Devil take it, whom had he been kissing?
"Nice work, Pinchingdale!" called a voice behind him, and Geoff swung around, still poised on the brink of the carriage, to see Martin Frobisher saluting him in a gesture of exaggerated approbation. "I give that at least three minutes without coming up for air, don't you, Ponsonby?"
As inebriated as his companion and slower on the uptake under any circumstances, Percy Ponsonby stumbled into the small circle of light cast by the carriage lamps and peered owlishly at the woman behind Geoff. "I say, Pinchingdale, what's all this?"
All this was very clearly not Mary Alsworthy.
The woman so recently entangled with Geoff yanked back with enough force that her hood slipped back, revealing a confusion of ginger-colored hair that glinted like a fuzzy halo where the light struck the individual strands. It could not have been farther from Mary's sleek fall of black hair, which ran silver and blue in the candlelight like a midnight stream. Mary's eyes were delicately tilted at the corners; this woman's were perfect rounds of shock, primrose to Mary's sapphire. The only similarity lay in the lips, full and generous—though some more generous than others. Mary had never responded like that.
"Well, well, well," said Martin Frobisher, rolling the word over his tongue like a fine port. "Well, well, well."
Once he found a syllable he liked, he stuck with it till the bitter end. At least, Geoff was feeling bitter, not to mention decidedly unwell.
He had just been kissing his future sister-in-law. With considerable relish. That undoubtedly counted as incest under an obscure ecclesiastical law dating to the early years of the Reformation, complete with a punishment involving a sack, a beehive, and a large pot of honey.
In his preoccupation with incest, Geoff realized he had completely missed a crucial step. What was Mary's little sister doing in his carriage in the first place? He felt rather as though someone had just whacked him over the head with a very thick plank. Nothing made sense and the world was still spinning.
"If it isn't little Letty Alsworthy," continued Frobisher, looking like the cat who had gotten the canary that had fallen into the cream pot.
Letty Alsworthy very rapidly snatched her hood up over her head. "No, it isn't," she trilled from the depths, in a palpably false fluting soprano. "Can't you see it's Mary, you silly, silly man?"
Percy might be dim, but even he wasn't that dim. He crossed his arms over his chest, peered into the carriage, and said, "No, you're not."
"How can you be so sure? It's dark."
For a moment, Percy wavered, swayed by the obvious truth of that last statement. He shook his head. "You're still Letty. Can't fool me there. They don't look a'tall alike, do they, Pinchingdale?"
"No," said Geoff grimly, "they don't."
One would have thought he might have noticed that before he swept her into his arms. But it had all happened so quickly…. One moment he was at the door, the next his arms were around her, and after that, he didn't remember much at all.
At least, he was trying very hard not to remember. If he could, he would scrape his mind clear with sand, obliterate from his memory the way the swell of her chest had felt pressed against his, the curve of her waist beneath his arm, the arch of her neck as his hand had stroked upward into her hair. None of that, he told himself firmly, had ever happened. It wasn't allowed to have happened.
Unfortunately, there were witnesses willing to attest that it had.
"Well, well, well." Geoff could learn to hate that word. Despite being somewhat wobbly on his feet, Frobisher still managed to direct a creditable smirk at Geoff before stumbling into Percy. "Caught by the oldest trick in the book."
"I say, Frobbers, that can't be right." Slinging an arm around his friend, Percy blinked sagely. "What about that trick played by those Greek chappies—something about a horse…" Percy subsided into academic reflection.
"Or, in this case," snickered Frobisher, "a carriage."
"No," protested Percy, shaking his head obstinately. "It was quite definitely a horse. Unless it was a rabbit. Maybe that was it. A rabbit."
"Neatly snared, too. Bagged yourself quite a catch, old girl," lauded Martin, in a triumph of mixed metaphors. "Well played."
Framed in the door of the carriage, Letty violently shook her head. Planting both hands on either side of the door frame, she leaned earnestly out. "It's not what you think. It isn't!"
"I know what I'm thinking," muttered Martin, nudging Percy. "Eh, Perce?"
His gaze was directed well below the lines of propriety. Underneath her cloak, Letty wore nothing but a linen night rail. With its high neck and long sleeves, it might at one point have been perfectly respectable, but frequent washings had reduced it to a whisper. Through the thin fabric, the carriage lamp illuminated the curves of breast and hip in a way far more erotic than mere nudity.
Flushing, Letty snatched the edges of her cloak back together, but not before the image was indelibly imprinted on the eyes of all three gentlemen. Percy, blissfully inebriated, saw not one but three. Percy was a very happy man.
Geoff hastily closed his mouth, which had been hanging open.
Being caught kissing Letty Alsworthy in his carriage was bad enough. Being caught kissing Letty Alsworthy in a night rail…
Who ever knew that she could look like that?
Geoff hastily banished such dangerous irrelevancies. Moving to block Letty from the others' view, he said ominously, "If you'll excuse us for a moment, gentlemen?"
"I don't know, Perce," drawled Martin. "Can we trust them alone together?"
Geoff ignored him, which was usually the best way to deal with Martin Frobisher.
"Where is Mary?" he demanded in an urgent undertone, keeping his eyes scrupulously above Letty's neck. It was an unnecessary precaution, since Letty was clutching her cloak closed with enough force to turn her knuckles white.
Letty glanced over her shoulder at Percy and Martin with wide, hunted eyes. "She's not here."
"I realized that."
Letty flushed and pressed her eyes closed, as though for composure. "I mean, she was delayed."
In the course of his work for the League of the Purple Gentian, Geoff had interrogated all sorts of liars. Some adopted a guise of innocence, others feigned indignation, still others a dithery, forgetful manner, as though recalling a story piecemeal might lend to its veracity. But all of them had one thing in common. It wasn't the shifting eyes, because he had seen accomplished liars who held his eyes throughout, and did it with a conviction that could hoodwink the agents of the Inquisition.
It was something in the voice itself, a hollow ring where the kernel of truth ought to have been. Geoff could hear it the way an accomplished singer could pick out the difference between an A flat and a B sharp.
Every instinct he possessed screamed that Letty Alsworthy was lying.
No matter what his instincts told him, the notion of Letty Alsworthy engaging in a deliberate entrapment of her sister's suitor was equally incredible. He didn't know her well, but in the course of his courting her sister, they had said the odd hello, danced the odd dance, all in perfect good humor and goodwill. She had never hung on his arm, pursed her lips in his general direction, or tried to wheedle him out onto a balcony (none of which could be said about Mary's closest friend, Lucy Ponsonby, who had relentlessly attempted all of the above). Letty was a good-natured, straightforward sort, and he had never seen her use the flirtatious flutterings and wiles that made so many of the Season's debutantes a blight on civilization.
But there was something about the way she said "delayed" that sent all his internal alarm bells ringing. It was a prevarication, and a poor one.
And then there was that night rail.
"Did Mary send you?" Geoff asked, deliberately keeping his voice neutral.