Last summer, Colonel Brandon had gotten himself caught up in one of my adventures and had acquitted himself well, helping me catch a killer. After that, he'd pretended to thaw toward me. All through the autumn, he'd invited me to his house to dine or for cards, to talk of our campaigns in Spain, Portugal, and India. He would drink plenty of port and pretend that the uglier incidents between us had never happened.
As autumn waned, however, the air between us became more and more strained, and we had returned to stiffness and veiled insults. By December, Brandon had had enough of me. He'd taken Louisa with him to a shooting party in the north, without sending me his good-byes.
Now this invitation. I did not doubt it had something to do with the fact that I'd become involved with yet another Bow Street problem. Brandon still regarded me as his junior officer, the man he'd made.
But I was no longer his man. I was on half-pay, semi-retired. I could perhaps get myself transferred to another regiment, if another captain were ready for half-pay or wanted my place in the Thirty-Fifth Light Dragoons. But the long war was over, I had little to offer another regiment, and there were plenty of half-pay captains wandering about at loose ends. Also, cavalry nowadays was used to put down riots, a practice I disliked. Firing at enemy soldiers doing their best to kill me in battle was one thing, firing at women and children, no matter how unruly they might be, was something else.
Additionally, the regimental commander of the Thirty-Fifth Light had made it plain to Brandon and me on that last day in Spain that we had better take our feud away from the Army. I could have brought charges against Brandon for what he had done, but I had not wanted his wife to face that shame. Our commander had snarled at Brandon and me as though we'd been recalcitrant schoolboys and called us a disgrace to the regiment. Brandon had taken the reprimand hard.
So here we were in London, both of us fish out of water. We were alternately painfully polite and boiling furious with each other. Louisa bore the brunt of it. She tried her best to heal the breach, because she blamed herself for the breach in the first place.
I could have told her that the rift would have come anyway. Though I'd much admired Brandon when I was younger, we no longer saw eye to eye. On the night when Brandon had made clear his intention to divorce Louisa, the break had come with a vengeance.
With all this in mind, I descended at the Brandons' Brook Street house at eight o'clock that night, on time. My breath fogged white in the January air, and the cobbles were slick.
Brandon was in full lecturing mode. The death of Simon Inglethorpe, via my sword-stick, was already the talk of Mayfair. As the footman served the meal, Brandon related how he'd been accosted at his club today by men asking him what had his captain got up to now? Louisa said nothing, keeping her golden head bent while she toyed with a thin bracelet on her wrist.
I explained the Inglethorpe business over the stuffed pheasant, mushroom fricassee, onion soup, and sole. Brandon glowered his disapproval when I talked of the magic gas and leaving Inglethorpe's so abruptly. He berated me for my carelessness in leaving behind the walking stick, clearly blaming me for Inglethorpe's murder.
He'd dropped all pretense of civility and this autumn's strained politeness. Brandon's blue eyes glittered with suppressed anger, and after the footmen had cleared the last plates, he abruptly told Louisa that he wished to speak to me alone.
Louisa, who had been uncharacteristically silent throughout the meal, rose obediently. But her eyes, too, sparkled with anger. I stood when she did, and she came to me and kissed my cheek. Brandon's sharp gaze remained on me until Louisa said a quiet goodnight and left the room.
"Good God, Lacey," he said the instant the door had closed. "I have been hearing the most sordid stories about you."
His color was high, his eyes fiery. Brandon had always been a very handsome man, tall and broad-shouldered, with crisp black hair and cold blue eyes, his face still square and strong.
"It is damned embarrassing," he went on, "to be approached at my club every day with some new tale of your exploits."
"Stay home, then," I said, my own anger rising.
"The latest offense I cannot even mention before my wife. I have heard gossip that you disported yourself wildly in a bawdy house, broke the furniture, and ran off with one of the women. For God's sake, Gabriel, what were you thinking?"
"Gossip has it wrong," I said in clipped tones.
"How can you deny you were there? People saw you. They told me that even Mr. Grenville was shocked at your behavior."
