The Hanover Square Affair (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries Book 1)

by Ashley Gardner

  We lay there in silence for a while as the fire warmed our bodies. I breathed the scent of her, trying to forget the grim world outside, the cold beyond our circle of warmth.

  Half an hour passed. She sat up and reached for her clothes.

  I caught her around the waist and pressed a kiss to her belly. “Stay.”

  “I can’t, my old lad.”

  “My bed is not very comfortable, but I offer it to you anyway.”

  She pressed her fingers to my lips. “I truly can’t, Gabriel. I’m sorry.”

  I licked her fingers.

  She withdrew them, her face reddening. “I ought to have told you right away. Sergeant-major Foster has found a house in Surrey. He wants me to go and live with him there. I came here today intending to say good-bye.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You are quick to dash a man’s hopes,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.

  We stood in the chill staircase hall, both of us dressed, Janet tying on a yellow straw bonnet with a blue feather.

  “I meant to tell you at once. Truly I did.”

  I folded my arms and leaned against the doorframe, my pulse beating fast and hard. “So you should have. Before you took pity on a fellow in his melancholia.”

  She flushed. “Please don’t be angry with me, Gabriel. I came here on purpose to tell you I could not see you again. But I found I couldn’t. Not so abruptly as that.”

  I regarded her steadily. “You could not before either, remember? When you left me for England? No promises, you said, no hopes.”

  “It is better that way, is it not?”

  “I don’t find it so.”

  She studied me, her eyes still. “I thought you would understand.”

  “That you would rather live with a man who’s come into money? Did you decide that after you saw the state of my rooms, my poverty—”

  “He invited me to live with him months ago. He said that when he found a house he wanted, he’d have me come and live with him. He might even marry me.”

  My lips tightened. “Then why were you so anxious to see me again? If you knew you already had better prospects?”

  “Because when I saw you . . .” Janet broke off, her eyes filling. “How can you ask me that? When you looked at me, and I knew you hadn’t forgotten me, I realized how much I’d truly missed you.”

  I nodded, my throat tight. “And you assured me that Foster was a mere acquaintance.”

  “I didn’t lie. I truly do only see him in the pub. I never thought he would find his house. I thought he was just talking. But today, he asked me.”

  “You ought to have told me you were waiting for such an offer. I might have beaten him to it.”

  She shook her head until her feather twitched from side to side. “I never expected anything from you. I would not demand anything. I thought we would come together and talk over old times, that is all.”

  I traced patterns on the doorframe. “Perhaps I wish you to demand something of me.”

  She looked down and away. “Mrs. Brandon told me what you have become. I can’t be a burden around your neck, Gabriel. I won’t. You have burdens enough of your own.”

  I stilled, anger filling me. “What I have become? Dear God, what the devil did she say to you?”

  “That you are hurt. That you were broken.”

  “So you came to pity me, did you? Damn you. Why didn’t you just stay away?”

  Her eyes flashed, answering my anger. “I didn’t come to you out of pity. I promise you that. I came to find the man I’d left on the Peninsula.”

  “That man is gone, Janet. I see on your face that you realize that. And the man I am now is not the one you want, is it?”

  “Gabriel, please don’t.”

  I caught her chin, twisting her face up to mine. “You don’t understand, do you?”

  Her eyes told me she didn’t. I leaned down and gave her a fierce kiss, and tears beaded on her lashes.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  I lingered there, drinking her in, wishing to God I could buy her with houses in Surrey and that I could still dash through a rain-drenched camp just to bring her coffee.

  I released her. “Don’t worry, Janet. I know when I’ve lost.”

  “There are reasons. I promise you, someday, I will tell you my life story, and we will have a good laugh.”

  “A good laugh. Is that what we are sharing now?”

  Janet’s gaze flicked to mine. “You always did know how to hurt, Gabriel. You have a cruelty in you that frightens me.”

  “Perhaps it keeps me from being pitied.”

  “God help whoever pities you.”

