My emotions roiling thus, I was therefore in no mood to be cut dead by Louisa Brandon.
I saw her just inside the theatre, after I'd strode past the grand columns and its usual collection of ladies in flimsy silks and rouged cheeks. I saw her in her long-sleeved matron's gown of dull maroon, its lighter pink trim matching the three feathers in her headdress.
She'd said something to her maid and had turned to make for the stairs to the boxes. Our gazes met for an instant. I saw, even around the substantial number of people between us, her color rise. Recognition--and dismay. Just as I was about to bow to her, Louisa abruptly turned and walked away.
I lost my temper. I strode through the crowd, never minding the pain in my leg, reaching the doorway to the stairs before she did. I planted myself in her path and waited for her to act.
She, of course, had to stop. I made a formal bow and said, "I remember you promising that you would not cut me entirely."
A spark of anger flared in her eyes. "I do beg your pardon, Gabriel. I did not see you."
She lied. She had certainly seen me. "It is of no moment." My lips felt stiff. "Shall I escort you to your box?"
"There is no need."
"It would be rude not to."
She gazed at me frostily, and I gazed back. I remembered us in a similar situation, once upon a time, at a regimental colonel's dinner. Louisa had been furiously angry at me for some fault or other, but because we'd been in the colonel's tent with the other officers and their wives, she had not been able to shout at me, nor I to retaliate. We could only glare at one another and offer strained politeness. Later, of course, she had dressed me down, and I'd shouted back until we'd cleared the air and become friends again.
We faced another restraining situation, her glare now twice as angry as it had been at that regimental supper. But we could not afford to make a scene, and she knew it. Louisa silently slid her gloved fingers under my arm, and we proceeded up the stairs, neither of us speaking.
I led her to her box and inside. She let me, both of us now determined to go through the charade. I settled her in a chair, draped her shawl over her shoulders, and sent for coffee, just as I would any other time, but my movements were deliberate, my questions cold.
I hoped, very much hoped, that she would at burst out laughing and say, "This is nonsense, Gabriel, do sit down." But Louisa remained stiff, her responses terse.
I handed her coffee, asked her if she'd like anything else. She lifted the cup to her lips and said clearly, "No. Go away, Gabriel."
"Louisa."
Her eyes hardened. "I do not wish to speak to you. Go."
I looked down at her, my anger undimmed. "You have been my friend for twenty years," I said. "I will never be able to simply go."
But I picked up my walking stick and departed. Several ladies who had spied Louisa entering slid into her box past me with cries of greeting, barely noticing me.
I hardly felt my sore knee as I stamped around the perimeter of Covent Garden Theatre to Lady Breckenridge's box. Louisa and I had quarreled before, but this felt very different.
She was tired of me. I did not blame her. And yet I did blame her for being cruel. She was cutting me off from a thing that gave me joy--speaking to her. Later on, I would hurt. Now, I was simply angry.
In such a mood, I entered Lady Breckenridge's box on the upper tier.
* * * * *
Chapter Sixteen
Lady Breckenridge's theatre box rivaled Grenville's for elegance. A gilt-embellished door led to a small outer room with a dining table where guests could take a meal before the performance. An oriental carpet covered the floor, and a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling to illuminate the satinwood furniture. A double door beyond this room led to the box itself, through which sounds of laughter and conversation drifted from the theatre proper.
The lackey tapped on the inner door for me, then opened it and ushered me through.
Six chairs stood in a row overlooking the stage below. Lady Breckenridge occupied the chair in the middle in a gown of lavender that left her shoulders bare. Her dark hair was threaded with diamonds.
Next to her sat a gentleman I did not know, and on her other side, with an empty chair between them, was Lady Aline Carrington. The gentleman returned my nod when Lady Breckenridge introduced us, but without much interest.
I took the seat between the two ladies. Lady Aline, stout of frame, had her gowns made cleverly, so that the dress neither pointed out nor hid her rotund figure. She rouged her cheeks red, outlined her eyes in kohl, and had coiled her white hair around a feathered headdress.
