"My circumstances have changed."

"So it would seem. Married and widowed in…three weeks? How very expeditious of you, Mrs. Alsdale."

"It was all quite sudden," replied Letty helplessly.

"There are many ladies in society who would be glad to learn that trick of you."

"Tell them to use hemlock," suggested Letty. "It's faster than arsenic."

Lord Vaughn's eyebrows lifted. "Remind me never to offer you the protection of my name."

"Never fear, my lord, you are too corporeal for my taste." Better for Lord Vaughn to think her husband imaginary, rather than merely misplaced.

He accepted the misdirection with an appreciative inclination of his silvered head. "You are, I believe, a very resourceful young lady."

"One does what one has to."

A whisper of a smile played about Lord Vaughn's thin lips. "Just as I said."

"There is nothing heroic about necessity," demurred Letty.

"There is," riposted Lord Vaughn, wagging his quizzing glass at her, "in retrospect."

"That doesn't help one much at the time, though, does it?"

"You, my dear Miss…pardon me, Mrs. Alsdale, are too much the pragmatist. You have the resourcefulness, but you lack the heroic mentality."

"I don't see anything heroic in gilding base actions with the passage of time."

"Base is it?" said Lord Vaughn. "What of Odysseus? Trick-ster, liar, philanderer…hero."

The list of attributes all too forcefully brought to mind a more modern man, who could not be conveniently closed away within the pages of a book, his sins lightly debated as an antidote to a dull party. It was impossible to distinguish his voice among the general chatter, but Letty could feel his presence behind her like a large burr in her back. A particularly prickly one.

"A hero conceived by a man," retorted Letty.

"My dear girl," drawled Lord Vaughn. "I find that highly unlikely."

"You don't think Homer was…Oh." Letty's cheeks rivaled Homer's wine-dark sea.

Having achieved his desired effect, Lord Vaughn quirked an inquisitive eyebrow. "You, I take it, would prefer the prudent Penelope?"

Letty pictured Penelope steadily stitching away as Odysseus cavorted with Circe, a Circe with silver-gilt curls and a come-hither way with a fan. Odysseus was a rotter who wasn't worth the waiting. At that rate, Penelope should have turned out the suitors, taken over the kingdom, and ruled Ithaca alone.

"That doesn't leave me much to choose from, does it?" said Letty with a grimace. "Either the philanderer or the woman foolish enough to wait for him."

"I suppose you don't approve of Patient Griselda either."

Letty had always thought Patient Griselda the worst sort of ninny. "Patience," she said in her best governess voice, "is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for."

Lord Pinchingdale most decidedly wasn't, any more than Odysseus had been, with his sirens in every port. What was she to do now? She could go back to London, to the spiteful conjectures of the ton. She could slink back to Hertfordshire, to her narrow childhood bed and quiet orchard. Neither option was terribly appealing.

Maybe that was why Penelope and Patient Griselda had persevered, not out of love, but from lack of alternatives.

Lord Vaughn spoke, uncannily echoing Letty's thoughts. "I have found that very few things are worth waiting for, Mrs. Alsdale." His face had settled into cynical lines, and Letty noticed, for the first time, the deep hollows beneath his cheekbones, and the lines on either side of his mouth. "That is why the prudent man takes and the fool merely anticipates."

"But then you simply have something not worth having a little earlier," said Letty, wondering where she had lost the skein of thought. "How is that any better?"

"Isn't the having better than not having? Asceticism is decidedly out of fashion these days." Vaughn's languid gesture took in the overly ornate room and equally overdressed guests.

His hand stilled with uncharacteristic abruptness just in front of a sallow youth, who was shambling over to them, scuffing his boots along the rug as he walked. In contrast to Lord Vaughn's elegant attire, the newcomer was positively unkempt, his mop of brown hair not so much fashionably windblown as simply unbrushed. Rather than attempt the intricate creases fashion demanded for the cravat, he had tied the cloth worker-style around his neck, tucking the edges under his limp shirt points.

No matter how unpleasant the newcomer, Letty couldn't help but be relieved to have been rescued from the tкte-а-tкte with Lord Vaughn. Her head ached with the effort of keeping away from the sharp side of his tongue.

"Ah, Mrs. Alsdale, I have a new pleasure in store for you." The way Vaughn drawled the word "pleasure" made it clear that it was anything but such a thing, and Letty felt a twinge of sympathy for the disheveled young man, who flushed and scowled at the design of vines on the carpet.