  I let out a breath. When I spoke, I forced my voice to soften, though the anger did not leave me. “To lose you again so soon after finding you is difficult to bear, Janet.”

  She touched my cheek. “You will never lose me. You can’t imagine how fond I am of you, my old lad.”

  I seized her wrist and pressed a kiss to it.

  And then, despite my pride and my temper, I let her go. She gave me a crooked smile, Janet’s warm smile, and she turned away and went down the stairs. Her footsteps echoed in the cold staircase and then were gone.

  I leaned back against a painted shepherdess and closed my eyes. I’d had nothing to offer her, no reasons to expect Janet to stay. I had known when she’d left me in Spain that we would drift together and then apart again, without bond, without promise. But I no longer wanted that. I wanted something more.

  My wounded spirit told me to go after her and beg her to stay. My pride and anger forbade it. As I leaned there, I remembered another loss, years and years ago, that had torn me apart until I’d gone nearly mad with grief. Only Louisa’s quiet voice and her hand in mine had saved my life that time. I reflected with ironic mirth that this loss was comparatively easy to bear.

  Footsteps clattered above me. I opened my eyes to see Marianne Simmons tramping down the steps, a folded newspaper in her hand. She peered at me in the gloom, her yellow ringlets a golden halo around her sweetly rounded face.

  “Devil a bit, Lacey, I thought she’d never go. Who was she?”

  I straightened up. “Someone I knew long ago.”

  Marianne gave me a cynical look. “So I concluded from your argument. In my opinion, you are better rid of her. That kind of woman wants to be sheltered, is afraid of being alone. She truly would be a burden around your neck. You need a girl with more pluck. One who does not need you.”

  I smoothed my hair back from my brow, trying to cool my temper. “My private affairs are my own business, Marianne.”

  She shrugged. “Then best not discuss them in an open stairwell. But that isn’t why I came down. Did you put this advertisement in the newspapers?” She held up a copy of the Times. “Wherever did you find ten guineas?”

  “Grenville is paying it.”

  “Ah, the famous Mr. Grenville. But I may be able to help you.”

  “Help me how? What do you mean?”

  “I might know where this girl went. Was she belly-full?”

  I nodded, trying to suppress my twinge of hope. I knew enough about Marianne not to take her words for absolute verity, especially not where money was involved. “Very likely.”

  “All right then. I know a place she might have gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Show me the ten guineas.”

  I made an impatient noise. “Grenville will pay it.”

  “Let us pay a call on Mr. Grenville, then.”

  “He’s gone to Somerset,” I said.

  “Then I’ll wait.”

  I took a swift step toward her. Marianne backed away, clutching the newspaper. “If you beat me, Lacey, I won’t tell you a thing.”

  “I am not going to beat you. The girl’s father is dying. Each day I delay finding her might mean the end of him. If you know where she is, I swear to you on my honor you will get your ten guineas when Grenville returns.”

  Marianne pursed her ch
ildlike lips and tilted her head to one side. I imagined that when she regarded her rich dandies thusly, they fell all over themselves to please her. “I suppose if I have your word. You usually keep it.”

  “A gentleman’s word is his honor.”

  She gave me a pitying look. “You have not met some of the gentlemen I know. Very well. Shall we go?”

  *** *** ***

  I rented a hackney at a stand and made Marianne accompany me to the Strand first, where I asked Alice to come with us. I did not know what Jane Thornton looked like, and I didn’t trust Marianne not to play a trick on me for the dazzling prospect of ten guineas.

  Marianne directed us to Long Acre then along Drury Lane toward High Holborn. After traveling this thoroughfare for a few minutes, we turned to a narrow lane and a little house that looked no different from the somber brick houses surrounding it. I raised a hand to ply the knocker, but Marianne stepped square in front of me and seized the knocker herself.

  The door was opened by a sullen maid with greasy hair and clean apron. “What’ya want?” was her greeting.

  Marianne walked right in. “I’m looking for my sister.”

  The maid glared at me and Alice. “Who’re they?”

  “My brother and my maid.”

