A Covent Garden Mystery clrm-6

by Ashley Gardner

  I crumpled the paper. "Why does the bloody man not stay out of my life?"

  Bartholomew, entering with my freshly laundered shirts, started. "What bloody man is that, sir?"

  I tossed the paper in the grate, though there was no fire on this warm summer day. "Bartholomew, you are quoting from Macbeth, did you know? King Duncan in the first scene, which is ominous. He died rather horribly soon after. I meant James Denis."

  "Oh, right, sir. I brought the letter upstairs from the messenger what left it in Mrs. Beltan's shop. Bad news?"

  "No, more interference. Why will he not keep his fingers from my personal business?"

  "Well, he's helped now and again," Bartholomew said in a reasonable tone as he dove into my bedchamber with the shirts. "Nabbed that Frog officer and helped get your colonel out of clink."

  True, Denis had assisted in many of the problems I'd solved in the last year or so-the murder of Josiah Horne in Hanover Square, the murder of Colonel Westin, the affair of the Glass House, the murder of one of Denis's own lackeys in Berkshire, and the mystery of Lady Clifford's missing necklace. He enjoyed helping me then reminding me that someday I'd be asked to pay him for his favors.

  Denis lived in a fine house in Curzon Street, had power and money and servants to do his bidding, and held many a lord, MP, and respectable gentleman in thrall. He owned them outright-paying their debts, gaining them seats in Parliament, or assisting them in other plays for power.

  He did all these favors for a very high price-the gentlemen were then obligated to make things happen in Commons or the Lords or in the courts, all for the glorious cause of making James Denis more money or bringing him more power.

  He wanted me to work for him outright. I do not know quite what he wanted me to do, but it could not, in the end, be good. Denis did not help others from kindness-he was a businessman, and he always made a profit. He was simply better at the business than any of the men who paid him.

  "He helps only for a price," I said to Bartholomew. "Remember that."

  "Right, sir."

  Bartholomew bustled into my bedchamber, where I could see him placing my shirts into the wardrobe. By the time he emerged, I'd scribbled a note on a half-sheet of saved paper, blew on the ink to dry it, then folded it over once. "Please take this to Mayfair, to Mrs. Brandon. I need her help in a matter."

  In the letter, I asked Louisa to have a young woman formerly known as Black Nancy to come to speak to me. Louisa had taken Nancy, a game girl, under her wing and found her honest employment in Islington. However, if anyone knew or could find out what went on with the girls in Covent Garden, it would be Nance, and I'd welcome her help.

  My pen would not write to Louisa the fact that Carlotta had returned. That was something I would have to tell her in person. "I will give you shillings for the hackney," I said to Bartholomew.

  "No need." Bartholomew snatched up the paper. "Mr. Grenville obliges."

  Grenville paid for all Bartholomew's expenses-Bartholomew and his brother had both been footmen in Grenville's house until Bartholomew had begged to train to become a valet. Grenville had lent him to me, implying that I did him a favor. Bartholomew brushed my suits and got my meals, and Grenville paid his upkeep. As Marianne had observed, Grenville did like to run people's lives for them. But unlike Denis, Grenville did it out of a sense of generosity and large-heartedness.

  Bartholomew departed, saying he'd get me in a meal before traveling to Mayfair. I quit the house and walked back down Grimpen Lane. The summer day had turned hot, and I was sweating by the time I reached Russel Street and turned again to Covent Garden.

  The large square that comprised Covent Garden was bounded on one side by the pile of the theatre, two sides by rows of houses and shops, and the fourth by St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Houses ran along the outside of the churchyard, people squeezing themselves in any place they could.

  The square teemed with life on most days, and this fair afternoon was no exception. Market stalls marched down the center of the square and vendors' carts jammed any open spaces they could find. Shoppers swarmed them, and thieves and pickpockets abounded, I knew, awaiting their chance. Young women bearing baskets of bright, ripe strawberries on their shoulders strolled the crowds, and milkmaids balanced heavy buckets on yokes across their backs, calling out to housewives and maids.

