Hanover Square Affair, The (6 page)

But I’d come to see that behind her prettiness lay the hardness of a woman who had looked upon the world and found it unkind. Where Black Nancy bantered with her mates and faced her hardships with good nature, Marianne Simmons could be hard and cold and ruthless.

Knowing I was poor, she spoke to me only when she wanted to borrow coal and tapers or a few pence for tea. That is, when she did not simply help herself. She also considered me a convenient supply of the snuff she was addicted to but could not afford.

She pulled out the ebony box. “If this Grenville is so rich, why does he not give you money?”

When Marianne had discovered that the famous Lucius Grenville had taken me under his wing, she’d pestered me with questions about him, although she seemed to know more about him than I did. I imagined that the gentlemen she took up gossiped heavily about him.

“A gentleman does not offer money to another gentleman. “

“Bloody inconvenient for you.” She clutched the box to her chest. “I suppose he does not take up with actresses?”

“He does.” In fact, I’d seen him the night before at the theatre with Hermione Delgardia, the latest sensation on the Continent, who was visiting England for a time.

Marianne wrinkled her nose. “None who dance in the chorus, I’d wager. No, he sets his sights loftier, does he not?”

I ushered her out the door without asking for the box back. “I couldn’t say.”

I shut the door and locked it with a key. I did not miss Marianne’s disappointed look that she would not be able to creep back downstairs and filch candles while I was out.

As it turned out, I would not be able to query Grenville that night about either his taste in actresses or his opinion of Josiah Horne, because he never appeared at Arbuthnot’s. The party there consisted of a duke, another actress of considerably more note than Marianne, several other people I knew only slightly, Lady Aline Carrington, and a very pretty young widow called Mrs. Danbury. The latter mostly ignored me, though I attempted to include myself in any conversations around her.

I waited most of the night, but Grenville never arrived. The painting hadn’t much to recommend it either.

Tired, annoyed, and at the last of my resources, I took a hackney as far as I could afford the fare and ended up in St. James’s. I strolled along, hoping I’d chance upon Grenville arriving at or departing from one of his clubs, but the man remained elusive.

I’d walked slowly down to Pall Mall and on to Cockspur Street, making my weary way back toward Covent Garden. As I approached Charing Cross, a man hailed me.

“Captain Lacey, is it? It’s me, sir, remember? Sergeant-major Foster?”

I looked down into a leathery face and twinkling blue eyes. I hadn’t seen the man in three years, but he’d been a mainstay of the Thirty-Fifth, rising through the ranks quickly until he attained his final one of sergeant-major. I knew he’d gone to Waterloo but had heard nothing of him since.

“Of course.” I held out my hand.

He grinned at it, then took a step back and saluted. “Can’t get used to civilian life, sir, that’s a fact. Once a sergeant, always a sergeant. And you, sir? I heard you’d hurt yourself bad and came home to convalesce.”

I smiled faintly and tapped my left boot with my walking stick. “I did. Still a bit stiff, but I get around all right.”

“Sorry to hear it, sir. You were a fair sight on the battlefield, you were, riding hell-for-leather and screaming at us to stand and fight. An inspiration you were.” His grin widened.

“I suspect ‘inspiration’ was the kindest of the words used.”

Foster chuckled. “You always were a sharp one, sir, begging your pardon. Ah, here is someone else you might remember. Mrs. Clarke, here’s our Captain Lacey.”

The plump young woman who’d been peering into dark shop windows a little way away from us turned and stepped back to the sergeant-major. The polite smile I’d put on my face in expectation of a half-remembered acquaintance froze.

I hadn’t known her as Mrs. Clarke; I’d known her as Janet Ingram, and seven years ago, she’d briefly been my lover. I hadn’t seen her since the day she’d left the Peninsula to return to her dying sister in Essex. She smiled into my eyes and I felt the years between us slide away, as if the pain, the betrayal, the empty ache of them, had never existed.

