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 the 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.