  I passed through the throng without stopping and turned my steps to King Street on the western side. King Street was lined on both sides with tall houses and ended in a tangle of small lanes that meandered to St. Martin's Lane and up to Long Acre.

  The street contained respectable houses, nothing grand enough for gentry or Mayfair aristocrats, but nice enough for the middle class and those who aspired to be middle class. The easy camaraderie of Grimpen Lane or Bow Street or Covent Garden was here replaced with quiet neighbors and dependable servants who looked after their masters.

  As I walked along, eyeing the faceless windows, I seethed that Carlotta had never told Gabriella about me. Carlotta had taken my daughter away from me not only in body, but in her mind and heart. To Gabriella, I'd never existed.

  My friends would no doubt have advised me to wait for the meeting with them and Denis tomorrow morning, but I could not. I wanted to see Gabriella. I needed to see her. I began to ask the dependable servants which houses took paying guests.

  Three of them did, number 37, number 31, and number 19. Nineteen I dismissed because it was above a milliner's shop, and I doubted Carlotta, who had always been rather snobbish about tradesmen, would agree to live above a shop.

  Inquiring at number 37, I found that the landlord rented only to elderly military gentlemen, which left number 31.

  The maid who answered my knock replied in the affirmative that Madame Auberge and her daughter and husband were staying here. What name did I want to say?

  I did not think that Carlotta would agree to see me. I paused on the threshold, wondering whether to send up my card or whether it would be wise to give a false name to lure her down, when Gabriella herself crossed the hall on her way to the stairs. She saw me standing in the sunshine and stopped.

  My daughter. Lord, she was so beautiful.

  Gabriella gazed at me with some hesitation, no doubt remembering the odd encounter from this morning and wondering what to make of it. "May I help you, sir? Captain, was it? My mother is resting."

  I drank her in, from her fresh, light brown curls to her pointed chin to her sensible, high-waisted gown now covered with a long apron. "I would talk with you," I said. "Please."

  This morning, I had spoken rudely to her mother and had tried to block Carlotta's escape from Covent Garden market. Gabriella must have thought me a bit mad. But the way she gazed at me now revealed the trait that made me know more than anything that she was my daughter. Curiosity.

  "Perhaps, sir," Gabriella said, "we may converse here in the hall."

  She glanced at the maid as though seeking her approval. It was not the thing for a young lady to speak to strange gentlemen, but as I said, she was my daughter. I read in Gabriella that she would bend the rules as far as she could in order to satisfy the same curiosity that ran rampant in me.

  I answered that speaking in the hall would do very well for me. The maid, who looked as though she did not like it but felt it not her place to say so, sent me a warning look, but opened the door wider to admit me.

  I walked into a foyer that was dim and small but scrupulously free of dust and mud. The maid closed the door, shutting us into a narrow rectangle with doors opening off one side into whatever rooms lay behind them. At the back of the hall, the staircase rose then twisted back on itself to the next floor.

  Gabriella waited politely as I took off my hat and relinquished it to the maid. With a last disapproving glance, the maid trotted off to the back of the hall and down the stairs to the servants' demesne.

  My daughter stood calmly near the foot of the stairs, her hands clasped loosely around the newel post, as though waiting for me to explain my errand
. Her hair, light brown with a touch of honey blond, was pulled into a simple knot on the crown of her head. She wore no jewelry, nor was her dress cluttered with perfusions of lace and ribbons that seemed to be fashionable these days. In short, she was simple and unadorned, a fresh-faced girl waiting for her life to begin.

  I could not speak. I gazed at Gabriella while she stood poised, likely wondering whether she'd been wise to let me in the house. Her eyes were brown like mine and like my mother's had been.

  "Are you all right, sir?" she asked after the silence had stretched.

  I suddenly wondered the real reason I'd come here. Had it been simply to feast my eyes on my daughter? Or had I come to tell her the truth, to burst into her world and explain to her who I was and what she was to me?

