A pause, and then Letty shook her head again, this time in negation. "No."
Geoff's face settled into hard lines. "I see."
It was like discovering that the Archbishop of Canterbury had a sideline in smuggling French brandy.
"Sniffing around the carriage, looking for ye, she were, my lord," came the mournful voice of his coachman from the box.
Letty stuck her head out the door in indignation, nearly losing her grip on the edges of her cloak in the process. Percy watched with interest, but he was doomed to disappointment; the fabric held together. "You threw me in! You practically kidnapped me!"
The idea of MacTavish, the most confirmed misogynist since John Knox had his infamous encounter with Mary, Queen of Scots, voluntarily kidnapping any woman would have been laughable had Geoff had any inclination to laugh.
Innocent. Ha. That kiss ought to have alerted him that Letty Alsworthy was anything but innocent. It had been a toe-curling, reputation-compromising, clothing-tightening kiss, the sort of kiss Saint Paul had had in mind when he had said it was better to marry than to burn. A few moments more, and the carriage would have gone up in flames.
Caught by the oldest trick in the book, indeed.
"Doing it a bit brown, aren't you, old girl?" drawled Martin. "Best save your breath for other things, eh, Pinchingdale?"
"What in the devil are you doing here, anyway?" demanded Geoff. He probably ought to have asked earlier, but between the kiss and the night rail, his faculties were not in their best functioning order. In fact, they seemed to have migrated somewhere below his waist.
Percy's face lit up. At last, a question he could answer! "We were just—"
"—protecting the lady's honor," cut in Martin smoothly. "Now that you have been seen."
"Hard to see much," contributed Percy, squinting in illustration. "Dark, y'know."
Not nearly dark enough, thought Geoff. Any darker, and Percy and Martin wouldn't have recognized him. Any darker, and none of them would have seen that disastrous night rail. It was the night rail that really did it. The kiss he could lay at his own door—he, after all, had grabbed her—but why go out in a night rail unless it was for the purpose of being compromised? Especially a night rail like that, which combined the specious illusion of innocence with a transparency to make a courtesan blush. And then there was her hair, tumbling down over her shoulders in a wanton mass that suggested dalliance and decadence.
"Still," Percy continued blithely, "you're going to have to marry her, you know. Devil of a shame."
"Thank you, Percy," said Letty acidly.
Percy waved a hand in a gesture of modest denial. "Least I could do. Always glad to be of service."
Geoff didn't bother to ask what sort of service that might be. The night rail, her enthusiastic response to his kiss, MacTavish's grumbling testimony, even the convenient appearance of Percy Ponsonby and Martin Frobisher might all, taken severally, be explained innocently. Put together, they spelled entrapment. His. It had all been quite cleverly done. If Letty grew bored with matrimony, he had no doubt she could have a brilliant career working for the French Ministry of Police.
Turning his back on the two men, Geoff slammed the carriage door closed.
"Let's get you home, shall we?" It was a command, rather than a question.
"I couldn't agree more," said Letty fervently.
Still clutching her cloak, Letty burrowed back into the corner of the seat, out of range of Percy Ponsonby and Martin Frobisher. She hadn't felt this befuddled since the time she fell out of a tree in the orchard in the process of retrieving her brother's pet bird. She had lain there on her back, with a double cast to her vision and a ringing in her ears, dizzy, vaguely ill, and not entirely sure what had just happened.
Falling out of a tree was nothing in comparison to being kissed. At least, with the tree, she had known where she was. For those first few moments, when Lord Pinchingdale's arms closed around her, and his lips merged with hers, she hadn't known and she hadn't cared.
That dreadful moment when he let go had been worse than hitting the ground from ten feet up. With a jarring thump, she had remembered where she was, and, even worse, who she was. That kiss hadn't been hers. All the affection, all the warmth, all the tenderness in his touch had been borrowed under false pretenses, stolen from the store intended for her sister. It had always been meant for Mary. And she—she had just been in the way.
Huddling her cold hands into the warmth of her cloak, Letty forced herself to focus on practicalities. Having gotten in the way, she somehow had to get out of it again, before she found herself stealing more than a kiss from her sister. It was the worst sort of ill luck that Percy Ponsonby and Martin Frobisher should have stumbled across that accidental embrace.
Or was it? Sluggishly, the outlines of a suspicion began to form. If Mary went to the trouble of arranging an elopement, she wouldn't want to leave anything to chance. As much as Lord Pinchingdale professed to adore her, there was always the danger of being compromised and discarded. They had all heard the stories of penniless young ladies being wooed with promises of marriage, then discarded long before they got anywhere near Gretna Green. A few witnesses, on the other hand, could work wonders in getting a wavering groom to the altar. Percy Ponsonby was the brother of Mary's closest friend…. Like one of the larger varieties of canine, Percy was as loyal as he was daft. If Mary had asked him to look in at the Oxford Arms at midnight, Percy was quite likely to obey without bothering with whys or wherefores, especially if he could combine it with a few flagons of anything fermented.
Either way, it was nothing short of disaster. Percy was a good-natured ignoramus, and Letty generally didn't mind him, but Martin Frobisher was another kettle of fish entirely. Letty had never liked Martin Frobisher. The feeling was mutual, especially since that incident last month, when Henrietta Selwick had poured ratafia all down Martin Frobisher's new coat and Letty had committed the unpardonable sin of laughing. Heartily. There had also, Letty remembered guiltily, been a certain amount of pointing along with the laughing. At the time, it had seemed a perfectly reasonable reaction.
The ratafia incident was merely the crowning touch. Frobisher had borne her a grudge ever since the prior Season. Like so many men, he had been dangling after Mary, although whether his intentions were marital or merely amorous had been left highly unclear. Being somewhat keener than most (his own assessment, not Letty's), he had come up with the cunning notion of pressing his suit under the auspices of Mary's impressionable little sister. Unfortunately for Frobisher's amorous designs, Letty wasn't nearly so impressionable as she looked. After accepting the lemonade Frobisher had fetched her, and hearing out his tale of unrequited love, she had flatly refused to lure Mary into a secluded alcove for him. Not only would it be improper, but Frobisher wasn't on any of Mary's lists. His fortune was decent enough, but he was at least four heirs away from a title—not very good odds from a marriage mart point of view. Mary could do far better.
It probably hadn't been diplomatic to inform him of that.
No wonder Frobisher had been pushing Lord Pinchingdale to do the honorable thing! It certainly wasn't concern for Letty's well-being. Frobisher probably hoped that if Lord Pinchingdale were forcibly removed, it would leave the field clear for him. Letty grimaced at the ceiling of the carriage. It was a forlorn hope on his part, but it would be nearly impossible to convince him of that. He really ought to have listened more closely to Letty's home truths about his lack of a title.
Even so, there had to be some way to silence him. She couldn't marry Lord Pinchingdale, no matter what Percy had said. Even if Lord Pinchingdale weren't already in love with Mary…No, it would never do. Letty shut that thought away in the realm of forbidden daydreams, locked in a box with a triple padlock. The idea that Lord Pinchingdale might, under any circumstances, have welcomed the idea of marriage with a little freckle-faced homebody like herself was nothing short of ridiculous.