The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Chapter Twenty

The hand was attached to an arm, flung out to the side, like a young child sleeping. And the arm…

It was the dress that Letty recognized, pink gauze over white muslin. It had been embroidered around the edges with silver thread, like the brightly beaded pink-and-silver reticule she had been carrying earlier that evening. Her skirts were rumpled where she had fallen, the pale fabric streaked with grime. Veiled by her tumbled mass of black curls, her head was twisted to the side, away from Letty.

"Miss Gilchrist?" Letty exclaimed. "Emily? What are you doing back here?"

Emily Gilchrist didn't respond.

She must have been knocked over by the same rude person who had shoved past Letty. With the corridors so narrow and so crowded, it was no wonder she had banged her head on something as she fell. That, realized Letty, must have been the noise she had heard, that sickening crunch. Not that any of that particularly mattered at the moment. The important thing was to determine how badly Emily was hurt and get her back to her guardian.

Letty sank to her knees beside Emily, murmuring soothing and pointless platitudes. "It's going to be all right. You've just hit your head. Don't worry."

She started to smooth back Emily's tangled hair, grimacing as sticky moisture seeped through the netting of her gloves. A metallic tang underlay the heavy floral scent of Emily's perfume, as sickly sweet as dead flowers.

"Drat," muttered Letty, rubbing her fingers together.

Emily must have hit her head harder than she had realized. Bandages, thought Letty briskly. She had left her shawl in the box, so her petticoat would have to do. It wasn't a particularly sturdy fabric, but it would serve to stop the bleeding until she could find something better. Letty had dealt with head wounds before; her little brother was constantly falling off horses, tumbling out of trees, and jumping off walls to see if he could fly. He hadn't been able to yet, but that never seemed to discourage him.

"Nothing to worry about," she said soothingly, as much for herself as the unconscious Emily, placing one hand on Emily's temple and the other behind her head. If she could turn her head, she might have some idea of how bad a cut it was. A very small cut on the head, Letty had learned from her brother, could yield quite a bit of blood, more disgusting than it was dangerous. "You'll be right as rain as soon as we get you home and bandaged up."

Moving very slowly, trying not to jar Emily more than she had to, Letty eased her head sideways. Her long locks of hair, matted and sticky with blood, fell to the side, leaving long, dark streaks on Letty's skirt and the backs of her hands.

Stains were the least of Letty's concerns.

Scuttling backward, Letty let Emily's head fall from her lap. It hit the ground with an unpleasant thud, but Letty didn't think Emily would notice. Emily wasn't going to notice anything, ever again.

Shaking, Letty staggered to her feet, bracing herself with one hand against the wall. She wasn't going to be ill, she told herself. She would not be ill. Her stomach begged to differ. Letty pressed both hands against her abdomen, fighting for control, and wishing she hadn't eaten quite so much for supper. She was still clutching the reticule. As she pressed her clenched hands against her stomach, Letty could feel each individual bead biting into her palm. She welcomed the sting. Anything to take her mind away from the revolution in her stomach, and the horror that had been Emily's face.

Or what was left of it.

Letty didn't hear the footsteps until they were almost upon her. Whoever it was moved with the subtlety of someone accustomed to silence, his slow steps scarcely audible in the dusty corridor. Acting on instinct alone, Letty whirled, striking out with the reticule. A large hand grabbed hers by the wrist, forcing it down.

Mindlessly, she struggled, hearing only the hoarse rasp of her own breath. She didn't want to die. Not now. Not like Emily.

"Letty! For heaven's sake!"

The harsh whisper didn't sound at all like his normal voice, but Letty would have known that tone of annoyance anywhere.

Going limp with relief, Letty ceased her resistance so abruptly that they both staggered. Her husband grabbed her shoulders to steady her—or restrain her. Letty didn't care. She was just glad he was there.

"Geoff?"

There was a series of reddening scratches on his cheek, courtesy of the reticule that she'd swung with more force than she realized. She lifted a hand to them, drawing it away again just before her fingers would have brushed his skin.

"Sorry," she said, inadequately.

"You might have confined yourself to a simple hello." Geoff had regained his usual urbane tone, but his breathing was still slightly ragged. "What was that all about?"

