"Oh, right." That made his second botched apology of the evening. "That was intended as more of a blanket apology."

Letty's blue eyes crinkled. "As in this blanket?"

Despite himself, the corners of Geoff's mouth turned up. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."

Averting her eyes, Letty gave a little shake of her head. "I've given up trying to figure out what you mean."

"I'll just have to make myself plainer, then." Tipping Letty's chin up, Geoff looked her straight in the eye. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that idiotic remark earlier. I'm sorry for having plunged you into all of this. I'm sorry—"

"Don't." Reaching up, Letty stopped his mouth with her hand. "Please."

The last thing she wanted was to be an object of pity, or, even worse, remorse. No one liked a hair shirt. They might believe it was good for them, but that didn't mean they actually enjoyed wearing it.

But that was only the smallest part of it. Letty couldn't have quite put it into words, but she knew, with agitated certainty, that going over the past would be the worst possible thing they could do, no matter how generous an impulse drove the enterprise. Any discussion of the past would invariably come back to Mary. And once Mary entered the conversation…how could he help but resent Letty?

"We don't need to go through all this again," Letty insisted.

Pressing a kiss to her palm, Geoff removed her restraining hand, holding it just below his chin. "I misjudged you. Horribly."

"That was all I wanted to hear," Letty lied, lacing her fingers through his. "Truly."

It wasn't, of course. But it would have to do.

"Shall we start again?" asked Geoff, his keen gray eyes intent on Letty.

Chapter Twenty-five

Letty took in the familiar, lean lines of his face; the small creases on either side of his eyes, even in repose; the flexible quirk of his thin lips; all the infinitesimal, indefinable details that had become so familiar over the past few weeks, and which she had studied covertly across the length of London's ballrooms long before that. Whatever reservations she might have paled in comparison.

"We never did have a wedding night," she ventured.

"A lamentable oversight," Geoff agreed, solemnly enough, but there was a curious light in his eyes that sent a corresponding current straight through Letty.

His free hand was already moving through her hair, freeing it of its remaining three pins. The pins didn't make a sound as they fell, muffled by the thickly woven carpet. The last heavy coil gave way, brushing across Letty's back as it slid down.

"Shall we call this a belated one?" Letty asked, her voice strangely thick to her own ears. Geoff's hands were on her shoulders, burning through the sleeves of her gown.

"You can call it anything you like." Sweeping aside the clinging strands of hair, Geoff kissed the side of her neck. "Your hair smells like chamomile. And lemons."

"The lemon is for my freckles," Letty confessed breathlessly, distracted by the gentle brush of his fingers where his lips had been. She was having a very hard time focusing on what she was saying. "It's supposed to bleach them off over time."

Geoff turned his attentions to the other side of her neck, and Letty wondered if it was possible to simply dissolve into the coverlet in a blob of pink goo. "How long have you been trying to bleach them?"

"Since I was twelve," Letty admitted, wrinkling her nose.

Geoff lightly kissed the offending appendage. "I like your freckles."

Letty shook her head at him. "No one will ever write an ode to a freckle. It just isn't done."

"You certainly don't want me to," said Geoff, with a sudden boyish grin. "My odes are terrible and my sonnets are worse."

"I know. Mary showed me that last poem, the one that began—" Letty broke off, wishing she hadn't said anything.

"'O peerless jewel in Albion's crown'?" Geoff recited resignedly, banishing Mary's ghost as smoothly and deliberately as though the awkward moment had never been. "Is there anyone in London who hasn't seen that blasted poem?"

"I've read them all," declared Letty giddily. "Every last one."

"Oh, no." Geoff's head dropped in mock shame.

"Every heroic couplet. Every deathless stanza."

"You don't want to do that," Geoff warned.

Oh, but she did.

"'O Muse! O Fates! O Love Divine!'"

Letty abandoned her pose as Geoff began stalking her across the breadth of the pink bedspread. Scooting hastily backward, Letty declaimed, "'Lend strength to my…'"

"Right." Geoff pounced.

