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

by Ashley Gardner

  I unsheathed my sword. The blade rang, and raindrops glittered on the bright steel as bitter anger burned through me. I wanted nothing more than to press that sharpness through the terrified coachman’s heart and watch him bleed until he died.

  Behind me Alice sobbed. “Please don’t, sir. It won’t bring her back.”

  It was as though my conscience had spoken aloud. I pressed my anger down, slid the blade back into its sheath, and helped Alice to her feet. In silence, I led her back up the path to the stairs.

  Not until we approached the waiting carriage did I realize that Jemmy and Denis’s two footmen had not returned with me. I glanced back through the rain to the bank below, but I couldn’t see them.

  The footman who’d remained with the carriage opened the door and hoisted both Alice and myself back inside. Alice huddled, damp and miserable, into a corner. I took the seat next to her, forcing the footman to sit next to Denis.

  We rode in silence back through Southwark, winding into the traffic heading across the bridge to the City. Denis studied me in the soft lantern light, the only one of us dry and unmussed.

  “Revenge, Captain, is usually a waste of time,” he said. “I don’t deal in it.”

  “Jane was avenged,” I said quietly.

  “With the murder of Horne by the butler? I suppose she was, indirectly.”

  “But it will not be enough. I want the procuress and anyone else who helped them.”

  Denis shook his head. “You are a hard man, Captain Lacey.”

  “If Horne had taken an innocent child and dashed out its brains, it would have been no different. All she’d ever known was happiness and people who cared for her. Suddenly all that was ripped from her, and she faced a monster. I cannot even begin to imagine her terror. She must have found it unbelievable that such a thing could happen.”

  Alice whimpered. I wanted to pat her hand, to comfort her, but I had no comfort to give. Sometimes there is no comfort, only the knowledge that the worst has happened.

  “I want everyone who was a part of that to face a magistrate and be punished for their sins.”

  Denis gave his head a slight shake. “Jemmy will not face a magistrate. He will face me. He had no business dealing directly with Horne without my knowledge.”

  I looked into his blank, handsome face and cold eyes, and my anger grew hot and heavy. “You are filth.”

  Denis held up his hand in its immaculate, expensive glove. “Have no doubt, I will make him name his accomplices.”

  “And send them to a magistrate? I want them tried before God.”

  He looked idly out the window. “It will do you no good to take them to court. First, you would have to prove what you say. I told you, I will not give you Jemmy, and without him, you will have no eyewitness. Second, you would have to tell the story of your Miss Thornton in all its sordid details, a story that would be sensational enough to be printed in the newspapers for all the world to see. Her family will always bear the stigma of having a daughter abducted, ruined, and murdered. Is that what you want?”

  My lips moved with difficulty. “No.”

  “I know you want vengeance, but the conventional way is not the best in this case. I will obtain your revenge for you, as a favor.”

  “I do not want to owe favors to you.”

  “You already owe me favors, Captain. You will get nowhere without Jemmy, and I will not give him to you. You will have to let me do this my way.”

  I met Denis’s eyes, clear, cold, and unforgiving. He knew I was dangerous to him, and he’d already begun taking precautions against me. I knew I would not win.

  *** *** ***

  “So I let him,” I said.

  Louisa twined her cool fingers through mine. She reposed next to me on the low divan in my sitting room, where she’d sat for the last three hours while I poured out my story.

  Five days had passed since I’d discovered Jane’s fate. Four of those I’d spent sunk in melancholia, unable to rise from my bed, barely able to eat the broth Mrs. Beltan forced upon me. Even today, every movement of my limbs hurt me, every motion was made with the greatest effort.

  I had gone to the Brandons’ Brook Street house after I’d helped Alice break the news to Mrs. Thornton that her daughter was dead. Louisa had been out, but her husband had been there, and I’d made him tell me where she was. He insisted on accompanying me to the card party at Lady Aline’s, where Louisa was happily gambling and chatting with friends.

