an unenthusiastic, "Oh, hullo."

"Where is Geoff?" demanded Henrietta, as Letty contemplated the best way to quietly fade into the background.

Miles tweaked one of his wife's curls. "You're meddling again, aren't you?"

"And you're trying to change the subject," riposted Henrietta, grabbing Letty by the arm before Letty could slip away. "Don't worry. Geoff will thank me for this later. Where is he?"

"It's a little difficult to say."

Henrietta just looked at him.

"Oh, all right! Geoff is…gone."

"You mean he's gone out?" ventured Letty, automatically turning to look at the door of the ballroom.

"I suppose you could say that," mumbled Miles, studying his own reflection in the polished tips of his boots.

"To his club?" Letty prompted. All gentlemen had clubs, even her absentminded father. She doubted theirs was the same club, since the one to which her father belonged featured a membership on the older side of sixty, chiefly known for their ability to hold a paper steady and doze at the same time.

"Er, no," said Miles. He cast a look of wordless entreaty to his wife.

Not having the slightest idea what he was entreating, Henrietta returned the look with interest, and more than a touch of exasperation. "And?"

"He's gone away," elaborated Miles, looking slightly hunted. He gestured helplessly with his hands. "Really away. Away, away."

"Away, away?" repeated Letty.

"What is that supposed to mean?" demanded Henrietta.

Miles contemplated the floor. "It means," said Miles, looking uncomfortably from Letty to his wife and back again, "that Geoff has gone to Ireland."

Chapter Seven

"Ireland." Letty turned the name over on her tongue. "As in the country?"

Miles cast a wary look over his shoulder at the remnants of the chattering, jabbering guests, those who hadn't either collapsed beneath the furniture or decorously gone home.

"Perhaps we should all adjourn to Geoff's study," he said with forced cheerfulness. "Hen?"

"Exactly what I was going to suggest," agreed Henrietta, nodding emphatically in approval. She slipped her arm through Letty's, leaving Letty feeling like a very small trout being towed along by a pair of determined fishermen.

Miles led the way unerringly down a series of corridors, away from the madding crowd in the eception rooms. It didn't escape Letty's attention that both Mr. Dorrington and Lady Henrietta appeared to know her new home far better than she did. Or that they referred to Lord Pinchingdale familiarly and fondly as "Geoff."