The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Chapter Twenty-one

Letty forgot that her hands were streaked with dried blood.

She forgot that they might have homicidal French agents or equally homicidal English relations in hot pursuit. She forgot that Geoff had meant to marry her sister. With his arm warm around her and his breath mingling with hers, none of that mattered. Nothing mattered but the smell of his cologne, the warmth of his skin, the caress of his hand in her hair.

He remained poised a whisper away, not moving, not saying anything, just being. There. With her. It couldn't have been more than a moment, certainly no more time than it took for the carriage wheels to complete a full revolution, but time had taken on curious properties, and it seemed to Letty that they lingered for a lifetime like that, with no sound between them but the rumble of the wheels and the hum of his breath. Letty was holding hers. The world hung suspended in perfect counterpoise, and even a breath might shatter it. A breath, and he might pull away, or say something, or remember that she wasn't the one he had wanted, and then it would all be spoiled.

With infinite care, as though he, too, were afraid of jarring their fragile peace, Geoff threaded his fingers deeper into her hair, tilting her head toward his. Letty's eyes drifted closed.

The expected kiss didn't appear. Instead, Geoff's lips feathered across her temples in a movement as soft as twilight. Working a trail of fire where his handkerchief had been, he brushed a kiss against the tender skin next to her eye, then her cheekbone. His lips grazed the very corner of her mouth, teasing, tantalizing.

Patience had never been Letty's strong suit. She didn't wait to see what he was going to do next. All it took was a slight tug on his ears to direct his head firmly in the right direction. Letty had thought she remembered what it was to be kissed. Over and over, she had replayed the hazy recollections of that night in High Holborn, the smell, the taste, the touch.

Memory was nothing to reality.

Their lips met like two armies clashing—an exercise in organized mayhem. Letty's ears rang as though with fusillades; her heart pounded the tattoo; and her closed eyes dazzled with sparks in a smoky haze. The minute their lips touched, the arms around her tightened. Letty's tightened back, until she was sitting more on him than next to him, and she didn't know and she didn't care. Her hair came down on one side, flopping against her cheek. Murmuring with distress, Letty batted it ineffectually aside.

With a low chuckle, Geoff brushed it aside for her, touching his lips to the exposed corner of her jaw. Letty hadn't been aware that such a portion of her body existed; it was just there as part of the apparatus that supported her head and made it possible for her to speak. She wasn't likely to forget it in the future. Geoff's lips tingled down her neck, awakening unknown nerves. Letty arched her neck to grant him better access, gasping as he kissed the sensitive skin above her collarbone.

His lips moved lower, past the modest pendant that hung around her neck, past the plain lace rim that edged her bodice—and the carriage rocked to a jolting halt.

The abrupt cessation of movement took them both off guard. As the elderly hackney lurched to a stop, Letty and Geoff rocked painfully against the back of the seat. Letty landed on her elbow. Her elbow landed on Geoff's ribs.

"Ouch," said Letty inadequately, rubbing her elbow.

"Indeed," replied Geoff, equally inadequately.

If his voice was muffled, it had as much to do with pure stupefaction as the blow to his ribs. What in the hell had just happened in there?

Certain parts of his anatomy were only too happy to provide the answer to that. Geoff told them to be quiet. They had gotten him in enough trouble already. And they would undoubtedly have gotten him into a good deal more trouble if the carriage hadn't stopped when it had.

Geoff unlatched the door and kicked down the folding steps without waiting for the driver to come around. It would have been better if he could have blamed his behavior on a chance impulse, if the motion of the carriage had flung them unexpectedly together, and finding her suddenly in his arms (the suddenness being the key factor), he had acted on an instinct as old as Adam.

But he had known exactly what he was doing, thought Geoff grimly, swinging down from the carriage without the aid of the steps. There had been any number of moments he could have drawn away, stuck the handkerchief in his pocket, and said something chummy and unromantic, along the lines of, "All right, then?" At least, that was what he ought to have done. No gentleman should take advantage of such a situation. He was sure there had to be a rule about it, sandwiched somewhere between not swearing in the presence of a lady and not coveting one's neighbor's goat. What those proscriptions all had in common was that they were "nots." Such as "not" kissing a woman whose critical faculties had been weakened by the sight of a dead body.

And "not" lusting after one's former fiancйe's sister.

That was what lay at the heart of it. Not the pure fact of his having kissed her, not the circumstances of having kissed her, dead body and all, but the wanting to kiss her. Even worse, he had enjoyed it. And certain parts of his anatomy were quite eager to enjoy it again.

He was, Geoff realized with painful clarity, in the anomalous situation of despising himself for betraying his former love by lusting after his wife.

