Hagen quickly and without fuss drove me to Berkeley Square. Lady Aline Carrington, sister to the Marquis of Weymouth, spent the Season in London in a lavish, rather modern house in Mayfair, while her brother maintained the older family residence in Portman Square.
Aline defied convention by living alone—without companion, brother, mother, sister—but her reputation and opinions were so well-known that exceptions were made for her. Lady Aline had been a member of the bluestocking set of her day, and still was, writing pamphlets on the place of women in society, and setting the bastion of old-fashioned males of London on edge. She drew to her the most brilliant of people—artists, writers, lecturers, mathematicians, scientists, actors and actresses, musicians and singers.
Donata had been drawn early into her circle. These days, Donata and Aline more or less set the taste for London in music, poetry, and opera, while Grenville set it for art, gentlemen’s clothing, food, and wine.
I’d met Lady Aline very soon after arriving in London, and had found a friend in her. At this hour of the morning, however, my friendship won me nothing.
A footman gazed at me stonily, unhappy I’d brought him upstairs from where the household was preparing for the day. He declared that Lady Aline by no means would descend to see me.
“If my wife is in the house, I will leave without fuss,” I said. “If not …” I made as though to move past him.
The footman, a tall, rather muscular young man, stepped in front of me. “Viscountess Breckenridge is not here, sir.”
“Then I must insist on speaking to Lady Aline. I’ll shout through the keyhole if need be.”
“Her ladyship is not to be disturbed,” the footman replied firmly.
Other servants were appearing, Aline’s aged butler and several maids, all looking annoyed. An upstart captain of uneven temper demanding entry at six in the morning was not to be borne.
“I’ll speak to your coachman then,” I said. “I suppose I will not have to shout through a keyhole to him.”
The footman scowled at me. “The coachman is not here either, sir.”
“Then where the devil is he?”
The footman had been well trained, and was good, I knew, at being silent, decorative, and efficient, but he had reached the end of his tether. He was ready to throw me to the pavement.
The butler, no less put out with me, came forward. “If you will allow me to explain, sir. Her ladyship and the viscountess arrived here late last evening. Her ladyship descended, but the coachman drove the viscountess on. The coachman has not returned, but we know he has met with no accident. He sent word that he was spending the evening at a public house on the Brompton Road.”
My qualms were not eased. Brompton was not a great distance—south of Hyde Park and not far from Tattersall’s. But even so, why should Donata order Aline’s coach to Brompton or thereabouts and not return?
“Did he say which public house?” I asked irritably. Aline’s servants obviously expected me to run home quietly and wait for the return of my eccentric wife without fuss.
“The Hound and Hen,” the butler said, tight-lipped. “The publican is his cousin. I will tell her ladyship you called.”
They would throw me to the pavement in another minute. I growled a thanks at the butler and retreated.
Donata’s coachman, Hagen, sharing my concern for his mistress, readily drove me south to Piccadilly and west to Knightsbridge, then angled southwest on the Brompton Road. London began to turn to country here, with gardens and plant nurseries, cricket grounds, and farms in the distance.
The Hound and Hen, a pretty country inn, was on Brompton Lane. When we entered its yard, I saw Aline’s coachman emerging from the house. I descended as quickly as I could, making my way to him before he could vanish into the stables.
“Sir?” Aline’s coachman blinked at me in surprise. He was a large specimen of a man, filling out his red coat. He had a round face, canine teeth filed to points, a large nose, small eyes, and not much hair on his head. He made up for the lack of hair on top by growing a set of luxurious side whiskers.
Hagen had come off the top of our coach. “Don’t sir him,” he snapped. “You tell him where ye took the mistress.”
Unlike Aline’s man, Hagen was lean and ropy, with a leathery face, dark eyes, and a thick shock of brown hair. I always thought he looked more like a highwayman than a coachman, but he was a skilled driver and protective of Donata and her son.
Aline’s coachman was much more good-natured, apt to tell a joke he’d heard or talk horse with me in a spare moment, but at present, he looked nonplussed. “I took her nowhere,” he said in bewilderment.
“Then where is she?” I demanded.
“Answer him,” Hagen said. He took a belligerent step to Aline’s coachman, murder in his eyes. “She was with her ladyship, then you came here. What happened in between?”
“I set her down in Park Lane, as she told me,” the coachman said. “She gave me quite a few coins and suggested I visit my cousin. She’d send for her own conveyance to go home, she said. Kind of her, I thought.” He ended with a defiant look at Hagen.
I held on to my patience. “What house in Park Lane?”
“Near Brick Lane. I saw her go into the courtyard—she has friends there, she said.”
Since Donata had friends and acquaintance all over London, this sounded plausible. Less plausible that she’d sent the coach away and hadn’t bothered to tell Hagen and her own household.
“Her abigail descended with her?” I asked.
“Of course.” Aline’s coachman looked worried. “Is her ladyship well?”
“We don’t know, do we?” Hagen snarled. “Why do you think we’re asking ye?”
“I can take you to the exact place I set her down. I saw nothing wrong in it, sir. The viscountess was quite decided.”
As only Donata could be. The best thing for me was to go home and wait for her to return, but my agitation would not let me. Why should Donata suddenly decide to visit a friend in the middle of the night and not arrange transport for herself to get home?
If she were any other woman, I might suspect she’d gone covertly to meet a lover. With Donata, I could not fathom her motive.
Though she’d been quite willing to not bother with fidelity to her first husband, who’d paraded his mistresses before her, I doubted she had taken up those ways again. Donata did not much like or trust men, with very few exceptions, and she’d declared it a relief to be married to a man who wanted to be with none but her. Besides, if she had been dashing off to a paramour, the rest of Mayfair would have told me about him.
I began to have other, more worrying suspicions about what she’d done. I turned to Hagen. “Let us go there and fetch her.”
“Yes, sir.” Hagen brightened, happy to be commanded to do what he wished to anyway.
He turned to the carriage, then his eyes narrowed, and he pointed a long finger at the back of the coach. “You there! I see you—get out of it.”
Hagen charged toward the carriage, where I suspected someone had helped themselves to a ride by clinging to the back.
I did not expect the man who strode firmly into sight from the morning shadows. Although, I ought to have expected him.
“Captain,” Brewster said. “If you’re looking for your wife, I know exactly where she is.”
Chapter Eight
Brewster spoke calmly, though he shot Hagen a fierce glance.
“What the devil?” I approached Brewster, barely keeping my temper. I wanted to strike at the man, though I knew I’d only land on my back with his boot in my stomach for my pains. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw you rush off early this morning,” Brewster said. “’S’my job to follow you, innit? Almost missed you—had to hop on the back in passing.”
Hagen did not look happy, both with the fact that Brewster had taken the liberty and that Hagen hadn’t noticed.