His cousin regarded him coldly. "You do know how to make a man regret his parentage."

"The sentiment is mutual. Do you know, Jasper," remarked Geoff, "I do believe you grow more loathsome every time I see you."

"I aim to please, dear coz."

The two men bared their teeth at each other in complete understanding and mutual loathing.

"You'll stand up with me tomorrow?"

Jasper stretched his long legs out in front of him. "Delighted to. I've always wanted to preside at an execution. Yours, for choice."

"Don't forget your black cap."

"I say, old chap," Jasper called after Geoff. "If this sister were to snuff it, you couldn't marry the other one, could you? Shades of Henry VIII and all that. Deuced hard luck for you."

Geoff left Jasper's lodgings to the sound of his cousin's mocking laughter. Jasper, he thought grimly, had really missed his calling when he went into the army rather than take up his well-deserved place on the boards of Drury Lane. Geoff decidedly regretted the impulse that had driven him to Jasper's lodgings.

It had clearly been a mistake to assume the day couldn't get any worse.

Chapter Six

The groom declined to carry the bride over the threshold.

He could not, however, refuse to offer his arm, not with three hundred wedding guests thronging around them, eagerly awaiting any further tidbit of gossip that might be gleaned from the occasion. To her credit, she didn't grab or cling. She didn't need to. The deed was done. The fatal words had been said. One "I do" apiece, to be precise. As they moved through the crowded rooms of Pinchingdale House toward the ballroom, where the wedding breakfast had been laid out with enough lobster patties to satisfy even the Prince of Wales, Geoff felt the light touch of Letty's fingers burning through his sleeve like a brand.

Mary hadn't attended the wedding. She had been unexpectedly called away to minister to a sick relative, although Geoff suspected it was more an exercise in tact than charity. The identity of the relative had already changed several times in the telling.

Next to him, Letty's hair whispered against the stiff lace ruffle that framed the back of her collar. From the corner of his eye, he caught a quick, frowning glance of the sort she had been sending him all morning. Geoff pretended he hadn't seen.

He would have liked to pretend her away altogether, but she was too corporeal to ignore. The faintly flowery fragrance of her hair mingled with the warm smell of clean skin taunted his nostrils with memory, and the plump shoulders revealed by the cut of her dress were already pink from the heat of the crowded room. A freckle perched right on the edge of her collarbone. The French, who, in the lazy days of the ancien rйgime had tended to name such things, would probably have given it a silly sort of name, like a "tatez-y," or a "touch here." It beckoned the eye as effectively as a well-fluttered fan.

As to where the eye was drawn…Given the standards of the Season, her bodice was modest, even prim, but from the angle at which Geoff was looking, it did little to conceal the lush expanse of flesh so faithfully outlined in the carriage two nights before. The same night she had so effectively laid her trap.

Geoff abruptly relocated his gaze. No matter how charmingly her freckles beckoned, it didn't change the fact that she was a scheming little opportunist who had ruined her own sister's happiness in her pursuit of social advancement. Whatever her allure, he despised her for her perfidy. And himself for his.

The object of his unpleasant meditations tugged lightly on his sleeve. Geoff allotted her the most perfunctory of glances. "Yes, my sweet?"

Letty frowned up at him with eyes as wide and blue as the summer sky and as treacherous as the sea.

"Could we please go someplace private?" she whispered.

Geoff smiled and nodded as someone he had never met before proffered insincere good wishes. "Eager to make sure we can't annul?" he asked pleasantly.

It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in, and when they did, Letty colored right up to her eyebrows. Her fingers tightened on his arm. "To talk."

"We have plenty of time for that." Deftly extracting his arm, Geoff brushed the back of Letty's hand with the merest pretense of a kiss. Pretense it might have been, but it still made Letty uncomfortably warm in a way that had nothing to do with the crush of people in the room. Over her knuckles, his gray eyes bored into hers. "Till death do us part, in fact. So if you will excuse me…"

His departure was so neatly done that Letty hardly saw it happen. One moment, his fingers had tightened on hers to the point of pain; the next, he was gone, leaving her standing alone at her own wedding reception in a breach of etiquette the size of Scotland.

