A Regimental Murder (22 page)

At the end of this echoing hall stood a tall
double doorway, behind it, a gargantuan drawing room, and the
Derwents.

They were grouped about a chaise longue as
though posed for a portrait. Lady Derwent reposed on the chaise,
and Sir Gideon stood behind her, his hand affectionately on her
shoulder. Leland stood next to his father, brimming with delight,
his gray eyes fixed hungrily upon my regimentals.

In a chair next to Lady Derwent sat a girl
perhaps a few years younger than Leland. Ash-blond hair and gray
eyes made her a child of Sir Gideon, and the slightly shy,
innocently curious looks she darted at me confirmed it.

The fifth member of the group proved to be a
lady I had met earlier that year--Mrs. Danbury, a young widow of
the same blond hair and gray eyes of the Derwents. She was not, in
fact, Sir Gideon's daughter, I was informed as she was presented,
but his niece.

Lady Derwent did not rise, but lifted her
hand for me. Her blond hair was darker than her son's and going
gray, and her eyes were light blue. The hand she offered me was
thin and worn. As I bowed over it, I saw in her face a weariness, a
gray tinge that her smile could not disguise.

Melissa Derwent went brilliant scarlet and
looked frantically at anything but me when I bowed to her and
murmured a greeting. She did not offer her hand, but curled her
fingers into her palms so tightly I feared she'd hurt herself.

Mrs. Danbury did profess to remember me. Her
smile was crooked, slanting one side of her mouth. "Captain Lacey
and I have met before. At Lord Arbuthnot's, was it not?"

I agreed that it was.

They plied me with Madeira, then we went
through another pair of palatial doors, opened by two footmen, to a
dining room with a ceiling at least twenty feet high.

As the ambience promised, the food brought in
by the deferential footmen on trolleys was on par with what Anton
gave me at Grenville's. I ate from fine porcelain plates with a
heavy silver knife and spoon, and drank from crystal goblets that
never seemed to be empty of smooth, blood red wine.

I realized as we began that there was no
other guest but me. I was the one they had lit the house for, had
unfurled the red carpet for, had produced this meal for. Good
lord.

By the time we reached the fish course, Sir
Gideon had asked me to relate, in detail, my life in the army, from
the time I'd volunteered to the day I'd decided to leave the life
behind. I could not imagine why they'd want me to tire them with
war stories, but they asked many eager questions, and Sir Gideon
refused to let me steer the conversation elsewhere.

"Tell us of Mysore," he'd say eagerly. "Did
you ride elephants? Was the Tippu Sultan as cruel as they say?"

"I have no idea," I had to reply. "When we at
last stormed the city, the Sultan was dead, by his own hand or
murdered, who could say. But yes, I did manage to ride an
elephant."

I then had to tell them exactly what that had
been like. Unnerving, to say the least. The elephants kept in the
town of Seringapatam were gentle enough, being generally used as
beasts of burden, but to ride atop a creature as large as a house,
who regarded you as no more significant than a flea, had been a bit
unsettling.

I remembered the hot, baking sun, the smell
of vegetation struggling to live in the heat and dense air, the
overpowering scent of elephant, and the faint cries of a very young
Mrs. Lacey, as white and golden as Melissa Derwent, screaming that
the elephant would eat her, or me, or at least kill us in some
horrible way. I had laughed at her.

Had I ever been such an arrogant, blind fool?
Yes, my conscience whispered to me. You were exactly that.

I was aware I'd paused too long, and
hurriedly resumed my narrative.

Mrs. Danbury, seated next to me, listened to
my tales as avidly as the others did, but her eyes crinkled in
amusement at the rapt attentions of her cousins. But at least she
listened. She could have flicked her fingers and sighed and given
other signs of growing boredom, but she never did.

Leland's stare on the other hand, fixed and
filled with hero-worship, made me most uncomfortable. I hoped to
God that tomorrow morning he would not run off to join a
regiment.

