Letty cast him a quick look.
"Not that sort of friend," Geoff amended. "A chap I went to Eton with keeps this house for his lady friends."
"Hmm," said Letty noncommittally. Given the nature of the decorations, she suspected that the term "lady" was singularly inapt.
Geoff moved to block a porcelain clock, which featured an amorous shepherd and his lass, enjoying the sorts of pastoral pleasures at which poets only dared hint. Given the plethora of equally objectionable items, the action was singularly ineffectual.
"Since the house isn't currently occupied," Geoff explained rapidly, "I asked if I could borrow it. It's set well back from the street, and the servants are generously paid to look the other way."
That brought Letty to a halt. Pausing in front of a small marble statue, she stared over her shoulder at Geoff. "Your friend probably thought…"
"There's no probably about it."
Letty's face flared with sudden color. "So, all the servants must think…"
"Yes."
"Oh." Letty sank down on the bed, an endearingly prim figure in her simple black dress against the billowing opulence of pink silk that surrounded her. She rubbed her forehead with the heel of one hand. "I do seem to be having a varied career recently."
Geoff's conscience dealt him another uncomfortable blow. Now, he supposed, was as good a time as any to begin apologizing for all the manifold wrongs he had visited upon her. It was a matter of pure justice, he assured himself, not an attempt to get his wife into bed.
Well, not entirely.
"I am sorry," said Geoff, joining her on the pink coverlet. The feather tick sagged obligingly.
"It's really not all that bad," remarked Letty, cocking her head to inspect the pattern of cavorting deities on the ceiling. A sudden stiltedness betrayed her awareness of their new proximity, but she didn't pull away. "As long as one avoids the pink."
"The pink?" Was that shorthand for "Carnation"? Letty's way of telling him that a damaged reputation was manageable but spies were not? Funny, Geoff had thought that was the bit Letty minded least of the whole affair.
"The coverlet," Letty elucidated. "The large and very bright object on which you happen to be sitting." She patted it in illustration.
"Oh, right." That made his second botched apology of the evening. "That was intended as more of a blanket apology."
Letty's blue eyes crinkled. "As in this blanket?"
Despite himself, the corners of Geoff's mouth turned up. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."
Averting her eyes, Letty gave a little shake of her head. "I've given up trying to figure out what you mean."
"I'll just have to make myself plainer, then." Tipping Letty's chin up, Geoff looked her straight in the eye. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that idiotic remark earlier. I'm sorry for having plunged you into all of this. I'm sorry—"
"Don't." Reaching up, Letty stopped his mouth with her hand. "Please."
The last thing she wanted was to be an object of pity, or, even worse, remorse. No one liked a hair shirt. They might believe it was good for them, but that didn't mean they actually enjoyed wearing it.
But that was only the smallest part of it. Letty couldn't have quite put it into words, but she knew, with agitated certainty, that going over the past would be the worst possible thing they could do, no matter how generous an impulse drove the enterprise. Any discussion of the past would invariably come back to Mary. And once Mary entered the conversation…how could he help but resent Letty?
"We don't need to go through all this again," Letty insisted.
Pressing a kiss to her palm, Geoff removed her restraining hand, holding it just below his chin. "I misjudged you. Horribly."
"That was all I wanted to hear," Letty lied, lacing her fingers through his. "Truly."
It wasn't, of course. But it would have to do.
"Shall we start again?" asked Geoff, his keen gray eyes intent on Letty.
Chapter Twenty-five
Letty took in the familiar, lean lines of his face; the small creases on either side of his eyes, even in repose; the flexible quirk of his thin lips; all the infinitesimal, indefinable details that had become so familiar over the past few weeks, and which she had studied covertly across the length of London's ballrooms long before that. Whatever reservations she might have paled in comparison.
"We never did have a wedding night," she ventured.
"A lamentable oversight," Geoff agreed, solemnly enough, but there was a curious light in his eyes that sent a corresponding current straight through Letty.
His free hand was already moving through her hair, freeing it of its remaining three pins. The pins didn't make a sound as they fell, muffled by the thickly woven carpet. The last heavy coil gave way, brushing across Letty's back as it slid down.
"Shall we call this a belated one?" Letty asked, her voice strangely thick to her own ears. Geoff's hands were on her shoulders, burning through the sleeves of her gown.
"You can call it anything you like." Sweeping aside the clinging strands of hair, Geoff kissed the side of her neck. "Your hair smells like chamomile. And lemons."
"The lemon is for my freckles," Letty confessed breathlessly, distracted by the gentle brush of his fingers where his lips had been. She was having a very hard time focusing on what she was saying. "It's supposed to bleach them off over time."
Geoff turned his attentions to the other side of her neck, and Letty wondered if it was possible to simply dissolve into the coverlet in a blob of pink goo. "How long have you been trying to bleach them?"
"Since I was twelve," Letty admitted, wrinkling her nose.
Geoff lightly kissed the offending appendage. "I like your freckles."
Letty shook her head at him. "No one will ever write an ode to a freckle. It just isn't done."
"You certainly don't want me to," said Geoff, with a sudden boyish grin. "My odes are terrible and my sonnets are worse."
"I know. Mary showed me that last poem, the one that began—" Letty broke off, wishing she hadn't said anything.
"'O peerless jewel in Albion's crown'?" Geoff recited resignedly, banishing Mary's ghost as smoothly and deliberately as though the awkward moment had never been. "Is there anyone in London who hasn't seen that blasted poem?"
"I've read them all," declared Letty giddily. "Every last one."
"Oh, no." Geoff's head dropped in mock shame.
"Every heroic couplet. Every deathless stanza."
"You don't want to do that," Geoff warned.
Oh, but she did.
"'O Muse! O Fates! O Love Divine!'"
Letty abandoned her pose as Geoff began stalking her across the breadth of the pink bedspread. Scooting hastily backward, Letty declaimed, "'Lend strength to my…'"
"Right." Geoff pounced.
Rolling out of the way of Geoff's hands, Letty managed to gasp out, "'…enmetered line!'" just before she found herself caught up and rolled across several yards of pink satin coverlet, in breathless, laughing confusion. They fished up on the far side of the bed, with Geoff propped up on his elbows over her. Letty's dress was decidedly worse for the escapade, and she had hair in her mouth. Making a face, Letty swiped ineffectually at it.
"Serves you right," said Geoff smugly, grinning down at her. "Mocking my poetry like that."
"You wrote it." Letty's blue eyes glinted mischievously up at him. "Don't worry. Percy Ponsonby thought it was quite good."
"Ouch." It wasn't a very convincing complaint, since his mind was otherwise engaged in the complicated engineering dilemma of how to work the buttons down Letty's back free of their moorings while she was lying on them. Any man to come up with a mathematical theorem to explain that great quandary of nature would surely win the respect not only of his peers but of posterity.