Geoff touched a finger lightly to the central stone, remembering, as through a glass darkly, the resentment that had roiled through him when he had placed it on her finger nearly a month ago. It seemed a very long time ago, a tale told about someone else. A very rash, selfish, and decidedly blind someone else, Geoff thought, resting his chin on the top of her head. Her hair smelled pleasantly of chamomile, like the old herb garden at Sibley Court in summer.

They would have to find something more appropriate for her when they returned to London. Aside from being ugly in itself, the Pinchingdale betrothal ring was far too heavy for Letty's hand. The stone spanned all the way from the base of her finger to the knuckle, too large for the delicate bones of her finger. A smattering of freckles testified that someone had been out without her gloves, and the paler mark of an old scar showed along the side of her thumb. Instead of the fashionable oval, her palm was nearly square. The sturdy shape was belied by the fineness of the bones that composed it, vulnerability masked beneath a shield of capability. Beneath the weight of the emerald ring, her hand seemed disconcertingly delicate.

He had never thought of her as particularly young or small before, but sleeping, she seemed smaller, softer. The top of her head rested just against his breastbone, nestled against him as trustingly as a child's.

The rest of her, however, did not feel the least bit childlike. If he hadn't feared waking her, Geoff would have squirmed as far to the other side of the carriage as possible. Instead, he nobly gritted his teeth and tried to recall the personal dossiers of every French spy currently resident in London. In alphabetical order.

He had only made it as far as "Carre, Jean" when the carriage drew up before a secluded cul-de-sac. Trying to jar her as little as possible, Geoff eased an arm beneath Letty's knees. Carefully maneuvering her dangling legs around the doorframe, he carried her out of the carriage, painstakingly navigating the folding steps.

Letty stirred as he started down the walkway to the house. Raising her head, she peered bemusedly down at the ground, as if trying to figure out how she had come to be dangling in midair.

"I can walk," she said fuzzily, squirming a bit.

"Are you sure?" Geoff made no move to relinquish her. "I'm perfectly happy to carry you."

Pressing her eyes together, Letty stifled a yawn with the back of her fist and nodded. "I can manage."

She effected her descent by the simple expedient of linking her arms around Geoff's neck, turning sideways, and sliding down, inch by agonizing inch. Agonizing for Geoff, that was. Letty, groggily rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, seemed entirely unaware of the distress she was inflicting.

She gaped at the vista in front of her. "Good heavens. Where are we?"

Geoff held out an arm to steady her. "Home. At least, for the moment."

The house in front of her looked as out of place among the orderly rows of red brick as a camel caravan outside Dublin Castle. It was scarcely larger than a garden folly, a miniature fantasy of a house that billowed out of its own private bower of flowering plants. In the light of the torchieres, the gleaming white stone had a ghostly, insubstantial glow to it, as though at any moment the house might tremble and blow away like a silk scarf on the night breeze. The shape of the building added to the sense of movement; the building was all curls and curves, from the rounded arches of the fanlight to the bay windows that undulated from the walls of the first floor. The whole was surmounted by a whimsical dome, more suited to the pleasure palace of a Baghdad caliph than an island marooned in a chilly northern sea.

Geoff opened the door with a key as ornately curved as the oval shape of the entrance hall. To either side, Letty saw doll-sized salons opening off, one upholstered in a ravaged red reminiscent of depictions of Pompeii, painted with murals representing the sack of an unfortunate city. The women—and they were all women—appeared to be fleeing in a considerable state of upset and undress. Letty could only assume the men had been away with the vanquished army, hopefully somewhat more clothed, although the statues that flanked either side of the staircase, ebony blackamoors lifting gilded torches, were as bare as their counterparts on the wall.

"You must be tired." Geoff hustled Letty up the stairs before she could peer into the second salon.

"Not anymore." Letty craned her neck back to try to get a better look at the truly peculiar bas-relief that arched above the bedroom door. Geoff hastily ushered Letty inside before she could attain more than a muddled impression of a very enthusiastic game of leap frog in fine Grecian style.

Looking increasingly ill at ease, her husband set his candelabrum down on a marble-topped table supported by two very playful caryatids who made Letty's pectoral development look positively anemic.

