"I entered and found the Marquise de Montval as you see her now. That is the sum total of it." Vaughn's eyes flicked almost imperceptibly toward the still form on the settee. "Teresa and I had more subtle means of causing injury to each other. We had no need for knives."

"Even the sharpest of tongues cannot do the office of steel."

Jane, thought Letty, seemed determined to out-Vaughn Lord Vaughn when it came to couching speech in obscurity. It was enough to make Letty yearn for good commonplace words of one syllable. Perhaps she should just hold up two cards, saying "yes" and "no," and demand that Vaughn point to the one that best answered the question "Did you kill the marquise?"

Knowing Lord Vaughn, he would probably find a way to point with ambiguity.

"Credit me with the common sense not to soil my own nest," said Lord Vaughn. Ambiguously.

Jane leaned back in her chair, propping one leg against the other in a studiedly masculine gesture. "That might be all the more reason to do so."

"Not," said Vaughn, "when it entails a stain on the upholstery. That fabric will be devilish hard to replace. It came from France."

Vaughn's eyes met Jane's in a way that suggested far more than a concern for interior decoration.

Letty was sure of it when Jane said, in a much milder tone, "When did you last see her alive?" For whatever reason, the interrogation had been abandoned.

"Half an hour ago?" Vaughn shrugged, as though it were of little matter, but Letty noticed that he avoided looking at the settee. A sign of guilt? Or something else?

"How would someone have entered without the servants hearing?" demanded Letty.

"You did," said Vaughn smoothly. "My cousin—no, Mrs. Alsdale, not that cousin. Nor"—he nodded to the couch—"that cousin."

Letty regarded him with unconcealed distaste. "Your cousins seem to experience considerable ill fortune."

"In being connected to me? In that case, it is an affliction to which a considerable portion of the peerage falls heir. My cousin Kildare, who is, I am sure you shall be relieved to hear, in the pink of health, was kind enough to afford me the use of his home. His staff, however, leaves much to be desired. The cook…But I digress. I returned from an invigorating visit to my tailor to find—I don't need to tell you, do I?"

"If," said Letty, leaning very heavily on the word, "your story is true, wouldn't you have crossed paths with the murderer?"

"My dear girl." Vaughn gestured expansively, snifter in one hand, quizzing glass in the other. "Look about you. The place is riddled with doors."

There was no denying the truth of that. Aside from the door to the front hall, there were doors, cleverly aligned with the plasterwork, leading off to rooms on either side. In addition to the doors, long-sashed windows offered a further means of egress. The room was above ground level, but not by much; a tall man would have no difficulty hoisting himself up on the sill, and exiting again by the same means.

"You have quite the wrong end of the stick," continued Vaughn. "There is someone who has considerably more reason than I to wish to see Teresa permanently silenced."

"And that would be?" Jane tilted her head quizzically.

"I think you know."

"It doesn't necessarily follow. Would a hunter kill his trustiest hound?"

"He would," said Vaughn, "if the hound bit him. Teresa was never good at bowing to the dictates of others." Vaughn swirled the liquid in his glass, watching its progress with as much interest as if it had been the finishing line at Newmarket. "Recently, she had taken umbrage with the activities of a lesser personage in her organization."

"Emily Gilchrist."

Letty didn't realize she had spoken the name aloud until Vaughn's eyes met hers. He looked, she realized, surprisingly tired. Under all the bravado of his manner, fatigue lined the sides of his face and pouched beneath his eyes.

"The very one." The shadows beneath his eyes might betray him, but there was no trace of weakness in the honed cadences of his voice. "Teresa believed she needed to be removed. She broached this with her colleague. Her colleague refused."

"Ah," said Jane.

"Ah, indeed. Such a little point, to cause such a great reckoning."

A little point. Having seen the removal of Emily Gilchrist, Letty wasn't sure she could agree with Lord Vaughn's characterization of the situation. What was it that Geoff had said last night? Something about the marquise not being worthy of her sympathy. Remembering Emily's ravaged face, she found it hard to regret the great reckoning that had been wreaked on the still form on the settee.

"Teresa took it upon herself to remove Miss Gilchrist. The rest"—Vaughn waved a hand in the direction of the settee—"is pure conjecture."

"You believe this was done in retaliation, then."

