"Do not worry about me. I do not imagine she has any interest in me whatsoever."
"You would be wrong, Lacey. But have a care. You are lonely. When one is lonely, one does foolish things."
We looked at each other. I wondered how many foolish things Marianne had done and how many more I would do.
I thanked her for her information and asked her to inform me if she thought of anything else. I took my leave, admonishing Marianne once again to try to be kinder to Grenville. She made a face at me.
As I departed, I heard Marianne close the boudoir door behind me and the click of the key as she locked it. I sighed. She and Grenville would have a long battle ahead.
Grenville was still furious with me when we retreated to the carriage, though he strove to mask it. He looked, if anything, embarrassed. Grenville, I had come to learn, was not a man who shared himself lightly. He valued his privacy above all else.
Nonetheless, I decided to approach the matter head-on and told him, rather bluntly, that if he did not let Marianne off the tether, she would snap it altogether.
He grew offended, of course. But at last, as we approached Haymarket on the way to Covent Garden, he heaved an exasperated sigh. "Blast it, Lacey, look what she has reduced me to."
"It is your business," I said, "and I will stay out of it. But my warning is fair. If you do not trust her, she will never trust you."
Grenville didn't answer. He looked away for a time, studying the passersby as we bumped slowly toward Covent Garden.
"Tell me what you learned from her, at least," he said after a time. "Unless you discussed only me."
"Not at all. She proved to be most helpful." To cover the awkwardness between us, I related to him everything Marianne had told me about Peaches. By the time I'd finished, Grenville had softened at bit.
"The poor woman," he said. "She probably would have done a great deal better remaining a strolling player in the country. Married some actor chap and had a passel of children who'd tread the boards as soon as they could walk."
Thus spoke a romantic-a man who would never know what it meant to be cold and hungry and not know whether the next town would provide enough money for food or shelter for the night.
"By the by," Grenville said. "What do you intend to do for the rest of the winter, once this problem is cleared up, I mean?"
"Do?" I raised my brows. "What I always do."
Which was damn little. Thanks to Grenville, I had his library available to me, and reading through the winter months kept me occupied at least. I had the Derwents to visit once a fortnight, an event I always looked forward to. Grenville would likely invite me to dine or to his club or to Tattersall's every once in a while. At least I now had things to occupy my time and keep my melancholia at bay.
Grenville studied me. "You know, Lacey, you do not need to live alone. I have an enormous house. I will give you rooms of your own, and you can pay me rent to soothe your pride. We can be two lonely bachelors together."
I looked at him in surprise. "You enjoy taking in strays, do you? First Marianne, then me."
"Touche, Lacey."
"I could not pay you the worth of the lodgings, and you know it."
He gave me a critical look. "You know, Lacey, your difficulty is that you spent most of your life with overwhelming tasks to undertake. Push back the Tippu Sultan in Mysore, push back Boney in Spain. Now, nothing so dire engages your attention. I have had this in mind for several weeks, and in fact, it was the news I wished to tell you at my soiree before you interrupted me to tell me you had found a ring on a poor dead young woman."
He stopped as though assessing my mood, and I gestured for him to continue. "What?"
"I have an old school friend in Berkshire, a widower and a gentleman of means, now head of the Sudbury School there. He is in need of a secretary. I saw him at Christmas, and he asked me in passing whether I knew of any gentleman he could take on. I thought at once of you. How about it, Lacey? Live in Berkshire and write letters for a dull headmaster? Hot meals by night and a servant to light your fire in the mornings?"
I sat still for a moment. Grenville was offering me what I wanted, a way to earn a living, a way to leave London and its smoke and grime and loneliness. Perhaps a way in which I could leave behind my melancholia and uncertainty, perhaps again find my own respect.
I wondered what Louisa would think of the offer. She would doubtless encourage me to take it. If I were out of London, she would no longer have to watch me bait her husband.
"It was good of you to think of me," I said.
"Not at all. It seemed the perfect solution."
"I might well be interested," I said. "I will think on it. Thank you."
Grenville nodded and we ended the discussion.
His coach dropped Bartholomew and myself at home then clopped away into the night. I went to bed, sending Bartholomew up to the attics to do the same. The next morning, Bartholomew fetched a newspaper for me as well as bread and coffee from Mrs. Beltan's shop.
I ate bread and leafed through the newspaper, and then I stopped, my blood freezing.
On the second page, in the middle of the column was a notice that a member of the peerage, Lord Barbury, a baron, had been found outside his house the night before, shot through the head, a pistol clasped in his hand.
Chapter Fourteen
I hastened back to Mayfair, taking Bartholomew with me. Lord Barbury's home was in Mount Street, in a large house typical of the neighborhood. Pomeroy was there, along with another Runner from the Queen's Square house, asking the neighbors what they'd heard. Nothing, Pomeroy told me in disgust.
Lord Barbury had been laid out on his bed, pale and cold. A dark red hole marred the black locks of his hair just behind his right ear. As I looked at him, my anger soared.
The fact that the pistol had been in his hand might convince the Runners that it was suicide-over grief for his dead mistress, they'd say-but I was not convinced.
His coachman, who had been the last to see him alive, replied readily to Pomeroy's questions. Upon leaving Grenville's, Lord Barbury had asked his coachman to set him down in Berkeley Square, saying that he'd walk home from there. He'd wanted to think, he'd said. Why he could not have thought in the carriage, the coachman couldn't say, but that was not a coachman's business. The man set his master down as requested and returned home. Later, one of Barbury's footmen had heard a noise outside, opened the door, and found Lord Barbury lying dead on the front doorstep.
The servants were shocked and grieved. Barbury had been a good master and a kind man. I was in a boiling fury. I had Bartholomew fetch another hackney, and I rode to Middle Temple.
I ought to have consulted Sir Montague or Thompson or even Pomeroy first, but I was tired of waiting for them to uncover evidence through slow investigation. Whatever my thoughts were, they were not clear; I only knew that I wanted to find the killer and drag him to justice. In the affair of Hanover Square, I'd sympathized with those wanting to murder the odious Horne. In the regimental affair, I'd understood the motives behind the deaths; but Peaches and Lord Barbury, though a misguided in some respects, were hardly in the same standing.
I turned to the most obvious suspect, the jealous husband.
Chapman's chambers lay in the Brick Court of Middle Temple. The house and those around it bore the same formal architecture of gray brick and white windows. The Middle Temple coat of arms, the Agnus Dei, reposed over the door.
Mr. Chapman sent down first his clerk, then his pupil, to try to put me off. Very busy, the clerk said. The red-haired Mr. Gower made a face and said, "He's been closeted all morning by himself, pouring over mucky books. Why, I do not know. I'm only thankful he hasn't made me help him."