She was beginning to have her doubts about the sort of establishment to which Geoff had brought her, especially when she spied the open book on the bedside table. Bound in gilt-edged leather, it had the sort of richly illuminated illustrations one generally associated with medieval manuscripts. From the looks of it, Letty doubted the monks would approve.

Geoff slapped the cover closed, but not before Letty caught a glimpse of two people entwined in a way that challenged all the known laws of gravity.

"The owner is very fond of…philosophy," prevaricated Geoff.

Letty reached for the book. "That didn't look like Aristotle to me."

"Aristotle explored the motions of heavenly bodies." Geoff whisked the volume neatly into a drawer and slammed it shut.

"Not those sorts of heavenly bodies," said Letty emphatically, nodding toward the drawer. "There was nothing celestial about it."

"Well, actually…never mind." Geoff shook his head. "I don't know what I was about to say."

Letty wandered in a bemused circle around the room, her eyes roving over the furnishings. It would be an understatement to say she had never seen anything quite like it before. She had never even imagined anything like it. An immense bed dominated the center of the room, as much with its opulence as with its size. Simpering golden Cupids supported a demi-canopy of gold-shot pink gauze. Yards of pink silk billowed across the bed, tufted and trimmed in yet more gold. All that pink made Letty's eyes ache.

Directly above was the dome she had spied from outside. In the daytime, inserts of tinted glass would cast colored shadows across the bed. Letty could only imagine how the yellow and blue and green would clash with the pink coverlet. Or how the colors would reflect off the skin of anyone lying on the bed, pillowed in pink and lit by the stained glass.

Her cheeks turning pinker than the coverlet, Letty tilted her head back and conspicuously busied herself examining the dome. Above the glass, inscribed on the underside of the dome, the gods held court at Olympus, in the style of domes the world over. Departing from the usual hierarchy, this dome was dedicated to Aphrodite rather than Zeus.

Aphrodite appeared to be having a simply marvelous time.

"Whose house is this?" demanded Letty.

Geoff stuck both hands in his pockets with the look of a man determined to brazen it out. "It belongs to a friend of mine."

Letty cast him a quick look.

"Not that sort of friend," Geoff amended. "A chap I went to Eton with keeps this house for his lady friends."

"Hmm," said Letty noncommittally. Given the nature of the decorations, she suspected that the term "lady" was singularly inapt.

Geoff moved to block a porcelain clock, which featured an amorous shepherd and his lass, enjoying the sorts of pastoral pleasures at which poets only dared hint. Given the plethora of equally objectionable items, the action was singularly ineffectual.

"Since the house isn't currently occupied," Geoff explained rapidly, "I asked if I could borrow it. It's set well back from the street, and the servants are generously paid to look the other way."

That brought Letty to a halt. Pausing in front of a small marble statue, she stared over her shoulder at Geoff. "Your friend probably thought…"

"There's no probably about it."

Letty's face flared with sudden color. "So, all the servants must think…"

"Yes."

"Oh." Letty sank down on the bed, an endearingly prim figure in her simple black dress against the billowing opulence of pink silk that surrounded her. She rubbed her forehead with the heel of one hand. "I do seem to be having a varied career recently."

Geoff's conscience dealt him another uncomfortable blow. Now, he supposed, was as good a time as any to begin apologizing for all the manifold wrongs he had visited upon her. It was a matter of pure justice, he assured himself, not an attempt to get his wife into bed.

Well, not entirely.

"I am sorry," said Geoff, joining her on the pink coverlet. The feather tick sagged obligingly.

"It's really not all that bad," remarked Letty, cocking her head to inspect the pattern of cavorting deities on the ceiling. A sudden stiltedness betrayed her awareness of their new proximity, but she didn't pull away. "As long as one avoids the pink."

"The pink?" Was that shorthand for "Carnation"? Letty's way of telling him that a damaged reputation was manageable but spies were not? Funny, Geoff had thought that was the bit Letty minded least of the whole affair.

"The coverlet," Letty elucidated. "The large and very bright object on which you happen to be sitting." She patted it in illustration.