"Forgive me, Louisa," I said, never taking my eyes from Brandon. "I would like to rest in order to start early tomorrow for Berkshire. If you need me, I will be staying the night at Grenville's house."
Brandon gave me a look that told me he did not think much of a man who took advantage of his friends. I resisted telling him to kiss the devil's hindquarters and politely took my leave of Louisa.
I walked home. No, not strictly home, Grenville's home. I did not have one.
For an Englishman to not have a home was a terrible thing. Everyone needed connection to a place, however loathsome it might be. I was adrift, rather like Sebastian's family who roamed up and down the canals with no clear goal in sight.
I reached Grenville's house to learn that Anton had prepared supper for me. I distressed him by merely pushing it about the plate and dragging myself to bed.
I woke in the night with a raging fever.
I do not know whether the fever was brought on by my distress over my daughter, my walking about in the pouring rain, or my exhaustion from the business at Sudbury and my journey to London. Probably all combined to make my throat raw, my skin burning, and my limbs weak.
Bartholomew the dutiful arrived with a tonic and cool water, then he pulled the covers over me and made to douse the light.
Fevered sleep claimed me quickly. I thought that I managed to tell Bartholomew to send a message to Grenville-"Tell him to ask Fletcher about canals," I said, or thought I said.
I drifted in and out of sleep, my dreams strange and horrible. Sometimes I lay staring at the canopy above me, my body wracked with fever, skin wet with sweat. From time to time I'd hear Grenville's servants enter the room, clean the grate and stoke the fire, hear whispered conversations at the door.
Bartholomew would loom over me every once in a while with a worried expression, but I could not break myself out of my stupor to reassure him.
When I finally awoke, the fever was broken and I lay weak and limp and watched the sunshine at the window.
Bartholomew came to look in on me. I asked him the time.
"Four o'clock in the afternoon, sir."
I rubbed my face, a stiff growth of stubble on my skin. "Too late to start for Sudbury, then. I do not mind a night's journey, but Grenville's coachman might object."
He gave me an odd look. "You all right, sir?"
"Just tired. And powerfully hungry. Did Anton not say he would make something for my supper?"
Bartholomew's brow wrinkled. "That was two days ago, sir."
"What?" I tried to sit up. My head spun, and I held it.
"Two days you've been in bed, sir. Sick as a blind cow, sir."
I fingered the linen nightshirt I did not remember putting on. "Hell," I said feelingly. "I need a bath. And a shave." My stomach growled. "Food first, I think."
"I'll bring you a tray, sir, and hot water. And, oh- " He dipped his fingers inside his waistcoat. "A letter, sir."
"From Grenville?" I reached for it.
"No, sir. I wrote him your note, about the canals and Mr. Fletcher, like you said, and I added that you were sick and wouldn't return until you felt better. He answered saying he'd look into the matter and to give you a tonic, but nothing since yesterday."
I had half-expected Grenville to come rushing back to London to find out what was wrong with me, or ask me what the devil I meant about canals and Fletcher, but perhaps he'd realized it was best to stay and wait for my return.
I rubbed my face again. "Then who sent the letter?"
"A lady, sir."
"Mrs. Brandon?" I asked.
He read from the direction on the folded page. "Viscountess Breckenridge." He tossed it into my lap, then went into the hall and shouted for someone to fetch me hot water and coffee.
I opened the letter. It was a formal invitation, addressed to me, informing me that Lady Breckenridge was hosting a musicale at eleven o'clock on the evening of March 16th, and would I attend?
"What day is it, Bartholomew?" I asked as he began to fill the shaving basin with steaming water from a kettle.
"Sunday the sixteenth of March, sir. The year of our lord, 1817."
I studied the invitation again. "Can you make me presentable? And get me to South Audley Street by eleven o'clock?"
"You sure you're feeling all right, sir?"
"Perfectly fine," I said. The fever had left me and now I was only restless and very hungry.
"I will endeavor, sir," Bartholomew said as he stropped my razor. "I'll shave you now, sir, while Anton fixes your dinner."
Donata Anne Catherine St. John, nee Pembroke, was known better to me by her title, the viscountess Breckenridge. She lived in South Audley Street, enjoyed the comforts of a vast fortune given to her by both her father and her late husband, and moved among the most fashionable people. Tonight it pleased her to host a musicale in order to introduce a young Italian tenor to the London ton.
I was still tired from my illness, but curiosity made me answer her invitation. I walked to the house, ignoring Bartholomew's bleats of protest about traveling there on foot. I was tired of the stuffy indoors and wanted to clear my head, the night was clear, and South Audley Street was not far from Grosvenor Street. Besides all that, my daily rides in the country had strengthened my muscles, and I wanted the joy of using them.
The door of Lady Breckenridge's house was opened by a liveried footman. Her butler, Barnstable, stood beyond him and gave me a smile of pleasure when he saw me. "Captain Lacey, welcome. How is your leg?"
"Much better," I said.
I'd hurt my weak leg badly earlier this spring, and Barnstable had given me his cure-scalding hot towels and a concoction of mint and other oils that had done my muscles well. Barnstable was proud of it.
"Excellent, sir," he beamed.
He led me upstairs through Lady Breckenridge's very exquisite, very modern, very white house.
The musicale was being held in a drawing room on the first floor. Double doors had been opened between front and back rooms, rendering them one large, high-ceilinged rectangle. A harp stood before rows of chairs, and a plump woman was plucking the harp's strings, sending tiny strains of music over the crowd.
Lady Aline Carrington, a spinster of fifty, and like Lady Breckenridge, a believer in women speaking their minds, presented the tenor to me. Lady Breckenridge stood next to them, dressed in a white silk high-waisted gown and holding an ostrich feather fan. Her only adornment was a necklace of diamonds, and her dark hair was pinned into innumerable coils.
The tenor's name was Enzio Vecchio, and he had only recently reached England from Milan. I bowed to him politely. He gave me a bored glance and mouthed a greeting.
"Mr. Vecchio will take London by storm, Captain," Lady Breckenridge said, her shrewd gaze on me. "You will shortly comprehend why."
Mr. Vecchio cast a fond glance upon Lady Breckenridge. "Only because you, dear lady, will make it so."
Lady Aline, behind him, looked at the ceiling. Lady Breckenridge took his fawning without changing expression. "Captain Lacey has shaken the country dirt from his boots to join us," she told him.
I made a brief show of studying my boots, then I replied, "For a short time only, my lady. I believe the boots will be thick with mud again in a day's time."
She deigned to smile at this feeble witticism. Lady Aline snorted. Vecchio only stared at me. Lady Breckenridge slipped her hand under Vecchio's arm and guided him off to other eagerly waiting guests.
As I watched the white-gowned Lady Breckenridge walk away on the arm of the black-garbed gentleman, I experienced a dart of annoyance. The annoyance bothered me. Why should it matter if Lady Breckenridge paraded about with a very young, black-haired Italian? It should not matter to me in the slightest.
But it did matter, and that bothered at me.