Another thing I felt was pain. The concoction was wearing off, and my leg began to throb with a vengeance. I gritted my teeth and drank deeply of brandy.
When Grenville finished, I rose to leave with him, and realized the height of my folly. My leg hurt like fire, and I had left my walking stick behind at Inglethorpe's.
Matthias offered to run and fetch it for me. Grenville forestalled him, somewhat crossly, and bade him fetch one of his own. I accepted with neither protest nor thanks, uncertain of Grenville's mood.
Not until we were inside his opulent coach, alone, did I open the subject I sensed he did not want to discuss. "What have you done with Marianne?" I asked.
Grenville shot me an angry look. "Do not worry, she is well. I have a house in Clarges Street. She is reclining there in the lap of luxury with plenty of sweetmeats to eat."
"She must be pleased." Marianne liked her comforts.
"Not really. She let me know what she thought of my high-handedness. But dear God, Lacey." His expression turned troubled. "I found her in your rooms, eating the leavings of your breakfast."
"I told her she might have the bread."
Grenville’s diamond cravat pin flashed as he turned his head. "She was shaking with hunger. If you had seen her… She was furious that I'd caught her eating like a starved mongrel. I cannot understand it. I've tried to help her, and yet, my charity seems to do no good."
"Marianne takes what help she likes and disdains the rest," I said. "That is why I leave my door unlocked. She pretends to put one over on me."
"Why the devil does she accept your charity and not mine?"
I shrugged, having no idea. "She has her own code of right and wrong."
"You are good to her, and good to worry about her. I have put her in a house where she might eat well and rest for a time, and she looked bloody indignant about it."
"Rather like caging a feral dog," I said. "Taking care of it might be best for it, but it still bites."
"Very apt. May we change the subject?"
I nodded, and he looked relieved. Grenville's motives were good, but I believed he'd met his match in Marianne. She liked luxury and money, but she also valued her freedom. I wondered how long she'd trade one for the other.
During the rest of the drive to Whitechapel, I told Grenville about Inglethorpe's gathering-who I had seen and what I had observed, and what Lady Breckenridge had related to me about Peaches and Lord Barbury. I omitted that fact that I had capered about like a fool with Mrs. Danbury.
I asked Grenville about the gentlemen I had recognized at Inglethorpe's, and we discussed them until we reached The Glass House, although Grenville could not tell me much. He knew them from his clubs, but not much deeper than that. He agreed it worth investigating whether they'd known Peaches and where they'd been when she died.
Rain still beat down as we drew up in St. Charles Row. The sun had long since descended, and early winter darkness swallowed the street.
We waited in the warm carriage while Matthias hopped down and darted through the rain to rap on the door. The same man I had seen before peered out, but this time, the reception was different. Matthias spoke to him, and the door was opened, wide and inviting.
Grenville descended, and I followed more slowly. Inglethorpe's concoction had definitely worn off, leaving me slow and sore and more fatigued than before.
I entered the house behind Grenville, and the doorman gave me a measuring look. I pretended to ignore him as I stripped off my greatcoat and hat. Matthias took charge of our things, not the doorman, who only watched in silence.
The few candles in tarnished sconces threw off a only a feeble light, and the gloomy evening made the dark-paneled front hall darker still. The doorman led us up a staircase that twisted round on itself to a wide hall containing one double door.
Laughter and voices poured from behind the door-talking, querying, pontificating-nothing I would not hear in any club or tavern. Our guide pushed open the doors and ushered us inside, and at last I understood why the ordinary looking building was called The Glass House.
We stood in a well-furnished, softly carpeted room as dark as the hall below, its walls lined with drapes, brown velvet and heavy. One curtain stood open to reveal a window, but it looked into another room, not outside. The room beyond was dark, the glass reflecting the light of the front room, much as Lady Breckenridge's carriage window had reflected only her own face. I assumed that the other curtains hid windows, the room surrounded on three sides by them.
Men lounged on Turkish couches and armchairs, talking, smoking, drinking brandy or claret, passing snuff boxes back and forth. Card tables occupied one half of the room, where a dozen gentlemen played whist and piquet, no doubt for high stakes.
A smattering of women roamed the crowd. They were, to a body, beautiful of figure, and wore their expensive silk gowns with grace. Their jewels had been chosen with taste, their hair carefully dressed. They were nothing like the painted girls of Covent Garden or even actresses like Marianne. These were courtesans of the highest order-experienced, well-bred, beautiful.
I'd met a few of the gentlemen here before, including an infantry officer, but I did not really know them. All recognized Grenville. He glided languidly into the room, embracing his man-of-fashion persona.
I did not see Lord Barbury among them. Perhaps he truly was beside himself with grief, as both Grenville and Lady Breckenridge had indicated, and home.
I wondered why this house had such an unsavory reputation. I saw nothing that I would not find in any gaming hell in St. James's, although perhaps the ladies enticing gentlemen to play cards here were a bit cleaner. Gentlemen regularly brought their mistresses to the hells, and the mistresses gambled as avidly as the gentlemen.
"It seems rather ordinary to me," I said to Grenville in a low voice. "Why would Peaches want to come here?"
"If she did like to come here, it does not say much for her character," Grenville said darkly. "Come, I will show you."
I followed him to the first heavy curtain, which lay beyond the card players, who took no notice of us. Grenville raised the velvet drape. The window looked into a small lighted room, cluttered with chairs and sofas and tables arranged in no pattern I could discern. Other than the furniture, the room was empty.
"Nothing there," Grenville said, and moved to the next window.
Behind that curtain we found gentlemen gathered around a hazard table while a lady dressed in a corset, knee-length skirt, and riding boots retrieved the thrown dice and handed it back to the caster. Her face dripped perspiration, and the muscles of her shoulders played as she reached for the dice.
Grenville dropped that curtain. "There is also a room for faro," he remarked, "and other more chancy games."
"So, it is a gaming hell."
"Somewhat." Grenville raised the next curtain. "They also have opium, if you like, and of course, this."
He gestured to the window. The room beyond was small, and only a chaise longue and a chair reposed in it. A lady lounged in a bored manner on the chaise, an open book on her lap. She wore a wig of bright red curls, and had a pointed, but pretty face. "You choose your vice behind the glass," Grenville said, "then give the house master your bid. You may buy only one vice per night, so choose well."
I didn't yet see the attraction. "Why not simply go to the usual gaming rooms? You can find hazard and willing ladies there."
"Not ladies such as these," Grenville said, nodding at the reclining woman. "They are courtesans who once enticed Napoleon and the king of Prussia and the Austrian emperor. They are the highest of the high."
"And Peaches was a second-rate actress. Why should she want to come here with such ladies present? Why should she want Lord Barbury here?"
"I have no idea. Barbury told me that the proprietor provided them a private room. He and Peaches never came down to the windowed rooms. It is certainly a house her husband could never enter."