"Sleep," Mary urged, twitching her stays into place. "It's not morning yet."

"Then there's no reason for you to go," he yawned. "' 'Tis true, 'tis day, what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me?'"

If he could indulge in quotations before breakfast, he was clearly feeling better. Mary yanked her dress down over her head. "I will call to see how you're getting on," she promised. "Properly chaperoned, of course."

Brows drawing together, Vaughn pushed himself up against the pillows, wincing as the movement pained his side.

"Are you having second thoughts?" he demanded. "If you are…"

"No," said Mary briefly, and watched as he relaxed. "No. Just a care for consequences. If anyone were to see me here, before you settle matters with your wife…"

"I hate it," said Vaughn grumpily, his dark hair sticking up around his head. "I want to parade you through the halls of St. James, flaunt you at the theatre, and keep you in bed all bloody day. Not in that order," he added.

Seating herself on a silk-upholstered chair, Mary laced up her boots, tying off the ends in neat knots. "Soon enough," she said soothingly, wishing she really believed it. "For now, sleep. We'll talk tomorrow. Today, rather."

It wasn't his sincerity she doubted, but his ability to bring it about. Even for the great Lord Vaughn, a properly wed wife was a rather large impediment. And there were even more pressing concerns to tend to. Such as keeping him alive.

"I'll fix it," Vaughn muttered, his voice indistinct among the bedclothes. "Somehow."

Without approaching the dais, Mary tied the strings of her bonnet beneath her chin. "I'll send Derby in to you if I see him. Someone should watch over you until the danger of fever is past."

"I'll send for my solicitor. Hargreaves. He'll know how to go about it. These lawyer chaps always do. Heretofores and wherefores and more stratagems than a battalion of scheming Greeks."

Mary paused at the foot of the dais, looking up at the bed. It took all the resolve she had not to climb the two steps, sit down beside him, take his hand. From there, she knew, it would only be a short slide to slipping down beside him.

"Send for the physician first," she advised briskly. "You'll be no good to either of us otherwise."

The doorknob was a hard lump beneath her palm. It was only through sheer force of will that she forced herself to turn it, breaking open their enchanted nest, where the rumpled bedsheets, the robe on the floor, the very movement of the shadows on the wall were all redolent of Vaughn. If only she could draw the drapes, pull closed the bed curtains, and keep the world permanently at bay while they drowsed together in perennial night.

But dawn would come. It was only a matter of time before the candle drowned in its own wax, before the sun poked insolently through the drapes, before the world once again was too much with them.

Taking a deep breath, Mary drew the door shut behind her, shutting out Vaughn's voice, halfway to sleep, murmuring, "There must be a way…."

Outside, in the hallway, all was dark and still. The candles in the sconces had long since been snuffed and there was no natural light to make her way. Mary felt like the heroine of a fairy tale after the enchantment had faded, making her way out of a palace where all had been lights and revelry, but, by the cock's crow, turned dark and deserted, like fairy gold that turned to dust by the light of day. Mary found her way to the main stair by memory and touch, keeping one hand running lightly against the wall until she found the banister. Down, down, down she went, her flat-heeled boots making a dull slapping sound against the shallow marble treads. She didn't think it was fairy gold that Vaughn was offering her. Not intentionally, at any rate.

If he were free…

Mary let herself out through the garden, keeping her bonnet close around her face as she slipped through the formal parterres that either Vaughn or one of his ancestors had laid out in the French style behind Vaughn House. The garden had already been readied for the colder weather. The marble statues were shrouded in burlap sacking to protect them against the elements, anonymous but for the odd bits of appendages that stuck out at the edges, a daintily arched foot here, a long tail there. The fountain in the center had been drained, already taking on that frostbitten grayish white tone common to stone in winter, and the base of the boxwood shrubs had been carefully banked with a preparation of bark and wood chips to protect them from the coming winter frost. Only the gravel beneath Mary's feet remained unaltered, constant season in and season out.

It was ridiculously easy to slip out of the house and through the garden gate. Which meant, thought Mary, casting a look of deep misgiving over her shoulder at the serried ranks of shrubs behind her, that it would be just as easy for someone to slip in.

From Vaughn's garden, it was only a short way back to Grosvenor Square. Mary stayed to the alleyways and dark corners, brooding over the problem of the Black Tulip. What if they put it about that Vaughn had died from the bullet wound? Mary instantly discarded that idea as unworkable. His heir would descend like a buzzard; curious members of the ton would throng the gates of Vaughn House; and Mary rather doubted Vaughn would meekly consent to play dead for the length of time it would take to find and kill the Black Tulip.

Entering by the servants' gate, Mary let herself quietly into her brother-in-law's house. The servants' hall was empty and quiet, the grate still thickly spread with last night's ashes. Vaughn could retreat for a month to his estates in Northumberland — but who was to say that the Black Tulip wouldn't have agents there, too? Accidents were so easily arranged in the country. There was something that nagged at her, something the Black Tulip had said that didn't quite make sense.

To be fair, there was a good deal the Black Tulip had said that didn't quite make sense. With her skirts quietly whispering against the worn back stairs, Mary tried to recapture those unpleasant moments before the Black Tulip had pressed her finger down on the trigger, sending Vaughn tumbling headlong into the grass. Mary hastily wrenched her mind away from that image, trying to force herself to focus on the Black Tulip's voice, the murmur of words in her ear. What was it he had said? Something about your Vaughn, followed by…Memory clicked into place, the Black Tulip's voice clear in her ears. He has a wife, you know.

