"He is quite fond of you," she remarked after a time.
"Grenville? I would hardly say that."
"Perhaps he fancies you."
I looked up. I expected to find her smiling at me, teasing me with barbs to hurt, but she was still studying the letter. Her eyes were tight. "No," I said. "He does not." I had seen enough of the world to know when a man preferred the company of another man to ladies, and Grenville had showed no sign of it.
"I see." She folded the letter.
"Do not toy with him, Marianne," I said. "He does not deserve that."
She dropped the paper back into the box. "Do you know, Lacey, if you were not so proud, you could get much from him. From what I hear, he has vast wealth, houses all over England, business interests in France and America. He could at least set you up in a house with servants to wait on you."
I fastened the leathers on my kit and hoisted it to my shoulder. "Yes, but I am that proud. So I stay here." At the door, I looked back at her. "You may have my bread and coffee in the mornings. I have already paid Mrs. Beltan for them."
A ghost of her usual smile lit her face. "How kind you are," she said in a mocking tone. "But do not worry about me, Lacey. I can take care of myself."
With this lofty statement, she brushed past me and made her way back upstairs.
I ate a half-loaf in Mrs. Beltan's bake shop, then went to the end of Grimpen Lane to await Grenville, reasoning he'd either send his carriage or Bartholomew with a message.
I found Colonel Brandon there instead. He was striding toward me down Russel Street, his own carriage halted among the press of wagons and carts. As usual these days, he exuded anger. He emanated violence in his every step, as though he just stopped himself drawing a weapon on me.
"Where is she?" he began once he was within earshot. "I know you have her, devil take you." His ice blue eyes were bloodshot, his mouth white. "Where have you hidden my wife?"
His voice climbed. Passersby stopped to stare.
I kept my own voice low. "I have hidden her nowhere. She does as she pleases."
His hands balled to fists, stretching his expensive gloves. "A man called Allandale paid me a visit. He thought it would interest me that one Captain Lacey had summoned my wife from a boardinghouse in Greenwich like a servant." He glared at me in fury.
Damn Allandale. I remembered giving the order for Leland to find Louisa and bring her back. Allandale must still have been in the house then. I imagined him gleefully relating the tale to Brandon. "Louisa?" I asked, incredulous. "Do you believe she would scuttle to me just because I called?"
"What I believe is that you knew where my wife was all along and you fetched her back to London at your convenience."
I lost my temper. "I asked her to look after a friend who is ill."
"But you knew. You knew." He stepped close to me. "I will kill you for this."
"At least you are no longer pretending you want reconciliation," I snarled.
"That was for Louisa's sake. You have forfeited any reconciliation with me."
"Thank God for that."
His eyes blazed. "I will have you up before a magistrate. If you are not hanged for the abduction and rape of my wife, I will shoot you myself."
If I'd had a pistol in my possession, I would have already potted him with it. "You idiot, do you realize that any move you make against me will ruin her? If you disgrace her, I will certainly find a way to kill you."
"Do not use her reputation to hide behind. Adultery is a foul crime and I will sink you for it."
I laughed humorlessly. "Lower than you have already sunk me? Ruining my life was not already good enough for you?"
His face and neck went brick red. "You took her from me. You must pay for that."
"You drove her away, you stupid fool. How much did they pay you to testify against Westin? What did they promise in exchange?"
His breathed hoarsely. "Why the hell can you not attend to your own affairs?"
We had collected quite a gathering now. Street girls stopped, hands on hips, to watch us. Mrs. Beltan had left her bakery. Mrs. Carfax and her companion slid by at the edge of the crowd.
"Because you drag me into yours," I answered him. "She is furious with you over Colonel Westin. Why the devil were Breckenridge's lies more important to you than your wife's good opinion?"
"You understand nothing."
"No, I do not. Were she mine, I would move the sun and the moon to please her. You seem to think you can do any idiotic thing you like and she will simply understand. No matter how slow-witted you are."
"She is my wife. Mine!"
"And that gives you leave to hurt her?" I was nearly dancing in rage now myself. "Know this. Whatever you believe, I care greatly for her honor. I would do nothing, ever, to disgrace her, even if that means not kicking you as I'd like to. Her honor is more precious to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand me?"
"So," he said, his voice shaking. "You choose between her honor and mine."
"Exactly, sir. And hers will ever win."
"Then for God's sake, why not tell me where she is?"
I looked him in the eye. "Because she asked me not to."
He stared at me for a long moment, then his lips pulled back in a fearsome snarl. "Damn you- "
He got no further, because Grenville's carriage and its fine matched grays on that moment stopped beside us.
Bartholomew hopped down from his perch, opened the door, and extended the stairs. Grenville leaned forward, his eyes alight. "Well, I am here."
"Where are you going?" Brandon barked. He blocked my way to the carriage. "Are you going to her?"
I gave him an irritated look. "Did you hear anything I've just said to you? No. I am leaving London on other business."
But he had a mad light in his eyes. "But you will go to her sometime. I will not let you out of my sight until you do."
"Oh for God's sake, get out of my way. I am in a hurry."
Bartholomew straightened from unfastening the stairs. At any moment he'd offer his cheerful assistance to remove Brandon from my path, just as he had with Denis's thug.
I could not let that happen. I suddenly remembered Louisa's words- He was a great man, full of fire and able to inspire that fire in others.
And he had been. I still saw it in him. His heart had been broken, partly by me, partly by Louisa, and he was bewildered and hurt. In any event, I could not let him simply be moved aside on the street by the towering Bartholomew.
"Get into the coach," I said.
Brandon blinked at me. "Pardon?"
"I said, get into the coach. If you must dog my footsteps, we may as well make room for you."
Grenville's well-bred brows rose, but he voiced no objection. He must have sensed that even touching the tension between Brandon and me might shatter the very air.
Brandon fixed his gaze on me for a long, furious moment, then he flung himself up and into the waiting carriage.
Along the road north through Hatfield, I told Grenville-and Brandon-about Denis's information and Pomeroy's report that Kenneth Spencer had headed to Hertfordshire, the same place Eggleston had gone to ground with his lover.
The road we traveled was, fortunately for us, rather dry this day. July had segued to August, with its still warm days but cooler nights. The heat wave, I hoped, had broken.
This road marked the route that eloping couples took to Gretna Green, in Scotland, where they could quickly marry. I had eloped with my young wife, but we had not had to travel the long way to Scotland. The man now sitting next to me had managed to obtain a special license for us. That license had allowed us to marry at once, without calling the banns in the parish church, thus preventing my father from standing up and voicing his most strenuous and foul-worded objections. If he had not managed to find impediments to our marriage, he would have created them. As it was, I had been of age, my wife's family had not objected-their daughter had been, in fact, marrying up-and I'd had the license in hand. My father had raged and roared, but the deed had been done.