Grace herself answered it, and her eyes widened in astonishment. "It's you, is it? You'd better come in, sir."
* * * * *
Chapter Sixteen
She opened the door and allowed me into a narrow hall that smelled of boiled vegetables. "You were Mr. Horne's friend. I know you were. It's a terrible thing."
Her large eyes filled, and she drew a handkerchief from her pocket.
I followed her to a tiny, dark parlor in the front of the house, and we sat down facing each other. "I am trying to discover who murdered him," I said.
She sniffled into the cloth. "Mr. Bremer did, sir. They arrested him."
"But I do not believe he killed him."
The handkerchief came down. "To be truthful, sir, nor do I. The master was stabbed something hard, and Bremer couldn't have done that with such force. He had to have John carry trays up the stairs for him."
"Then who do you believe could have?"
Her eyes were large in her tearstained face. "I don't know. John would be strong enough. Or Cook."
"Did you find him?"
She started. "What?"
"Mr. Horne. When I came upstairs that day, you were in the doorway to your master's study. You were crying. Do you remember?"
"Yes, sir. I couldn't believe my eyes. There he was, the poor master."
"Did you find him? Did you open the door and find him there?"
She shook her head vehemently. "I would never have gone in without his permission. I would have knocked first. No, Bremer opened the door, and I looked inside."
"Why were you upstairs at all?"
The hand holding the handkerchief whitened. Her eyes moved past me, then back to my face, and she wet her lips.
The obvious explanation would have been that she was going about her duties. But she brushed her lips again with her pale tongue and replied woodenly, "I was fetching something. For Bremer. When he came to open the door, I looked into the room."
I pretended to believe her. "Were you fond of your master?"
She relaxed. "Oh, yes, indeed, sir. A kind gentleman he was, always giving presents and the like, and letting us have more days out than most. I'd have done anything for him."
"Including locking a girl in an attic and giving her opium to keep her quiet?"
Her handkerchief came down. "Aimee would whine and fuss so, just because the master liked to play a little. Lily were much more of a lady. She always did what she was told."
A hard edge entered my voice. "Do you know what happened to Lily?"
"The master sent her away, didn't he? Not surprising, really. He had set her up nice and proper, but she didn't like it one bit. Ungrateful cow."
"You said she always did what she was told."
"Oh, indeed. But with such airs, she did. Like she was being put upon, instead of the master favoring her. I'd have given anything to have the master's favor."
I tasted bile. At least Bremer had been ashamed. "The day Mr. Horne died, how long were you upstairs?"
"Why do you want to know that, sir?" she asked around the handkerchief.
"Were you there when Mr. Denis left?"
Her eyes went round. "Mr. Denis was there?"
"Yes. He visited for a time."
"Oh. I didn't know that. I was out shopping for cook until . . . Why did he want to come there? Bothering the master for money, I'll warrant. He was always writing the master letters, and the master would get fair put out when he got them. But it was so much safer for him not to come. You know that."
"I don't work for Mr. Denis, Grace."
She regarded me in astonishment. "You don't? But I thought . . ."
"You thought I was a go-between. Why did you think that?"
"Who do you work for, then? The magistrates?"
"No. I am working for Aimee, and Lily, who was really a young lady called Jane Thornton."
She gave me a puzzled look that wondered why I'd want to do anything for them. "I thought you were with Mr. Denis. He always sent someone different. Safer, wasn't it? Mean of you to let me think you came from him."
"What time did you return from your shopping that day?"
"I don't know, do I? Maybe about three."
Denis would have been gone by then, if John had told me the truth that he'd let the man out at half past two. "And you went upstairs?"
"I gave Cook her things and listened to her snarl about them. I slipped upstairs to get away from her."
"What were you to fetch for Bremer?"
Grace jumped. "What?"
She'd already forgotten her lie. I leaned forward. "What did Bremer tell you to fetch for him?"
Her face reddened. "Oh. I don't remember."
"You went upstairs on your own. Bremer had nothing to do with it. Why?"
She gave me a confused look. "Why do you say so?"