Clearly, he was not in the mood to talk.

Snagging a glass of champagne off a tray, Letty tilted it recklessly back, coughing as the bubbles seared the back of her throat. Liquid overflowed her glass and splashed onto the hem of her hastily refurbished best dress as someone jostled into her from behind.

"All right there, my girl?"

With a glass of negus in his hand, his white hair rumpled and his glasses askew on his nose, her father looked to be enjoying himself immensely. Letty had never been quite so delighted to see one of her parents.

"It depends on what you mean by 'all right.'" Letty paused for a moment to consider. Her reputation was in tatters, she was irrevocably married to a man who was assiduously avoiding her, and she had just spilled champagne all over the hem of her best gown. "Actually, no."

"Good, good." Mr. Alsworthy patted her absently on the shoulder. "A splendid illustration of the human comedy, isn't it, my little Letty?"

"More farce than comedy," said Letty, taking refuge in another sip of champagne. Any drama of seduction and discovery that featured her in a leading role had to be farce. All that was needed was a jealous older husband and a comic serving wench hiding in a wardrobe.

"We have all the seven sins displayed before us in fine array," Mr. Alsworthy continued cheerfully, as though Letty hadn't spoken. He waved a hand at the groups of chattering people, the dripping champagne, and the young fop who had collapsed in a corner of the room and was being discreetly hauled by his feet through the double doors by a pair of liveried footmen. "Gluttony, sloth, vainglory, even a spot of lust."

"I think you missed a few," said Letty. "That was only four."

"I did miss out envy, didn't I? Your mother is quite outdone. I saw at least three ensembles sillier than hers in the music room alone." Mr. Alsworthy rubbed his thin hands together in contemplation of it.

As always, Letty marveled at her father's ability to be so easily diverted. Why couldn't she do that? Her predicament would be far easier if she could step back and view the chattering wedding guests from the lofty height of condescension, scorning their petty gossip and pitying their small-mindedness.

Of course, her father wasn't the one being invited by elderly rouйs to participate in the reproduction of salacious French prints.

"I would find it all more amusing if I weren't the object of it," said Letty bluntly.

Mr. Alsworthy patted her reassuringly on the arm. "Buck up, my girl. There will be a new scandal next week, and you will be all but forgotten."

"But I will still be married," pointed out Letty, lifting her glass again to her lips. The bubbles didn't hurt quite so much, and the sour liquid was beginning to spread a comforting warmth from her cheekbones straight back to her ears.

"Alas, so go we all eventually. It is an unenviable but inevitable part of the human condition." Mr. Alsworthy's eyes lit upon a portly gentleman who was dipping his cup directly into the punch. "Ah, that's where Marchmain got to! His recent letter in the Thinking Man's Monthly on the implications of that man Smith's theories was entirely misguided."

"Was it?" muttered Letty.

She should have known better than to seek reassurance from her father. After all, this was the man whose idea of comforting a child afraid of the dark was to explain Plato's allegory of shadows on the wall of the cave. As a strategy, it had worked better than one might have expected. The story had put her straight to sleep, mooting the entire question of monsters in the closet.

Unfortunately, she didn't think a misconceived marriage could be similarly bored away with an explanation of the wealth of nations, not unless she slept for a very long time, indeed.

Some of the strain in Letty's tone must have penetrated her father's philosophical fervor. Mr. Alsworthy paused a moment in his pursuit of greater truths to comfort his daughter in her time of need.

"In navigating the shoals of matrimony, my best advice to you, my dear," he said briskly, "is to invest in a subscription to the circulating library and a stout pair of earplugs."

"Your very best advice is earplugs?"

"Yes, earplugs. I favor wax, although a bit of wadded cloth will do, as well." His duty discharged, Mr. Alsworthy beamed at his daughter, set his spectacles more firmly on the bridge of his nose, and said, "Pardon me, my dear. I'm off to set Marchmain straight. The man doesn't know the first thing about the principles of political economy."

With a gleam in his eye not unknown to Roman Caesars and the more bloodthirsty sort of pugilist, Mr. Alsworthy set off for the punchbowl and his prey, leaving his daughter prey to another sort of emotion entirely.