"You said Miss Gilchrist's assailant dropped them?"

"That is a losing argument," countered Geoff, leaning back in his chair. "The marquise would never have carried a pink reticule with a man's costume. She's too careful for that."

"Running about in breeches." Miss Gwen sniffed as though she smelled something unpleasant. "Disgraceful."

"As have I on occasion." Jane cast her chaperone a sideways glance ripe with amusement. "With your connivance."

"That," declared Miss Gwen, with equal parts dignity and illogic, "was different."

"The reticule?" said Geoff.

"It was quite definitely Miss Gilchrist's," said Letty. "I remember seeing it on her wrist earlier in the evening…."

"Gilchrist must have stolen the seal and letter," declared Miss Gwen. "Used them for a spot of blackmail."

"How would she know the value of them if she wasn't involved?"

"Hmph," said Miss Gwen.

"I have an idea," put in Letty, cupping her coffee cup in both hands. "What if there wasn't one Black Tulip, but two? That would explain why they both have seals."

"Why only two?" declared Miss Gwen sarcastically. "Why not three or four?"

"Why not, indeed?" echoed Jane.

Miss Gwen looked at her charge as though she suspected her of having run mad. "Absurd!"

"It might be a syndicate," argued Letty. "Like a merchant trading company."

"More like pirates," said Miss Gwen austerely, "with no respect for their betters."

Jane gazed thoughtfully at the green-and-white pattern on the wall. "Neither analogy is entirely inapt."

Letty struggled to put her idea into words. "It isn't really that shocking when you think about it. After all, you have a league. Why shouldn't they?"

"Something more than a league, I think," said Jane softly. "There was a reason that Geoffrey mistook Miss Gilchrist for the Marquise de Montval."

"To be fair"—Letty rose to her husband's defense before they could rehash that whole argument again—"there wasn't much of her face left to recognize. I only knew her by her dress."

"And by something else," prompted Jane.

Geoff drained his cup. "You can't base a theory on a chance similarity of physiognomy."

"You really believe it was chance?"

"What are you suggesting?"

"I think you know," said Jane.

"I don't," put in Letty.

"Petals," said Jane, her lips curving into a slight smile. "Petals of the Tulip."

Chapter Twenty-two

"Petals, indeed!" declared Miss Gwen. "You have been among the French too long."

"All the better to know how they think."

Miss Gwen's sentiments regarding the French mind were best expressed in a vehement snort.

"There might be something to it," said Geoff, only partly because he enjoyed contradicting Miss Gwen. "It would appeal to a certain sort of humor to employ a series of agents with the same coloring and general physical type."

"Are you saying," demanded Miss Gwen, "that if our adversary's pseudonym were 'the Rose,' we would find ourselves chasing a series of red-haired persons?"

"Possibly," said Geoff. It did sound rather foolish when put that way. But there was something to it, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. "I never liked the idea of the marquise as the Black Tulip. She was never quite clever enough."

"If all these agents are merely petals," broke in Letty, "wouldn't you need…" Letty's horticultural knowledge failed her.

"A stem?" provided Geoff, with a smile that turned Letty's cheekbones a faint pink more becoming than anything found in the botanical kingdom.

"An evil mastermind," mused Miss Gwen, happily oblivious of any undercurrents that failed to involve espionage, treachery, or torture, with a preference for the last. "I like it."

"I'm so glad our deductions meet with your approval," murmured Geoff.

"Not as a theory, young man." Miss Gwen regarded Geoff haughtily over the top of the coffeepot. "For my novel."

"But who is he?" demanded Letty, before Miss Gwen could expatiate further on her literary endeavors.

Miss Gwen cleared her throat ominously.

"Or she," Letty corrected herself. "The real Black Tulip, I mean."

Something about the phrase the real Black Tulip caught at Letty's memory, but she couldn't quite place it. Not when Geoff was watching her from the other side of the table in a way that brought back memories not best suited to the drawing room.

Letty took a hasty gulp of her coffee before remembering that it was three-quarters sugar.

"Perhaps this might be of some help," suggested Jane, reaching for the small twist of paper that had fallen out of Emily's reticule. "Have you read it yet, Geoffrey?"

"There wasn't an opportunity."

"Wasting good time in dalliance, no doubt," sniffed Miss Gwen.