"I thought…Oh, Geoff." Letty lifted a balled fist to her mouth.

Geoff froze, his expression changing in an instant from irritation to concern. Catching Letty's hand, he raised it to examine the dark smears of blood that stained the fabric. "What happened? Did Jasper—"

Letty shook her head, drawing in breath on a choked laugh. Somehow, the notion of Jasper struck her as comical. Jasper had ceased to matter, cast into the abyss of the insignificant. "Not Jasper. I wish—no. Over there."

Letty lifted one hand and jabbed unsteadily to the left. She hoped she was pointing in the right direction, because she didn't want to look to make sure. Once had been enough.

"Good God." Geoff pressed Letty's head into his chest. "Don't look."

From the region of his waistcoat, he heard a shaky voice say, "I already did."

Geoff amended his advice. "Pretend you didn't."

Letty vented her feelings in an incredulous puff of hot air, but she stayed where she was.

Ignoble though it was, Geoff's first reaction was relief that it wasn't Letty lying there. Her hair smelled faintly of chamomile, clean and wholesome as summer. Geoff would have liked to bury his nose in it, and drown out the stench of death.

His second was a great deal more professional. Keeping Letty's head firmly lodged in his waistcoat, Geoff sidled closer, examining what he could see of the corpse. The skirts were rucked up, revealing a webbing on the calf that might have been a particularly outrй form of garter, but was more likely a sheath of some sort. It would have to have been a very small knife, one small enough not to make a bump under the fine muslin currently in fashion for evening wear. Something thin and deadly, like a stiletto.

The face was nearly unrecognizable, so covered with blood that Geoff, even with eyes well used to the gloom of the backstage area, could scarcely make out the nature of the wound. One staring eye regarded him through a screen of dark hair. The other…There wasn't much left of it. Something sharp, broader than the Black Tulip's preferred stiletto, had entered the woman's left eye, cutting deep. The knife's trajectory had continued downward, on an angle, slicing through the soft tissue of the woman's cheek, and ending somewhere in the region of her upper lip. At a guess, she had been kneeling when the blow struck. There were no signs of a struggle; at least, none that he could make out. None of the scenery leaning against the walls had been overturned, and the dust had only been disarranged by the impact of the woman's body, not by a scuffle.

Geoff frowned, trying to reconstruct the scene. Two confederates, walking in apparent amity. A disagreement occurred—a disagreement, or a prearranged double-cross. Geoff tended to lean toward the latter. The abandoned corridor made an excellent venue for an unofficial execution, if one were so inclined. The woman would have bent down to sweep her knife out of its sheath. As she did so, her intended victim grabbed his own knife, stabbing down. She must have looked up just as he struck, hence the injury to the eye. The force of such a blow would have impelled her body backward, leaving her sprawled on the floor where Letty had found her.

Geoff had a fairly good idea of just who the two actors in that little drama had been. The woman's features might be too marred for a positive identification, but the long black hair and the painfully white skin, made even paler in death, were unmistakable.

Whatever alias the Marquise de Montval had been hiding under, she wouldn't be using it any longer.

Against his waistcoat, Letty began to squirm. "You can let me go now," she said, her voice only slightly muffled. "I'm all right."

"Are you sure?" One's first dead body—at least, he assumed it was Letty's first dead body—was never a pleasant sight, and the marquise's demise had been messier than most. Geoff loosened his hold, but didn't release her.

There was a crease in Letty's cheek where she had pressed against a seam of his coat, and her hair was rumpled, but there was a determined cast to her expression that struck Geoff as surprisingly gallant, like a very small knight steeling herself to enter the ogre's den.

Letty's eyes drifted sideways in the direction of the slumped shape on the floor.

"She was so pretty…so young."

"Not as young as you think," Geoff said quietly.

"When I saw her lying there…I thought she was alive. I thought she had just fallen and hurt herself. I thought—" Letty broke off, looking up at him with dazed blue eyes. "Geoff, why would anyone do this? To Emily?"

"Emily?" Geoff asked sharply.

"Yes. Emily Gilchrist."

"You knew her." Geoff's expression turned intent, his eyes fixed on Letty's face.

