<strong>Lydia Katherine Clarke</strong><br/><em>AKA Irina Emelia Constantin</em><br/><br/>Youngest daughter of a country vicar, Lydia grew up educated with her two older brothers. By the time her father died when she was twenty, she knew she didn't want to spend the rest of her life as the wife even minor country gentry. She declined both the offer of marriage her father's replacement and her brother's offers to live with them and their families, instead making her way to London to find a job. After some lean times in which she almost turned to prostitution, she managed to secure a job as a clerk in a bookstore.<br/><br/>It was there that she met a Romanian nobleman looking for someone willing to teach him English. She seized the opportunity and quickly became his mistress by mutual choice. Always having a knack for languages, by the time he returned home in a year, his English was fluent and her Romanian was nearly perfect. Although she was very fond of him, she declined his offer to take him back to Romania with him, knowing that he was really country nobility at heart.<br/><br/>Having acquired expensive tastes in their time together, she quickly realized that Lydia Clarke didn't have a chance of supporting herself in the manner that she'd become accustomed and that she had little taste for being beholden to most men as a mistress. Instead, she turned to crime, finding that her education and talent for languages made her a rather slick thief and con-artist.<br/><br/>Her favorite identity is "Irina Emelia Ccnstantin," a widowed Romanian countess. Irina is an elegant, sensual creature with expensive taste. While she rarely has much cash, she finds that she can live any way she wants as long as she plays the part to the hilt.<br/><br/>Having secured an invitation to the Winterstone's shooting weekend, she intends to enjoy it immensely. She doesn't have a partucular target in mind at the moment, having just completed a profitable scam, but she's opportunistic enough to take advantage of one if it presents herself.<br/><br/><strong>Sophie Laurent</strong><br/><br/>A young Frenchwoman, Sophie is Irina's maid. She's fairly loyal, as she's treated and paid fairly well, but not a confidant. Lydia knows loyalty is more easily won through kindness.