I would no doubt lose my own life in the process. I had noted the alertness of Denis's bodyguards and knew they were well paid to stop hotheads like me. But what did I have to lose? The society I lived in viewed any physical blemish with horror, and here I was, a lame man half out of my mind with melancholia, trying to be accepted as a gentleman on that society's terms. I never would or could. I saw for myself days and nights spent in melancholia, or in trying to forget I had no life to speak of. Who would regret my leaving it?
Louisa might.
Louisa. I repeated her name silently, clinging to it to bring me back from black despair. Louisa cared. Her caring had been the only thing that had kept me alive after her husband had done his best to kill me. I needed to see her.
I'd received another letter from her today about her damned supper party with the admonition that I attend. I would have to disappoint her. I was in no mood to make inane small talk at a gathering that would include her husband. I contemplated rushing out and shooting Denis at once, so as to have an excuse to avoid Louisa's dinner.
The joke relieved neither black humor nor my need to speak to her. I left my rooms and walked to Covent Garden theatre on the chance Louisa had attended tonight, but I did not see the Brandon carriage among those milling nearby. I did not see Nance either. I cringed at the thought of journeying to the Brandon house in Mayfair and refused to dash about town looking for her.
In the end, I paid a visit to the Thorntons, and I found Louisa there.
"I thought you'd be deep in whist at Lady Aline's," I said, sitting down in the Thorntons' bare front parlor. Alice returned to a footstool before Mrs. Thornton, pale and worn, who was nodding off over a skein of wool.
"I wasn't in the mood for cards tonight," Louisa answered.
The red and blue and gold wool she was winding made bright splashes on her brown cotton gown. Her gray eyes and the thin bandeau winding through her hair were her only adornments tonight.
"How is Mr. Thornton?" I asked.
Alice glanced at me. "The same, sir."
I knew then I should not have come. Looking at them only made my heart harder. I caught Louisa's cool hand.
"Talk to me."
She looked up, frowning, but what she saw in my face made her still. She'd known me for a long time, and she knew what I was capable of.
She gently pushed my hand away, and then she began to talk of things small and unimportant. I closed my eyes and let her voice trickle through my anger, dissolving my despair, loosening the knot in my heart. I remained there while she and Alice spoke of the small things that made up everyday life, until I was able to trust myself to return alone to my rooms and so to bed.
I felt slightly better the next morning. The post brought me a letter from Grenville saying he was starting home at once and that Somerset had proved interesting. He did not elaborate.
I tossed his letter aside and opened my reply from Master Philip Preston of number 23, Hanover Square. I'd written him the previous day before I'd set out for Denis's, asking formally for an appointment. He'd answered:
Dear Captain Lacey: I received your letter and thought it frightfully decent of you to write. I've been laid up since the end of Michaelmas term, and they let me see no one, but if you'd call at one o'clock today, I will ensure that you are admitted. I know you have been investigating the murder next door, because I've watched you out the window. You also faced the cavalrymen who quelled the rioters, by yourself, which I thought very brave. I'd much like to meet you and talk about the murder. Your respectful servant, Philip Preston.
The slanted juvenile handwriting and the scattered ink blots made me smile a little. I tucked the letter into my pocket.
At one, I emerged from a hackney in Hanover Square. The weather had turned, and a hint of May and warmer spring lay on the breeze that broke the clouds. May would also bring the wedding of the Prince Regent's daughter, Charlotte, to her Prince Leopold. The festivities were already the talk of London. After that, June would arrive with its long days of light. I looked forward to summer, though I knew it would be gone all too soon. The dreariness of most of the year did my melancholia little good.
I knocked at number 23, managing to avoid looking at number 22. A butler, who might have been cast from the same mold as that of number 21, answered the door. He began to tell me that Mr. Preston was out, but I handed him my card and told him my appointment was with the young master.
An indulgent look touched his face that made him almost human. "Of course, sir. Please follow me."
Chapter Nineteen
The butler led me through an echoing, elegantly furnished house with many pseudo-Greek pilasters and Doric columns and to the upper floors. At the end of one hall, he stopped, knocked, and opened the door when a young voice bade us enter.
The room behind the double doors was stifling. A fire roared high on the hearth and the windows were shut tight. Books littered the room, as did papers, broken pens, the remains of a microscope, and various other scientific-looking instruments.
Philip Preston himself hopped up from a divan. He was a tall, spindly lad of about fourteen, and his voice had already dropped from childish shrill to pre-manly baritone. I couldn't tell if his thinness came from his illness, or if he simply hadn't grown into the fullness of his body. He moved jerkily, as though someone controlled him with strings, and he executed an awkward bow.
"You aren't wearing your regimentals," he said in a disappointed tone after the butler had gone. "John next door, said you were in the cavalry. The Thirty-Fifth Light."
"I was. I only wear my regimentals on formal occasions."
He seemed to find this reasonable. "You are investigating the murder, aren't you? Like a Runner."
I moved newspapers aside and deposited myself on a chair. "Not precisely like a Runner." Runners got the reward money when a criminal was captured and convicted. I would get nothing for my efforts but the satisfaction of preventing a man from being wrongly hanged.
"I saw you talking to one. Big blond chap."
I inclined my head. "Pomeroy. Yes, he is a Runner. He was one of my sergeants on the Peninsula."
"Really? Bloody marvelous. Who do you think did the murder?"
"I came here to get your opinion on that. I believe you watch out the window a good deal."
Philip plopped himself on the divan. "I must. I'm not well, you see. I came home last Michaelmas with a fever and had it for a month. I'm still too weak to go back to school, Mama's doctor says."
I looked him up and down. Thin, yes, but his eyes moved restlessly, and the mess in the room did not speak of weakness.
"You spend much time alone," I said.
"I do. Mama is not well, either. She stays most days shut up in her rooms and doesn't come down. She will go out with Papa sometimes, but most days she will not. Papa stays out much of the time. He has business. He's in the Cabinet, you know."
Ah. That Preston. Right hand to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A man like that would not have time to indulge a valetudinarian wife and a bored and lonely son.
"Do you ride at all?" I asked.
Philip's eyes lit up, then dimmed. "I have my own pony. But I don't ride. Mama's doctor said it would tire me."
I suspected Mama's doctor had discovered how to keep his fees rolling in from his wealthy patients. "We'll take you and your pony to Hyde Park and I'll teach to you ride like a cavalryman. That means how to ride long distances without tiring yourself."
His face blossomed a wide grin. "Would you, sir? I'd be free Monday. That is-oh, I see, sir. You are being polite to me. I'm sorry."
I shook my head. "Not at all. Good riding is a skill much admired in all gentlemen. I will show you how even an ill lad can do it."