  Louisa’s mirth had evaporated when her husband and I entered to pull her from the sitting room. I explained what had happened, barely able to speak, my mind already pulling away from me. I was never sure what happened after that, because after a long, long time traveling back through London and the hour it took to climb my stairs to my rooms, I’d had strength enough only to crawl into bed and lie there.

  I learned later that Louisa had gone to the Thorntons and given them what aid she could, including arranging for Jane’s body to be retrieved and decently buried in a churchyard with the proper service. She told me that Mr. Thornton would survive his gunshot wound, but she suspected he would always be weak. The heart had gone out of him.

  I never did discover what had happened to Jemmy and the procuress and anyone else involved in the matter. I came across a terse letter from Denis as I leafed through the post that had piled on my writing desk in the intervening time. In brief sentences, he told me that everything had been taken care of, giving me no details. From that day forward, I heard nothing, not from Denis, not in newspapers, not in rumor.

  I told Louisa everything, the words tumbling from my lips, as though she were a papist confessor and I a contrite sinner.

  “So I turned my back on Jemmy and left him to Denis’s mercy. God knows what he did to him.”

  Louisa lifted her head, and firelight glistened on a sleek, golden curl that fell to her neck. “I confess that I do not feel much sympathy for him. Not after spending these past days with Mrs. Thornton. Not for Horne, not Jemmy, not the procuress.”

  “You didn’t see Denis’s eyes. I have never seen anything so cold. It’s as though he’s not even alive, Louisa.”

  She shivered. “I think I never want to meet this man. Although I am very angry about what he did to you, and I would like to tell him so.”

  I smiled at the image of Louisa Brandon scolding James Denis, her finger extended, then I sobered. “He wanted to punish Jemmy himself, not because Jemmy had done a terrible thing, but because he’d disobeyed Denis. And, Denis sees it as a way to have power over me.”

  “Mr. Denis also could not let Jemmy in court for fear of what he might confess in the dock—or on the scaffold,” Louisa pointed out.

  “Denis does have the magistrates in his pocket, but gossip and public opinion can still ruin him.” I ran my hands through my hair. “But I did the same, didn’t I? I let my own will prevail over the law and justice.”

  “By letting Aimee’s aunt take her to France?”

  I rested my head against the back of the divan. “Ease my conscience, Louisa. Was I right to let her go?”

  Louisa met my eyes, hers clear gray and filled with compassion. “What Horne did was unforgivable. Aimee took his life in desperation, and in defense of her own. He never would have paid for what he’d done, if she hadn’t.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I’ve shot men who were doing their best to shoot me, I’ve plunged my saber into men who were trying to plunge their bayonets into me. I had to defend myself. Does that make me—or Aimee, or Josette—any less wrong for taking another person’s life?”

  “I cannot answer that, Gabriel. What was right for Aimee, and what was wrong, I do not know. Perhaps the choice was neither right nor wrong. It only existed.” Louisa laid her hand on my knee.

  I closed my eyes. “If I go to Bow Street and tell them all I know, Aimee and Josette would be dragged back to England, likely to be hanged. Horne was a prominent man, and they are nobodies.”

  “What will you do, t
hen?”

  Louisa watched me, expectant.

  I stared at a point beyond the flaking plaster arches that climbed to my ceiling. The firelight softened the once-gilded walls to a mimicry of their former glory.

  “I must let them live.”

  Louisa looked relieved. “I’m glad.”

  “May God forgive me.”

  Louisa leaned to me, fragrant with lemon and silk, and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead.

  “Even if he will not,” she whispered, “I will.”

  End

  Author’s Note

  I hope you enjoyed The Hanover Square Affair. This series began as a labor of love years ago, with my vision of Captain Lacey as one of the many soldiers who returned from the Napoleonic Wars with no money, no family, and no prospects; he is gentleman-born, but caught in the world of poverty.

