The Deception of the Emerald Ring (34 page)

"Emily?" Geoff asked sharply.

"Yes. Emily Gilchrist."

"You knew her." Geoff's expression turned intent, his eyes fixed on Letty's face.

Wrapped in her own recollections, Letty scarcely noticed. "We were on the boat from London together. And now " Letty shivered. "What a hideous way to die."

"There are worse."

Looking back on the Black Tulip's history, Geoff found it difficult to muster much sympathy for her. One of his friends had been a victim of the Tulip, back in the early days of the war, when revolutionary fervor still ran high across the Channel, and the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel still specialized in ushering distressed noblemen to safety in England. Tony had been sent on just such a rescue mission.

The Black Tulip hadn't allowed him nearly so speedy an end as she had been granted.

For Letty's sake, Geoff added, "She died quickly. She wouldn't have felt much."

Letty rubbed her hands along her upper arms as though cold. "I heard it happen. She just gasped, and then fell. I thought someone had tripped. If I had been here a few moments earlier—"

"Let's not go down that byway, shall we?" Geoff tilted Letty's head back with a finger under her chin. "Did either of them see you?"

"I don't know. I heard a crash, and ran forward to help. Someone pushed past me—it didn't seem important then. I just thought he was being rude."

"Damn," muttered Geoff. Vaughn might have been in too much of a hurry to take note of Letty, but he doubted it. Vaughn knew Letty and, more important, Letty knew Vaughn. Vaughn hadn't evaded detection thus far by leaving simple precautions to chance. He would be back. "Let's get you out of here."

"You don't think—?"

Geoff began steering her down the corridor, moving with the sureness of a cat in the dark. "I'm not thinking anything until we're a good ten yards away."

Letty's legs moved numbly, by rote, as he hustled her out a back exit and into a hackney. Somewhere, far, far away, she could hear her husband's voice giving directions, but she couldn't have said with any certainty where he had instructed the driver to go. Instead, she kept replaying the scene in the corridor, hearing that sickening thud—Letty swallowed hard—feeling the jolt as the murderer pushed past her, sending her stumbling into the wall.

And then, something else. Something heavy falling on her toe.

Lifting her wrist, Letty gazed dumbly at the reticule dangling from its silver strap. Used to the weight of a reticule on her wrist, Letty had forgotten she was holding it. It wasn't hers. Hers was black and sensible—and, Letty remembered, with a twinge of annoyance, back in their abandoned box in the theater. There hadn't been much in it, anyway, only a handkerchief and a few coins, in case she was separated from her party. This reticule glittered with silver beading over a pink silk base, a stiffened spray of beads forming an upside-down fan at the bottom. Letty recognized it instantly. She had last seen it dangling from Emily Gilchrist's wrist.

She had been warned that pickpockets operated in the theater, but not that they might turn violent. Still, in a dark corner, if Emily had protested What a horrible, senseless waste. And all for—what? A handful of coins? An embroidered handkerchief? There wasn't awfully much one could fit in a reticule.

Wrenching the strap off her wrist, Letty held it up by two fingers. The reticule dangled in the air between them, its sparkle dimmed with dark smears.

"Geoff, I've figured it out. He killed her for this." Letty regarded the small, pink bag with undisguised loathing. "The murderer dropped it when he bumped into me. It's Emily's. I would recognize it anywhere."

Geoff reached out for the little bag, with its silver clasp and loop of beads fanning out from the bottom. "May I?"

As Letty nodded, Geoff forced open the clasp. It was stiff enough to take considerable pressure. A handkerchief sat on the top, embroidered and scented. Beneath it, Geoff found a small comb and a twist of coins tied into another handkerchief, stuffed into the bottom. There was nothing incriminating about it at all.

Geoff had heard of one case where an agent had used embroidery as a means of communication, so many French knots to the words, but to his inexperienced fingers, the satin-stitched flowers embroidered around the corners felt just as they were supposed to. Well, they would, wouldn't they? He would have to show the handkerchief to Jane later; embroidery was more in her line than his.

"All for a purse," said Letty disgustedly.

Upending the innocuous contents into his lap, Geoff rolled the empty bag between his fingers, searching for irregularities. His groping fingers located something at the very bottom, in between the lining and the beaded exterior.