She knew, all too well. But how had the Black Tulip?

Creeping up the back stairs, Mary slipped through the green baize door into the front hall, where the Greek gods and goddesses in their arched niches scowled down at her. Mary scowled back at them, her mind busily belaboring the possibility of a connection between the Black Tulip and Vaughn's curiously resurrected wife. Was it sheer coincidence that Vaughn's wife and the Black Tulip had both been in Hyde Park at the same time, with a bullet meant for Vaughn?

In the corner of the room, one of the statues lurched to life and stumbled towards her.

Mary instinctively lurched back, arms coming up in self-defense, before realizing that it wasn't a statue, but her sister, draped in a voluminous shawl over what was clearly last night's dress. Tripping over the fringe of her shawl, Letty stumbled to a halt. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she blinked blearily at Mary.

"Thank God," she said heavily, catching at the foot of a statue of Artemis for balance. She moved as though her limbs pained her, which wasn't surprising, considering that the marble bench she had been occupying lacked cushions, arms, or back. "You're all right. You are all right?"

"Yes." Mary moved warily into the room, keeping a watchful eye on her sister. Letty looked far worse that she did. Her upswept crown of curls had been squashed to one side from leaning against the wall, and the weave of her shawl had imprinted itself across one cheek. "I'm perfectly well."

Letty closed her eyes. "Thank God," she repeated.

Her wide blue eyes roamed with dismay over the splotches on Mary's dress, the disarranged hair shoved up under her bonnet.

"How did you — no. Where did you — " Something in Mary's face must have stopped her, because she broke off with a strangled laugh. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. It's enough that you're back. And safe. Really, it is," she repeated, as though trying to convince herself.

Her very freckles looked like they were about to pop off her cheeks with the strain of keeping her flood of questions from bursting forth.

"You are the eldest, after all," Letty added, rather desperately, twisting her hands in the fabric of her skirt in that way she always had when she was anxious. "There's nothing I can tell you that you don't know already. And it's your life. I can't organize it for you."

She looked pleadingly at Mary. Her shawl trailed down drunkenly over one shoulder like a Scotsman's ceremonial plaid, and her hair stuck out to the right, but there was a certain heroic dignity about her as she lifted her chin and announced, "I'm not going to ask."

Mary had never been so fond of her little sister as in that moment. Crossing the room to her sister, she bent, and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"Thank you," she said, and then she turned and went upstairs to bed.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"What was Dempster planning to do, sell the papers on the black market?" I made a face at Colin over my wineglass. "Is there even a black market for old documents?"

As far as I could see, his theory about Dempster's raiding his archives for monetary gain was as full of plot holes as a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

Colin made a face right back, only he looked cuter doing it. "It's not the documents themselves that are worth money to him; it's the identity of the Pink Carnation."

"How?" I demanded. "It's not as if the French would still be willing to pay money for that information. Not unless he's living in even more of a dream world than I am."

"He might be, for all that," said Colin. "But that's not the point. The French might not be willing to pay that sort of money, but there's more than one publisher who would."

"For the identity of the Pink Carnation," I said flatly. "Now you're the one living in a dream world. It's certainly big news from a scholarly standpoint, but why would anyone else care? And scholars don't generally make up a big portion of the book-buying market."

"History sells. It sells well. And the Pink Carnation is just the sort of figure to catch the public imagination. Especially since…"

"Yes, yes, I know," I said hastily, glancing quickly around to make sure no one else was listening. "The whole woman thing. A new heroine for our times, blah, blah, blah."

"And real," Colin stressed. "Not a made-up heroine, but a real one, with documentary proof to back it up."

"I see," I said slowly. Dempster's crazy motive was beginning to seem less crazy by the moment. "There'll be History Channel programs, a made-for-TV movie…"

"Book deals, movie deals…," Colin continued.

"Maybe even a 20/20 special," I finished grimly. Certainly enough to make it worth Dempster's while seducing a pretty and somewhat neurotic twenty-something to obtain access to her family's papers. "Damn. But why would he get the money? Why not you, as the keeper of the papers? Why would all the rights suddenly belong to him?" As you can tell, my knowledge of intellectual property rights is not exactly extensive.

"As long as he publishes first, it doesn't matter who owns the papers. I can only protect the papers themselves, not the information in them. If he wrote a book about the Carnation, and the BBC based a program off his book, he's the one they would have to pay."

I mulled that over for a moment. "Even if he succeeded in conning Serena — or me — into giving him access to the information, he's not the only one who knows the secret. You know, I know, your aunt knows…How does he guarantee one of us doesn't scoop him?"

Colin twirled his glass so the wine swirled in a circle like a burgundy sea. "While I would hate to admit to knowing how a mind like Dempster's works, I would guess that he's banking on my and Aunt Arabella's having our reasons to keep the story quiet. We wouldn't go out and publicize it for the very same reasons we haven't done so all these years. As for you," he added, before I could get my mouth open to ask him just what those reasons might be, "it's common knowledge that the academic press moves as slowly as the windmills of the gods."