Chapter Twenty

The hand was attached to an arm, flung out to the side, like a young child sleeping. And the arm…

It was the dress that Letty recognized, pink gauze over white muslin. It had been embroidered around the edges with silver thread, like the brightly beaded pink-and-silver reticule she had been carrying earlier that evening. Her skirts were rumpled where she had fallen, the pale fabric streaked with grime. Veiled by her tumbled mass of black curls, her head was twisted to the side, away from Letty.

"Miss Gilchrist?" Letty exclaimed. "Emily? What are you doing back here?"

Emily Gilchrist didn't respond.

She must have been knocked over by the same rude person who had shoved past Letty. With the corridors so narrow and so crowded, it was no wonder she had banged her head on something as she fell. That, realized Letty, must have been the noise she had heard, that sickening crunch. Not that any of that particularly mattered at the moment. The important thing was to determine how badly Emily was hurt and get her back to her guardian.

Letty sank to her knees beside Emily, murmuring soothing and pointless platitudes. "It's going to be all right. You've just hit your head. Don't worry."

She started to smooth back Emily's tangled hair, grimacing as sticky moisture seeped through the netting of her gloves. A metallic tang underlay the heavy floral scent of Emily's perfume, as sickly sweet as dead flowers.

"Drat," muttered Letty, rubbing her fingers together.

Emily must have hit her head harder than she had realized. Bandages, thought Letty briskly. She had left her shawl in the box, so her petticoat would have to do. It wasn't a particularly sturdy fabric, but it would serve to stop the bleeding until she could find something better. Letty had dealt with head wounds before; her little brother was constantly falling off horses, tumbling out of trees, and jumping off walls to see if he could fly. He hadn't been able to yet, but that never seemed to discourage him.

"Nothing to worry about," she said soothingly, as much for herself as the unconscious Emily, placing one hand on Emily's temple and the other behind her head. If she could turn her head, she might have some idea of how bad a cut it was. A very small cut on the head, Letty had learned from her brother, could yield quite a bit of blood, more disgusting than it was dangerous. "You'll be right as rain as soon as we get you home and bandaged up."

Moving very slowly, trying not to jar Emily more than she had to, Letty eased her head sideways. Her long locks of hair, matted and sticky with blood, fell to the side, leaving long, dark streaks on Letty's skirt and the backs of her hands.

Stains were the least of Letty's concerns.

Scuttling backward, Letty let Emily's head fall from her lap. It hit the ground with an unpleasant thud, but Letty didn't think Emily would notice. Emily wasn't going to notice anything, ever again.

Shaking, Letty staggered to her feet, bracing herself with one hand against the wall. She wasn't going to be ill, she told herself. She would not be ill. Her stomach begged to differ. Letty pressed both hands against her abdomen, fighting for control, and wishing she hadn't eaten quite so much for supper. She was still clutching the reticule. As she pressed her clenched hands against her stomach, Letty could feel each individual bead biting into her palm. She welcomed the sting. Anything to take her mind away from the revolution in her stomach, and the horror that had been Emily's face.

Or what was left of it.

Letty didn't hear the footsteps until they were almost upon her. Whoever it was moved with the subtlety of someone accustomed to silence, his slow steps scarcely audible in the dusty corridor. Acting on instinct alone, Letty whirled, striking out with the reticule. A large hand grabbed hers by the wrist, forcing it down.

Mindlessly, she struggled, hearing only the hoarse rasp of her own breath. She didn't want to die. Not now. Not like Emily.

"Letty! For heaven's sake!"

The harsh whisper didn't sound at all like his normal voice, but Letty would have known that tone of annoyance anywhere.

Going limp with relief, Letty ceased her resistance so abruptly that they both staggered. Her husband grabbed her shoulders to steady her—or restrain her. Letty didn't care. She was just glad he was there.

"Geoff?"

There was a series of reddening scratches on his cheek, courtesy of the reticule that she'd swung with more force than she realized. She lifted a hand to them, drawing it away again just before her fingers would have brushed his skin.

"Sorry," she said, inadequately.

"You might have confined yourself to a simple hello." Geoff had regained his usual urbane tone, but his breathing was still slightly ragged. "What was that all about?"