  Something held my tongue. I realized I did not want to spoil her innocence, did not want to wipe the ingenuous expression from her face. I wanted her to know, but I did not want the knowledge to hurt her.

  "Are you well?" I asked her at last.

  "Yes, sir." She looked relieved that I had asked a polite question. "Though I am finding London rather crowded."

  My mouth moved in polite response, although I hardly knew what I said. "I am sorry that the peach seller tried to cheat you. It was a poor example of English hospitality."

  Amusement lit her eyes. "They did the same in Paris. I believe it is a habit of market sellers to try to take as much coin as they can from the country folk."

  "And you have always lived in the country?"

  "Oh, yes, always. My father has a little estate near Lyon. He likes farming," she finished with a fond look.

  The look broke my heart. I cleared my throat. "Do you like life in the country?"

  "It is pleasant," she said. "But I was happy to see Paris, and I am excited to be in London. I had never been farther than Lyon before, you see."

  She spoke politely, making the same sort of small talk a young woman might to an acquaintance of her parents.

  I could barely contain my patience. I wanted to sit her down and have her tell me all about her life, what she had learned and who had taught her and what she knew of Latin and Greek and geography. I wanted to know what was her favorite color and what she liked to read and what were her dreams and her hopes. I wanted to know everything.

  My anger rose. I should already know everything about her. Carlotta had stolen from me the joy of watching her grow and learn and become the young woman she now was. I should have been at Gabriella's side for every one of her triumphs and every one of her heartaches and everything she'd discovered in her life. I should have had that.

  I had grown used to the fact that Carlotta had left me. The insane rage that had visited me the day I discovered her gone had long since worn down. But seeing Gabriella again brought home the pain that all the years between then and now could never be recovered.

  "You are not called Gabrielle, in the French way," I said.

  "My mother is English," Gabriella said, as though she'd grown used to explaining this. "But you know that, sir. You know her. You spoke to her familiarly in the square this morning."

  I realized, with a jolt, that while I was standing here watching Gabriella and trying to discover everything about her, she was trying to discover everything about me. The pain twisted tighter.

  "I was a captain in the English army. Cavalry, Thirty-Fifth Light Dragoons. I was posted to India at the end of the nineties, and then Paris during the Peace of Amiens. That was fifteen years ago." I stopped.

  "Did you know my mother and father there? I was born in France."

  "No," I answered. "You were born in India."

  Gabriella looked perplexed. "No, sir, in France. My mother has never been to India."

  I stilled my tongue. Carlotta must have constructed a world in which I did not exist, cutting out the years she had been married to me. In spite of my hurt and anger, I knew why Carlotta had done so-simple lies were easier than the complicated truth, and Carlotta ever sought the easier path.

  "She was there," I said. "And so were you. Your cries used to annoy my colonel. I was not very contrite about that."

  I remembered how in the middle of the night, I would walk up and down with Gabriella on my shoulder. Carlotta had hysterics when Gabriella cried too much, certain retribution would come upon her. She had not known what to do with a healthy and robust baby like Gabriella.

  I had not known what to do with a baby either, but I had carried her about the tents and the campfires of the men and told her about all the beautiful things I would buy her when she grew up. I remembered her nonsense words and her laughter, and how she'd stared in wonder at everything on the ship as we'd made the long journey back to Europe.

  Louisa Brandon, my colonel's wife, had loved Gabriella. Louisa had no children of her own, and by the time we reached France, she'd realized it was unlikely she ever would. She had doted on Gabriella, happily playing with her on the voyage while Carlotta had been laid low with seasickness. Louisa had been as upset as I when Carlotta had taken Gabriella away, though Louisa had had her hands full bringing me back from madness.

  "You were there," I almost whispered.