"Lacey, my boy, I am pleased to see you," she said warmly.
"And I you, my lady."
"I will forgive the lie. I hear you have been haring about town again, solving crimes like a Bow Street Runner. Disgraceful."
I took her admonishment good-humoredly. Lady Aline liked me, and I her.
"Was that Louisa Brandon I saw you speaking to?" Lady Aline went on in her booming voice. She waved her lorgnette, indicating that she'd spied us through it. "I had not thought she was coming tonight."
I responded that she had indeed seen Louisa and hoped my tense anger did not betray itself.
"I shall have to call on her tomorrow and have a good chat," Lady Aline said. She seemed in no hurry to rise and round the theatre to speak with her now.
I had no idea what the opera was below. The players seemed not to have much idea either. The audience laughed at the tragedy and shouted at the comedy, and a group of tall lads, who each reminded me a bit of the lanky Mr. Gower, sang along at the tops of their voices.
Lady Breckenridge wore a thick perfume tonight that smelled of eastern spices. She made little movements with her fan that sent the scent into my nose.
The gentleman on her other side was called Lord Percy Saunders, and that his father was the Duke of Waverly. Lord Percy, somewhere between forty and fifty, with gray hair at his temples, said little, and occasionally wiped his nose with a handkerchief. When he did speak, he confined his remarks to Lady Breckenridge and ignored me and Lady Aline.
When the opera wound to an interval, Lady Aline gathered her things and rose. "I've had enough of this nonsense. Good night, Donata. Give my love to your mother."
Lady Breckenridge smiled and gave her a pleasant, "Good night." Lord Percy rose and bowed, looking bored.
I escorted Lady Aline downstairs, since Lord Percy did not seem inclined to bestir himself. I walked with her all the way to her carriage in King Street, her footman and maid trailing us. Lady Aline told me I had manners, unlike many a gentleman, a high compliment from her, and I shut her carriage door.
When I returned to Lady Breckenridge's box, Lord Percy had gone.
Lady Breckenridge was just coming into the little dining room as I entered it. She paused at the doors that led to the box, an odd look on her face. Then she shook her head and closed the double doors behind her. The noise from the second act of the opera faded somewhat.
"Your friend Percy has no manners," I observed. "He should not have left you alone."
"He is ghastly." The diamonds in her hair sparkled as she turned her head. "He believes I should give up being the dowager Viscountess Breckenridge to become his wife." She shuddered. "I could not bear to be called Lady Percy."
"You might be called Duchess of Waverly later," I said.
"He is a younger son and unlikely to ever become the duke," she said dismissively. "Do you know, Lacey, that just for a moment, when you came in, you looked remarkably like Breckenridge."
I blenched. Her late husband had been a brute of a man with little to redeem him. "I am sorry to hear you say that."
"I do not believe there has been a morning I have not awakened thanking heaven that he is dead." Lady Breckenridge punctuated the callous remark by removing a cigarillo from a silver case. She lit it with one of the candles on the table and put it to her mouth. "Do sit down, Lacey. Unless you would rather listen to that racket that is su
pposed to be opera."
I did not, so I took one of the Louis Quinze chairs, waiting for her to sit before I did.
She leaned back as she looked me up and down, tendrils of acrid smoke weaving about her head. "You seem in much better health, this evening, I must say."
"Indeed. Your butler's cure worked wonders."
"Barnstable is marvelous. But I see you have not recovered your walking stick. Although that is a fine one."
"Grenville kindly lent it to me."
"Pity about the other," she said, taking a pull on the cigarillo. "It must have been a wrench to lose something that close to you."
I was surprised she understood that. "It is, yes."
"And I read in the newspaper this evening that Mrs. Chapman's husband, of all people, had been arrested for Inglethorpe's murder. Do you think he did it?"
"He confessed," I said.
"Probably mistook Inglethorpe for having an affair with his wife," Lady Breckenridge said with uncanny perception. "Mrs. Chapman was a silly young woman, and I am not surprised she brought everyone around her to a bad end. She was quite common, as I told you."
