"Shall we sit?" blurted out Letty, a little too loudly. She grabbed Geoff's arm and tugged; beneath the tightly tailored fabric of his coat, his arm muscles were as taut as the gilded iron railings that fronted the box. "Look! We're missing the first act!"

"Well, cousin?" drawled Jasper, drinking in his cousin's discomfiture with vicious satisfaction.

"The opera?" demanded Letty, placing herself determinedly in between the two men. Since they were of a height, which put each of them a good head above Letty, the maneuver did little to further her cause.

"Stay away," said Geoff, very softly, "from Mrs. Alsdale."

"Why?" taunted Jasper, lips spreading over teeth that suddenly looked too large for his mouth. "She doesn't bear your name."

Geoff took a step forward. Not much, but just enough to convey a potent physical warning. Not to be outdone, Jasper mirrored the gesture. Sandwiched between them, a black waistcoat on one side, sea-blue brocade with burgundy flowers on the other, Letty had heard enough.

"Oh, for heaven's sake! Why don't you simply hit each other and have done with it?" she suggested irately, squirming out from between them. "I'll just get out of the way and let you have at it."

Geoff almost took her up on it, right there in the middle of the Theatre Royal, with the actors cavorting onstage below, and a dozen opera glasses sure to light on their box at the first sign of fisticuffs.

After a lifetime of Jasper, Geoff had thought he was immune to provocation—and that included the memorable incident where Jasper had "borrowed" Geoff's identity for a particularly sordid evening in a gaming hell. The men who had showed up in Geoff's bedroom the following morning to collect on their IOUs had been no more amused than Geoff. He had been months untangling that little escapade.

But something about the way Jasper had been slavering over Letty's more noticeable attributes acted on Geoff's acquired tolerance like vinegar on varnish. At that moment, nothing would have given him greater satisfaction than to knock the leer right off Jasper's face with a few well-placed right hooks.

Letty muttered something that Geoff couldn't quite make out, but by the tone, it wasn't complimentary. Geoff glanced down. Glancing down was a mistake. If Jasper hadn't been holding Letty's wrap, Geoff would have wrapped it firmly around her and tied it in a double knot.

"Don't mind us!" Jane bustled up in a frill of flounces, jarring Geoff's attention away from Letty's dйcolletage. Jane's was considerably lower, but it didn't have the same unsettling effect.

"Auntie Ernie and I are just off to pay some calls," Jane announced, just as a hand crept along Letty's waist.

It did not belong to her husband.

Letty took a hasty step forward. "I'll come with you."

"Oh, no!" protested Jane, with a mischievous smile that didn't seem entirely owing to her role. "I couldn't think of making you miss the rest of the first act."

"The entertainment leaves much to be desired," said Letty darkly.

"Speak for yourself!" smirked Miss Gwen, who had also noticed the roving hand. "I, for one, am excessively diverted."

"Hmm," said Letty noncommittally, because she didn't trust herself to say anything else.

Jane fluttered her handkerchief. It was embroidered about the edges with small, pink flowers—roses, Letty was relieved to note, not carnations.

"Have you seen how many of our lovely friends are here tonight?"

The comment was ostensibly addressed to Letty, but there was an underlying edge to it that was not. Jane gestured out at the tiers of boxes that lined three sides of the theater, and began rattling off names, mostly of young women. Letty suspected that Jane had made half of them up.

Letty wondered just which lovely friends Jane and Geoff were pursuing tonight. She couldn't blame them for not telling her—her first impulse, when anyone's name was mentioned, was to turn and stare. Her companions had learned that the hard way at a masked ball at the Rotunda two nights before. Geoff had been very good about including Letty in the more minor sorts of missions, although the major ones Letty could only guess at from the deepening circles under her companions' eyes and the occasional enigmatic comment across the coffee table.

She had never seen anyone think or act quite so efficiently as Geoff. He tackled mental puzzles with the same economy with which he moved, proceeding from problem to solution in a clear line. And then, just as he had reduced a complicated code to plain English, he would say something wry and funny—and Letty would find herself swamped with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

It made no sense at all.