He had become an exercise in illogic.

Handing Letty down from the carriage, Geoff made a concerted effort to regain his usual air of urbane detachment. "We seem to be making a habit of this," he said.

"Of…?" Letty blinked at him, her lips swollen and her hair rumpled.

She looked, in short, alarmingly kissable. Enough so to make any man knock aside his scruples about neighbors' goats and former fiancйes, and take up Luther's advice to sin boldly.

"The carriage," Geoff clipped out, moving so rapidly up the front steps that Letty had to run to keep up.

"Oh." Letty's voice went flat as she realized what he meant, another kiss in another carriage, and the unhappy consequences. "Right. That."

"Yes," agreed Geoff, wishing he had never brought up the topic. He brought the knocker down against the door with more force than necessary. "That."

Much to Geoff's relief, a maid opened the door almost immediately. Recognizing Letty and Geoff, she admitted them without question.

"We'll want a pot of coffee in the parlor." Geoff glanced at Letty's bloodstained hands and dress, incongruously grisly in the tidy entryway. "And a basin of water and some towels."

The maid curtsied and took herself off, not betraying any surprise at the gruesome state of Letty's garments. She had clearly seen worse.

Wrapping her offensive hands in her skirt, Letty preceded Geoff up the stairs, feeling her temper rise with each additional step. It wasn't that Letty objected to the water—she knew she needed it—but the fact that Geoff had ordered it made her feel even more of a horrible hag than she did already. And that comment about the carriage! How could he? What happened to their so-called truce? Clearly, it had disappeared back there in the carriage, along with his handkerchief—and her pride. She had been so pathetically pleased with his attentions, so happy to think that he might care just a little bit about her. That he might want to kiss her. Not Mary.

So much for that hope.

She knew she wasn't Mary, and that he hadn't wanted to marry her, but that gave him no right to kiss her and then throw that back in her face.

Who had kissed whom?

On second thought, Letty would have preferred not to answer that question. If she went back and thought, really thought, about what had just happened in the carriage, it was rather unclear who had kissed whom. Those little kisses along her cheek had, at the time, seemed like the inevitable prelude to a grand romantic encounter. But they might have been intended as nothing more than a calming caress.

Calming. Ha! There had been nothing calming about them. And he certainly hadn't shied away when she kissed him back.

Letty stomped up the last few steps with more vigor than grace. If he regretted the kiss, he should just say so, plainly, not go about making snide remarks about carriages. She hadn't expected words of love, but to bring up their prior interlude in a carriage—where he believed her to be her sister—was a bit much. It made her feel cheap. Interchangeable. Unwanted.

It made it all the worse that all of those were true.

On the landing, Geoff reached for the parlor door. He was as unruffled as ever, his expression as smooth as the impeccably tailored lines of his coat. Letty could feel her hair hanging drunkenly to one side, moored by three remaining hairpins. Her dress was streaked with dried blood like a tricoteuse who had sat too near the guillotine, and her lips felt about three times their normal size.

Letty marched up in front of her husband. "We need to get a few things straight."

"Do we?" Geoff opened the parlor door and gestured for her to precede him.

"Yes, we do." The words lost some of their force when she had to twist her head to deliver them. That just made Letty angrier, especially as she was quite sure he had done it deliberately.

Letty whirled to face him, nearly banging into his waistcoat. No man had a right to move that swiftly or that silently. Letty added that to her growing list of grievances.

"That carriage comment was completely unconscionable."

"I shouldn't have said it," Geoff agreed, with every appearance of sincerity.

"And you shouldn't have—oh." Letty refused to be mollified. Wearing a track on the little green-and-white carpet, she gesticulated helplessly. "You may say that now, but it's going to come up again. And again, and again…"

"I believe I have the idea." Geoff sounded amused.

Letty stopped abruptly in her perambulations. It might be amusing to him, but it wasn't to her.

"No, you don't. I know we agreed not to talk about—about what happened that night, but we can't go on like this, just poking around the subject. We might as well have it out now. And you're going to listen this time." Letty folded her arms across her chest and stared defiantly at her husband. "I didn't try to trick you. It was all a nasty accident."

"I know."

Prepared to forcibly present her evidence, Letty stopped short, all the wind knocked out of her sails. "You know?"

Geoff favored her with a wry smile. "Credit me with some sense."

Letty wasn't sure she was willing to go that far.

"When did you come to that conclusion?" Letty asked suspiciously.

"Some time ago."

"I've only been here a week."

"I've always been a quick study."

"Modest, too," said Letty, but her voice was less hostile.

"And—ever so occasionally—wrong. Not frequently, but it does happen."

