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

by Ashley Gardner

  I hobbled to the rickety wooden door. My left leg buckled, pain throbbing through it, and I had to pause three times, easing my weight from it, before I could resume.

  I rubbed my hands in the grease, and then onto the doorframe, near the latch. I repeated this several times, being careful not to douse the lamp, then I touched the flame to the wood.

  The grimy doorframe sizzled, and a thin band of smoke rose and stung my eyes. I held the flame to it, rubbing on a little more grease. The wood grew warm. The grease melted. After a long time, the flame crawled up the damp wood, found fuel, and clung there.

  “What are you doing?” Nance cried.

  “Setting the door alight.”

  She sprang to her feet. “Are you mad? You’ll kill us.”

  “I imagine Denis’s men will not want to remain on a boat that is going up in flames.”

  “No, they ain’t stupid. They’ll light for shore.”

  “Not if they have no way to get there. They will not want to go down with us.”

  “Why don’t we just duck out the skylight?”

  “We will. But Denis’s men are out there. And maybe you’re right.”

  I tossed the candle to the bunk. The flame nearly went out, then it caught on the dirty sheet. The linen crackled and smoked.

  Nance stared at me, round-eyed. “Right about what?”

  “That I am mad. Up you go.”

  I caught her ‘round the waist and boosted her toward the skylight. She pushed on it. “It’s fastened.”

  “Pound on it, then. The wood’s old.”

  “You should have done this before you set us on fire.” She beat her fists against the frame, but to no avail.

  I lowered her to the floor. I stripped off my coat and wadded it around my hands. While she hunkered in the corner farthest from the bunk, I reached up and slammed my hands, at the top reach of my arms, against the slats above.

  The bunk was burning well now, and the wall behind it caught. Flame snaked up and down the doorframe, and smoke hung heavy in the air. I heard shouting. They’d seen. They were coming.

  I pounded the boards. With a loud crack, they broke. I continued beating them, smashing the wooden slats away. Splinters rained down on me, and slivers cut through my jacket to tear my hands.

  I flung the jacket aside and grabbed Nance. “Up you go.”

  She squealed. I shoved her through the broken skylight, pressing my hand on her backside. “Once you’re out there, you run for the side and go over and cling to the boat. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She wailed. “I can’t swim.”

  “Damn you, I can. I am a strong swimmer. I’ll tow you to shore.”

  I had no idea if I could walk across the deck, let alone get myself and one sobbing, wretched girl to the bank of the Thames, but I’d galvanized Nance. She wriggled herself upward and caught the edges of the skylight. Nancy cried out softly as the slivers cut her hands, then I pushed her through. She landed on her stomach and rolled away.

  I couldn’t follow. My leg made it impossible for me to jump, and the only piece of furniture I could have stood on, the bunk, was bolted to the wall and ablaze.

  A splash of water hit the door. They were trying to put out the fire without entering the cabin. I smiled. Futile. Flames licked the roof, eating toward the skylight from which Nance had fled. This boat would burn.

  I caught up my coat, wrapped it around my arm and shoulder, and charged the burning door. The wood, weak and smoldering, gave way at once, and I fell through. My bare foot slid on the wet deck, and I fell hard to my knees.

  I scrambled to right myself. One of Denis’s huge brutes charged me, and I ran, gritting my teeth on the pain. I wondered whether Nance had gotten away, and if so, where she had gone over the side.

  In the shadow of the cabin a grappling hook bit into the planks of the deck. A taut rope drew a rowboat alongside. A bulky shadow of a man crouched in the stern, but in the bow, one foot on the gunwale, stood Lucius Grenville. Firelight glinted on his dark hair and his glittering eyes. In his hand he held a pistol, and he pointed it straight at me.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I took one step back then dashed forward and flung myself over the side. Grenville shouted. The bitter cold water of the Thames took me, sliding greasily over my body. The cuts on my face stung as the grimy water closed over my head.

  I kicked hard, and surfaced. Above me, Grenville fired. The spark flared in the night, and the roar deafened me. A thin spiral of smoke drifted upward, white against the darkness. On the deck, one of Denis’s thugs fell, groaning.

