Geoff looked over his shoulder at Jasper and frowned.

"I'll be fine, really. Go!"

"Good girl."

With a quick, approving smile, Geoff pressed her hand and departed. He disappeared so rapidly that if it hadn't been for the residue of his touch, Letty would have wondered if he had ever been there.

Gathering up the opera glass and her program, Letty stood, feeling oddly dispirited. She knew she shouldn't be. She had done her bit for the war effort. She had even gotten credit for it. Good girl. Like a pet dog.

Letty let out an irritated breath, glancing out over the edge of the box. Time to make good on her word, like the reliable creature she was, and seek out Emily Gilchrist and Mr. Throtwottle. An evening with Emily would be penance for her sins—although what sins those were, Letty was having a hard time putting into words. Silliness, she concluded. That was her fault. Engaging in extreme silliness without the slightest provocation.

Aside from that moment with the opera glass…

Oh, for heaven's sake! Behind her, she could hear Jasper's heavy tread, and while she suspected that Jasper would be less likely to press his attentions on her without an audience, it wasn't a chance Letty wanted to take. She didn't doubt her ability to fend him off, just the limits of her temper. If she was very lucky, maybe Emily would flirt with Jasper, and Letty wouldn't have to talk to either of them.

There was just one problem: Emily Gilchrist wasn't there. And neither was her guardian. Their box was as empty as Lord Vaughn's.

As she frowned at Emily's empty box, the heavy crimson velvet curtains came sweeping down, wreathing her world in red. Letty stumbled backward, coughing at the dust as the fabric unfurled, cutting off their box from the rest of the theater as effectively as a wall.

"Alone at last," said Jasper.

Chapter Nineteen

By the time Geoff reached the pit, Lord Vaughn had long since disappeared backstage. Trusting that the audience was more interested in the ingenue's legs than in a stray gentleman on the prowl, Geoff put a hand to the painted panels that masked the stage door and slid around the edge, allowing the door to fall gently shut behind him.

On the other side of the door, the bright paint and proud gilding of the public parts of the theater gave way to unrelieved gloom. In contrast to the glitter of the galleries, the narrow corridor was dimly lit, cluttered with shrouded shapes and bits and pieces of scenery propped against the wall, waiting their turn onstage. Ducking under a rope that dangled from the beams overhead, Geoff moved cautiously down the dingy corridor. Above, exposed beams webbed the ceiling, hung with ropes, sandbags, and the other effluvia of the theater. Breaks in the wall gave onto the stage on one side and onto yet more narrow and torturous passages on the other, like the catacombs below a cathedral. To Geoff's left, a flat painted with the image of a gazebo gave an illusion of pastoral pleasures, while the flames of hell waited for the unwary Don Giovanni farther down the passageway.

There was no sign of Vaughn near either scene, no conveniently dropped handkerchief or lost shoe buckle to give Geoff a hint of his direction. It was no use listening for a stealthy footstep or a whispered conversation; the wings bustled with stagehands hauling flats and furniture, while actors darted on-and offstage, neatly navigating around the spare scenery and one another. Geoff ducked behind the gazebo as a group of ballet dancers, dressed in a costumer's fantasy of Turkish dress, padded flat-footed to the wings, chatting in low voices as they waited for their cue to enter.

Vaughn kept in good trim, but no man's legs were that good.

Slipping past the unwitting dancers, Geoff took a left onto one of the side corridors, away from the stage, hoping that the feint backstage hadn't been merely a blind to draw attention while his quarry slipped through a back door and out to a waiting carriage bound elsewhere. It was a ploy that Geoff himself had used on more than one occasion.

Being led on a fool's errand was one thing, but being tangled backstage while his reprobate of a cousin pressed his heavy-handed attentions on his wife was another matter entirely.

Geoff looked back, a useless gesture since the stage door stood between him and the galleries that fronted the stage. Damn Jasper, a thousand times over. Why couldn't he have stayed in London and gambled away what remained of his inheritance?

Thank God Letty was too sensible to be taken in by him.

Geoff was conscious of a guilty sense of relief that it was Letty in the box instead of Mary. Well, naturally. He had been in love with Mary. How could a man in love stand to see someone else press his attentions upon his beloved? It was the stuff of jousts and duels and ruined kingdoms. It was a perfectly sensible explanation—except that it wasn't true. When it came right down to it, he just didn't trust Mary to have defended herself—or to have had the common sense to see Jasper's attentions for what they were. Whereas Letty did.

Geoff stepped over a coil of rope, ducked beneath a sandbag, and made a neat turn into one of the side corridors, automatically slinking back against the wall as he went, without the slightest awareness of where he was going.

Geoff tried to conjure up Mary's image, but it was as one-dimensional as the scenery propped against the walls. When he tried to remember just what it was he had loved about her—did love about her—all he could come up with was the graceful tilt of her head, the serene beauty of her smile. Storybook images, all of them, like the maiden waiting in the tower at the end of a quest, never half so important as the adventure itself. He had plotted and schemed for her dances, spent hours gazing longingly at her across a multitude of unmemorable ballrooms, and scraped the limits of the lexicon for words to describe her beauty in verse—but he couldn't remember one memorable word she had uttered, or have said with any certainty whether her favorite color was green or blue.