  The woman’s look told me she no more believed her than if she’d said it had suddenly become July. But she stood aside and let us in.

  The house had seemed quiet on the outside, but noise filled the inside. Voices poured down the stairs, women’s voices: laughing, weeping, shouting, cursing, singing. An angry tirade rose in the upstairs hall.

  “Give that back, ye thieving bitch!” A door slammed, cutting off the rest of the argument.

  This was no brothel. The house had no comfortable front parlor for gentlemen to gather for cards or to talk sport before seeking a different sort of sport upstairs. No madam or abbess met us to rub her hands and offer me her finest—or call her bully-boys when she realized she’d not get any money out of me. But this was not a boardinghouse either. It resembled a boardinghouse, but the atmosphere was wrong.

  “What is this place?” I asked Marianne. The maid had tramped away down the back stairs.

  “It’s a house where girls can come who need a rest. Or to lie low. Or for a lying in. Mostly for that.”

  I craned my head and looked up the dark, dusty stairs. “Who is the benefactor who lets them stay?”

  “There is no benefactor. They pay to stay here, same as any boardinghouse. Nine pence a week, bed and board.”

  “You think Jane might have found her way here?”

  “Could be. A girl at the theatre told me yesterday that there’s a lady here that’s stayed a long time. She came in same as the other street girls, but she’s not a street girl. She talks genteel and is obviously well born and bred. But she’s ruined like the rest of them. She helps the other girls through their lying-in and talks to them when they’re blue-deviled. They call her Lady, but no other name.”

  My heart beat faster. “May I see her?”

  “Cool your heels in the sitting room, Lacey. I’ll find her.”

  Alice and I went to the small and dusty sitting room, while Marianne skimmed her way up the stairs.

  “Do you think it’s her, sir?” Alice asked. “It’s just what my lady would do—never mind her own troubles to help others.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” I said, though my characteristic impatience trickled through me and wouldn’t let me sit. I paced while Alice watched me, not daring to hope.

  After what seemed a long time, I heard Marianne returning. Another pair of footsteps overlapped hers. I turned, and Alice jumped to her feet beside me.

  Marianne entered the room with a small young woman whose back was straight, her eyes large and brown, like a doe’s, but holding a calm serenity. A white cotton fichu crossed her shoulders and tied at her sash, and she lightly touched it, as though it gave her comfort.

  Alice’s dark eyes filled with tears. “It ain’t her. It’s not Miss Jane.”

  “You are looking for someone?” The young woman’s voice was polite, but her tone held caution.

  “A girl called Jane Thornton,” I said. “Or she might have used the name Lily.”

  “You are her brother?”

  I shook my head. “Her family is looking for her. I’m helping them.”

  The woman assessed me a moment then relaxed a fraction, as though I’d passed some test. “If she came here, sir, then she is truly lost.”

  Alice sat down abruptly. “You’ve not seen her?” I asked the woman.

  She shook her head. “I’ve lived here since Epiphany and have met no one by those names. She may have used another name, of course.”

  “You help the girls here?”

  Lady inclined her head. “I’m one of them. I help as I can. I like to be useful. I too am lost, as they are.”

  My curiosity grew despite my disappointment. “You came here for sanctuary?”

  “I came here for my-lying in. I decided to stay, as I had nowhere else to go.”

  Lady met my gaze with eyes calm and strong, but I saw grief in them. There were no signs or sounds of children here. If her child had not died at birth, she’d have given it up to someone else’s care. I read in her that the decision had been a painful one.

  Her acceptance made my anger flare. “And the name of the blackguard who made it necessary for you to come to this place?”

  To my surprise, Lady smiled. “I will keep that to myself, sir. The sin was not all on his side, and I have been punished.”

  Had he been punished? I wished with all my heart she’d tell me his name so I could break his neck. I needed to put at least one person’s wrongs right.

  I handed her one of my cards. “If you hear of a girl called Jane Thornton, or Lily, or if she comes here, please send for me. Her family is worried.”

