As I turned away, I spied Bartholomew and his brother Matthias, both clad in livery, dashing up and down the stairs with glasses of champagne. I motioned Bartholomew to me.
"Evening, sir," he said, as I lifted a glass from his tray. He cast a critical eye over my regimentals, which he'd studiously brushed this morning. His look turned disapproving, so I was certain I’d allowed a speck of mud to land somewhere on my journey to the house. But he said nothing and hurried away again.
I took the champagne and climbed the next flight of stairs to a quieter landing and Grenville's private rooms. I was grateful to his invitation to rest away from the crowds, because after seeing the poor girl on the bank of the Thames, I was in no mood for polite conversation and false smiles. I had a few true friends among the ton; one of them was Lady Aline Carrington, a spinster of loud opinions and independent thought, but I could not expect her to give all her attention to me. The Brandons had also been invited, but they were not attending, Louisa had informed me in a letter, because Colonel Brandon did not much approve of Grenville.
The news disappointed me, because Louisa had been elusive of late, and I had hoped to speak with her. A few months ago, Louisa had helped me through a bad bout of melancholia. Her presence in my front room had been a bright beacon as I lay unmoving in my bed. When I showed signs of recovering, she left me to the care of my landlady and departed. In early December, she and her husband had gone north to visit one of Brandon's cronies in a hunting box. Since their return to town, I had not seen much of either of them, and I was not certain why.
I sipped champagne as I opened the door to Grenville's sitting room. I looked forward to perusing Grenville's collections or dipping into one of his many fine books.
On the threshold, I stopped. A slim lady in an ivory silk gown and a feathered headdress stood on the other side of the sitting room, her back to me. Her attention was fixed on a row of tiny figurines from the Orient that rested on a shelf near the window. As I watched, she lifted one and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that to admire the cleverness of it.
If she had been any other lady, I might have believed that Grenville had given her leave to examine his collection, perhaps to wait to be private with him later. With this particular lady, however, I knew he bloody well had not.
I cleared my throat. Lady Breckenridge snapped her gaze to me but she didn’t put down the figurine, nor did she look in the least bit ashamed of being caught.
"Ah, Captain Lacey. Good evening."
The dowager Lady Breckenridge was near to thirty, with a sharp face, dark brown hair, and blue eyes like summer skies at dusk. I had met her the previous summer, in Kent, while I was investigating the affair of Colonel Westin. She'd played billiards with me, blown cigarillo smoke in my face, and told me that I was a fool. What irritated me most was that she'd been right.
"Good evening, my lady," I returned.
She looked at me a moment longer then shrugged at the figurine in her hand. "I could not resist. I hear that Mr. Grenville's collections are the best in England, but he shows them to so very few. Netsuke, I believe they are called. They’re very exotic, aren't they?"
The ivory figure in her hand was a ferocious-looking little beast; only three inches long, it had two rows of teeth and a curving tail. Lady Breckenridge reached to return it to its place, but the sleek ivory slipped from her hands and dropped to the floor. Fortunately, the figurine landed easily on the thick carpet and did not shatter.
Lady Breckenridge began to bend to retrieve it, but I crossed the room, bent down for her, and came up with the little creature in my hand.
"Always the gentleman," she said. She smiled at me, and I was surprised and a bit pleased to see that it was without rancor.
I set the figurine back on its shelf. Last year Lady Breckenridge had, by letting me go through her husband's papers, helped me discover who had committed several murders. She’d never betrayed sorrow for her now-deceased husband, and having met him, I could hardly blame her.
With any other lady, I would have had a stock of polite conversation ready to hand, and she would have a stock of polite responses. With Lady Breckenridge, such convention was useless. She would bat away any polite phrase with stinging wit and wait for more.
"Well, Captain," she said, breaking the silence. "I believe that you still owe me five guineas."
I had lost a wager with her at that fateful billiards game, but I had dutifully enclosed the note with a letter to her when I'd received my autumn pay packet. I'd made certain to pay that debt, not only for honor’s sake, but because I definitely did not want to be beholden to Lady Breckenridge.
She knew this. The glitter in her eyes told me so.
I bowed. "I beg your pardon. I will rectify the omission immediately."
Her smile deepened, as though she'd wagered with herself whether I would go along with her pretense or tell her to go to the devil.
We watched each other for a few minutes more, then, losing interest in our non-conversation, Lady Breckenridge abruptly inclined her head and said, "Good evening, Captain," and sashayed her way to the door.
The musky scent of her perfume lingered after she'd gone. I straightened the figurines on the shelf, wondering again what to make of Lady Breckenridge. Her blunt observations were every bit as pointed as those of Lady Aline Carrington, but Lady Breckenridge's eyes often held a spark of malice, while Lady Aline was kindness itself.
I had learned through Lady Aline that Lady Breckenridge came from a very wealthy and powerful family; likely she'd married Viscount Breckenridge at her family's behest. There had certainly been no love lost between Lord and Lady Breckenridge; in the brief time I'd observed them, they’d never even exchanged words.
I sank down with some relief to the Turkish sofa to wait for Grenville, and amused myself with a volume of his Description de L'Egypte. Grenville was the proud owner of these large folios of magnificent engravings put together by Napoleon’s scientific expedition to Egypt nearly eighteen years before. The emperor had been mad for Egypt, and so had dragged artists, scientists, draftsmen, and architects with him to the Nile to measure and record every antiquity in the country. We'd heard intriguing stories of artists drawing while bullets rained down around them and of them using soldiers' backs as drafting boards.
The Description was immense, and few could afford it, but Grenville, of course, had procured the first volumes immediately on publication. He kept them in a cabinet that had been specially built for it, with shelves ready to receive the forthcoming volumes.
I flipped through the pages, admiring the artist's skills and letting myself be astonished by the exotic temples, pyramids, and statuary. Grenville had a passion for Egypt, and had been there more than once. I wondered when he would disappear from foggy London to travel there again.
I was engrossed in drawings of colossal statues depicting seated men with hands on knees when Grenville finally entered.
I looked up in surprise. I had been sitting only an hour or so, and the soiree still raged below. I had not expected him until very late.
Grenville closed the door with an air of relief. "Quite a crush."
I returned the folio to its shelf while he moved to a side table and a decanter. "Claret? I've set aside the best."
Grenville seemed in no hurry to tell me why he'd wanted to speak to me. He poured us both a glass of warm, red claret, seated himself on his favorite chair, and drank deeply.
I supposed him working up his way to confide in me, but I was too impatient with my own task to wait. I removed the silver ring from my pocket and passed it to him.
Startled, Grenville took it. "What is this?"