"Was that an apology?"

"Was it that poorly delivered? I'll have to try again later. I appear to be singularly maladroit tonight."

"Not in everything," said Letty, before she had time to think better of it. Her cheeks turned an uncomfortable pink. "I mean…er."

"Thank you," said Geoff, with a smile that sent tingles straight down to Letty's toes, "for sparing my ego."

"Don't let us interrupt," cackled Miss Gwen, pounding her parasol against the floor for emphasis.

Letty and Geoff sprang apart like a pair of scalded cats as Jane and Miss Gwen appeared in the doorway, still wearing their respective costumes.

"No, that's all right. We were just—" More flummoxed than Letty had ever seen him, Geoff looked helplessly around as though the answer might be hidden somewhere among the delft-ware on the dresser.

"—sitting down," Letty finished. She had just pulled out a chair, and was about to suit action to words, when a sudden movement from Jane stopped her.

"Your hands," said Jane.

Letty automatically looked down, staring idiotically at the streaks of dried blood that marred her gloves.

"Oh, yes," gabbled Letty. Fumbling with the buttons, she stripped off the offending gloves, but the liquid had seeped through the rough mesh, leaving a macabre checkerboard of dark stains. Letty scrubbed ineffectually at one hand with the other. "I forgot about that."

"A lady," pronounced Miss Gwen, eyeing Letty with some disfavor, "never goes out in public with blood on her hands."

Having satisfied herself that Letty wasn't hurt, Jane looked to Geoff, her curls and ruffles sitting ill with her alert expression. "What happened?"

Geoff didn't waste time in trivialities. "The Black Tulip is dead."

For once, even Miss Gwen was struck silent.

As they stood there, frozen in tableau, the maid entered with a basin, a length of toweling draped over her arm.

Jane waited until the maid had departed before she spoke.

"Did you—?"

"No," said Geoff, as Letty plunged her hands gratefully into the warm water, scrubbing at the stains with more vigor than science. "We found her backstage in the Crow Street Theatre. Someone had driven a knife through her eye."

The maid, returning with the coffee tray, did not so much as rattle the cups at the mention of murder.

Unblinking, she placed the tray on the table before Jane. Jane nodded her thanks, and the maid departed as noiselessly as she had come. The staff, Letty knew, were all involved in some way with the League, but Letty had never asked, and Jane had never volunteered.

Jane looked closely at Geoff, a fine line between her brows. "Exactly whom did you find backstage?"

"Emily Gilchrist," said Letty, just as Geoff said, "The Marquise de Montval."

Jane's forehead smoothed out again.

"What," she asked carefully, tilting the coffeepot over one white-and-blue cup, "led you to believe that Emily Gilchrist was the Marquise de Montval?"

"Her murder had something to do with it," Geoff said mildly. "But there was also this."

Upending the reticule, he shook its contents out onto the table.

The silver pawn hit the table with a metallic ping. Four sets of eyes followed its rotations as it rolled on an elliptical path before finally settling to a stop just in front of Miss Gwen's cup.

Jane's hand stilled, and she returned the coffeepot to its place on the tray with unnecessary care. "Now, that is interesting."

She scooped up the little silver die, examining the markings on the bottom with a practiced eye.

"I heard Lord Vaughn in discussion with the marquise," said Geoff, as Jane inspected the seal, "a few minutes before I came upon Letty—and the body."

Remembering that unpleasant scene, Geoff took a quick look at Letty. Across the table, Letty was stirring sugar into her coffee with every appearance of composure. She might have carried off the pose if she hadn't put in eight lumps and stirred with more vigor than was strictly necessary.

Reaching across the table, Geoff snagged the sugar bowl before she could go for a ninth. Looking up, Letty flushed slightly and managed a sheepish smile.

Geoff felt an unpleasant constriction in his chest, like a very bad cold.

Letty's hands were red from scrubbing; her bloodied gloves were wadded into a little ball next to her cup; and her hair was still up on one side, but down on the other. Over the past few hours, she had been propositioned by his cousin, confronted with the corpse of an acquaintance, then assaulted and insulted—by him.

And her only concession to weakness was to put too much sugar in her coffee.

He didn't know whether to take off his hat to her or get down on his knees and apologize.

It wasn't just tonight. Looking at her, resolutely stirring her eight lumps of sugar into a brown sludge, it struck him, for the first time, just how trying the events of the past few weeks must have been for her. When she was the villainess, it hadn't mattered that her likeness was plastered across a thousand broadsheets, her good name dragged through the mud. Leaving for Ireland without her had seemed like an excellent way of thumbing his nose at the woman who had deliberately destroyed his only hope of happiness—and serving England while he was at it. The quintessential case of two birds with one stone.