  A rope snaked across the space between me and the rowboat and slapped the water. I grabbed the line, wrapping it around my numb wrists. It tightened, dragging me toward the boat. I realized that the bulky figure behind Grenville, towing me to safety, was Aloysius Brandon.

  I grabbed the side. Brandon reached down, seized me beneath the arms, and hauled me into the boat. I landed on the gunwale and rolled in, a crash of water following me. Grenville fired another pistol. Brandon abandoned me to slice the rope that bound us to Denis’s boat.

  “Wait.” I climbed to my knees, my teeth chattering. “We must find Nance.”

  “What?”

  “Nance. I told her I’d take her to shore. She can’t swim.”

  “I can’t make out what the devil you’re saying, Lacey. Sit down. We’re going.”

  “No,” I choked.

  Grenville swung around. “Are you talking about the girl? I saw her climb out of the cabin and go over the side. You came out just after.”

  My jaw shook with cold and reaction. “Where? Row ‘round the boat.”

  Grenville dropped to the seat and grabbed the oars. I thought, hysterically, that I supposed I should take it as a compliment that he was ruining a pair of fine kid gloves to rescue me.

  He competently pulled around the stern of Denis’s boat. The cabin was completely ablaze now, and Denis’s men had turned their efforts to dousing the fire. I expected any moment to see Nance clinging to the side, her black head above the water, but she did not appear. Grenville circled close, turning the boat on one oar.

  I peered into the blackness, shading my eyes against the glare of the fire. “Nance!”

  I heard nothing above the crackle of the flames. Other boats, attracted by the blaze, were moving toward us, coming to the aid of the ailing craft.

  “Nance!”

  My eyes stung, and my opium-fogged brain wanted to slip back to sleep. But the drug was wearing off enough for me to feel the wounds Denis’s men had inflicted, along with the cuts from the skylight and the torn mess of my bare feet.

  A pistol roared, and a ball whizzed by my head. Brandon ducked, cursing.

  “Devil take it, Lacey, we have to go.”

  “I won’t leave her.”

  Grenville rowed, breathing hard. I scanned the surface near the boat and the water beneath it. I saw nothing. We slid all the way back to our starting point.

  “Go ‘round again,” I shouted.

  Grenville bent over the oars. Brandon rose. “No. Leave it. Pull for shore.”

  “I’ll not leave her!”

  “We have to. There’s no time.”

  My chest was hot, my belly clenched. “Go ‘round again, Grenville. Do it.”

  “Damn you, Lacey. I’ll make it an order if I have to.”

  I swung on Brandon. “I’m not leaving her here to rot, you bastard, like you left me. Grenville, row.”

  Another pistol shot whistled past us. Brandon seized me. “Do I need to knock you down?”

  My rage came forth in a wash of madness. I hit him, hard, in the gut, and then in the jaw. Brandon cursed and spat blood. Then his head came up, and his eyes sparkled with all the fury and hatred he’d bottled up behind politeness for the last two years.

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  I lunged for him. I beat him, the man I’d loved best in the world once upon a time, beat him with all the anger and rage and helplessne
ss I’d felt when Denis’s men had pummeled me. I beat him for Nance, drowning under the dark waters of the Thames, for Jane Thornton, who likely had gone to the same fate. I beat him for Aimee, broken and scarred by a monster, and for Louisa, who cared far too much for both of us. I beat him for myself and the ruin of my life.

  Grenville grabbed me from behind. “Enough. Lacey, stop it. He’s right. She’s gone.”

  Brandon disentangled himself from me. Blood smeared his face and spattered his neckcloth.

  The fight went out of me. Grenville held me for another moment or so until my rage washed away, and my legs buckled. I sank to the bottom of the boat and buried my head in my hands.

  The other two fell silent. Brandon’s breath gurgled in his throat. The fire on Denis’s boat roared into the night.

  Across the water came a muffled sobbing, quiet and soft, accompanied by faint splashing. I raised my head.

  Grenville was on his feet, balancing against the pitch of the boat, sighting into the darkness. “There!” He pointed. I followed the line from his outstretched finger to a tiny patch of deeper darkness, bobbing in the current.

