Earplugs. Letty shook her head, a crooked little smile curving her frozen lips. She didn't think they would do very much good in her situation.

Taking a fresh glass from a footman's tray, Letty scanned the crowd for her errant husband. He was standing with one arm braced against the plinth of a statue of Daphne, deep in conversation with Miles Dorrington and his wife, Lady Henrietta. As Letty looked on, he arched an eyebrow and said something to Lady Henrietta that caused her to swat him with her fan, and Dorrington to fold his arms across his chest in a gesture of mock menace. Lord Pinchingdale's lips curved fondly, and he shook his head at Lady Henrietta's retaliatory rejoinder. Watching them, Letty wanted, painfully, to be part of that charmed circle of easy camaraderie. She wanted Lord Pinchingdale to bend his head attentively toward her, as he was toward Lady Henrietta, to lift a dark eyebrow at her, with a hint of a smile lurking about his lips to take the sting from the gesture.

Letty looked dubiously down into the trickle of liquid left in her glass. Goodness, the stuff must be stronger than she had realized, to make her go all mawkish over her husband's inattention.

Husband. How absurd that a flimsy web of words, hastily gabbled by a sleepy cleric, could transform a stranger into the closest sort of relation. Wasn't there supposed to be something more to it? Affection, understanding…Letty sighed, wrapping her gloved hands around the coolness of a fresh glass of champagne, wishing she could press it against her burning cheeks instead. At this point, she would have abandoned any hopes of undying devotion and settled for a simple, "Hello, how are you?" Even a friendly smile would do.

She didn't even know if he expected there to be a wedding night. A proper wedding night, that was, involving one bed and two bodies. One wasn't raised in the country without a fairly good notion of what that entailed.

Letty firmly squelched the memory of the interior of a dark carriage, of gloved hands in her hair and warm breath against her lips and a strong arm across her back, pressing her to him as though she could never possibly be close enough. Those moments hadn't been hers. They had been borrowed from Mary under false pretenses.

But that didn't mean they couldn't come to some sort of amiable understanding, did it? Now that they were bound till death did them part, under pain of thunderbolts, the only sensible thing was to accept what couldn't be changed and make the best of it. From what Letty had seen back in Hertfordshire, one didn't need grand passion and undying devotion to make a marriage, just a certain amount of goodwill and forbearance. And earplugs. Perhaps her father was more sagacious than she had given him credit for.

She would just walk up, pause next to them, and say, "Good evening, my lord." Just a simple little Good evening, my lord. How difficult could it be?

"Good evening, my lord," Letty muttered under her breath, taking a tentative step forward. She worked at arranging her stiff lips into a suitable sort of smile. Curve the lips, bend the head slightly, try not to break the stem of the champagne glass. "Good evening, my lord."

Still yards away, Lord Pinchingdale turned his head to say something to Lady Henrietta. His eyes caught on Letty's. The genial smile froze on his face. His spine straightened and his shoulders stiffened, leaving a cold stranger in the place of the smiling man who had stood there a moment before. There was more warmth in the marble statue behind him. Letty felt an answering chill settle across her own face, and she hastily looked away, her greeting turned to ashes on her tongue. Turning her back defiantly on the little grouping in the alcove, she pretended to be fascinated by the scrapings of the musicians on their plinth on the far side of the room.

"Poor girl," said Lady Henrietta Dorrington, a small furrow forming between her hazel eyes as she watched the transparent pantomime. "How dreadful for her this all is."

"Dreadful for her?" echoed Geoff incredulously. Christian charity was all very well and good, but that was taking it a bit too far.

Geoff scowled at Henrietta, who was making sympathetic faces at Letty's back. How did Letty get to be "poor girl," while he was cast as the villain of the piece? It wasn't as though he had climbed up through her window and hauled her off to have his wicked way with her. Geoff's conscience prodded him with the memory of that ill-advised kiss in the carriage. But that had been an accident. It wasn't as though he had meant to kiss her. Her as her, that was.

The devil with it! Geoff made a face of extreme annoyance. None of it, not the kiss, not this hideous party, not any of it, would have happened had Letty not been where she was decidedly meant not to be: in his carriage. And there was no reason for her to be in his carriage unless she had chosen to be there. In one fell swoop, she had deprived him of the right to marry as he chose, and a very large dollop of pride. She was about as pitiful as Napoleon Bonaparte.