"I was at The Glass House, yes."
"The Glass House." Brandon spat the name. "That you were even in such a place speaks ill of you."
"Have you been there?"
He looked outraged. "Of course not."
I believed him. Brandon was stiffly moral. "It is a place in which fine gentlemen think nothing of raping a twelve-year-old girl," I said. "She was the lady with whom I fled into the night. I took her away from that place and to the Derwents to care for her. I regret I had time to break only one of the windows."
The tale of my heroics did not soften him. "Why the devil did you go to such a place at all?"
"Because a woman might have died there," I said.
His eyes narrowed. "The woman from the river?"
"Yes."
Brandon frowned. I could tell he did not like the brutal murder any more than I did, but he merely gave me another look of disapproval. "You involve yourself unnecessarily."
I knew that. I always had. Even in the Army, a puzzle or incongruity could intrigue me, even if it were none of my business. Maybe if I'd been a happy man with wife and children to take up my time, I'd have been less interfering.
"If you had seen the dead woman, you would understand," I said. "I want to find the man who did that to her."
"That is Bow Street's business," Brandon snapped. "Let your sergeant investigate crime, and keep your hands out of it."
"Had I kept my hands out of it, a twelve-year-old girl would be raped again tonight."
He gave me a dark look. "You are evading the question."
"I no longer need to report to you, sir. We are civilians now. What I do is not your business."
"It is my business when your name and mine, not to mention the name of my wife, are spoken together. I do not blame gentlemen for cutting you. If not for Louisa, I would do the same."
I rose, my temper fragmenting. "Do not stand on ceremony. I would be most relieved not to have to sit through these tedious nights while we pretend to be friends."
Brandon sprang up as well. "Don't you dare turn on me, Lacey. I took you in when you were nothing. You would have had no career and no standing but for me."
He was right, and I knew it. It angered me that Brandon still had the ability to hurt me. "You are correct, sir. Had I not followed you, I would be buried in Norfolk, poor as dirt with a wife and children to support. Now I am poor as dirt in London, and all alone. I suppose I do have you to thank."
"Go to hell."
"Gladly, if there I do not have to watch you pretend to forgive me."
His eyes flashed. "I've done with forgiving you, Gabriel. I have tried and tried and you've spit in my face every time. By rights I should have shot you for what you did."
"Instead, you sent me to die as David did Uriah."
It was a mean shot, but my accusation was true. Brandon had sent me off with false orders straight into a pocket of French soldiers. I had survived afterward only by crawling away across country, alone. Half-alive, I had at last been found by a Spanish woman named Olietta, who'd eked out a living on her tiny farm after her husband had been killed in the war. I murdered the French deserter who had more or less held her hostage, and she nursed me through the worst of my nightmare pain. At last, at my insistence, she'd dragged me back to the Thirty-Fifth on a makeshift litter, with the help of her six- and eight-year-old sons.
Later I'd regretted the decision to return at all. I might have stayed with Olietta, hidden away in t
he woods, while Wellesley and the English Army pushed on to France and left Spain and me behind. Brandon and Louisa and everyone else had thought me dead. Why should I not have simply remained so?
But I had been too damned anxious to return, too anxious to let everyone know I was alive. And when I'd got back, I'd learned that Brandon would have been quite happy to think me dead.
"Was I not justified?" Brandon snarled.
This was the first time he'd ever admitted, out loud, his guilt in the matter.
We were fighting about Louisa, of course. When Brandon had declared he would divorce Louisa, she had come to me. On a wild and rainy night she'd fled to my tent, seeking comfort. Brandon had forgiven Louisa, but never me. No matter that he claimed he'd repeatedly offered forgiveness, he never truly had. He hated me now, and all the pretense in the world would not change that.
"No," I said. "You were not justified. I wake up every morning knowing that."
Brandon rarely let his rage show naked in his eyes, but he did so now. I thought he was going to come for me, but suddenly Louisa was there, between us, having stormed into the room while Brandon and I were busy shouting at each other.