  I got to my knees and grabbed an oar. Grenville dropped to the seat, snatched the oar from my grasp, and bent his back to turn the boat. Brandon half stumbled, half crawled to the tiller, seizing it as it began to slap against the water.

  We slid across the current to the girl who floundered weakly in the shadow of Denis’s boat, her cries growing fainter as we neared. I held the rope ready. Grenville competently turned to drift alongside Nance, just as her head went under.

  I tossed away the rope, leaned hard over the side, and grabbed. Nancy’s shoulder slipped from my grasp, but her hair tangled my wrist. I buried my fingers in it and hauled her upward. She came, all limp and heavy, and I got my hands under her arms and pulled her over the gunwale. Nance fell to the bottom with a wet slap, her skirt in shreds, her legs cut and bleeding.

  Her eyes were closed, her skin cold and clammy. I rolled her onto her belly, and pressed hard on her ribs. I pushed and pushed, while my opium haze receded and pain ground through me.

  At last, Nancy groaned and vomited up the dark water of the Thames. I pulled her into my arms, holding her, rocking her, kissing her wet face. Tears spilled from her eyes, but she clung to me, kissing me back, her lips weak.

  Grenville took up the oars again and rowed us away from the conflagration and the boats zigzagging through the river, and toward the shore.

  *** *** ***

  I awoke to warm sunshine, a sweet-smelling bed, and a cool hand on my brow.

  “Louisa.”

  I caught her hand and gripped it, tight, tight. She returned the pressure, and our eyes met, and held.

  I lay in a featherbed with cool sheets over me and lavender-scented pillows under my head. My body ached all over, my face stinging with healing cuts.

  “Where am I?” I croaked. “This isn’t your spare bedroom.”

  Louisa smiled. “No, it’s Mr. Grenville’s. He insisted you be brought here, and he sent for his own surgeon.”

  Damn good of him, but I felt a twinge of worry. “What about Nance? Where is she?”

  “At my house, being fussed over by my cook and housemaid, hating every minute of it.”

  My face hurt too much for smiles. “She does not much like women.”

  “So I understand from her unfortunate language. Who is she?”

  I let Louisa disentangle her hand from mine. “A street girl whose well-being I foolishly care about. Please don’t cart her off to a workhouse. Or one of those horrible houses of reform.”

  “Don’t worry. She may stay in my attics until you decide what’s to be done for her.”

  “I hope you have a stout lock on your attic door.”

  A smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. “She has tried to run away twice. Until I told her you wished her to remain there. Since then, she’s been curiously compliant. The things she says about you are—quite interesting.”

  I grunted. “Don’t trust her.”

  Louisa smiled again, then she dropped her gaze, watching her hand smooth my sheet. “Aloysius wants to apologize to you. For something he said out on the river, I gather.”

  My head began to ache. “I am far too tired to face Aloysius.”

  “A moment only, Gabriel. Please.”

  I stared at her until she looked up and met my gaze. I wanted to tell her that I much preferred Aloysius’s candid curses to that damned public politeness he hid behind while he hated me with his eyes. But I was not certain she’d understand. She wanted me to forgive him all his past sins, and I was not yet ready.

  “Tell your husband and his apology to go to hell,” I said.

  Her eyes filled with tears. We eyed each other for a few heartbeats of silence before she turned and rustled across the cavernous room and out the door. She did not say good-bye.

  My fogged brain still swam with the aftereffects of opium, and whatever else Grenville’s surgeon had given me for pain. I remembered the conclusions I’d formed while on board the boat, and I groped for them through the haze of my thoughts. I was missing one piece of information about Horne’s death—the identity of one person—but I knew now what that person had done.

  As much as I tried to think it through, my eyes closed, and when I awoke again, the shadows slanted sharply on the huge carpet.

  Grenville’s spare bedchamber must have been about thirty feet across and as much high. The canopied bed I lay in could have held five people, and the cost of the damask hangings could have bought them all food for a year. I felt like an insect waiting to be stepped on.