Seeing that Jasper was safely occupied by Miss Gwen, Letty left Jane and Geoff to their faux flirtation and drifted toward the front of the box. Sliding into a seat covered in crimson moreen, she flipped indifferently through her program. The night's entertainment was Ramah Droog: Or Wine Does Wonders, which, the managers informed her, was a comic opera written by James Cobb, and produced "with a splendor and brilliancy that reflect additional credit on the Irish stage."

Letty yawned and set the program aside. Splendid and brilliant it might be, but Letty could scarcely hear the singers over the conversation in the neighboring boxes. Below, an orange seller was giggling shrilly as she beat off the attentions of a bunch of amorous journeymen, her voice carrying far better than that of the soprano onstage. At the far end of the third tier, a pair of tipsy gentlemen were amusing themselves by casting gingerbread crumbs and bits of orange peel at a group of apprentices in the pit, unleashing a spate of profane commentary. Someone below cursed loudly as he stepped on a rotten apple, the sour juices blending with the debris of crumbs and orange pips already littering the floor. The theater had only been refurbished a few years before, but the painting of Apollo and the Muses on the ceiling was grimed with the effects of nightly candle smoke, and the king's arms above the stage had begun to flake at the edges.

Letting her eyes drift downward along the tiers, Letty spotted Lord Vaughn and his cousin—the living cousin—in a box not far from the stage. Augustus Ormond looked even more untidy than usual, his cravat tied in an uneven knot and his shirt points wilting at the edges. Next to him, as though in reproach, Lord Vaughn was making a great show of shaking out the lace over his cuffs, his elegant hands adorned with three large rings that caught the light as he moved. He was dressed in full rig, with silver lace at his throat and cuffs and the glimmer of a sword hilt at his side, more in the manner of the past century than the present.

Given the nature of the crowd in the pit, Letty couldn't blame him for coming prepared to fight his way down through the lobby.

From the box next to Vaughn's, Emily Gilchrist, decked out in pink gauze, caught Letty's eye and waved frantically. Light scintillated off the beaded reticule dangling from her wrist as it swung back and forth. Letty smiled and nodded, but Emily's guardian, the soberly garbed Mr. Throtwottle, pulled his head-strong ward back behind the gilded railing before she could respond—or take a tumble into the pit.

Tiring of the Throtwottle domestic drama, Letty shifted her attention to Lord Vaughn's box.

It was empty.

Lord Vaughn, Mr. Ormond—both had gone. Unless they were lurking in the back…Letty picked up Jane's discarded opera glass from the seat beside her. Vaughn and his cousin were definitely not in the box. Letty swung the glasses sideways. Nor did they seem to be paying calls on any of the neighboring boxes.

It seemed an odd time to go for refreshments.

Geoff would want to know, Letty decided. It wasn't that she was bored and looking for attention. Of course not. She was just being helpful.

No one had ever told her right out that Lord Vaughn was somehow implicated in the rebellion, but whatever suspicions his appearance by Lord Edward's grave had piqued had been confirmed by her companions' behavior over the past week. When Lord Vaughn left the room, either Geoff or Jane tended to follow. It did make sense; if one cousin had espoused the Irish cause, why not the other? Lord Vaughn's idle disclaimers by his cousin's grave didn't fool Letty for a moment.

Lord Vaughn's dark clothes blended easily with the crowd in the pit, but his ubiquitous accoutrements did not. As Letty scanned the theater, looking for Vaughn, a flash of light caught her eye. It was the head of Vaughn's cane, a silver serpent whose head reared over the ebony body of the cane, poised to strike. In the glare of the footlights, the serpent's fangs glowed an ominous red.

"My lord!" Letty called softly, wafting one hand behind her as she kept her eyes fixed on that telltale silver serpent. "Lord Pinchingdale!"

Behind her, Geoff broke off his conversation with Jane. "Yes?"

"I need your help"—seized with inspiration, Letty fluttered her program in the air—"translating the lyrics."

"I am, of course, always delighted to be of assistance. But the opera is in English."

"Such a pity I never learned it properly," gabbled Letty nonsensically. Tugging on his sleeve to bring him down to her level, she hissed, "Look! Lord Vaughn!"

Geoff looked straight toward Vaughn's box without having to ask which it was. Ha, thought Letty. She had been right. It was nice to be right about something after a week of uncharacteristic incompetence.

Seeing the empty row of seats, Geoff cursed beneath his breath. "Did you see where he went?"