I willed myself to cool. I had no proof that he had Jane Thornton, not yet. But if I found it, if I found Miss Thornton in his power, I would break him.
I cleared my throat. "When?"
"I will have to write him, make an appointment, convince him to see you. He does not see just anyone, you know. Mr. Grenville's name should speed things along."
I shook my head. "Do not mention Grenville. I do not want to presume." I imagined myself having to explain to Grenville why I'd used his name to gain an appointment with a procurer. I had no right to presume upon his patronage, nor did I want to drag him into something without his knowledge.
Horne looked disappointed. "Very well, but it might take longer. Though my vouching for you will help. Give me your direction, and I will write to you."
I told him to send missives to the bakery beneath my rooms in Covent Garden. It was definitely not a fashionable address, but he did not blink.
Horne took a sip of punch, which left a red line around his lips. "You were wise to come to me. If you'd gone to Mr. Denis with your blunt ways, you would have come away the loser. He wants a delicate touch, does Mr. Denis. Who directed you to me, anyway? Was it Grenville?"
I looked him in the eye. "Jane Thornton," I said.
The words dropped into the room like bullets into a barrel.
Horne stared at me blankly. "Who?"
"You do not know her?"
"Never heard of her. Did she send you to me?"
I sat back, doubt creeping into my anger. "There was rioting today in the square. Your front windows were broken."
"Indeed, yes. We were in much confusion here."
"The riot was directed at you."
Horne raised his brows. "Do you think so? Nonsense, it could not have been personal. My political opinions are far from radical. No, it was some lunatic escaped from Bedlam stirring the crowd. My life, alas, has not been very exciting."
"You did not know the gentleman?"
"Should I have? What are you on about?"
He seemed puzzled, in truth. My fury abated enough for me to assess my position. I realized I had only the word of the maid, Alice, as to Horne's involvement in Jane's abduction. Though Horne had already irritated me in every way possible, I knew I must go carefully. A man who lived in Hanover Square would have the wherewithal to bring suit against me for slander, which could ruin me completely and not help the Thorntons one bit.
"I am on about nothing," I said. "Merely making conversation. As you observed, I am not skilled at it."
Horne laughed again. "Indeed, you are not. Perhaps you should cultivate Mr. Grenville's acquaintance more thoroughly, Captain. He sets an excellent example in manners."
I went home by way of another hackney. To a captain on half-pay, the shilling-a-mile fare was dear, but rain had begun to pelt down in earnest again, and I knew I'd never make it on foot without much pain.
The driver dropped me at the top of Grimpen Lane, a tiny cul-de-sac that opened from Russel Street near Covent Garden square and paralleled Bow Street. My landlady, Mrs. Beltan, who let rooms in the narrow house to me and another tenant, kept a bake shop on the ground floor. Passersby willingly made the trip to the tiny court for her yeasty breads, which went down well with a jar of ale.
At this hour, the bake shop was shut, and the windows above it were dark. The second floor was let to an actress, the pretty Marianne Simmons, who, between roles, sometimes paraded about the Covent Garden or Drury Lane theatres, looking for a protector for a fortnight or two. But she was discreet, and I rarely saw the gentlemen who took her up.
The house had been grand a century ago, with a high-ceilinged staircase that ascended one side of the house. The staircase walls had been painted with a mural of a lush landscape that rose to a soft sweep of blue overhead. Painted clouds and slightly out-of-proportion birds dotted it. Years and grime had faded the painting, and only bits of the landscape protruded through the haze, so that candlelight fell on the branch of a tree here, a shepherdess in charming yellow there.
Tonight, I did not bother to light a candle. I groped my way up in the dark, one hand on the cool wall, the other on my walking stick. I lived on the first floor, one story above the ground floor. The rooms, one in front and one behind, had once been the house's drawing room and grand bedchamber, and the ceilings were high, a drawback in the cold of winter. Plaster arches, once carved to resemble vines twisting around pillars, crumbled a little more each day. Bits of plaster were apt to float down and land in my coffee.
When I opened the door to the front room, I found a single candle glowing there, and to my surprise, Louisa Brandon sat in my armchair.
Chapter Four
We stared at one another for the space of a moment, then I closed the door and stripped off my gloves.
"Did you not receive my message?" I asked.
She rose to her feet in a rustle of silk. "I did. But I wanted to see you."
I came to her, and she raised her cheek for a kiss. Her light perfume touched me as I pressed my lips to her smooth skin.
I wanted to grow angry at her for presuming to seek me out, but I could not. I always felt a lightening of the heart in the presence of Louisa Brandon, despite what was between her husband and myself, and after the events of this day, my heart needed soothing.
I released her hands. She'd stirred the fire, but it burned feebly, so I knelt and shoveled more precious coal into the grate. "Does your husband know you're here?" I asked as I worked.
"He knows I have gone to the opera."
I gave the fire a cynical poke. "In other words, he knows you are here."
Louisa resumed her seat with a graceful sweep of skirt. "Aloysius does not keep me, Gabriel."
I rose from the fireplace and tried to speak lightly. "I will send for coffee if you want it, but I do not guarantee you will like it. I suspect the landlady at the Gull brews it from old boots."
"I did not come for coffee," she said. "I came to talk to you."
I did not answer. I knew why she'd come.
Nineteen years before, my mentor and greatest friend, Aloysius Brandon, then a captain, had introduced me to his bride. She'd been a fresh-faced girl of twenty-one, with white blond hair and eyes of gray. Her hair was still as yellow and her eyes still as clear, but her face bore lines of grief, etched there by the loss of her three children, none of whom had lived past their first year.
My own dark hair had threads of gray in it, and my own face held lines of pain. Louisa had been there for every single one of them.
I rested my arm on the crumbling mantel and let the fire's warmth ease the ache in my leg. I waited for her to begin, but she simply watched me, while rain beat against the windows like grains of sand.
"I have had a trying afternoon, Louisa. I know you've come to reason me into accepting your husband's apology, but don't bother. I'm not yet ready."
"He wants to see you."
"The hell he does," I said.
"He wants everything the way it was before. He's told me."
Something tightened in my chest. "Well, it cannot be. I've lost my trust in him and he in me. We will never look at each other the same way again."
"You agreed to at least make a pretense."
"I agreed to too damn many things. Look at me, Louisa. My career was the only thing in my life I had done right, and now I do not even have that."
"He wants to help."
My jaw hardened. Brandon had offered his charity a few times since we'd returned to London, but the look on his face when he'd done so had enraged me further. "I'll not take help from your husband."
"You loved him once," Louisa said.
A piece of coal broke and slithered to the hearth. "I have changed. And he has done things that are unforgivable. You know that."