by Лорен Уиллиг
"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.
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.
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.