"Yes, so you said." Her opinion coincided with Marianne's. Peaches had been a woman other women had little use for.
"Do not pity her too much," Lady Breckenridge said, observing my expression. "She brought many of her troubles upon herself."
"I can't forget seeing her lying on the bank of the Thames," I said softly. "It was a brutal death."
"I daresay it was. But do not let that cloud your judgment to what she was."
"You are a bit brutal yourself tonight," I said.
Her eyes took on an enigmatic light. "I am honest. And not always polite, I am afraid."
I smiled a little. "I am surprised you speak with me at all. I am hardly in your class."
She returned the smile. It was surprisingly warm, and her eyes twinkled almost as much as Lady's Aline's. "Nonsense. You come from a fine lineage. I looked you up."
"A rather overly pruned family tree," I said dryly.
"And you have no sons?"
I shook my head.
"But you were married, weren't you?" she asked.
I regarded her in surprise. My marriage was not common knowledge, not because I wanted to hide it, but because I didn't like talking about it. Why cause myself more pain?
Her smile deepened. "You have the look of a man who's had a wife, who has experienced the hell that can be marriage. A widower, you know, looks a different man from a bachelor."
I only nodded, not correcting her that I was not a widower. My wife still lived, in France, possibly with the French officer for whom she had left me. She had changed her name, but I still knew her as Carlotta.
Lady Breckenridge smoked in silence for a few moments, letting smoke trail from her lips.
"My news is scarcely news any more," she said at last. "Now that you know who murdered Inglethorpe. But I thought you'd like to know just the same."
My interest quickened. Lady Breckenridge, though acerbic, was also observant. "Yes?"
"I know who took your walking stick." She laid the cigarillo in a porcelain dish, where it continued to burn. "I have no idea how Chapman got hold of it, but I know how it left the house that day."
"Do you?" I stared. "Why the devil did you not say so at the inquest?"
She shrugged a slim shoulder. "Because I am not as callous as people believe I am. I do not truly think that the person who took the walking stick killed Inglethorpe, but Bow Street would have pounced on her at once, would they not have? Possibly dragged her off to the magistrate then and there. What a disgrace for her and her family. I did not wish that on poor Mrs. Danbury."
"Mrs. Danbury?" I clearly pictured Mrs. Danbury smiling at me in Inglethorpe's drawing room while we danced, and then later, looking at me with innocent gray eyes when I'd questioned her at Sir Gideon's, declaring she had not seen what had become of the walking stick. "Are you certain?"
Candlelight danced in the diamonds in Lady Breckenridge's hair as she nodded. "Of course. I saw her."
"Saw her? When?"
"As my carriage pulled away from Inglethorpe's. I looked out of the window and saw her walk out of Inglethorpe's front door with your walking stick in her hands, probably chasing after you to return it. Not seeing you, she went to her own coach and got in."
"Bloody hell," I said, with feeling. "Why the devil didn't you say so at once? As I recall, I was in the coach with you at the time."
"I assumed she'd send it back to you. You dine at the Derwents' and were likely to see her soon. But I happened to speak to Mr. Grenville yesterday afternoon, and he told me that you were still very puzzled about the walking stick. So I wrote and invited you here."
I got to my feet. "Oh, good God. Much trouble might have been saved if you'd told me right away."
She rose to meet me. "Well, I had no idea the bloody thing would end up in Inglethorpe, did I?"
We faced each other, both angry, her eyes glittering.
Mrs. Danbury had lied to me. She'd sat before me and lied and lied. "Damn it to hell," I muttered.
"I am sorry if I have distressed you, Captain. I thought it only a peculiarity at the time."
I balled my hands. My gloves, cheap, stretched over my fingers until the stitching split. "The next time you come across a peculiarity, for God's sake, tell me right away."
"You have a foul temper," Lady Breckenridge observed.
"I know that."
"I hardly thought it your way to swear at a lady."
I looked up at her, fire in my eyes. "You seem to want me to tell you my true thoughts."