Wrapped in her own recollections, Letty scarcely noticed. "We were on the boat from London together. And now…" Letty shivered. "What a hideous way to die."

"There are worse."

Looking back on the Black Tulip's history, Geoff found it difficult to muster much sympathy for her. One of his friends had been a victim of the Tulip, back in the early days of the war, when revolutionary fervor still ran high across the Channel, and the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel still specialized in ushering distressed noblemen to safety in England. Tony had been sent on just such a rescue mission.

The Black Tulip hadn't allowed him nearly so speedy an end as she had been granted.

For Letty's sake, Geoff added, "She died quickly. She wouldn't have felt much."

Letty rubbed her hands along her upper arms as though cold. "I heard it happen. She just…gasped, and then fell. I thought someone had tripped. If I had been here a few moments earlier—"

"Let's not go down that byway, shall we?" Geoff tilted Letty's head back with a finger under her chin. "Did either of them see you?"

"I don't know. I heard a crash, and ran forward to help. Someone pushed past me—it didn't seem important then. I just thought he was being rude."

"Damn," muttered Geoff. Vaughn might have been in too much of a hurry to take note of Letty, but he doubted it. Vaughn knew Letty and, more important, Letty knew Vaughn. Vaughn hadn't evaded detection thus far by leaving simple precautions to chance. He would be back. "Let's get you out of here."

"You don't think—?"

Geoff began steering her down the corridor, moving with the sureness of a cat in the dark. "I'm not thinking anything until we're a good ten yards away."

Letty's legs moved numbly, by rote, as he hustled her out a back exit and into a hackney. Somewhere, far, far away, she could hear her husband's voice giving directions, but she couldn't have said with any certainty where he had instructed the driver to go. Instead, she kept replaying the scene in the corridor, hearing that sickening thud—Letty swallowed hard—feeling the jolt as the murderer pushed past her, sending her stumbling into the wall.

And then, something else. Something heavy falling on her toe.

Lifting her wrist, Letty gazed dumbly at the reticule dangling from its silver strap. Used to the weight of a reticule on her wrist, Letty had forgotten she was holding it. It wasn't hers. Hers was black and sensible—and, Letty remembered, with a twinge of annoyance, back in their abandoned box in the theater. There hadn't been much in it, anyway, only a handkerchief and a few coins, in case she was separated from her party. This reticule glittered with silver beading over a pink silk base, a stiffened spray of beads forming an upside-down fan at the bottom. Letty recognized it instantly. She had last seen it dangling from Emily Gilchrist's wrist.

She had been warned that pickpockets operated in the theater, but not that they might turn violent. Still, in a dark corner, if Emily had protested…What a horrible, senseless waste. And all for—what? A handful of coins? An embroidered handkerchief? There wasn't awfully much one could fit in a reticule.

Wrenching the strap off her wrist, Letty held it up by two fingers. The reticule dangled in the air between them, its sparkle dimmed with dark smears.

"Geoff, I've figured it out. He killed her for this." Letty regarded the small, pink bag with undisguised loathing. "The murderer dropped it when he bumped into me. It's Emily's. I would recognize it anywhere."

Geoff reached out for the little bag, with its silver clasp and loop of beads fanning out from the bottom. "May I?"

As Letty nodded, Geoff forced open the clasp. It was stiff enough to take considerable pressure. A handkerchief sat on the top, embroidered and scented. Beneath it, Geoff found a small comb and a twist of coins tied into another handkerchief, stuffed into the bottom. There was nothing incriminating about it at all.

Geoff had heard of one case where an agent had used embroidery as a means of communication, so many French knots to the words, but to his inexperienced fingers, the satin-stitched flowers embroidered around the corners felt just as they were supposed to. Well, they would, wouldn't they? He would have to show the handkerchief to Jane later; embroidery was more in her line than his.

"All for a purse," said Letty disgustedly.

Upending the innocuous contents into his lap, Geoff rolled the empty bag between his fingers, searching for irregularities. His groping fingers located something at the very bottom, in between the lining and the beaded exterior.

"Not just any purse," Geoff said, with great satisfaction. He ripped the lining free with one neat wrench.

