I touched it to Allandale's cheek. He focused nervously on the tip. "What are you doing, Lacey? Are we going to fight like drunkards in a rookery?"
"No, we will not fight. I have no intention of letting you fight. I am going to reveal to everyone your true face, so that when they look upon you forever after, they will know you for what you are, and loathe you."
He stared, his mouth a round O, uncomprehending.
I pressed the blade into his skin and cut him. He screamed.
Grenville's voice rose on the other side of the door. "Lacey! Bloody hell!"
My knife worked. I sliced stroke after stroke across his alabaster cheeks, shallow cuts that would heal and close and leave a criss-cross of scars all over his face. Scars that would remind him, every time he looked in the mirror, of me. They would tell him that he could not merely smile in soft politeness and have what he wanted. He would never, ever be able to trick anyone with his handsome face again.
Such coherent thoughts would come much later when I reasoned out why I had done what I'd done. At the moment, I only shook with rage and hatred and deep hurt.
This man had broken my beautiful Lydia, wounding her so deeply that she had gone deliberately into despair and shame. The Lydia Westin who had so resolutely stood by her wronged and innocent husband, in the face of all who opposed him, would never have dreamed of lowering herself to a courtesan's tricks, or to using a man who had showed her the slightest kindness. Allandale's actions had turned her into someone she herself had hated in the end.
He had taken her from me before I'd even met her. I would never know that other Lydia, the one true and steadfast and honorable and beautiful. He had shamed her and hurt her, and I doubted she would ever recover from that.
And so I cut him. My knife moved across his lips, his eyelids, his brows. All the while he screamed and wept and pleaded. He tried futilely to claw himself free, but a too soft life had made him weak. I pinned him firmly and sliced again and again into his ever so handsome face.
Behind me, the door burst open. Strong hands seized me and hauled me away from Allandale.
I went without fight, because I'd finished. Allandale's face streamed blood, cuts covering his face in a bizarre pattern. Tears mixed with the blood, smearing it, dripping to his cravat.
"Good God, Lacey, are you mad?"
Grenville was glaring at me. He seemed to have brought other gentlemen with him, but I could not see them through the haze of my rage.
"Yes," I said. My hands were shaking as I slid the knife back into my pocket. I looked at Allandale. "The wilds of Canada will not be too far. Be gone by tomorrow."
Grenville still held me. I jerked from his grasp and strode past him and the gibbering Allandale and out of the room. Outside, club members had gathered to peer into the room and discover the source of the fuss.
I heard Grenville come behind me. He gained my side as we reached the foyer and plunged out into St. James's Street and the sweet September air.
Grenville's efficient coachman had the carriage waiting for us. Matthias bundled the both of us in. The door slammed and I fell into the seat. I was shaking and sick, and my hands were sticky with Allandale's blood.
"Are you insane?" Grenville asked incredulously. "He will bring you up before a magistrate."
"Good. Then I can spread far and wide what kind of man he is. No one will ever trust him again. Even if I go to the gallows for it."
I leaned against the cushions and passed a hand over my brow. My fingers were shaking so hard, I stopped and gazed at them in amazement.
"Are you all right?" Grenville asked sharply.
"Yes," I said. Then I found myself on my hands and knees on the floor of his opulent carriage, gasping for breath.
Allandale did try to prosecute. He began a suit against me the next day, which Pomeroy called round to warn me about. But before the constables could make their way to Grimpen Lane to arrest me, Allandale and his suit suddenly vanished.
I assumed that Grenville had influenced someone in high places, but Grenville wrote that he'd not had the chance to make any plans before Allandale had suddenly left London.
The mystery was solved when I received a letter on thick, cream-colored paper, sealed with a blank wax seal. In it, a fine, slanting hand I did not recognize informed me that my recent trouble had been taken care of. The letter was not signed. I knew, however, in my heart, that James Denis had just made another entry in my debit column.
Somehow, the story put round was that I had taken Allandale aside and bruised him for trying to cheat me at cards. Such a motive was understandable, and I am sorry to say it won me a bit more respect in Grenville's circle. The knife was never mentioned, not by the gossipers, not by me, and not by Grenville.
Lydia Westin had also quietly departed London. When I passed along Grosvenor Street not a week after our final interview, I saw that her house had indeed been shut up, William gone, and the shutters closed. She had not said good-bye.
The only other final note in the business was that I at last gave in to Grenville's insistence and let his tailor make me a coat to replace the one I'd lost in Kent. The new coat was black and made of finest wool, so light I barely was aware of wearing it but warm enough to keep out the London damp. The thing fitted, glovelike, over my somewhat wide shoulders, a change from the secondhand, pinching garments I usually wore.
Grenville persuaded me into the coat because he'd said I'd earned it. I had sacrificed the old coat in my quest to clear Lydia's husband, and cleared him I had. Bow Street Runners earned their rewards; I must earn mine.
I also believe he regarded me in a new light after the incident with Allandale. I'd catch him looking at me sidelong for weeks after, and his conversation with me was more guarded, less impatient.
Louisa Brandon was the only person that autumn who did not avoid me. I confessed to her what I had done, and why, and she understood. I read anger in her eyes, not at me, but at Allandale, and at Lydia Westin.
I told her all as we walked together in Hyde Park on a day late in September. I'd spent intervening time staving off melancholia and not very successfully. The day was chilly, but I had needed to see her. She'd replied that she'd meet me, no doubt welcoming the chance to escape from her convalescing and somewhat irritable husband.
"I was a bit sharp with Mrs. Westin," Louisa said now. She strolled at my side, her hand on my arm. She had admired the coat and told me it made me look fine, but even that had not warmed my heart. "I know it was not her fault," she continued, "but even so, I was most annoyed at her actions."
"She could have done nothing else," I answered. "I would have given myself to her, you know, Louisa. Completely."
"I know."
We walked in silence for a time. I wondered if Brandon had raged at his wife when she'd confessed to him why she'd gone, or if he had wept. Both most likely.
Louisa had not written to me since she'd returned home, nor come to my rooms to see me, though she must have known I'd been ill with the melancholia. But I did not admonish her. I simply enjoyed her presence, savoring this walk and the warm pressure of her hand on my arm.
As we turned along the path toward the Serpentine, she spoke again. "Have you given up looking for Carlotta?"
I thought a moment about James Denis and the paper he had held out to me.
"Yes," I said. "I have given it up."
We stopped to gaze at the gray surface of the water. A breeze rippled it.
"I am sorry," she said softly.
I faced her, studying the rust-colored bow beneath her chin. In the shadow of the bonnet, her gray eyes held sadness.
I said, "I thought I had found something that I'd always wanted. Instead…" I paused and drew a burning breath. "I found something I can never have."
Louisa touched her fingers briefly to my chest, then lifted her hand away. "Your heart will heal in time, Gabriel."
I looked at her, at the ringlets of gold that touched her face. "Perhaps," I said. "But at t
he moment, I think it never will."
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A Regimental Murder clrm-2 Page 23