  The first six books of the Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries were published by Berkley Prime Crime and went out of print a few years later. Other projects kept me from returning to the series, but I received letter after letter inquiring about the fate of Captain Lacey—so many that when indie (self-) publishing came about, I was willing to try it.

  I expected to sell very little when I re-released the first books, but to my astonishment, the series quickly outsold the previously published print books several times over, and continues to sell well. I put out the books first in e-editions, but each book is now available in print (from online booksellers or via special order from any bookstore, plus Book Depository in the UK and Europe).

  I was happy to be able to put out new books, including The Necklace Affair, a never-before-published novella sitting in my drawer, then A Death in Norfolk and A Disappearance in Drury Lane to continue the series. More original novels and novellas are in the works. Audio editions and foreign-language editions of the books are coming out as well.

  To be kept up-to-date on the publication of new books as well as audio editions and special sales, please join the Ashley Gardner newsletter by going here: http://tinyurl.com/k9z4ggf and filling in the form. (Any email addresses I collect are never given out or sold to anyone.)

  Updates are also posted to my website and blog: http://www.gardnermysteries.com, which also contains a list of books in the series, in order. You may subscribe to updates to the blog and site there, if you wish.

  If you would like to leave a review for this book or any of the Captain Lacey books on Goodreads or wherever you shop, please do. Reviews always help spread the word about an author’s books.

  Thanks again for reading! Captain Lacey’s adventures continue in A Regimental Murder.

  Turn the page for a complete list of books in the series.

  Books in the Captain Lacey Regency Mystery Series

  The Hanover Square Affair

  A Regimental Murder

  The Glass House

  The Sudbury School Murders

  The Necklace Affair

  A Body in Berkeley Square

  A Covent Garden Mystery

  A Death in Norfolk

  A Disappearance in Drury Lane

  Murder in Grosvenor Square

  The Gentleman's Walking Stick

  (short stories)

  And more to come!

  Save $ by purchasing Boxed Sets

  Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries, Vol 1

  Includes

  The Hanover Square Affair

  A Regimental Murder

  The Glass House

  The Gentleman’s Walking Stick

  (short story collection)

  $8 (US) value for $4.99!

  Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries, Vol 2

  Includes

  The Sudbury School Murders

  The Necklace Affair

  A Body in Berkeley Square

  A Covent Garden Mystery

  $10 (US) value for $6.99!

  More boxed sets will follow as the series grows

  Continue for a preview of

  A Regimental Murder

  Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries

  Book 2

  By Ashley Gardner

  Chapter One

  A new bridge was rising to cross the Thames just south and east of Covent Garden, a silent hulk of stone and scaffolding slowly stretching its arches across the river. I walked down to this unfinished bridge one sweltering July night through darkness that belonged to pickpockets and game girls, from Grimpen Lane to Russel Street through Covent Garden, its stalls shut up and silent, along Southampton Street and the Strand to the pathways that led to the bridge.

  I walked to escape my dreams. I had dreamed of a Spanish summer, one as hot as this, but with dry breezes from rocky hillsides under a baking sun. The long days came back to me and the steamy rains that muddied the roads and fell on my tent like needles in the night. The warmth took me back to the days I had been a cavalry captain, and to one particular night when it had stormed and things had changed for me.

  Now I was in London, Iberia far away. The damp warmth of cobblestones caressed my feet, soft rain striking my face and rolling in little rivulets down my nose. The hulk of the bridge was silent, a dark presence not yet born. That is not to say it was deserted. A street theatre distracted passersby on the Strand and game girls stood at the edges of the pavement. A threesome of burly men, arm-in-arm and smelling of ale, pushed through singing a happy tune off-key. They slithered and dodged among wheeled conveyances, never loosening their hold on one another. Their merry song drifted into the night.