"What are you doing?" exclaimed Letty, reaching for the bag.

"This."

Geoff's fingers closed triumphantly around a pawn-shaped object, nestled at the bottom of the bag between lining and beading. The sparkle of the beads would have distracted the eye from any telltale bulge; as for the bag being bottom-heavy, that was cleverly concealed by the spray of beading on the bottom.

He knew what it was even before the pads of his fingers brushed against the lines incised on the bottom.

He dropped the tiny silver trinket into Letty's hand. "Your friend Emily wasn't quite what she seemed."

Letty regarded the silver pawn in her hand uncomprehendingly. "She liked chess? I don't see—"

"Turn it over," suggested Geoff, continuing to root around in the shredded lining.

Letty turned it over. At first, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to be looking for, but after a moment of squinting blankly at the silver disk, the irregularities on the surface resolved themselves into a form of sorts. It was a seal. Like the one hanging around Jane's neck.

And it had been wedged into Emily Gilchrist's reticule.

"Oh," said Letty flatly, adding two and two and coming up with five hundred and sixty-four.

"Exactly." Geoff was still rooting about in the lining, seeking the source of the other bump he had felt. It might be a lumpy seam, or…Doing his best not to make loud crowing noises, Geoff withdrew a small cylinder of paper.

"You think Emily was involved in…all this?"

Geoff tucked the paper back into the abused reticule, to be examined later. Even if it weren't too dark to read, it would undoubtedly need decoding.

"What did you know of her?"

"Only what she told me." Which, Letty realized, for all of Emily's incessant jabbering, hadn't been much. Emily talked and talked and talked, but never about herself. It had all been ribbons and shoes and the wonders that awaited them in Dublin. Most of the time, Letty hadn't listened very closely.

"She had just come from a seminary for young ladies outside of London," Letty said slowly. "At least, that's what she claimed. I don't believe she ever mentioned the name of the school."

"If she had," said Geoff, "I think you would find it didn't exist."

"And I didn't ask. I didn't want to know." Letty grimaced at the memory, her voice thick with self-reproach. "I found her tedious."

In the dark of the carriage, Geoff's hand closed reassuringly over hers. "You were supposed to find her tedious. It was all part of her role."

"I suppose."

"I know," said Geoff firmly. "She wasn't worth your sympathy."

Something in Geoff's tone caught Letty's attention. "You know who she is." Wincing, Letty corrected herself. "Was."

"Have you heard of the Black Tulip?"

Letty shook her head. "I've never followed the espionage reports."

Her apologetic tone wrenched a reluctant chuckle from Geoff. "It's probably for the best. At least it means you aren't harboring any absurd misconceptions."

"Like spies wearing black masks all the time?"

"Something like that." Reluctantly, Geoff got down to business. "The Black Tulip appeared right after the Scarlet Pimpernel, in the early days of the Revolution. Wherever the Pimpernel was, there was the Tulip, leaving a trail of dead agents in her wake."

"Charming," said Letty, finding it hard to picture flighty Emily Gilchrist as a flinty-hearted French agent. But that was the point of a disguise, wasn't it?

"When Bonaparte seized power with the Coup of Brumaire in 1799, the Black Tulip all but disappeared. There were any number of theories at the time. Selwick—" Geoff broke off, glancing quizzically at Letty.

"The Purple Gentian. I would have had to have been immured in a tower not to know that much. His unmasking was all over the papers last month."

Letty's reaction to the plethora of Purple Gentian headlines had been something along the lines of "Oh, for heaven's sake, not another spy!" and "Why can't the papers report anything useful for a change?" but she didn't feel the need to confide those details to the spy sitting next to her.

"Right. Richard claimed to have shut the Black Tulip into an Egyptian pyramid during the 1798 expedition. It made an excellent story, but it was hard to verify, especially when neither of us had the slightest idea of who the Black Tulip was. We do now."

"Emily Gilchrist?"

"That was merely an alias. Her real name was Teresa Ballinger, but she was better known by her married name: the Marquise de Montval."

Ballinger wasn't a French name, any more than Gilchrist had been. "She was English? Really English?" Letty asked incredulously. Emily's accent had been impeccable, but for an Englishwoman born and bred to go over to the French…it strained credulity.