Ballrooms and musicales were no way to get to know someone; a few words of conversation, and then the patterns of the dance pulled you apart again. With Mary, there had always been a dozen eager swains clamoring to drag her away again. It was nothing like the artificial intimacy of a mission, the long hours spent poring over a map or a code, the thrill of a shared adventure.

Except that there was nothing artificial about Letty. Geoff had never, in all his perambulations through high society and low, ever met anyone quite so entirely herself, so completely immune from pretense. She couldn't dissemble if she tried. And she had tried. Watching her attempt to bandy double meanings with Lord Vaughn would have been enough to make Geoff laugh, if he hadn't been so blazingly angry with her at the time. And tonight…Despite himself, Geoff grinned at the memory of Letty disclaiming any familiarity with the English language. She would never make a spy.

It wasn't that she didn't try. She did. But every single thought that crossed her mind blazoned itself on her face, like a medieval clock with all the workings out in the open. Her preferred method of solving a problem was not to tiptoe around the edges of it, but to barge right through. Effective, for the most part, but about as subtle as a rampaging bull. After a decade of dwelling among people who changed their aliases more frequently than they changed their linen, Geoff found it oddly refreshing.

But it made his original conclusions regarding her role in their elopement harder and harder to justify.

And if he had been wrong…that meant he had wronged her. Rather badly.

Voices—English voices—caught Geoff's attention. With reflexes honed by hundreds of midnight missions, he slid seamlessly up against the wall, a shadow against shadows. A few steps more and he would have gone too far, bypassing the half-open door of a darkened dressing room, no different from a dozen other unused dressing rooms. Except that this one, despite the lack of lamps, was currently in use.

It might have been an assignation, but the sounds involved were not those of pleasure.

As Geoff positioned himself to the side of the doorframe, he heard the first voice say, "She is becoming a distinct liability."

The speaker wasn't Vaughn.

It was a woman's voice, low-pitched, grating in its tonelessness. From his vantage point next to the doorframe, Geoff couldn't make out the speaker. The door opened in, not out, and she was somewhere to his left, behind that inconvenient slab of wood. But he could picture her features, their classical perfection at variance with the flat tones of her voice. High cheekbones, skin as white as any poet could desire, sultry black eyes, and a come-hither smile.

The Marquise de Montval. The Black Tulip herself.

Her companion detached himself from his seat at the vanity and strolled dangerously close to Geoff's hiding place. The cane swinging from his right hand was as unmistakable as the marquise's voice.

"A bit of an exaggeration, surely," replied Lord Vaughn, in tones of intense boredom. "My dear, you must control these tendencies toward hyperbole. They don't become you."

The marquise ignored him. "She never had the skill for it."

"Not everyone has your…talents."

"My talents have been hard-won."

"Believe me," said Lord Vaughn wearily, "no one knows that better than I."

"I don't know why I tolerate you, Sebastian."

"Because"—Lord Vaughn smiled sardonically over the head of his cane—"without me, you would still be rotting in London."

"I didn't need your help. I would have gotten out of that myself."

"Not nearly so expeditiously. Nor with so little trouble to yourself. Bribing the guards with your body isn't much in your line, my dear. Unless your fervor for the cause has changed you in more ways than one."

"It might have been more pleasant to have remained in prison. Certainly the company would have been more genteel."

"As you will. You always did have low tastes, Teresa. Robe-spierre, Danton, Marat…not a gentleman amongst them."

"If all gentlemen are of your ilk, I'll take the rabble."

"But only if they come clothed in silk. Much as it enlivens my existence to be insulted by you, did you have a purpose for this little tкte-а-tкte? Or could you merely not resist an opportunity to get me alone in the dark? For old times' sake, as it were."

"Don't flatter yourself, Sebastian."

"If I don't, who will?" Vaughn's tone changed, and from his vantage point behind the door, Geoff could see his posture change, the lazy line of his back go taut, as he asked, "Do you really mean to eliminate the girl?"

"Unless you can suggest another way."

"'If it were done when 'tis done, then it were well it were done quickly,'" quoted Vaughn meditatively. It was unclear whether the words were question or command.

"Tonight," said the Black Tulip softly.

The word reverberated through the quiet room.

Unfortunately, a reverberation of an entirely different kind filled the corridor. The quiet hallway rumbled under the weight of a large piece of scenery, being rolled by a full complement of burly stagehands.

"He would have to have an elephant," one of them grumbled, as Geoff flattened himself against the wall rather than be run down by a remarkably one-dimensional pachyderm on wheels.

His companion's answer was indecipherable over the clatter of the rough trolley.

Geoff used the confusion to slip sideways into the dressing room. It was too late. The birds had flown, leaving nothing behind but the smell of greasepaint and a dozen unanswered questions. Who, Geoff wondered grimly, were they planning to eliminate? The first name that came to mind was Jane's. Or, as they knew her, Miss Gilly Fairley. Wherever Jane and Miss Gwen had gone, he hoped they were watching their backs.

But the marquise had indicated that whoever the unnamed nuisance was didn't have much talent for the game. Which led, unerringly, to Letty.

Vaughn had recognized Letty from London, of that much Geoff was sure. Her clumsy charade as Mrs. Alsdale wouldn't fool a child—but it might spark the suspicions of a pair of paranoid French spies. The marquise's pride must be smarting at having been caught by an amateur like Henrietta; she wouldn't want it to happen again. To be caught once by an amateur might be accounted carelessness, but to do so twice meant a quick trip to the inner reaches of the Temple Prison.