Avoiding Geoff's eyes, Letty said hastily, "Have you considered Mr. Throtwottle?"

"Mr. Who?" demanded Miss Gwen.

"Throtwottle," Letty repeated. "Emily Gilchrist's guardian. Or, at least, that is what she claimed. If she was an agent, it seems likely that he was one, too."

"No self-respecting agent would adopt so ridiculous a name as Throtwottle," declared the faux Mrs. Grimstone. "It's absurd."

"All the more reason why he might be," Jane said briskly, frowning over the paper. Either the code was proving intractable, or she didn't like what she was reading. "How better to hide your devious purposes than picking a name so outlandish no spy would use it?"

While Miss Gwen considered this new angle, Geoff took up the line of questioning. "What do you know of Mr. Throtwottle?"

"Not terribly much," admitted Letty. "We were all on the packet from London together, but I saw far more of Miss Gilchrist than I did of her guardian. When he did appear, it was usually to misquote bits of Latin." She cast a rueful glance at Geoff. "He was exceedingly tedious."

Geoff's lips turned up at the reference to their earlier conversation, a private link between the two of them. "You were meant to find him tedious," he said.

"It worked," said Letty. "Both of them."

"Yes, and?" broke in Miss Gwen. "Do get on. We don't have all night."

"We do, actually," said Geoff. He glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was only just past one. "Unless you have other plans for the evening."

"I don't know about you, but I intend to spend the rest of the night as the good Lord intended. In slumber," she added pointedly.

"Probably hanging upside down like a bat," Geoff whispered to Letty, who bit down on a shocked giggle, her large blue eyes glowing in a way that reminded him rather forcibly that the good Lord had intended the night for things other than slumber.

They were married, after all.

"All right," Geoff said briskly, suddenly eager to have the meeting over and done with. "Let's get on. Is there anything else you can recall?"

"Ye-es," said Letty. "Tonight, at the theater, Emily leaned over the box and waved at me. I thought she was just—"

"Exhibiting her usual lack of propriety?" put in Miss Gwen.

"Something like that. But she seemed too eager. Desperate, even. Her guardian pulled her back into the box. I thought he was just scolding her for leaning out like that. But when I looked back, they were gone."

"Interesting," pronounced Miss Gwen, forgetting to be snide.

"Do you think she was trying to communicate something to you?" asked Geoff.

"Possibly," said Letty. She stared down at her reddened knuckles, reassembling shards of memory. "I think she had before, too, only I was too thick to see it. She brought up the Pink Carnation and the Purple Gentian a good deal. At the time, I simply put it down as another example of her frivolity."

"She thought you were a spy," said Geoff soberly.

"You were traveling under an alias," pointed out Miss Gwen, looking superior. "Albeit a clumsy one."

"Ironic, isn't it?" Letty said, shaking her head.

"Ironic" wasn't the word Geoff would have used. Bloody terrifying was more like it.

"She must have been trying to sound you out," Geoff said grimly. "Either to elicit information from you, or…"

"Or?" demanded Miss Gwen.

Geoff frowned. "When I overheard the marquise and Lord Vaughn, they were discussing eliminating an unnamed party who had become a liability. I assumed," he added, nodding to the others at the table, "that they were referring to one of you."

"They won't be rid of me that easily," declared Miss Gwen.

Letty caught her husband's eye. "You think they were talking about Emily Gilchrist."

"It does follow," said Geoff, tactfully refraining from rehashing the details. Letty was grateful for that. Even if Emily Gilchrist had been a hardened spy, it wasn't pleasant to picture her lying in the hallway of the Crow Street Theatre. "My money is on Vaughn."

"Why Vaughn?" asked Letty.

"The sort of wound we saw isn't in the marquise's usual style. She prefers the stiletto."

"But in her current costume," put in Jane, without looking up from the scrap of paper in front of her, "a knife might be more apt."

Letty preferred not to think too deeply about the nature of Emily's wound; it had been bad enough seeing it once. Instead, she devoted herself to chasing down that elusive sliver of memory. Something about a tulip…

"He might be double-crossing you, you know," Geoff was saying.

"There is no real Black Tulip!" exclaimed Letty.

Three sets of eyes fastened on Letty. Even Jane glanced momentarily up from her labors.