"And married to a French nobleman. Two of the reasons no one ever suspected her. We all assumed the Black Tulip was French. And a man," Geoff added, as an afterthought.

"Then how did you discover her identity?"

"I didn't." Chagrin softened the ascetic angles of Geoff's features, lending him an unexpectedly boyish aspect. "All the best minds in the War Office searched for the Black Tulip for ten years…and Henrietta figured it out."

Letty couldn't quite hide her grin.

"Henrietta felt much the same way," said Geoff dryly. "She gloats very effectively."

"Good for Henrietta," Letty said stoutly. Her grin faded as a less pleasing image floated to the fore. "Although it doesn't make much difference now, does it?"

Her memory conjured up Emily's body, bloodied and lifeless in a forgotten corner of the Crow Street Theatre. It was a chilling reminder of the futility of human endeavor, more effective than any number of tombstones. Whatever she had done in the past, the Black Tulip's plotting days were over.

"I'm sorry you had to see that."

"So am I," said Letty feelingly.

Geoff turned to face her, propping an elbow on the battered back of the seat. "What were you doing backstage?"

It was a sign of her distraction that it took Letty a moment to remember what had driven her backstage. "It was Captain Pinchingdale."

Next to her, Geoff stiffened. "What did he do?"

"He wanted me to murder you!"

"Oh, if that's all…" Geoff relaxed against the cushions, remarkably unconcerned by the homicidal designs of his kin.

"All? The loathsome cad actually thought I would be so bowled over by his dubious charms that I would murder you and run off with him."

"Tempted?" Letty could hear the smile in his voice.

"By a hangman's noose? No, thank you."

"It is nice to know that your common sense stands between me and the grave."

"There was another consideration."

"Really?" Draping an arm along the back of the seat, Geoff leaned forward inquisitively. "What might that be?"

"Captain Pinchingdale's sideburns offend me."

"How disappointing for Jasper," Geoff managed to choke out.

"And his teeth are too big," Letty added with relish.

"Poor Jasper." Geoff tried to raise an eyebrow, but found it hard to do while shaking with repressed laughter. "Damned by his dentition!"

That set them both off. Letty tried to contain her giggles, but they kept emerging in a series of explosive snorts that made them both laugh even harder, rolling against the back of the seat in their mirth.

Letty's stomach hurt, her ribs hurt, and her eyes were starting to tear.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she panted, clutching her aching abdomen. "It's not that f-funny."

Even saying the word "funny" made her break up again.

"Jasper's teeth, or his sideburns?"

"No—" Letty clutched at Geoff's sleeve in supplication. "Don't. Don't make me laugh more. It hurts too much."

Hiccupping, Letty started to swipe at her eyes with the back of her hand, before remembering that her hands were all bloody. Not fancying red streaks all over her face, she made an attempt to dry her cheeks with her elbow, but the attempt left something to be desired.

"Allow me," said Geoff solemnly, although his voice was still slightly shaky with laughter.

Withdrawing a clean handkerchief from his sleeve, he applied it to the area beneath her eyes with the same sort of focused concentration she had seen him devote to decoding a letter or following a suspect. He drew his handkerchief in a gentle semicircle under her left eye, stroking gently up along the curve of her cheekbone until all the tears were gone. Lifting the handkerchief, he moved on to the right eye, repeating the motion.

Letty lost all inclination to laugh. She drew a shaky breath, suddenly very aware that his other arm was curled around her back, holding her steady as he attended to her cheeks with elaborate care. She could feel the warmth of him through the fine wool of his coat, seeping through her dress and rising to her cheeks. She hoped he couldn't feel the sudden heat beneath his fingers, or guess its cause.

Geoff inspected his handiwork. He ran his thumb along the curve of her cheekbone, smoothing her hair back from her face. It must have been tangled, littered with unmoored pins, but his touch was as soft as the brush of an angel's wing.

"Better?" Geoff asked.

She was fascinated with the way his lips shaped the word, molding themselves around the syllables.

Letty could only nod.

"Good," Geoff said, a hint of a hidden smile in his voice.

The handkerchief drifted forgotten to the floor.