Lady Derwent ate very little. She toyed with
her food, her thin fingers shaking slightly. Her smiles were as
eager as her son's and husband's, but I saw her strain to keep her
lips still, saw the cough well up in her throat from time to time
before she hastily buried it in a handkerchief.

A dart of sympathy pierced my heart. These
people, these innocent, kind, genuinely friendly people would soon
know grief. I wondered how long it would be. From the waxen tinge
to Lady Derwent's skin, I thought it possible she would not live
much past Christmas.

I sought to entertain them as I could,
pulling their thoughts from sorrows to come. I tried to keep the
more gruesome aspects of my stories to a minimum, attempting to
relate only the light and humorous. Louisa would like these people,
I reflected. I would introduce them, when she recovered from her
own present grief. In fact, it might be just the thing for her. She
hated to wallow in her own sorrows, and this unworldly, innocent
family would tug at her heart.

After we had consumed the elegant desert--a
decadent pudding decorated with spun sugar--we moved back to the
drawing room. Despite its ostentation, the room was well lived in.
Workbaskets rested by chairs, books lay about, a lady's sketchbook
had been tucked into a rack near a settee. The Derwents obviously
spent every evening here, guests or no. They occupied every inch of
this grand house, and with their charming obliviousness, rendering
what could be cold and grandiose warm and friendly.

Melissa performed a minuet for us on a
satinwood pianoforte. She played competently but nervously. I
clapped politely when she finished and smiled when she curtseyed.
Sir Gideon and Leland both seemed very pleased with me.

It was very late before I could introduce
into the conversation the purpose for which I'd come. I tried to
casually lead to the topic of Sir Edward Connaught, Major in the
Forty-Third Light Dragoons, but in the end I had to bluntly ask if
he were their acquaintance.

"Of course, my dear fellow," Sir Gideon
replied. He handed me yet another tumbler of mellow, sweet brandy.
"I do know him. He was one of those involved at Badajoz, was he
not? With this killing of the man, Captain Spencer."

"Yes." So they did read the newspapers after
all.

Sir Gideon turned an eager gaze on me. "I did
not know Colonel Westin well, except from the club, poor chap. Did
he really kill that wretched man at Badajoz?"

"No," I answered. "I believe Colonel Westin
was innocent."

My words rippled through the room like the
faint approach of a summer storm. The four Derwents turned to me,
breathless. Even the footman, who had come with a tray of exquisite
chocolates, froze to listen.

There was nothing for it then that I should
tell them every detail of the Badajoz investigation, as well as
about the death of Lord Breckenridge.

Never in my life had anyone listened to me
with complete interest, begging me to go on when I slowed. Another
man might have been flattered; I realized early on that they simply
had very little connection with the outside world. I must have
seemed larger than life to them.

By the time I departed--Sir Gideon insisted
on calling his own carriage for me--I had made an appointment to
meet Connaught in the company of Sir Gideon and Leland four days
hence.

I also garnered another invitation for supper
in a week. They suggested they make my invitation to supper a
standing one once a fortnight. This idea delighted the four
Derwents; Mrs. Danbury smiled in the background. I was uncertain
whether to be pleased or alarmed.

As we pulled away, I looked back at the warm,
bright house that had welcomed me so. They wanted me back. I would
oblige them.

I was just settling back when my eye caught a
brief movement. I peered past the coach lights into the darkness.
Gaslight had been laid here, but in the space between the pale
yellow globes the darkness was complete. I had seen someone, a man
I thought, duck back into shadows.

It had been Brandon trailing me to and about
Astley Close, but he had no reason to do so now. Disquiet settled
over me. I asked the coachman to stop, told him what I saw, and to
drive back to the spot.

When we reached it, the footman and I climbed
down and examined the lane between the houses, but we found
nothing, and no sign that anyone had passed.

* * * * *

Chapter Seventeen

The next day I set plans in motion. If I were
to marry Lydia Westin, and I had fixed upon this course, I had many
things to do.

Long ago, when I had first married, I had
swept my bride away in haste without thought to jointure and
settlements. This time, I would go more carefully. Lydia was a
widow, a very wealthy one. I had nothing. When Lydia married,
unless wills and settlements said otherwise, I would gain control
of her money.