  A woman brushed past me, making for the tunnel of darkness that led to the bridge. Droplets of rain sparkled on her dark cloak, and I glimpsed beneath her hood a fine, sculpted face and the glitter of jewels. She passed so close that I saw the shape of each slender gloved finger that had held her cloak, and the fine chain of gold that adorned her wrist.

  She was a furtive shadow in the midst of the city night, a lady where no lady should be. She was alone—no footman or maid pattered after her, holding slipper box or lantern. She was dressed for the opera or the theatre or a Mayfair ballroom, and yet she hastened here, to the dark of the incomplete bridge.

  She interested me, this lady, pricking the curiosity beneath my melancholia. She might, of course, be a high flyer, an upper-class woman of dubious reputation, but I did not think so. High flyers were even more prone than ladies of quality to shutting themselves away in gaudy carriages and taking great care of their clothes and slippers. Also, this woman did not carry herself like a lady of doubtful morals, but like a lady who knew she was out of place and strove to be every inch a lady even so.

  I turned, my curiosity and alarm aroused, and followed her.

  Darkness quickly closed on us, the soft rain our only companion. She walked out onto an unfinished arch of the bridge, slippers whispering on boards laid over stones.

  I quickened my steps. The boards moved beneath my feet, the hollow sound carrying to her. She looked back, her face pale in the darkness. Her cloak swirled open to reveal a dove gray gown, and her slender legs in white stockings flashed against the night.

  She reached the crest of the arch. The rain thickened, a gust of wind blowing it like mist across the bridge. When it cleared, a shadow detached itself from the dark arms of scaffolding and moved toward her. The woman started, but did not flee.

  The person—man or woman, I could not tell which—bent to her, speaking rapidly. The lady appeared to listen, then she stepped back. “No,” she said clearly. “I cannot.”

  The shadow leaned forward, hands moving in persuasive gestures. She backed away, shaking her head.

  Suddenly, she cried out, turned, started to run. The assailant lunged at her, and I heard the ring of a knife.

  I ran forward. The assailant—male—looked up, saw me coming. I was a large man, and I carried a walking stick, within which was concealed a stout sword. Perhaps he knew who I was, perhaps he’d seen me and my famous temper at work. In any event, he flung the woman from him and fled.

  She landed hard on the stones a
nd boards, too near the edge. I snatched at the assailant, but his knife flashed in the rain, catching me across my palm. I grunted. He scuttled away into the darkness, disappearing in a wash of rain.

  I let him go. I balanced myself on the slippery boards and made my way to her. To my left, empty air rose from the roiling Thames, mist and hot rain and foul odors. One misstep and I would plunge down into the waiting, noisome river.

  The woman lay facedown, her body half over the edge. Her cloak tangled her so that she could not roll to safety, and her hands worked fruitlessly to pull herself to the firm stones.

  I leaned down, seized her about her waist, and hauled her back to the middle of the bridge. She cringed from me, her hands strong as she pushed me away.

  “Carefully,” I said. “He is gone. You are safe.”

  Her hood had fallen back. The jewels I’d glimpsed were diamonds, a fine tiara of them. They sparkled against her dark hair, which lay in snarls over her cloak.

  “Who was he?” I asked in a gentle voice.

  She looked about wildly, as though unsure of who I meant. “I do not know. A—a beggar, I think.”

  One with a sharp knife. My hand stung and my glove was ruined.

  I helped her to her feet. She clung to me a moment, her fright still too close.

  Gradually, as the rain quieted into a soft summer shower, she returned to herself again. Her hands uncurled from my coat, and her panicked grip relaxed.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for helping me.”

  I said something polite, as though I had merely opened a door for her at a soiree.

  I led her off the bridge and out of the darkness, back to the solid reality of the Strand. I kept a sharp eye out for her assailant, but I saw no one. He had fled.

  Our adventure had not gone without attention. By the time we reached the Strand, a small crowd had gathered to peer curiously at us. A group of ladies in tawdry finery looked the woman over.