The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig

coz?"
    "Not with you."
    "Off to moon over your dear lost Mary? Don't look so, coz! One sister will do as well as the other in the dark."
    "I'll ascribe that statement to the wine, and leave it at that."
    "Or you'd what? Call me out?" Jasper blew out a thick ring of smoke, and ran it through with the stem of his pipe. "Think how it would upset your dear mama. But our family paragon wouldn't do anything so foolish, would he? Unless I have always wondered, how far can our virtuous Geoffrey be pushed before he cracks?"
    "Push too far and I'll refuse to pay your bills the next time your creditors get too much for you," amended Geoff calmly. "Think how much that would upset your dear mama."
    His cousin regarded him coldly. "You do know how to make a man regret his parentage."
    "The sentiment is mutual. Do you know, Jasper," remarked Geoff, "I do believe you grow more loathsome every time I see you."
    "I aim to please, dear coz."
    The two men bared their teeth at each other in complete understanding and mutual loathing.
    "You'll stand up with me tomorrow?"
    Jasper stretched his long legs out in front of him. "Delighted to. I've always wanted to preside at an execution. Yours, for choice."
    "Don't forget your black cap."
    "I say, old chap," Jasper called after Geoff. "If this sister were to snuff it, you couldn't marry the other one, could you? Shades of Henry VIII and all that. Deuced hard luck for you."
    Geoff left Jasper's lodgings to the sound of his cousin's mocking laughter. Jasper, he thought grimly, had really missed his calling when he went into the army rather than take up his well-deserved place on the boards of Drury Lane. Geoff decidedly regretted the impulse that had driven him to Jasper's lodgings.
    It had clearly been a mistake to assume the day couldn't get any worse.

Chapter Six
    The groom declined to carry the bride over the threshold.
    He could not, however, refuse to offer his arm, not with three hundred wedding guests thronging around them, eagerly awaiting any further tidbit of gossip that might be gleaned from the occasion. To her credit, she didn't grab or cling. She didn't need to. The deed was done. The fatal words had been said. One "I do" apiece, to be precise. As they moved through the crowded rooms of Pinchingdale House toward the ballroom, where the wedding breakfast had been laid out with enough lobster patties to satisfy even the Prince of Wales, Geoff felt the light touch of Letty's fingers burning through his sleeve like a brand.
    Mary hadn't attended the wedding. She had been unexpectedly called away to minister to a sick relative, although Geoff suspected it was more an exercise in tact than charity. The identity of the relative had already changed several times in the telling.
    Next to him, Letty's hair whispered against the stiff lace ruffle that framed the back of her collar. From the corner of his eye, he caught a quick, frowning glance of the sort she had been sending him all morning. Geoff pretended he hadn't seen.
    He would have liked to pretend her away altogether, but she was too corporeal to ignore. The faintly flowery fragrance of her hair mingled with the warm smell of clean skin taunted his nostrils with memory, and the plump shoulders revealed by the cut of her dress were already pink from the heat of the crowded room. A freckle perched right on the edge of her collarbone. The French, who, in the lazy days of the ancien régime had tended to name such things, would probably have given it a silly sort of name, like a "tatez-y," or a "touch here." It beckoned the eye as effectively as a well-fluttered fan.
    As to where the eye was drawn Given the standards of the Season, her bodice was modest, even prim, but from the angle at which Geoff was looking, it did little to conceal the lush expanse of flesh so faithfully outlined in the carriage two nights before. The same night she had so effectively laid her trap.
    Geoff abruptly relocated his gaze. No matter how charmingly her freckles