Which suggested that the contents really were inflammatory beyond what even Tab, no wilting violet, could imagine facing down. “From the man she’d sent it to.” Ro narrowed his eyes. “And he wouldn’t give it back?”

“No-he agreed to give it back.” Lydia looked exasperated. “Of course he did. If Tab ordered him to jump through a hoop, he would.”

Ro blinked. “Who is he?”

Lydia studied him, then made up her mind. “Montague Addison.”

Ro opened his eyes wide, struggled to keep his lips straight. “Addison the spineless wonder?”

Lips tight, eyes like flint, Lydia nodded. “Yes. Him.”

“Well.” Ro pushed away his empty plate; lifting his goblet, he sipped. “That explains a number of things.” Including why Tabitha Makepeace no longer favored marriage. If as an impressionable seventeen-year-old she’d considered Montague Addison a pattern card of gentlemanly virtue, it was entirely understandable that she’d subsequently rejected wedlock. Especially to gentlemen.

“So”-Ro focused on Lydia-“Addison agreed to give the letter back. What went wrong?”

“After getting Tab’s note, Addison-the idiot-put the letter in its envelope in his coat pocket. He said he intended to find Tab at a ball and hand it over-even though, of course, Tab rarely attends balls. And it’s February, for heaven’s sake! There are hardly any balls in town, and if he’d bothered to read Tab’s direction on her note, he would have seen we were at home in Wiltshire. But Addison, being Addison, didn’t think of any of that. He went on his usual rounds to a few parties, then, not finding Tab, went on to some hell called Lucifer’s.”

Ro was starting to get a very bad feeling about what might have happened, and more specifically where Tab’s letter currently was. “I know it.”

Hearing his clipped tone, Lydia looked at him, momentarily distracted from her frustration with Addison. “Yes, I daresay you might.” She blinked, then returned to Addison’s shortcomings with a frown. “Addison lost heavily, as I understand he frequently does. He needed to write an IOU to…the gentleman to whom he’d lost, and-I presume he was thoroughly foxed by then-he pulled out Tab’s letter and wrote his note of hand on the envelope, and gave it to…the gentleman.”