And "not" lusting after one's former fiancйe's sister.

That was what lay at the heart of it. Not the pure fact of his having kissed her, not the circumstances of having kissed her, dead body and all, but the wanting to kiss her. Even worse, he had enjoyed it. And certain parts of his anatomy were quite eager to enjoy it again.

He was, Geoff realized with painful clarity, in the anomalous situation of despising himself for betraying his former love by lusting after his wife.

He had become an exercise in illogic.

Handing Letty down from the carriage, Geoff made a concerted effort to regain his usual air of urbane detachment. "We seem to be making a habit of this," he said.

"Of…?" Letty blinked at him, her lips swollen and her hair rumpled.

She looked, in short, alarmingly kissable. Enough so to make any man knock aside his scruples about neighbors' goats and former fiancйes, and take up Luther's advice to sin boldly.

"The carriage," Geoff clipped out, moving so rapidly up the front steps that Letty had to run to keep up.

"Oh." Letty's voice went flat as she realized what he meant, another kiss in another carriage, and the unhappy consequences. "Right. That."

"Yes," agreed Geoff, wishing he had never brought up the topic. He brought the knocker down against the door with more force than necessary. "That."

Much to Geoff's relief, a maid opened the door almost immediately. Recognizing Letty and Geoff, she admitted them without question.

"We'll want a pot of coffee in the parlor." Geoff glanced at Letty's bloodstained hands and dress, incongruously grisly in the tidy entryway. "And a basin of water and some towels."

The maid curtsied and took herself off, not betraying any surprise at the gruesome state of Letty's garments. She had clearly seen worse.

Wrapping her offensive hands in her skirt, Letty preceded Geoff up the stairs, feeling her temper rise with each additional step. It wasn't that Letty objected to the water—she knew she needed it—but the fact that Geoff had ordered it made her feel even more of a horrible hag than she did already. And that comment about the carriage! How could he? What happened to their so-called truce? Clearly, it had disappeared back there in the carriage, along with his handkerchief—and her pride. She had been so pathetically pleased with his attentions, so happy to think that he might care just a little bit about her. That he might want to kiss her. Not Mary.

So much for that hope.

She knew she wasn't Mary, and that he hadn't wanted to marry her, but that gave him no right to kiss her and then throw that back in her face.

Who had kissed whom?

On second thought, Letty would have preferred not to answer that question. If she went back and thought, really thought, about what had just happened in the carriage, it was rather unclear who had kissed whom. Those little kisses along her cheek had, at the time, seemed like the inevitable prelude to a grand romantic encounter. But they might have been intended as nothing more than a calming caress.

Calming. Ha! There had been nothing calming about them. And he certainly hadn't shied away when she kissed him back.

Letty stomped up the last few steps with more vigor than grace. If he regretted the kiss, he should just say so, plainly, not go about making snide remarks about carriages. She hadn't expected words of love, but to bring up their prior interlude in a carriage—where he believed her to be her sister—was a bit much. It made her feel cheap. Interchangeable. Unwanted.

It made it all the worse that all of those were true.

On the landing, Geoff reached for the parlor door. He was as unruffled as ever, his expression as smooth as the impeccably tailored lines of his coat. Letty could feel her hair hanging drunkenly to one side, moored by three remaining hairpins. Her dress was streaked with dried blood like a tricoteuse who had sat too near the guillotine, and her lips felt about three times their normal size.

Letty marched up in front of her husband. "We need to get a few things straight."

"Do we?" Geoff opened the parlor door and gestured for her to precede him.

"Yes, we do." The words lost some of their force when she had to twist her head to deliver them. That just made Letty angrier, especially as she was quite sure he had done it deliberately.

Letty whirled to face him, nearly banging into his waistcoat. No man had a right to move that swiftly or that silently. Letty added that to her growing list of grievances.

"That carriage comment was completely unconscionable."

"I shouldn't have said it," Geoff agreed, with every appearance of sincerity.

"And you shouldn't have—oh." Letty refused to be mollified. Wearing a track on the little green-and-white carpet, she gesticulated helplessly. "You may say that now, but it's going to come up again. And again, and again…"

"I believe I have the idea." Geoff sounded amused.