I looked down at her, swallowing my anger and what I'd meant to say to Brandon. Olietta had been dark, with deep brown eyes and brown skin. Louisa's hair was as bright as the Spanish sun.
"Stop this," Louisa snapped. "Gabriel, go home."
I controlled my response voice with effort. "Your husband is displeased with me yet again. It is a wonder he let me into the house at all."
Louisa's eyes flashed. "Blast you, Gabriel, why can you not simply bow your head? Is your neck so stiff with pride?"
Her anger stung me. It was like a whiplash, to feel that anger. Her husband could hurt me, but Louisa could hurt me ten times as much.
"I cannot," I said to her, "because his idiocy hurts you."
Brandon raged. "How dare you speak so in my own house! Do you try to turn my wife from me before my eyes?"
I was so tired of these rows with Brandon, tired of Louisa looking at me with hurt in her eyes. The three of us could not occupy the same room without the old accusations, old anger, old sorrow bubbling to the surface.
I made a frosty bow. "I beg your pardon, Louisa. I will go. Thank you for the meal."
Louisa merely looked at me, angry, unhappy, unable to answer. I walked out of the room, my heart sore.
At the door, I looked back. Brandon and Louisa watched me, like two statues frozen in anger. We had been bound to each for many years, but the love and friendship we had once shared had dwindled to this. We were forever hurting one another, forever regretting. We would continue to do so, I realized, until we learned to let go. And I knew that day would be long in coming.
*** *** ***
I left the Brandon house for the icy night, swearing under my breath. Brandon could wind me into anger faster than any man alive, and it always took me a good while to cool down.
I knew bloody well that Brandon would never be able to provoke such anger if I hadn't once loved him. He'd been good to me when I'd needed his help, and he'd used his influence to benefit me many times.
I had not realized at the time that in return he'd wanted unconditional love and unquestioning obedience. And I had ever been one to question my betters.
A boy darted into the street, sweeping horse dung from the cobbles, clearing a path for me. I tossed him a penny for his trouble as I made my way across the slick street.
I was not far from Grosvenor Square, and I walked there, making for the home of Sir Gideon Derwent. It would the height of rudeness to arrive without invitation, but I was restless and annoyed and very much wanted to ask Mrs. Danbury a few questions. I could not tamely return home and brood; I wanted to push on with the investigation, to do something.
I regretted my impulse, however, because when I arrived at the Derwent house, I learned that Lady Derwent had taken ill.
* * * * *
Chapter Nine
I was surprised that the footman let me into the house, but he took my hat and greatcoat and led me upstairs to the grand sitting room on the first floor. In only a few minutes, Sir Gideon himself entered the room, followed by his son, Leland.
Leland, in his early twenties, had fair hair and guileless gray eyes. His father was a portly version of the son, slightly faded. Both father and son looked out at the world in all innocence, seeing only what they wished to see. They believed me to be a man who'd had all the exciting adventures that they had not and never would. They were endlessly interested in tales of my life in India and France and Spain.
Father and son advanced upon me eagerly, but I saw worry on both faces. Typically, Sir Gideon brushed aside his own fears and was anxious to learn why I'd come.
"To inquire about Jean," I answered.
"Poor child." Sir Gideon shook his head. "You were right to take her out of that place."
I could imagine no greater contrast to The Glass House than this one. The ceiling of the drawing room loomed twenty feet above us and was decorated with intricately carved moldings. Landscapes and portraits of Derwents covered the yellow silk walls, and matching silk adorned the chairs and settees. It was elegant, tasteful, and serene, everything The Glass House was not.
"Her story is a common one, I'm afraid," Sir Gideon went on. "She came to London to find work in a factory and was met at a coaching inn by a procuress." He shook his head. "We cannot find all these poor children, alas, but I will discuss The Glass House with my colleagues. That at least will be finished."
"Attempts have been made to shut it down before," I said.
"Yes. Odd that. You would think the outcry would be great. But I am determined to change this."