  I rubbed the blur from my eyes as Grenville himself tramped into the room. He was dressed in a costly suit and a pristine cravat, but he wore soft, flat shoes and no jewels in his lapels, so I assumed he was spending the evening at home.

  When he saw that I was awake, he pulled an armchair next to the bed and plopped down on it, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “Where did you learn to row like that?” I asked.

  “Quebec. And the Nile. I’ll tell you all about it someday. I never thought I’d have adventures in staid and boring London, but that was before I met you.”

  “Grenville, about that letter I sent you—” My face warmed, remembering the haughty phrases I’d used.

  Grenville held up his hand. “Say nothing of it. I had no right to be such a highhanded prig, and I deserved everything you said. Well, most of it. I might have to box you over one or two things. But it’s a mercy you told me to go to Mrs. Brandon’s supper party. When my servants came home without you, I worried a bit, but when I received your letter next morning, I understood you were only annoyed with me. When I called on you in person, and you weren’t home, I still supposed you avoiding me. But when I told Mrs. Brandon of your absence, she became alarmed at once.” He shuddered. “Damn it, Lacey, Denis might have killed you and we still wouldn’t know.”

  “He didn’t mean to kill me.”

  “No? Those pistol shots came damned close for someone who had no intention of killing you.”

  I shook my head against the pillow. “If Denis had wanted me dead, he’d have had me killed at once. He could have done so at any time, easily, and you’d still be wondering where I’d got to. No, he meant to frighten me away from crusading against him. He wanted me to escape, and probably watched to see how I’d do it. The shots were made by his hired men, who were understandably annoyed at me for setting the boat on fire.”

  “Perhaps.” He looked skeptical.

  “How did you know where to find me, anyway?”

  Grenville’s dark eyes lit, as though he’d been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to tell me his part in the adventure. “As I said, Mrs. Brandon grew alarmed when I said I hadn’t been able to find you. So I told Brandon—and his wife, because she refused to leave the room—about Denis and my fears.”

  Grenville paused to smile. “Your Mrs. Brandon must be one of the Furies. As soon as she hea
rd my tale, nothing would do but that we went out at once and searched for you. She was prepared to come with us to the end. Nothing her husband said could persuade her otherwise, even when he shouted at her to obey.”

  I could picture the scene exactly. “Louisa is the most stubborn woman I know.”

  “I pointed out that Mrs. Danbury had arrived and needed looking after, and that seemed to persuade her. But looking into Mrs. Brandon’s eyes, I knew how the Spartans felt. We’d better bring you back alive, or not come back at all.”

  “Mrs. Danbury?” I remembered the elegant blond woman I’d met at the viewing of the painting. “Dear God, she didn’t see me, did she?”

  “No. I brought you directly here and sent word to Mrs. Brandon.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  Grenville lounged back in the chair. “Do you want to know how I found you?”

  He seemed anxious to impart the rest of the tale. I nodded, not really caring.

  “I started searching for you around Grimpen Lane and Covent Garden. One of my footmen found your walking stick—in pieces—behind the theatre. In pieces. The scabbard was broken, but I’m having another made for you.”

  “Good of you.”

  “Not at all. The trail was easy to follow after that. Large men in a scuffle leave overturned rubbish and annoy people, and that is remembered. Someone saw them carry you into a carriage and head toward the river. I remembered that Denis kept two boats on the Thames—which I’d learned when he’d procured the painting for my friend—and I went there. One of the boats was gone, and several boatmen on shore had seen it taken out. So I hired a boat, and Brandon and I went after you.” He stopped. “Is it true you started that blaze on board?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good Lord, man. You might have killed yourself.”

  “I know. But I would have taken Denis’s men with me. They meant to frighten me, and I wanted to frighten them back.”

  “Good God, Lacey, I sincerely hope he calls a truce. And that you honor it.”

  I lay quietly for a moment, my aching head demanding a rest. I had slighted Grenville in my proud anger and still he’d made a dangerous and difficult attempt to rescue me. True, part of his impetus had been to satisfy his sense of adventure, but his actions told me that he forgave my momentary peevishness and thought it of no consequence. There was just a chance that I might have made a friend.