"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."