Letty stopped abruptly in her perambulations. It might be amusing to him, but it wasn't to her.

"No, you don't. I know we agreed not to talk about—about what happened that night, but we can't go on like this, just poking around the subject. We might as well have it out now. And you're going to listen this time." Letty folded her arms across her chest and stared defiantly at her husband. "I didn't try to trick you. It was all a nasty accident."

"I know."

Prepared to forcibly present her evidence, Letty stopped short, all the wind knocked out of her sails. "You know?"

Geoff favored her with a wry smile. "Credit me with some sense."

Letty wasn't sure she was willing to go that far.

"When did you come to that conclusion?" Letty asked suspiciously.

"Some time ago."

"I've only been here a week."

"I've always been a quick study."

"Modest, too," said Letty, but her voice was less hostile.

"And—ever so occasionally—wrong. Not frequently, but it does happen."

"Was that an apology?"

"Was it that poorly delivered? I'll have to try again later. I appear to be singularly maladroit tonight."

"Not in everything," said Letty, before she had time to think better of it. Her cheeks turned an uncomfortable pink. "I mean…er."

"Thank you," said Geoff, with a smile that sent tingles straight down to Letty's toes, "for sparing my ego."

"Don't let us interrupt," cackled Miss Gwen, pounding her parasol against the floor for emphasis.

Letty and Geoff sprang apart like a pair of scalded cats as Jane and Miss Gwen appeared in the doorway, still wearing their respective costumes.

"No, that's all right. We were just—" More flummoxed than Letty had ever seen him, Geoff looked helplessly around as though the answer might be hidden somewhere among the delft-ware on the dresser.

"—sitting down," Letty finished. She had just pulled out a chair, and was about to suit action to words, when a sudden movement from Jane stopped her.

"Your hands," said Jane.

Letty automatically looked down, staring idiotically at the streaks of dried blood that marred her gloves.

"Oh, yes," gabbled Letty. Fumbling with the buttons, she stripped off the offending gloves, but the liquid had seeped through the rough mesh, leaving a macabre checkerboard of dark stains. Letty scrubbed ineffectually at one hand with the other. "I forgot about that."

"A lady," pronounced Miss Gwen, eyeing Letty with some disfavor, "never goes out in public with blood on her hands."

Having satisfied herself that Letty wasn't hurt, Jane looked to Geoff, her curls and ruffles sitting ill with her alert expression. "What happened?"

Geoff didn't waste time in trivialities. "The Black Tulip is dead."

For once, even Miss Gwen was struck silent.

As they stood there, frozen in tableau, the maid entered with a basin, a length of toweling draped over her arm.

Jane waited until the maid had departed before she spoke.

"Did you—?"

"No," said Geoff, as Letty plunged her hands gratefully into the warm water, scrubbing at the stains with more vigor than science. "We found her backstage in the Crow Street Theatre. Someone had driven a knife through her eye."

The maid, returning with the coffee tray, did not so much as rattle the cups at the mention of murder.

Unblinking, she placed the tray on the table before Jane. Jane nodded her thanks, and the maid departed as noiselessly as she had come. The staff, Letty knew, were all involved in some way with the League, but Letty had never asked, and Jane had never volunteered.

Jane looked closely at Geoff, a fine line between her brows. "Exactly whom did you find backstage?"

"Emily Gilchrist," said Letty, just as Geoff said, "The Marquise de Montval."

Jane's forehead smoothed out again.

"What," she asked carefully, tilting the coffeepot over one white-and-blue cup, "led you to believe that Emily Gilchrist was the Marquise de Montval?"

"Her murder had something to do with it," Geoff said mildly. "But there was also this."

Upending the reticule, he shook its contents out onto the table.

The silver pawn hit the table with a metallic ping. Four sets of eyes followed its rotations as it rolled on an elliptical path before finally settling to a stop just in front of Miss Gwen's cup.

Jane's hand stilled, and she returned the coffeepot to its place on the tray with unnecessary care. "Now, that is interesting."

She scooped up the little silver die, examining the markings on the bottom with a practiced eye.