And Henrietta was supposed to be his friend. What had happened to loyalty?

"May I point out that this poor, innocent creature happened to find her way into my carriage in the middle of the night? Your sympathy seems somewhat misplaced."

"These things happen to the best of us." Henrietta dismissed the point with a wave of her hand. "Think how terrifying it must be for her, forced into a loveless marriage with a man she barely knows."

Geoff raised an eyebrow at Henrietta. "I'm not sure I appreciate being cast as a fate worse than death."

Undaunted by the eyebrow, Henrietta shot Geoff a repressive glance. "Don't be silly. I didn't mean it literally."

"I'm immeasurably reassured."

"And don't go all supercilious and sarcastic," ordered Henrietta. "For heaven's sake, go talk to her. You can't avoid her forever."

"No, but he can try," contributed her husband cheerfully, leaning comfortably back against the wall. "It was a rum thing she did, you must admit."

"You"—Henrietta wagged a finger at her husband—"are not helping."

"I'm helping Geoff," explained Miles benignly.

"Such touching loyalty," murmured Geoff automatically, his eyes still on the small figure across the room.

"I thought so," agreed Miles.

"Didn't you recently promise something about forsaking all others and cleaving unto me?" demanded Henrietta of her husband.

Miles stretched complacently. "I don't think that was the kind of cleaving they were talking about, Hen."

Henrietta's cheeks pinkened. She hastily turned and gave Geoff a little push. "Shouldn't you be doing some cleaving of your own?"

"Later," Geoff prevaricated, thinking it might be a very good thing if all newlyweds were shunted off to an island somewhere until the initial phase of insufferable gooiness wore off. The fact that he was newly wed and not feeling the least bit gooey just made their cooing that much more annoying.

Sensing the need for masculine solidarity, Miles charged to the aid of his friend. "There's no rush. They do have the rest of their lives, you know."

"You do know how to cheer a fellow up, Dorrington."

"I try," said Miles modestly.

"Well, don't."

"Buck up, old chap. Forced marriages aren't all that bad." Miles gave his wife's waist a squeeze. Henrietta smiled up from under her lashes at Miles in a way that made Geoff's future seem even bleaker than it already did.

"Yes," Geoff agreed dryly, deliberately breaking into the tender moment, "but only when it's someone you want to marry."

Miles tugged at his cuffs. "I was hoping you would miss that bit."

"It was hardly likely to escape my notice."

"Give her a chance," urged Henrietta, adding, as though it settled everything, "I have always liked her."

"Hen," said Geoff wearily, "I appreciate your attempt to shove me into married bliss. I am happy you are happy. At present, I am not happy. And I am not going to be made any happier by your nagging at me. Can't we just leave it at that?"

The stubborn tilt of Henrietta's chin spoke more clearly than words.

Viewing it easier to deflect than to argue, Geoff turned to Miles. "If you have a moment, I need to discuss something with you."

"Something…" Miles indulged in an alarming series of facial contortions designed to imply clandestine activity. He mostly succeeded in looking like the victim of an unfortunate twitch.

"Something along those lines," agreed Geoff with a faint smile, feeling some of the hard knot of bitterness lodged in his chest loosen a bit. Even the best of romances might wither eventually, but friends…those lasted. He had his friends and he had his work, and in the grand scheme of things, while his pride still smarted at how easily he had been duped, he was still luckier than most.

Naturally, he couldn't express any of that to Miles, at least not without giving him a thorough drubbing at the same time, so he simply inclined his head toward the ballroom doors, and said, "If you'd like to join us, Hen?"

Henrietta shook her head. "Letty has been accosted by the Ponsonbys. And since someone ought to rescue her…" With a reproachful glance at Geoff and a kiss blown to her husband, she was gone, moving purposefully toward the far end of the ballroom.

"Do you think we ought to help Hen rout the vultures?" asked Miles, tilting his head in the direction of his wife.

Geoff's face hardened at the memory of Percy's appearance the other night, the final tug on a trap he had been fool enough not to realize was tightening around him.