All of that, of course, was only justifiable in the context of her culpability. Someday, he would find out exactly how she had come to be in his carriage. It didn't really matter anymore. However it had come about, he was sure of one thing: It had been an accident.

And it had hurt her far more than it had hurt him.

Jane returned the seal to the center of the table and reached for the coffeepot, resuming her abandoned duties as hostess. "You heard Lord Vaughn with the marquise?"

Geoff propped one leg against the opposite knee, forcing himself to look away from Letty. Apologies would have to come later. Apologies and…Geoff remembered that he was supposed to be carrying on a sensible discussion about Vaughn and the marquise. Anything else would also have to wait for later. "They did not appear to be on the best of terms."

"No," said Jane slowly, passing a cup down the table to Geoff. "They haven't been. Not for some time, if Vaughn is to be believed."

"I wouldn't believe that man if he told me the sky was blue," Geoff said bluntly, remembering Vaughn's artful flirtation with Letty at Mrs. Lanergan's party. No honest man spun such a polished line of patter. "But, given the outcome, Vaughn seems to have been telling the truth in this. Unfortunately, a group of stagehands carrying scenery chose that moment to pass by. I lost track of Vaughn and the marquise. Until Letty found her body."

"You believe," Jane summarized, "that while you were trapped on the other side of the scenery, Vaughn killed the marquise."

Miss Gwen made a derisive noise.

Jane silenced her with a glance. "Tell me, while you were listening, were you able to see the marquise?"

"How did I know it was she, do you mean?" He could understand Jane's question. His interactions with the Marquise de Montval in London had been few, and her most notable characteristic, her unusual coloring, was easily masked by a wig and cosmetics—masked or counterfeited. Some traits, however, were harder to hide than others. "The marquise's voice is unmistakable."

"Oh, I won't argue with you on that," said Jane. She looked oddly relaxed, as though she had come up against a difficult problem and solved it to her own satisfaction. It made Geoff decidedly uneasy. "But you didn't see her, did you? You didn't see what she was wearing?"

Geoff looked grim about the mouth. "No. The angle of the door blocked my view."

"There you have it, then." Jane indulged in a sip of coffee.

"Have what?" asked Letty, looking from Geoff to Jane. She had, Geoff noticed, smartly pushed her sugar-laden cup aside.

"The answer," said Jane. "Your theory would be very sensible—"

"Would?" Geoff raised an eyebrow. Aside from the confusion that assaulted him when confronted with the fatal combination of his wife and wheeled conveyances, all his logical faculties were in proper working order.

"If," Jane continued, "Miss Emily Gilchrist were the Marquise de Montval."

Geoff raised a restraining hand. "Just because I didn't see the marquise wearing Emily Gilchrist's clothes doesn't invalidate the theory. Consider the evidence. First"—Geoff held up a finger—"we can place Vaughn and the marquise backstage at the crucial moment. Second, you have their remarkable similarity in coloring. There aren't many women—in our circle, at least—with hair that dark and skin that white. Finally, we have the seal of the Black Tulip concealed in Emily Gilchrist's reticule. It all points the same way."

"But, you see," said Jane gently, "Emily Gilchrist can't be the Marquise de Montval."

"Why not?" asked Letty, saving Geoff the trouble of doing so.

Miss Gwen just smirked.

Jane paused a moment before dropping her bombshell.

"Because the Marquise de Montval is Augustus Ormond."

Geoff's face was a study in skepticism. "Ormond is the Black Tulip?"

"Surprised you, didn't it?" gloated Miss Gwen. "A bit of humble pie does any man good. Eat up, sirrah!"

Geoff ignored her. He looked directly at Jane. "Why Ormond?"

Jane lifted her cup, the very image of innocence.

"Because Lord Vaughn is working for me."

If Letty hadn't already been sitting down, she would have. From the smug expression on Miss Gwen's face, she had already known for some time. Geoff, on the other hand, looked as though he would have dearly liked to say something unfit for female ears, and was only restraining himself through an extreme exercise of will.

"For you, or with you?" Geoff finally clipped out.

Jane smiled to herself over her cup. "He would say 'with.'"

Letty stared down into her cup of sludge, watching the pieces form up like tea leaves.

It was all embarrassingly clear—in retrospect. Jane's banter with Vaughn in the crypt. All that rubbish about charades. At the time, the topic had struck Letty as decidedly unwise. But it hadn't been. Not when Vaughn already knew. As for the meeting in the crypt, that hadn't been by chance either, had it? Jane had always intended for Geoff to examine the pulpit, while she went below for a prearranged meeting with Lord Vaughn. Letty had been a last-minute addition to that party; neither Jane nor Vaughn had made allowances for an extra party. Not that she had posed any problem for them. Letty winced at the memory of being induced to perform the introductions—even worse, the ways she had tried to intervene to protect Jane's identity. How they must have laughed!