  She took my card, read it, and looked as though something amused her. “I will send word, of course, Captain.”

  I thanked her, and we departed. Another argument began above stairs as we left that house, disappointed and dejected. I looked back once before ascending the hackney, and saw Lady framed in the sitting room window, her white fichu bright against the dark panes. She looked back at me, but did not raise her hand or nod in farewell.

  We traveled back down Drury Lane toward the Strand. Carriages from Mayfair were just making their way toward the Theatre Royal, the glittering coaches and glittering people emerging a sharp contrast to the wretches who scrambled to get out of their way. Beggars thrust hands at the fine ladies with diamonds in their hair until liveried footmen drove the beggars away. Across the road, street girls sashayed back and forth and called to the men. Two well-dressed gentlemen broke away to speak to them, never mind the respectable ladies who stood not a yard from them.

  I didn’t see the Brandon carriage anywhere around the theatre, and Grenville was out of town. Lady Aline Carrington, however, was there in full force, I saw as we passed, the gossipy Mr. Gossington with her.

  Our one-seated hackney was crowded with the three of us. Alice, stuffed between myself and Marianne, sniffled into a handkerchief, and Marianne crossed her arms and glared out the window, not bothering to hide her disappointment. We reached the Strand, and I stood down to help Alice out at the end of the lane to the Thorntons’ lodgings.

  Marianne did not speak to me as we rolled up Southampton Street and through Covent Garden to Russel Street and Grimpen Lane. I paid my shillings and caught up to Marianne waiting upstairs outside my door. She swung around as I stepped off the landing. “What about my ten guineas?”

  My mood had soured considerably. “We did not find Miss Thornton.”

  “I know, but I led you to a good place. If she’s belly-full, it’s likely she’ll go there. I can use the blunt.”

  “God damn your ten guineas, Marianne.”

  She reddened. “I like that! I go out of my way to do you a bit of good, and you throw curses at me.”

&nb
sp; I strode into my sitting room and crossed to the writing table. I scribbled Grenville’s address on the back of one of my cards, returned to the hall, and thrust the card at her. “Give Grenville time to return from Somerset, then go ask for your bloody ten guineas. Tell him I sent you.”

  I closed the door on her startled face. The image of Grenville’s expression when she turned up on his doorstep filtered through my melancholia, and just for a moment, I let myself feel amused.

  *** *** ***

  The next afternoon, I took a hackney to Curzon Street, the heart of Mayfair, pulling up, just at the stroke of three, in front of the house James Denis had directed me to.

  The house reminded me strongly of Grenville’s. The outside was plain, without ostentation; the inside was elegant, tasteful, quiet, and expensive. I paused before a painting on the landing, which depicted a young girl standing by a window, pouring water from a jug. The bright yellows and blues and greens were astonishing. I recognized the painter, one of the Dutch school of the late seventeenth century. The painting was exquisite, rare, genuine.

  The footman’s dry cough tugged me away, and I followed him up the polished staircase. A sharper contrast to Horne’s household could not be imagined. Everything here spoke of refinement, of a person who knew the value of things and what made them precious.

  The footman opened two double doors of rich walnut and ushered me into a library. The room smelled of books and wood and of a fragrant fire on the hearth. My boots sank into a red and black oriental carpet without sound.

  Mr. Denis sat behind a large desk devoid of everything but one small stack of clean paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. He was much younger than I’d expected; I put him to be in his late twenties at most. His hair was brown, close-cropped, and curled naturally, and his eyes were small under black brows. His mouth was straight and long, his face square. He rose while the doors closed behind me and motioned for me to advance.

  As I limped forward, I noticed the large man standing still as a statue near the window. His arms were folded across his large chest, and he watched me from heavy-lidded eyes, as though he were half-asleep.

  Denis came around the desk and shook my hand. He was of a height with me. His face might be described as handsome, but when I looked into his dark blue eyes, I saw nothing. No emotion, no speculation, no thoughtfulness. Nothing. If eyes were windows to the soul, the shutters of James Denis were firmly closed.