Lord Vaughn, reflected Letty, did seem to have that effect upon people.

Vaughn left only enough time for the sting to be felt, before continuing smoothly, "May I present to you my cousin, Augustus Ormond. But we like to call him Octavian. He is," commented Vaughn, with a sly, sidelong look at his cousin, "too early for empire."

"It is very hard being the youngest," said Letty warmly, trying to catch the boy's eye. Shamed out of all countenance, he continued to stare resolutely at the floor, his lips puffed out in an unattractive pout.

"I'm afraid your sympathies are wasted in that quarter, Mrs. Alsdale. Augustus may be young in looks, but he is old in sin."

"Looks are seldom any indication of character," responded Letty, her mind on her husband's ascetic features, the features of a poet or a philosopher, not a base philanderer who couldn't wait even a week after his wedding to pursue his amours.

Vaughn trained his quizzing glass on her abstracted face. "Do you truly think so, Mrs. Alsdale? I beg to differ. Unless, of course," he added, a slight smile playing about his lips, "a deliberate deception is employed."

"A deception upon others, or ourselves?" asked Letty bitterly.

"An intriguing point. The dandy, who seeks to convince himself that he is better than he is. The beauty, who is none. The widow…" Letty stiffened beneath her false mourning as Lord Vaughn's voice dwelled meditatively on the word. Lord Vaughn smiled pleasantly, inclining his head in the direction of Letty's dark dress. "But far be it from me to impugn another's honest grief."

Hamlet had used the word "honest" with Ophelia in just such a double-edged way. Right before he drove her mad. How apt, thought Letty irritably.

"You aren't going to advise me to get myself to a nunnery, are you?"

Vaughn acknowledged the point with a mild arch of the eyebrows. "How can I, when I am but indifferent honest myself?"

"And mad north by northwest, too, no doubt," muttered Letty.

"Tut-tut, Mrs. Alsdale. It's against the rules to borrow from a different speech."

"I wasn't aware there were rules," said Letty in frustration.

Vaughn's eyes glinted silver. "There are always rules, Mrs. Alsdale. It is simply more amusing to break them."

"Except for those who are left to pick up the pieces," drawled a new voice, from somewhere just behind Letty's left shoulder.

Letty started, unintentionally bumping against the man who had moved silently behind her. His sleeve brushed against the bare skin between her glove and sleeve. It was an inadvertent touch, but Letty felt the shock of it all the way down to her slippers. The faint hint of bay rum cologne clung to the fabric, redolent with memory.

Letty looked down at her gloved hands, not willing to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his presence. The Pinchingdale betrothal ring glowered back at her, the dark surface of the cabochon-cut emerald seeming to swallow rather than reflect the light, an ill-omened ring for an ill-omened marriage.

"Ah, Pinchingdale!" Vaughn greeted the new arrival. "What an unmitigated…surprise."

"Vaughn." Lord Pinchingdale acknowledged the greeting with an almost imperceptible inclination of his dark head, moving forward slightly, so that he stood between Letty and Vaughn. "What brings you from London this time of year?"

Vaughn lazily raised his quizzing glass. "I might have asked you the same, my Lord Pinchingdale. Such an unfashionable time of the year to be in Dublin. One might have almost thought you were running away from something. Or someone."

Lord Pinchingdale shot Letty a hard look. Safely out of range of Vaughn's quizzing glass, Letty softly shook her head in a silent denial.

Vaughn missed the movement, but caught the direction of Lord Pinchingdale's gaze. "But I forget my manners! Have you made the acquaintance of the charming Mrs. Alsdale?"

Lord Pinchingdale bowed over Letty's hand. Under the guise of the seemingly impersonal touch, she could feel his fingers dig hard into hers through the kid of her gloves in a quick, warning squeeze.

As if she needed to be reminded!

"Mrs…. Alsdale and I are some little bit acquainted," said Lord Pinchingdale, which was, as Letty reflected, true as far as it went. Aside from the tenuous formality of the marriage vow, they might as well be strangers.

"We have mutual friends," elaborated Letty, smiling innocently up at Lord Vaughn. "Percy Ponsonby, for one…Ouch!" Lord Pinchingdale's fingers had clamped in a viselike grip around the bare skin just above Letty's glove.

"Mrs. Alsdale," he drawled, "may I interest you in some lemonade?"