Next to him, Leland nodded in fervent agreement. I had the feeling that the corrupt magistrates would meet their match in the Derwents.
I steeled myself to ask Sir Gideon if I might speak with Mrs. Danbury, but before I could inquire about her, the lady herself entered the room.
She looked at me without surprise; presumably, a servant had told her I'd arrived. She crossed the room and pressed a kiss to her uncle's forehead. "Captain Lacey," she greeted me.
As usual, Mrs. Danbury was cool and composed, comfortably elegant in a dark blue gown with a sash of light blue. Her hair, as fair as Leland's, was twisted into knot and bound with a ribbon. I had risen from my chair at her entrance. I bowed over her hand politely, and her gray eyes met mine.
She flushed slightly and moved back to Sir Gideon. "Aunt is asking for you. And she sends her greetings to Captain Lacey."
Sir Gideon excused himself and hurried from the room, clearly worried about his wife. Leland stayed and pretended he wanted to chat, but I saw that he, too, longed to dash upstairs to see how his mother fared. At last Mrs. Danbury told him to run along, saying cheerfully that she'd keep me company.
Leland departed with relief, leaving the double doors open--me alone in a closed room with Mrs. Danbury would have been most improper. The room was so large, however, that if we spoke in low voices in the middle of it, no one passing would hear us.
As soon as Leland disappeared, I asked, "How is Lady Derwent? In truth?"
Mrs. Danbury let out her breath. "She will recover this, I think. But she grows weaker with every attack."
She knew, as well as I did, that the day would come soon when Lady Derwent would not recover. "Please give her my best wishes," I said.
Mrs. Danbury nodded, and I could see she was pleased that I cared.
"I suppose you heard about Inglethorpe," I said after a moment.
"Yes, my uncle told me of it. It is gruesome. Poor man."
"Did you know him well?" I asked.
She looked up at me, surprised. "Hardly at all. He was a friend of my husband's. My second husband, that is, Mickey Danbury."
I raised my brows. "He was your husband's friend, but you did not know him?" My wife had known all of my friends, whether she liked them or not, and Mrs. Brandon was well ac
quainted with Brandon's cronies.
Mrs. Danbury flushed. "I rarely saw my husband's acquaintance."
I did not pursue it. I knew that in many marriages in the ton, the husband and wife lived entirely separate lives. I found this attitude strange, but many in the upper classes married for financial reasons or for family connections. I wondered what Mrs. Danbury's reasons had been.
"I was surprised to see you at his gathering, yesterday," I said.
"He invited me. I chanced upon Mr. Inglethorpe the other day in Grafton Street, and he asked if I'd like to attend. I was interested; I did not see what harm it would do."
I drew my thumb along the handle of my borrowed walking stick. "I wonder why he invited you, if he did not know you well."
A spark of anger lit her eyes. "I haven't the faintest idea, Captain. He simply happened to, that is all."
I made a placating gesture. "And you attended out of curiosity. What did you think of it?"
She hesitated. "I found it most strange. I have never felt a sensation like that. Had you?"
"No. It made me forget myself." I smiled. "As you observed."
Her flush deepened. "And I as well. I was a bit ill afterward."
"I must apologize for taking the liberty of waltzing with you," I said. "I cannot account for my lack of manners."
She eyed me curiously. "Why did you?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Why did you waltz with me?"
I remembered hearing music in my head, a tune of a fine waltz, and looking down at her bright smile and curved waist. "I wanted to," I said.
Her cheek tinged with a blush. "It was I who made a fool of myself. In front of Lady Breckenridge too."
It surprised me that she should care for the opinion of Lady Breckenridge, even if Lady Breckenridge was a few rungs higher on the social ladder. Mrs. Danbury had prettier manners, but Lady Breckenridge wielded more power among the ton.
"I must also apologize for leaving you there when I dashed off," I said. "My only excuse is that I wanted to ask Lady Breckenridge a question before she disappeared. But I ought to have seen that you reached your carriage safely, at least."
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