"I thought…Oh, Geoff." Letty lifted a balled fist to her mouth.

Geoff froze, his expression changing in an instant from irritation to concern. Catching Letty's hand, he raised it to examine the dark smears of blood that stained the fabric. "What happened? Did Jasper—"

Letty shook her head, drawing in breath on a choked laugh. Somehow, the notion of Jasper struck her as comical. Jasper had ceased to matter, cast into the abyss of the insignificant. "Not Jasper. I wish—no. Over there."

Letty lifted one hand and jabbed unsteadily to the left. She hoped she was pointing in the right direction, because she didn't want to look to make sure. Once had been enough.

"Good God." Geoff pressed Letty's head into his chest. "Don't look."

From the region of his waistcoat, he heard a shaky voice say, "I already did."

Geoff amended his advice. "Pretend you didn't."

Letty vented her feelings in an incredulous puff of hot air, but she stayed where she was.

Ignoble though it was, Geoff's first reaction was relief that it wasn't Letty lying there. Her hair smelled faintly of chamomile, clean and wholesome as summer. Geoff would have liked to bury his nose in it, and drown out the stench of death.

His second was a great deal more professional. Keeping Letty's head firmly lodged in his waistcoat, Geoff sidled closer, examining what he could see of the corpse. The skirts were rucked up, revealing a webbing on the calf that might have been a particularly outrй form of garter, but was more likely a sheath of some sort. It would have to have been a very small knife, one small enough not to make a bump under the fine muslin currently in fashion for evening wear. Something thin and deadly, like a stiletto.

The face was nearly unrecognizable, so covered with blood that Geoff, even with eyes well used to the gloom of the backstage area, could scarcely make out the nature of the wound. One staring eye regarded him through a screen of dark hair. The other…There wasn't much left of it. Something sharp, broader than the Black Tulip's preferred stiletto, had entered the woman's left eye, cutting deep. The knife's trajectory had continued downward, on an angle, slicing through the soft tissue of the woman's cheek, and ending somewhere in the region of her upper lip. At a guess, she had been kneeling when the blow struck. There were no signs of a struggle; at least, none that he could make out. None of the scenery leaning against the walls had been overturned, and the dust had only been disarranged by the impact of the woman's body, not by a scuffle.

Geoff frowned, trying to reconstruct the scene. Two confederates, walking in apparent amity. A disagreement occurred—a disagreement, or a prearranged double-cross. Geoff tended to lean toward the latter. The abandoned corridor made an excellent venue for an unofficial execution, if one were so inclined. The woman would have bent down to sweep her knife out of its sheath. As she did so, her intended victim grabbed his own knife, stabbing down. She must have looked up just as he struck, hence the injury to the eye. The force of such a blow would have impelled her body backward, leaving her sprawled on the floor where Letty had found her.

Geoff had a fairly good idea of just who the two actors in that little drama had been. The woman's features might be too marred for a positive identification, but the long black hair and the painfully white skin, made even paler in death, were unmistakable.

Whatever alias the Marquise de Montval had been hiding under, she wouldn't be using it any longer.

Against his waistcoat, Letty began to squirm. "You can let me go now," she said, her voice only slightly muffled. "I'm all right."

"Are you sure?" One's first dead body—at least, he assumed it was Letty's first dead body—was never a pleasant sight, and the marquise's demise had been messier than most. Geoff loosened his hold, but didn't release her.

There was a crease in Letty's cheek where she had pressed against a seam of his coat, and her hair was rumpled, but there was a determined cast to her expression that struck Geoff as surprisingly gallant, like a very small knight steeling herself to enter the ogre's den.

Letty's eyes drifted sideways in the direction of the slumped shape on the floor.

"She was so pretty…so young."

"Not as young as you think," Geoff said quietly.

"When I saw her lying there…I thought she was alive. I thought she had just fallen and hurt herself. I thought—" Letty broke off, looking up at him with dazed blue eyes. "Geoff, why would anyone do this? To Emily?"

"Emily?" Geoff asked sharply.

"Yes. Emily Gilchrist."

"You knew her." Geoff's expression turned intent, his eyes fixed on Letty's face.