I did not wish to be perceived as what both
Allandale and Lady Breckenridge intimated, a fortune hunter. I
would need to ensure that barriers would be set in place against me
so she'd have use of the money for her lifetime, and leave it to
whom she wished.

Then there was the matter of my first
marriage. My wife had abandoned me fourteen years ago. I had no
idea now where she was, or even if she still lived. When she'd
first left me, I had been ready to drag her back in shame. Louisa
had argued with me day and night against it. For abandoning me, my
wife could be tried for adultery, sentenced to the stocks, or much
worse. I'd come to realize that I wanted her back only to assuage
my pride, not to assure her safety. The frail girl would never have
survived the censure and the ruin of her character, let alone trial
and ignominy. I'd finally convinced myself to let her go.

Later, I'd attempted to find her and so
discover what had become of my daughter, but the trail had gone
cold. I'd attempted a search several times, wasting money with no
result. I'd not found her to this day.

I could not have done much, in any case.
Divorces were costly and difficult to obtain--only those in the
upper classes managed to divorce and even then they could be
ostracized by their family and friends. An annulment could be
granted only under certain circumstance, such as my wife and I
being too closely related or one of us already married to another
party--or me being afflicted with Colonel Westin's malady. So I had
simply let her go. I was a poor man with no prospects; likely she
and my daughter were better off without me.

I could, of course, simply declare her
missing and marry again without taking the trouble to search for
her. Others did so when wives or husbands traveled to far lands and
never came back. After seven years without word, one could presume
they had died and marry again without censure.

But I wanted to know.

Of course, my wife could very well no longer
be living. Her French lover might have abandoned her long ago, or
she might have married another. She might have died in France. My
first step was to find her, and decide what to do after that.

I swallowed my pride and approached Grenville
for advice.

First, he professed astonishment, because I
had not yet told him I had once been married. Once he'd recovered
his surprise, he admitted he knew a man of business in Paris who
could help me.

As he wrote the letter, he quizzed me. "You
are certain you want to pursue this?" He sat at his ornate writing
table in the center of a private sitting room, a chamber decorated
with mementos from his travels. A scarlet tent hung from one wall,
and fascinating gold miniature cats from Egypt occupied a shelf
beside whimsically carved ivory animals from the Orient.

"Quite certain," I said.

"I do not mean your marrying Lydia Westin.
For that, I can only applaud your taste. I mean delving into the
past. I know from experience that sometimes the past is best left
buried."

I paced across his silken carpet from Syria,
my hands behind my back. "I cannot marry Mrs. Westin under false
colors."

"I know that. But it was so very long ago.
Who knows what person your wife has become? Or what her life is
now? Is it worth raking up what was, for either of you?"

I stopped. "You mean she might have married
under false colors herself? I have thought of that. I have also
realized that she might no longer be living. But I cannot marry
Lydia if I am anything but honest with her. Not discovering the
truth might only haunt us later."

Grenville gave me a cynical smile. "Such as
the previous Mrs. Lacey turning up on your doorstep threatening
suit? Yes, I can understand why you would want to prevent
that."

He did not understand in the least. I could
not let Lydia marry a lie. Even if my first wife never turned up, I
would know the lie, and it would fester. Also, I wanted to finish
what had been between myself and my wife, now that I could finally
put my hurt behind me.

In addition, I could learn what had become of
my daughter. I probed that thought as delicately as I would an
abscessed tooth. So long I had debated whether or not to search for
my daughter and bring her home. By law, she belonged to me, not her
mother. But always I feared that knowledge the investigation would
bring. If I learned Gabriella had died, I would know oceans of
pain. If she lived, she would not know me.

"You do know," Grenville was saying. He toyed
with the end of his pen and did not look at me. "There is a man in
London who could find your wife quickly, and what is better,
discreetly. With little disturbance to her, I imagine, if you so
chose. I would even offer to put up the fee."