"Yes, but you are rather straining the bonds of politeness."
"To hell with politeness," I growled. "No doubt baiting me amuses you, but I grow tired of it."
She breathed rapidly. "I want friendship. I told you."
"Your definition of friendship is decidedly odd."
"You mean because I lay in bed with you the other morning? You looked as though you needed comfort, to be in too much pain for anything else."
"That did not give you the leave to take such a liberty. You ought to have a care for your reputation."
She gave me a pitying look. "I will worry about my reputation. I did not notice you sending me away, by the by."
I recalled her head on my shoulder, her warm arm across my chest. It had been comforting, without heat or fever.
"I did not wish to send you away," I said. "That does not mean I acted well in the matter."
"It was meant in friendship," Lady Breckenridge said stubbornly.
No doubt she thought so. She was maddening, one of the most unfathomable women I'd ever met.
"Why did you not tell me about the walking stick?" I repeated. "As you observed, it was not something I wanted to lose."
"Well, I do not quite know," she said. "I was not paying sufficient attention. I do apologize." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
I ran my hand through my hair. I was frustrated and angry, so angry at all the lies and deceit and cruelties. Lady Breckenridge had probably not thought the matter of any importance, possibly found it amusing that Mrs. Danbury would rush after me with the walking stick. She did not see what I saw, feel what I felt. I could not expect her to.
"I beg your pardon," I said, lips tight. "I am out of sorts. I have had a terrible afternoon."
"Poor Captain Lacey."
The words were mocking, but I liked that she said them.
Perhaps because I was angry at Mrs. Danbury and also at Louisa that I realized that when I'd been ill and in pain, Lady Breckenridge had been the only one to soothe me. She had said friendship, but she meant companionship, something she had certainly never gotten from her husband.
Her black hair curled around her forehead, loose from her headdress. She had a pointed chin and laugh lines about her eyes. I touched one of those lines.
She looked at me, startled. I thought she would back away, fling more scorn at me, but she o
nly lowered her lashes. I traced her cheekbone with my thumb. Lady Breckenridge stilled a moment then she silently leaned into my touch.
She had brazenly thrown herself at me in Kent. Now, all fever gone, she gently lifted her hand and caressed mine. Emboldened, I leaned to her and lightly kissed her lips.
She laughed, just as I'd wanted Louisa Brandon to. "Oh, Lacey," she said, and slid her arms around me.
For a time, I forgot about my frustrations, the tragedy of Peaches and her husband, my walking stick, Mrs. Danbury's lies, the opera. Lady Breckenridge soothed me again, and I let her.
*** *** ***
In the morning I awoke to the peal of church bells all over the city. St. Paul's Covent Garden, chimed the loudest, with the church of St. Martin in the Fields, on the west end of the Strand, a close second. Those bells blended with that of St. Mary's le Strand, and beyond that, in the distance, the booming bells of St. Paul's Cathedral.
They chimed and rang in the winter sunlight, and Bartholomew whistled a tune in the front room as he stoked my fire to overflowing.
I lay in bed, listening to the sounds of Sunday, thinking about Saturday, and all that had happened.
Barbury's death, Chapman's arrest, our boat ride up the Thames, Kensington's revelations, the opera. I needed to write Sir Montague Harris of our findings and about Kensington. If Peaches had been ready to betray him, how much easier for Kensington if she were dead. He'd had the opportunity, been on the spot. The circumstances were damning. I simply needed the tiniest piece of evidence, or a witness.
A witness. I turned that thought over in my mind. I would ask Sir Montague to accompany me to speak to the potential witness I had in mind.
I also thought about Lady Breckenridge. After a heartbreak last year, I was not in the mood to fall in love with another lady, but Lady Breckenridge had demanded nothing of me. She was intriguing and interesting, and, I admitted, refreshingly candid. She took me for what I was and did not ask me to be anything else. Her kisses had been unhurried, without heat. She'd kissed me because she enjoyed kissing me. It was a heady feeling. I lay back to enjoy the first sunshine in a long while and listed to the music of the church bells.