"Not just any purse," Geoff said, with great satisfaction. He ripped the lining free with one neat wrench.

"What are you doing?" exclaimed Letty, reaching for the bag.

"This."

Geoff's fingers closed triumphantly around a pawn-shaped object, nestled at the bottom of the bag between lining and beading. The sparkle of the beads would have distracted the eye from any telltale bulge; as for the bag being bottom-heavy, that was cleverly concealed by the spray of beading on the bottom.

He knew what it was even before the pads of his fingers brushed against the lines incised on the bottom.

He dropped the tiny silver trinket into Letty's hand. "Your friend Emily wasn't quite what she seemed."

Letty regarded the silver pawn in her hand uncomprehendingly. "She liked chess? I don't see—"

"Turn it over," suggested Geoff, continuing to root around in the shredded lining.

Letty turned it over. At first, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to be looking for, but after a moment of squinting blankly at the silver disk, the irregularities on the surface resolved themselves into a form of sorts. It was a seal. Like the one hanging around Jane's neck.

And it had been wedged into Emily Gilchrist's reticule.

"Oh," said Letty flatly, adding two and two and coming up with five hundred and sixty-four.

"Exactly." Geoff was still rooting about in the lining, seeking the source of the other bump he had felt. It might be a lumpy seam, or Doing his best not to make loud crowing noises, Geoff withdrew a small cylinder of paper.

"You think Emily was involved in all this?"

Geoff tucked the paper back into the abused reticule, to be examined later. Even if it weren't too dark to read, it would undoubtedly need decoding.

"What did you know of her?"

"Only what she told me." Which, Letty realized, for all of Emily's incessant jabbering, hadn't been much. Emily talked and talked and talked, but never about herself. It had all been ribbons and shoes and the wonders that awaited them in Dublin. Most of the time, Letty hadn't listened very closely.

"She had just come from a seminary for young ladies outside of London," Letty said slowly. "At least, that's what she claimed. I don't believe she ever mentioned the name of the school."

"If she had," said Geoff, "I think you would find it didn't exist."

"And I didn't ask. I didn't want to know." Letty grimaced at the memory, her voice thick with self-reproach. "I found her tedious."

In the dark of the carriage, Geoff's hand closed reassuringly over hers. "You were supposed to find her tedious. It was all part of her role."

"I suppose."

"I know," said Geoff firmly. "She wasn't worth your sympathy."

Something in Geoff's tone caught Letty's attention. "You know who she is." Wincing, Letty corrected herself. "Was."

"Have you heard of the Black Tulip?"

Letty shook her head. "I've never followed the espionage reports."

Her apologetic tone wrenched a reluctant chuckle from Geoff. "It's probably for the best. At least it means you aren't harboring any absurd misconceptions."

"Like spies wearing black masks all the time?"

"Something like that." Reluctantly, Geoff got down to business. "The Black Tulip appeared right after the Scarlet Pimpernel, in the early days of the Revolution. Wherever the Pimpernel was, there was the Tulip, leaving a trail of dead agents in her wake."

"Charming," said Letty, finding it hard to picture flighty Emily Gilchrist as a flinty-hearted French agent. But that was the point of a disguise, wasn't it?

"When Bonaparte seized power with the Coup of Brumaire in 1799, the Black Tulip all but disappeared. There were any number of theories at the time. Selwick—" Geoff broke off, glancing quizzically at Letty.

"The Purple Gentian. I would have had to have been immured in a tower not to know that much. His unmasking was all over the papers last month."

Letty's reaction to the plethora of Purple Gentian headlines had been something along the lines of "Oh, for heaven's sake, not another spy!" and "Why can't the papers report anything useful for a change?" but she didn't feel the need to confide those details to the spy sitting next to her.

"Right. Richard claimed to have shut the Black Tulip into an Egyptian pyramid during the 1798 expedition. It made an excellent story, but it was hard to verify, especially when neither of us had the slightest idea of who the Black Tulip was. We do now."

"Emily Gilchrist?"

"That was merely an alias. Her real name was Teresa Ballinger, but she was better known by her married name: the Marquise de Montval."