She looked little different now than she had all those years ago and all those miles away in Portugal when she’d been a corporal’s widow. Her waist was as plump, her arms as round, her hair, now adorned with a flat straw hat, as richly auburn. Her brown eyes sparkled as they had of old—the sparkle of a woman who faced life on her own terms, whatever it dealt her. Our affair had lasted only six months, but every day of those months was sharp and clear in my memory.

I don’t know if Sergeant-major Foster remembered the circumstance of our acquaintance. He stood by, beaming and grinning, as if he’d played a joke on me. My throat was paper dry, and I did my damndest to smile and politely tip my hat.

“Mrs. Clarke.”

She bypassed my stilted politeness with a smile that took my breath away. “Gabriel.” She ran her gaze from the dark brown hair at my forehead to the tops of my boots. “I am pleased to see you, though you do not look the same. What happened to you?”

“That,” I said, “is a very long story.”

Sergeant-major Foster rubbed his hands. “Well, well, quite a reunion tonight. How’s the colonel, Captain?”

I dragged my gaze from Janet back to Foster’s tanned and smiling face. “I beg your pardon?”

“Bless me, he’s forgotten already. Our commander, sir. Colonel Brandon. Your best mate.”

I flinched as the truth wanted to come out, but I masked it in politeness. “The colonel is in good health. As is his wife.”

Janet cocked her head, her eyes skeptical, but she said nothing.

“Pleased to hear it,” Foster said. “I’ve had a bit of luck meself. Me old uncle passed on and it seems he had quite a bit of money laid by. All came to me. I’m thinking of going to Surrey and finding a nice little house in the countryside. What do you think of that for an old sergeant, eh, Captain?”

“I think it excellent news, Sergeant-major.”

“When I’m all settled in, I’ll send word, and we’ll have a nice long talk over old times.”

“I’d like that.”

My mouth spoke the expected responses, but my thoughts, and eyes, were on Janet. She looked back at me, her smile pulling me to her and telling me all I needed to know.

“We’ll let the captain get on now, Mrs. Clarke,” the sergeant-major was saying. He saluted again, stiff and exact. “Good night, then, sir.”

I saluted back. “Good night, Sergeant-major. Mrs. Clarke.” I wondered who the devil
Mr.
Clarke was, but that question would have to wait.

Janet took my offered hand, and the brief, warm pressure sent a slight tremor through me. I realized then that although I’d sent Janet away all those years ago, I’d never truly let her go.

They said their good-byes and walked on together. My feet led me the other way, toward Long Acre. After I’d gone perhaps ten paces, I stopped and looked back. Janet walked beside Foster, equal to the small man’s height. She turned her head and looked back at me.

She’d always been able to tell what was in my heart. I imagined, as our gazes locked, that she could tell what beat there now.

At last she turned away, and I walked on, but the world had changed.

*** *** ***

“Gossip is flying about you, my friend,” Lucius Grenville said as his butler silently presented me a goblet of French brandy. I thanked him and sipped the fine liquid, my eyes closing briefly in appreciation.

We reposed in the upstairs sitting room of Grenville’s Grosvenor Street house. The façade of the house was simple, almost austere, in the style of the Adam brothers from the later years of the last century. The inside, however, was lavishly furnished. This room in particular showcased items from Grenville’s travels: carpets from the Orient piled the floor, a silk tent hung overhead. Ivory and bits of Egyptian jewelry filled a curio shelf near the door, and a gold mask of some ancient Egyptian adorned the fireplace mantel. Furniture ranged from a Turkish couch to mundane straight-backed chairs set at random around the room. Real wax candles, dozens of them, brightened the gloom and softened the colors around us.

I recalled the faux Egyptian room in Horne’s house and wondered if the man had tried to emulate this chamber, though it was unlikely he’d ever seen it in person. If he’d meant to imitate, he’d fallen far short of the mark.

