Free The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig

in the direction of the center of the room that never quite made it as far as the white-gowned figure on the railing, he achieved the door and was gone, leaving an unhappy hush behind him.
    From her position on the stairs, Mary raked Letty with a long, appraising gaze. "I never knew you had it in you."
    Letty stared at her sister. "But I never meant This wasn't any of my doing! Mary "
    Letty held out a hand in mute appeal.
    Mary narrowed the midnight blue eyes her admirers had compared to sapphires, velvet, and the water off the coast of Cornwall. Currently, they were as hard as agate, and as dark as a scoundrel's heart.
    "Who asked you to interfere?"
    Flinging her glossy tresses over her shoulder, Mary retreated up the stairs with all the dignity of an exiled queen. In the painful silence, Letty could hear the swish of her hem sweeping across the steps like a train, until a door thudded shut on the story above and even that small sound was blotted out.
    Letty's mouth opened and closed but Mary wasn't there to argue with anymore. All the reasons that had seemed excellent two hours ago turned to dust at the back of Letty's throat.
    "Wait!"
    Lifting the hem of her cloak, Letty scrambled up the stairs after her sister, slipping and skidding on the treads. It was as if twelve years had rolled back, and she was a roly-poly little six-year-old again, scrabbling after her older, more interesting sister, desperately wanting to be allowed to do whatever Mary did, play whatever Mary played.
    But no matter how she tried, she was always the one stumbling after, the one with tears in her dress and scrapes across her knees. Always the one running behind.
    On the landing, Mary's door was closed. Letty barreled into it, scarcely taking time to turn the knob before tumbling into the room. Inside, all the candles were lit, branches and branches of candles, burning like little stars against the dingy wallpaper. The wallpaper had once been white with blue stripes, but time and indifferent care had faded the whole to a dull pewter. The room bore the signs of hasty action: Mary's traveling dress lay strewn across the unmade bed, and a portmanteau slopping over with scarves slumped next to the window. Letty could see the corner of Mary's silver-backed brush sticking out of one corner, smothered beneath a length of spangled gauze.
    Mary stood by her dressing table, which, like the wallpaper, had once been white. Her perfect profile was averted, staring fixedly at nothing in particular, or, rather, nothing that Letty could see. Her stillness terrified Letty more than a dozen screaming rages.
    "Mary?" she whispered.
    At the sound of Letty's voice, Mary's head slowly lifted, her spine straightening. By the time she turned, moving as deliberately as an actor in a court masque, she was once again entirely in command of herself, her face as composed as a porcelain fig-urine, and about as warm.
    "What would you like me to say?" she asked. "Congratulations?"
    "Of course not! Mary, you know I didn't I wouldn't " Letty's protests faltered against her sister's unruffled regard.
    "But you did," said Mary.
    It was a simple statement of fact.
    And there was nothing Letty could say to refute it. In the face of Mary's implacable poise, all her perfectly sensible arguments crumbled on her lips, like so much chipped paint.
    It had always been like this.
    "You didn't love him," objected Letty. "You can't claim you did."
    Mary reached to rearrange a strand of her hair, and turned to examine the effect in the spotted glass of the mirror. "No. I didn't. Did I? You know best, of course. You generally do."
    Doubt lacerated Letty's heart with ice.
    "If you do really care about him " she began uncertainly.
    "I suppose it could be worse." Mary's voice was as finely edged as frost. "At least one of us gets him. We keep it all in the family."
    She smiled at Letty, the tight, social smile of the hostess speeding the parting guest.
    "If you don't mind, it is quite late. I need my