Ballinger wasn't a French name, any more than Gilchrist had been. "She was English? Really English?" Letty asked incredulously. Emily's accent had been impeccable, but for an Englishwoman born and bred to go over to the French it strained credulity.

"And married to a French nobleman. Two of the reasons no one ever suspected her. We all assumed the Black Tulip was French. And a man," Geoff added, as an afterthought.

"Then how did you discover her identity?"

"I didn't." Chagrin softened the ascetic angles of Geoff's features, lending him an unexpectedly boyish aspect. "All the best minds in the War Office searched for the Black Tulip for ten years and Henrietta figured it out."

Letty couldn't quite hide her grin.

"Henrietta felt much the same way," said Geoff dryly. "She gloats very effectively."

"Good for Henrietta," Letty said stoutly. Her grin faded as a less pleasing image floated to the fore. "Although it doesn't make much difference now, does it?"

Her memory conjured up Emily's body, bloodied and lifeless in a forgotten corner of the Crow Street Theatre. It was a chilling reminder of the futility of human endeavor, more effective than any number of tombstones. Whatever she had done in the past, the Black Tulip's plotting days were over.

"I'm sorry you had to see that."

"So am I," said Letty feelingly.

Geoff turned to face her, propping an elbow on the battered back of the seat. "What were you doing backstage?"

It was a sign of her distraction that it took Letty a moment to remember what had driven her backstage. "It was Captain Pinchingdale."

Next to her, Geoff stiffened. "What did he do?"

"He wanted me to murder you!"

"Oh, if that's all " Geoff relaxed against the cushions, remarkably unconcerned by the homicidal designs of his kin.

"All? The loathsome cad actually thought I would be so bowled over by his dubious charms that I would murder you and run off with him."

"Tempted?" Letty could hear the smile in his voice.

"By a hangman's noose? No, thank you."

"It is nice to know that your common sense stands between me and the grave."

"There was another consideration."

"Really?" Draping an arm along the back of the seat, Geoff leaned forward inquisitively. "What might that be?"

"Captain Pinchingdale's sideburns offend me."

"How disappointing for Jasper," Geoff managed to choke out.

"And his teeth are too big," Letty added with relish.

"Poor Jasper." Geoff tried to raise an eyebrow, but found it hard to do while shaking with repressed laughter. "Damned by his dentition!"

That set them both off. Letty tried to contain her giggles, but they kept emerging in a series of explosive snorts that made them both laugh even harder, rolling against the back of the seat in their mirth.

Letty's stomach hurt, her ribs hurt, and her eyes were starting to tear.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she panted, clutching her aching abdomen. "It's not that f-funny."

Even saying the word "funny" made her break up again.

"Jasper's teeth, or his sideburns?"

"No—" Letty clutched at Geoff's sleeve in supplication. "Don't. Don't make me laugh more. It hurts too much."

Hiccupping, Letty started to swipe at her eyes with the back of her hand, before remembering that her hands were all bloody. Not fancying red streaks all over her face, she made an attempt to dry her cheeks with her elbow, but the attempt left something to be desired.

"Allow me," said Geoff solemnly, although his voice was still slightly shaky with laughter.

Withdrawing a clean handkerchief from his sleeve, he applied it to the area beneath her eyes with the same sort of focused concentration she had seen him devote to decoding a letter or following a suspect. He drew his handkerchief in a gentle semicircle under her left eye, stroking gently up along the curve of her cheekbone until all the tears were gone. Lifting the handkerchief, he moved on to the right eye, repeating the motion.

Letty lost all inclination to laugh. She drew a shaky breath, suddenly very aware that his other arm was curled around her back, holding her steady as he attended to her cheeks with elaborate care. She could feel the warmth of him through the fine wool of his coat, seeping through her dress and rising to her cheeks. She hoped he couldn't feel the sudden heat beneath his fingers, or guess its cause.

Geoff inspected his handiwork. He ran his thumb along the curve of her cheekbone, smoothing her hair back from her face. It must have been tangled, littered with unmoored pins, but his touch was as soft as the brush of an angel's wing.

"Better?" Geoff asked.

She was fascinated with the way his lips shaped the word, molding themselves around the syllables.