"After you." Miles wrenched open a door to a small, booklined room, and set about lighting candles to alleviate the evening gloom, while Henrietta solicitously settled Letty into a large leather chair. The pale gauze overlay of Letty's hastily refurbished dress contrasted incongruously with the dark leather of the chair, a feminine intrusion into a masculine stronghold.

There was something rather unsettling about being in a room so clearly marked by her new husband's presence. His papers and books dominated the desk, all squared into tidy piles with the edges all lined neatly into place. The bindings on the books were as well-worn as her father's, if their placement more orderly, in a staggering array of subjects and languages. Letty made out the ornate, curled letters of the German presses, thin pamphlets in French, heavy treatises in English, and curious, narrow little books with Greek letters incised into the spine, the gilt letters glowing uncannily in the candlelight, like the aftermath of a wizard's spell.

Magic, indeed! Letty squirmed upright against the slick leather of the chair, determined not to fall prey to fancies. There was nothing at all magical about Lord Pinchingdale's departure—just something craven. Had he been planning, all along, to flee as soon as the vows were said? The study showed no signs of disarray; every drawer was neatly closed, every book in its place. Beneath a layer of indignation and champagne, Letty felt another emotion stir, an emotion that felt curiously like disappointment.

She would have thought Lord Pinchingdale many things, but not a coward.

"How long ago did he leave?" asked Letty, more sharply than she had intended.

"Half an hour. Maybe more," said Miles curtly.

Casting a reproachful look at her husband, Henrietta moved to stand protectively behind Letty.

Letty stared at the clasped hands in her lap, and rethought her question. "Why did he leave?" she asked.

Over her head, Miles and Henrietta exchanged a long look.

"He didn't even give an excuse, did he?" said Letty disgustedly.

"He doesn't really owe you one, does he?" said Miles, folding his arms across his chest like a Roman gladiator staring down a particularly uppity lion. "Not after the trick you played on him."

Letty grasped the arms of the chair and hauled herself upright. "The trick I played on him?"

"That's right," said Miles, nodding. "He told me all about it."

"What trick?"

"Oh, so you deny it."

"How can I deny it if I don't even know what I'm denying?" Letty paused and frowned, running back over the words in her head. There was something wrong with the sentence, but there was so much wrong in general that syntax and the possible odd double negative were the least of her worries.

"You mean to say that you didn't arrange for Geoff to be—" Miles paused in his role of Grand Inquisitor to cast a quizzical glance in the direction of his wife. "Dash it, Hen, what's the male equivalent of 'compromised'?"

"You think I compromised Lord Pinchingdale?" Letty's champagne-soaked brain boggled at the image.

Miles shrugged uncomfortably. "Something like that. So you can't blame old Geoff for haring off first chance he got."

"Why would I…but how would I…?" Letty broke off and tried again. "But I didn't even know about the elopement until five minutes before!"

"I told you so," said Henrietta smugly, coming around to perch on the arm of Letty's chair.

"Told him what?" asked Letty anxiously.

"That you weren't a scheming adventuress," explained Henrietta.

"You all thought…think…I'm an adventuress? Me?" It was quite as absurd as her being perceived as a fallen woman, so miserably inapt that all Letty could do was gape.

"It did seem a little unlikely," Miles admitted, scuffing one booted foot against the red-figured Oriental rug.

Henrietta sent him a repressive look. "Not that you couldn't be a brilliant adventuress if you wanted to be," she said soothingly.

Miles rolled his eyes to the study ceiling at the vagaries of women, and went to uncork the brandy decanter. Laying the crystal stopper to the side, he poured amber liquid into a round-bottomed glass.

"I thought—" After the past few minutes, it was hard to remember what she had thought, or that she was capable of thought at all. Letty shook her head to clear it, and continued, "I thought Lord Pinchingdale was sulking because I'd gotten in the way of his elopement. Because I had interfered with his plans."

She straightened and squinted a bit as Miles pressed a glass into her hand.

"Brandy," explained Miles. "You look like you need it."

Letty didn't entirely agree, but she took the glass anyway, curving her hand around the rounded bowl to keep it steady. Whether it was her hand or her glass she was attempting to keep from shaking, she couldn't quite say.

