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thinking without knowing the current situation.
    She directed the coachman to draw in to the verge in alarge gap between two landaus. The separation between her carriage and the others was sufficient to establish that she wasn’t courting gossip, wasn’t openly inviting discussion of Randall’s sensational death.
    “I can see Lady Cowper climbing down from her carriage,” Hermione whispered. “She’s heading this way.”
    “Good.” Letitia glanced at the lawns nearby. “You’ll have to give up your seat—the ladies won’t want to mention murder with your delicate ears about. I suggest you stroll, but don’t go far.”
    Somewhat to her surprise, Hermione nodded. “All right.” Gathering her parasol, she opened the carriage door. The footman hurried to assist her to the ground.
    Hermione loved listening to her elders gossip. Letitia, eyes narrow, studied her sister, suspicious, wondering…but then Emily Cowper reached the carriage and she had to give her attention to her ladyship, and the numerous others who followed in her wake. Emily, who had known her since birth, claimed precedence as an old family friend and joined her in the carriage. Most others merely stopped by the carriage’s side, to offer their condolences and hear whatever she felt able to tell them of the recent shocking events.
    As she’d predicted, given that she and Hermione were appropriately garbed in black bombazine and she evinced no desire to encourage those stopping by to linger, their presence elicited no censure, especially not with Emily Cowper, patroness of Almack’s, sitting so solicitously beside her.
    Letitia knew her ton.
    As she’d expected, there were many who, along with their condolences, were only too happy to recount what they’d heard. To her dismay, the universal theme was that Justin, in a fit of the famous Vaux temper, had brutally slain his brother-in-law. Whether his temper had been aroused on his own account, or on hers, or on Hermione’s, was the chief point of conjecture.
    No one—not one person—questioned Justin’s guilt.
    Letitia was grateful for her veil; she’d never been especially good at hiding her feelings, and she certainly wouldn’t have been able to conceal her mounting dismay as lady after lady simply assumed Justin was Randall’s murderer.
    The veil also allowed her, when from the corner of her eye she caught sight of a group amassing a little way from the carriage, to cut her eyes in that direction.
    What she saw horrified her. What was Hermione doing?
    Her sister, animated and exclaiming, stood at the center of a circle of fascinated ladies, young and old, all hanging on every word she uttered, increasingly hotly.
    She was defending Justin. Letitia didn’t need to hear Hermione’s words to know that was so.
    Swallowing a curse, she immediately developed a headache. Excusing herself to Lady Cowper and the other three ladies with whom she’d been speaking, she dispatched the footman to fetch Hermione with a message that she was needed immediately at the carriage.
    Her sister broke off in mid-tirade, and ignoring those around her, came hurrying over. She gripped the carriage’s side. “What’s happened?”
    Supremely aware of curious eyes, and even more curious ears, Letitia gestured weakly. “I have the most dreadful headache—we need to return to the house.”
    Hermione frowned, surprised by the headache, something she knew Letitia rarely suffered from. “All right.” The footman opened the door and she climbed into the carriage.
    Letitia gave the order to return to South Audley Street in a suitably faint tone.
    Both footman and coachman were Randall’s people. While she could have spoken quietly enough to leave the coachman unaware, the footman, perched directly behind the seat on which they sat, was another matter. She resigned herself to holding her tongue—and her temper—until they reached the house.
    Nevertheless, as they turned out of the park and into Park Lane, she