Rolling out of the way of Geoff's hands, Letty managed to gasp out, "'…enmetered line!'" just before she found herself caught up and rolled across several yards of pink satin coverlet, in breathless, laughing confusion. They fished up on the far side of the bed, with Geoff propped up on his elbows over her. Letty's dress was decidedly worse for the escapade, and she had hair in her mouth. Making a face, Letty swiped ineffectually at it.

"Serves you right," said Geoff smugly, grinning down at her. "Mocking my poetry like that."

"You wrote it." Letty's blue eyes glinted mischievously up at him. "Don't worry. Percy Ponsonby thought it was quite good."

"Ouch." It wasn't a very convincing complaint, since his mind was otherwise engaged in the complicated engineering dilemma of how to work the buttons down Letty's back free of their moorings while she was lying on them. Any man to come up with a mathematical theorem to explain that great quandary of nature would surely win the respect not only of his peers but of posterity.

Perhaps if he rolled her just a little bit to the right…

"Oh, it gets better!" It certainly did. The shift in angle worked as smoothly as anything devised by Newton, exposing a whole row of buttons ripe for the plucking. Or, rather, the unplucking. Geoff eased the first one free. "He called it 'corking good verse.'"

"Corking?" Geoff paused in his unbuttoning and cast Letty an incredulous look. "Is that even a word?"

Letty shrugged, which had the beneficial effect of shaking an extra button free of its casing. "I don't know; you're the poet."

"Someone ought to cork Percy Ponsonby," declared Geoff absently, thinking mostly of buttons.

Letty's face went stiff, and she lurched upright so abruptly that her dress slid drunkenly off one shoulder. As Letty grabbed for it, the impact of Geoff's mistake thudded home. Since Percy was the one who had found them…Damn. Cursing himself for his carelessness, Geoff hastened to make amends.

"Not that," he said softly, cupping Letty's face in both hands. "I didn't mean that."

For a moment, Letty's lips parted as though to speak. Whatever she might have said, she thought better of it. Instead, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Geoff's with a determination that might have meant that she believed him, or might equally well have meant that she didn't. Geoff was vaguely aware that he ought to inquire, but what with one thing and another, his body deemed external considerations irrelevant.

Geoff's hands slid to where her dress gaped invitingly, narrowing to a point at the base of her spine. His hands roamed over the exposed area, the fine fabric of her chemise bunching beneath his fingers. "Is there a hem to this?" he asked huskily, his lips barely leaving hers.

"It would be a little odd if it hadn't," began Letty, but her philosophical meditations on the finite nature of fabric ended in an indrawn breath. Geoff had found the edge of the chemise all by himself, and was involved in exploring under it.

The sensation of her husband's ungloved hands stroking the length of her spine made their previous kisses seem practically proper in comparison. There was something more than a little decadent about sitting side by side, in the glare of a dozen candles, fully clothed except for the secret caress of his hands against her bare back, hidden from view by the specious propriety of her gown. In a mirror of the movement of his hands on her back, Geoff's tongue slid across her lips. Driven by pure instinct, Letty leaned into the kiss, matching his tongue with hers. There was nothing delicate or courtly about the kiss; it was an open-mouthed expression of pure passion, the sort that might have persuaded Lancelot to forsake his allegiance to Arthur, or Helen to run off with Paris.

"For that," commented Geoff hoarsely, when they could speak again, "I'll even forgive your mocking my verse."

"For that," replied Letty cheekily, "I'll even forgive you writing it."

Their eyes locked, glittering with heightened awareness. Geoff could feel a cockeyed grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, echoed by an answering expression on Letty's face, the same sort of expression he had seen on agents before they set out on a particularly exciting mission, flush with high spirits and ready to dare the devil himself. But no agent he had ever known had looked anything like Letty. With her color heightened, and her gown slipping from one shoulder, she looked like a Renaissance painter's depiction of Susanna bathing, all pink curves and unconscious sensuality.

Geoff drew in his breath at the sight.

When he spoke, it was with a certain amount of difficulty. "This is your last chance. If you want me to sleep on the divan, tell me now."

She couldn't choose the divan. It might be fitting punishment for his sins, but he wasn't sure he could survive it.

Letty ran her tongue over her lips in a gesture that was nearly Geoff's undoing.