"How could he have thought I planned this? It doesn't make any sense."

"It made sense when Geoff explained it," muttered Miles, making a second trip to the brandy decanter.

"Men!" declared Lady Henrietta, swinging a slippered foot back and forth as she perched on the edge of Letty's chair. "Incapable of adding two and two, the lot of them."

"I say, Hen, that is harsh."

"It's no more than you deserve for leaping to conclusions," said Henrietta, entirely undermining her stern words by throwing a kiss.

Letty hastily looked away. She took a tentative sip from the glass Miles had handed her. Being of a lamentably healthy disposition, she had never had the opportunity to taste brandy before. Letty made a face as the first drops hit her tongue. It didn't taste nearly as pretty as it looked in the glass. It tasted almost salty. Letty took another small, diagnostic sip, and decided it wasn't nearly as bad the second time. A third sip rendered it almost pleasant, although she still couldn't understand why gentlemen seemed quite so enamored of it. But then, gentlemen were enamored of the oddest things. Cards, for example, and curricles, and punching one another for recreational purposes.

"Now that we've got all that straightened out," Henrietta continued, although Letty couldn't see that anything was straightened out at all, not even the chair, which persisted in swaying in a most alarming way, "where on earth is Geoff off to?"

Miles propped himself against the edge of Lord Pinchingdale's desk and took a fortifying gulp from his glass before venturing to respond.

"It was something to do with a horse."

Letty lifted the glass in her own hand so that the candlelight struck gold sparks off the pale liquid, and announced, "I don't think I've imbibed enough to believe that."

Miles grinned at her, a grin that both approved the sentiment and tried to make up for earlier mistrust. Letty appreciated the gesture, even if she did still feel as though someone had hit her repeatedly with a very large mallet. "Then you clearly need some more."

"What we all need," said Henrietta, protectively resting a hand on Letty's shoulder as Miles sauntered over with the decanter to top off Letty's glass, "are some explanations. Miles? Or did Geoff not bother to provide those?"

"Oh, he did. You know Geoff, thorough to a fault." Miles surrendered the decanter, stretched out his booted legs in front of him, and said apologetically, "It really was about a horse. A very special horse," he added hastily, as though that might mitigate the blow to Letty's pride. It wasn't very heartening to take second place to a horse, even a very special one. What horse could possibly be that special? It only reinforced Letty's conviction that his real motive had been to avoid her.

"I still don't see why he had to go tonight," mused Henrietta, giving voice to Letty's thoughts. "It could have waited till morning."

"No, I really don't think it could," said Miles, and there was a quelling note in his voice that Letty didn't quite comprehend. "This was a very elusive sort of animal."

"Ah," said Henrietta.

"Ah," agreed Miles.

"I don't understand at all," protested Letty.

"Have some more brandy," said Miles.

"To aid the understanding?" Letty wrinkled her nose in disbelief.

"No, to dull it. Trust me, it works," said Miles.

It wasn't working well enough. Letty's mind insisted on circling back over that awful scene in her parents' foyer—her mother had congratulated her on being compromised! Hugged her and praised her. And she, what had she done? Letty struggled to remember. She thought she had protested. She thought she had made clear that the match wasn't any more to her liking than his. But had she? Or had it all been said later, in private, with her father? That was the problem with memory, thought Letty despairingly. One knew what one had said—or thought, or felt—so one assumed that everyone else knew it, too.

Images, out of order, flashed through Letty's brain. Martin Frobisher, talking about snares. Mary, looking guileless in white at the head of the stairs. Lord Pinchingdale, barely meeting her eyes at the altar that morning, brushing a kiss across the air above her hand as though he could barely stand to be near her. And there was Martin Frobisher again, always there just when one didn't want him, talking about bagging a catch. Of course, Letty had known she hadn't planned any such thing, but to Lord Pinchingdale…Suddenly, a great many things made a good deal more sense, and Letty rather wished they didn't.

No wonder he had gone to Ireland. It was only amazing he hadn't chosen Australia.

Letty buried her head in her hands and groaned.