"Perhaps. It might have been meant as a warning to the others. It was a matter of order. And of power. Uneasy lies the head, and all that. No ruler can brook such a blatant challenge to his authority and expect to remain long on his throne. And so, farewell, Teresa."

For someone who claimed to be uninvolved, Lord Vaughn seemed suspiciously well informed.

"By ruler," Letty asked, "do you mean the Black Tulip?"

"As you will. That name will do as well as any other. Teresa referred to her colleague only as monseigneur. A quaint touch, don't you think?"

"It needn't have been a literal rank," mused Jane. "In French?"

"Invariably. It is," added Vaughn, "not necessarily an indicator of his place of origin. Teresa had gone native in all things. She even took to calling herself Thйrиse for a time. Or simply 'the marquise,' as if she were a piece on a chessboard with no person beneath it."

"You knew her for a long time, then," said Letty, watching Vaughn closely. A germ of an idea teased at her imagination. Vaughn's explanations all fit a little too well, fell a little too pat.

"A very long time." Vaughn smiled a crooked little smile, before adding, with a studied air of nonchalance, "Odd, isn't it, how these revolutionaries cling to their titles, despite all of their republican pretensions. Bonaparte will be naming himself emperor next."

"Might I ask," inquired Jane delicately, "why you did not see fit to bring the marquise's relations with Miss Gilchrist to my attention prior to this?"

Vaughn bowed in apology. "I was only admitted to her confidence on that score last night. Ought I to have interrupted your chaste slumbers?"

"None of us," said Jane austerely, "shall slumber properly until the matter of the Black Tulip is dealt with."

She had, realized Letty, very neatly avoided either accepting Vaughn's excuse or naming him a liar.

Vaughn turned and looked straight at the figure on the settee. There was very little spare flesh on his form, but a trick of the light made the sharp bones of his face seem even more stark than usual, as though the skin were stretched too tightly over them.

His lips twisted in what might have been mockery, or grief, or both.

"'Sleep no more. Macbeth hath murdered sleep.'"

With an uncharacteristically abrupt gesture, he tossed back the remains of his drink. Setting the glass down heavily on the small gilt table, he said, "She wasn't supposed to be here. She had a meeting tonight, with the leaders of the rebel cause."

"Tonight?" repeated Jane. "Was it at a place called Kilmacud?"

"No. It was the name of some local saint or other. The one with the snakes."

Letty's mouth felt suddenly very dry.

"Patrick?" she asked. "As in Patrick Street?"

"The very one. Teresa had an appointment to view their armory, to make sure it would be up to snuff in time for the invasion. Tedious stuff." Vaughn flipped open a small china box and expertly deposited a smattering of snuff on the side of his wrist.

Against the lace of his sleeve, the grains looked dark as gunpowder.

Jane's face was very still. "When?"

"Six…half past…something of that order. She was to inspect, and then report back to her shadowy colleague later this evening." Conveying the snuff neatly to his nostrils, Vaughn essayed a genteel cough, indicative of extreme boredom. "That is all I know."

As one, Letty and Jane turned to the clock on the mantel. As if it knew it was being watched, the minute hand jerked awkwardly toward the Roman numeral IV, like a malingering sentry scurrying back to his post.

Twenty past six. And Geoff and Miss Gwen would still be there, caught red-handed among the kegs of gunpowder when the rebel leaders reappeared. They couldn't possibly fight their way through that many.

Jane's eyes met Letty's over the marquise's fallen form. "I need to search the marquise's belongings immediately."

She didn't add before someone else does, but the meaning was as clear to Letty as if she had spoken it. Whatever her arrangement with Vaughn, it didn't extend to unconditional trust. What better way to watch a potential suspect than feigning partnership? Letty approved the motivating sentiment, but if Jane wasn't able to warn Geoff, that left only one option.

On the mantel, the minute hand arched another centimeter closer to half past the hour.

"I'll go," said Letty.

* * *

"Who're you?"

The whiskey fumes hit Geoff before the words. Propping one hand against the doorjamb of the outbuilding, the watchman took an unsteady step forward, squinting at Geoff.

Geoff curved his back in a casual slouch, doing his best to look harmless. Only a yard from the back door, he had begun to hope that Emmet had left the house completely unattended. There were, after all, several other rebel caches throughout the city, and limited staff on hand to man them all.