  A step on the landing above kept Gabriella from answering. I looked up and beheld a man with graying hair descending toward us. He was not tall, but he was squarely built, with a small head on broad shoulders. Bulky, rather than fat. He wore a plain suit cut in the French style and shoes that would make fashionable Grenville wince. His stance said that he wore his clothes for convenience, not for fashion.

  A pale scar creased his face from ear to cheekbone, probably earned while serving under Napoleon during the first part of the war. He had a military bearing, and I knew at once that I looked upon the man for whom Carlotta had deserted me.

  "Captain Lacey?" he said, stopping behind Gabriella.

  I bowed, but made no reply.

  "I am Major Auberge. I must ask why you have come."

  I answered in French, knowing that language and not wanting any faulty understanding to slow what I wanted to say to him. "There has been an appointment fixed with Mr. Denis for tomorrow."

  "Yes, I received his note. Therefore, we will meet tomorrow. There was no need for you to come today."

  "I suppose I wanted to satisfy myself that you were truly here."

  Auberge gave me a nod, eyes guarded. "Now you have seen."

  "Why did you bring her?" I looked pointedly at Gabriella. "Carlotta could have come alone."

  "My wife could not have made such a journey on her own. I had to accompany her."

  "But you have other children, do you not? Did you bring the entire family?"

  Gabriella broke in. "They stay with my uncle," she said in perfect French. "He has his lands adjacent to ours. We often stay with Uncle."

  "Gabriella." His voice held a father's warning tone.

  "Who is he, Papa?" Gabriella asked. "Why do you speak to him so? And why does he say I was in India?"

  "Gabriella, please return upstairs and attend your mother."

  She certainly was my daughter. A rebellious look came over Gabriella's young face, and she drew a breath to argue. Then she seemed to think better of it, made a polite curtsy to me and one to her father, and rushed up the stairs. Her swirling skirts revealed slim ankles and slender calves, the legs of a girl who liked to run, probably more than was ladylike.

  Gabriella trained her gaze on me again, then turned the corner of the staircase and ascended to the dim recesses above. Not until we'd heard a door slam in the distance did Major Auberge speak again.

  "You will have what you want," he said, still in French. "This Mr. Denis says he can make things satisfactory for all parties."

  "No doubt he can." James Denis had resources, both people and finances, far beyond what I and a small landholder from Lyon could manage. "Why did you bring her? Gabriella, I mean? Why is she not at home with her uncle and the rest of your brood?"

  Red crept into the major's face. "There was a young man. I do not a
pprove of him."

  I immediately did not approve of him either. Gabriella was seventeen, too young, in my opinion, for any kind of liaison or engagement. "So you brought her here to keep her out of harm's way? Is that what you told her?"

  "We told her we would visit her mother's brother. Which we will."

  "Gabriella will discover the true reason you are here, no matter how you try to hide it. She is a Lacey-she will ferret it out."

  "She will learn the truth, in time." Auberge frowned at me. "But from me, please."

  "And what truth will you tell her? That I am her rightful father, denied her all this time?"

  His expression hardened. "Carlotta was unhappy with you. She told me."

  "She was. That is true." After all these years I could admit that I'd expected Carlotta to live a life she'd been in no way suited for. We'd both been very young and foolish, and I ought to have been more patient. "But Gabriella was not miserable. And she belongs to me."

  Auberge lost his veneer of politeness. "Do I not know that? Do I not know that every time I have looked at her for these fifteen years, I have been seeing another man's child? And now with this telling, that I will no doubt lose her? Gabriella is very dear to me."

  I scarcely cared. I was jealous and angry and craving to be with Gabriella, and having this Frenchman tell me that he would be heartbroken when she learned the truth was more than I could bear.

  I planted my walking stick, which encased a stout sword, in front of me. "Then you will have a taste of what you have done to me. Pinching a man's wife and daughter is not the thing, Major."

  He only looked at me, anger in his eyes. He knew that I was the wronged party, and yet, he blamed me. My fault that I'd lost them in the first place, my fault that now he'd have to face Gabriella with the truth.