Grenville himself was a slim man a few years younger than I, with dark hair that curled over his collar and sideburns that drew to a point just below his high cheekbones. His eyes were black in his sharp face, his nose long and sloping. He could not be called a handsome man, but there were hordes of women, respectable matrons and Cyprians alike, willing to forgive him for it.

In that morning’s post, I had found a letter from Grenville, informing me that his carriage would call for me at eleven o’clock to carry me to his home. I was torn between annoyance and relief. He’d solved the problem of my seeking him by him seeking me, but his abrupt habit of summoning me whenever he wished to see me grated on my pride.

Horne had also written me that he’d had an answer from Mr. Denis, and would I call at number 22 that afternoon at five o’clock? I replied, answering in the affirmative.

I’d bathed and breakfasted and thought about Janet Clarke, who’d once been Janet Ingram.

Janet had been the widow of a young infantryman, left on her own very young, without money or protection. One night I discovered a card game in progress among my men—the winner would take Janet home with him. When I broke it up, she grew angry and demanded to know where I thought she was to sleep that night, if I were so clever. I said I supposed she could stay with me. Which she did, for six months.

She never spoke much about her past, although she did tell me she’d been born in a village on the east coast of England, near Ipswich. She’d had little to look forward to, she said, except backbreaking work on a farm or being pawed at by the local lads. When young Ingram had passed through her village, boasting that he was taking the King’s shilling and going off to chase the Frenchies out of Portugal, Janet had seized a chance to escape her narrow life, and left with him.

Life following the drum was hard for a woman, as I well knew, but many of them, like Louisa Brandon, developed a resilience that any general would envy. They suffered loss and deprivation and hunger and exhaustion, and every battle, successful or not, brought much death. Wives so easily became widows; many more than once.

Janet herself had developed enough resilience to survive her husband’s death and declare she would become the wife or mistress of whoever won the card game. My men were annoyed with me for taking her for myself, but I ever after rejoiced that I had. During those six months I was more alive than I had been in the decade before or the years since.

We never spoke of love, or later. During the war in Spain and Portugal, you had only now, because tomorrow, a battle or a French sniper could change your life forever. When Janet received word that her sister was dying, I’d sent her home, knowing she would not come back. We did not promise to write, or to meet again, or to wait. Time had passed, but she was still beautiful. Still Janet.

Grenville held up his forefinger, which was encircled with a diamond-encrusted ring. “First, you escort Mrs. Brandon to the opera, while her husband is conspicuously absent.”

I said, “Any slander regarding Mrs. Brandon will be silenced at the end of my pistol.”

Grenville grinned and shook his head. “Your honor, and Mrs. Brandon’s, seems to be unquestionable. Though the most malicious tried valiantly to make something of it, that story was quashed.”

He lifted his second finger alongside the first. “Second, you are putting up notices about a young woman I have never heard of, which means you are involved in something interesting.”

“That is almost close to the truth.”

Grenville raised the next finger. “Third, you single-handedly threw a dozen cavalrymen out of Hanover Square yesterday, where they were making a nuisance of themselves. Lieutenant Gale is fuming.”

“Five,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

I took another sip of brandy. “I threw only five cavalrymen out of Hanover Square.”

Chapter Six

Grenville half smiled at me, as though he thought me joking. He wore monochrome colors today, his black and white suit as understated as the exterior of his house. A ruby stick pin adorned his white cravat like a drop of blood.

As I continued to sip brandy, his eyes widened. “Good Lord, Lacey, you are serious. You astonish me.”

I settled myself on his Turkish divan, stretching my left leg to ease the ache in it. “Is that why you asked me to call on you? To discover which rumors were true?”

“Only in part. The other was to get your opinion on this brandy.” He held up his glass, showing amber depths glowing behind crystal facets.

“It is truly remarkable,” I conceded. “An excellent choice.”

“I enjoy giving you food and drink, Lacey. You do not wait to discern what I want you to say before pronouncing judgment. If something truly disgusts you, you do not hesitate to declare it so. I appreciate your honesty.”