Letty could have happily joined her husband in a few choice words.

"Was Lord Edward Fitzgerald really Lord Vaughn's cousin?" Letty asked in a strangled voice.

"Yes." Jane regarded her sympathetically, as though she knew what Letty was thinking. "They didn't get on, though."

Geoff leaned back in his chair with an air of deceptive casualness. "How long has this been going on?"

"Lord Vaughn released the Marquise de Montval from custody on my behalf," Jane explained calmly. "Due to their prior relationship—and certain other factors, which are no one's business but Lord Vaughn's—I believed she would be less likely to question his motives."

It didn't escape Letty's attention that Jane had sidestepped Geoff's question.

Geoff tried again, with no more success.

"How did you happen to make Vaughn's acquaintance?"

"We met in Paris," said Jane.

She did not volunteer any further information.

"Do you mean to say," Letty broke in, "that Lord Vaughn has been minding the Black Tulip for you all this time?"

"Absent the echoes of the nursery, yes. I provided Vaughn with reports to be fed to the marquise, and Lord Vaughn relayed information about the marquise's movements to me." Jane arranged her hands demurely in her lap. "It was a most profitable arrangement."

"I can see your reasoning," said Geoff, with great difficulty, "but you might have saved us all a great deal of bother by informing the War Office of your little arrangement."

Jane looked prim. "I prefer not to confide everything to the War Office. They have a regrettable tendency to lose dispatches to the French."

"Let me rephrase that," said Geoff pleasantly. "You might have seen fit to inform me. Or did you not trust me to hold my tongue?"

"The shoe is not so pleasant on the other foot, is it, eh?" inquired Miss Gwen.

"A necessary subterfuge. Lord Vaughn and I agreed—"

"You mean that you decided," interjected Geoff.

"—that it would be safer for all if we kept our little arrangement a secret."

"Not from me," put in Miss Gwen smugly.

"How could I possibly have any secrets from my dearest Auntie Ernie?"

"But why would someone murder Emily Gilchrist, then?" broke in Letty, deeming it wise to change the subject.

"And how do we explain these?" Geoff gestured to the seal and paper occupying pride of place in the center of the table.

"You said Miss Gilchrist's assailant dropped them?"

"That is a losing argument," countered Geoff, leaning back in his chair. "The marquise would never have carried a pink reticule with a man's costume. She's too careful for that."

"Running about in breeches." Miss Gwen sniffed as though she smelled something unpleasant. "Disgraceful."

"As have I on occasion." Jane cast her chaperone a sideways glance ripe with amusement. "With your connivance."

"That," declared Miss Gwen, with equal parts dignity and illogic, "was different."

"The reticule?" said Geoff.

"It was quite definitely Miss Gilchrist's," said Letty. "I remember seeing it on her wrist earlier in the evening…."

"Gilchrist must have stolen the seal and letter," declared Miss Gwen. "Used them for a spot of blackmail."

"How would she know the value of them if she wasn't involved?"

"Hmph," said Miss Gwen.

"I have an idea," put in Letty, cupping her coffee cup in both hands. "What if there wasn't one Black Tulip, but two? That would explain why they both have seals."

"Why only two?" declared Miss Gwen sarcastically. "Why not three or four?"

"Why not, indeed?" echoed Jane.

Miss Gwen looked at her charge as though she suspected her of having run mad. "Absurd!"

"It might be a syndicate," argued Letty. "Like a merchant trading company."

"More like pirates," said Miss Gwen austerely, "with no respect for their betters."

Jane gazed thoughtfully at the green-and-white pattern on the wall. "Neither analogy is entirely inapt."

Letty struggled to put her idea into words. "It isn't really that shocking when you think about it. After all, you have a league. Why shouldn't they?"

"Something more than a league, I think," said Jane softly. "There was a reason that Geoffrey mistook Miss Gilchrist for the Marquise de Montval."

"To be fair"—Letty rose to her husband's defense before they could rehash that whole argument again—"there wasn't much of her face left to recognize. I only knew her by her dress."

"And by something else," prompted Jane.

Geoff drained his cup. "You can't base a theory on a chance similarity of physiognomy."

"You really believe it was chance?"

"What are you suggesting?"

"I think you know," said Jane.

"I don't," put in Letty.

"Petals," said Jane, her lips curving into a slight smile. "Petals of the Tulip."