"Because you had plenty of time to dash upstairs, go to your master's study, stab him through the heart, and then pretend to be about your duties when Bremer came and found him."
Grace looked outraged. "I would never. I would never have hurt Mr. Horne. Never, ever."
"Then why were you upstairs?"
"That isn't your business, is it, sir?"
"You tell me the truth or I'll drag you off to the magistrate and you can answer his questions. I'll take you by the ear if necessary."
"But I didn't kill him."
"I don't care whether you did or not. I can make a magistrate believe it, and then you'll go to Newgate and Bremer will go home. So will you tell me? Or shall we go to the magistrate?"
Whatever Grace read in my eyes made her whiten. She glanced about as if looking for help but found none.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was listening at the door."
"Why?"
She twisted the handkerchief. "Always did, didn't I? When he was with her. In case he needed my help."
"Help with what?"
A shrug. "Anything. Sometimes she'd fight him, and I'd help him quiet her. Stupid girl. I wouldn't have fought him. Ever."
"So you were listening at your post that day, hoping Horne would call for you. What did you hear?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing at all?"
Grace shook her head, looking disappointed. "Nothing. But sometimes I can't hear nothing, no matter how hard I listen. The door is a bit thick."
"How long did you stay there?"
"Until I heard Bremer coming upstairs. Then I hid until he opened the door."
I fell silent. Would she have heard the murder take place through the heavy wooden door? Could the murderer have escaped between the time she fled and the time Bremer reached the door? Or had Denis left him dead, annoyed with the man for not paying him for Aimee and Jane? Or perhaps it had nothing to do with money. Perhaps Horne simply could not be discreet.
Anger boiled inside me. None of Horne's people gave a damn about the two abducted young women, except perhaps John, who'd become infatuated with Aimee. They cared only about a good place, high wages, or Horne's foul attentions, willing to look the other way at whatever the monster did.
I leaned to Grace again. "Where is Jane Thornton?"
Her brow wrinkled. "Who?"
"I just told you. The girl called Lily. Where is she? What did Horne do with her?"
"How do I know? She was there one day, gone the next. Good riddance, I say."
"Did he take her somewhere?"
"I don't know," Grace repeated in a hard voice. "I never asked. Most like she ran off."
"She disappeared, and it did not occur to you to inquire?"
"Why the devil should I? I didn't like her. Why the master liked her, I'll never understand. Such a milk-and-water miss. No wonder she was chucked out in the end."
I held my temper barely in check. "She was a respectable girl from a respectable family."
"Why didn't she go home, then? I wager it was she who done the master. She crept into the house and killed him. You should be trying to arrest her. "
I rose. "I hav
e not ruled out the possibility that you murdered him, Grace. You had plenty of time and plenty of opportunity. And you were jealous."
She sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing. "How dare you say that to me. As if I'd ever have hurt him. They arrested Mr. Bremer, didn't they? Not me."
"But you were alone upstairs, listening at the door, and you disliked him giving his attentions to Aimee and Jane."
Grace's eyes widened, her voice rising with hysteria. "You can't prove that. A magistrate would never believe you."
But a magistrate most likely could and would. From the fear in her eyes, she knew that.
"I never killed him," she repeated breathlessly. "I never would."
I left her standing in the middle of the dingy sitting room, her mouth open in fear and outrage. I opened the door to the dark rain and let myself out.
* * * * *
My rooms in Grimpen Lane gave me a cold and cheerless greeting. The fire had died and flakes of plaster floated down as I slammed the door. I limped to the fireplace, shivering, knelt, and began the tedious process of striking a spark to ignite the coal.
As the tiny flame licked over the dead black coals, I remained kneeling, staring into the fireplace. London was so damn cold and dank and dreary after the bright heat of India and Portugal and Spain. In Wellington's army, I had fought for my life and watched men die, endured disease and heat and the near madness of grief.
But I had lived. Every day, I had lived, as Grenville said I had. He envied me for it. Here, I simply existed. I did not fit in to London, and it did not know what to do with me. A career required money, connections, and influence, and I had none of those. Marriage required the same. Many a man without wealth or the right family might ship himself to the colonies of Jamaica or Antigua, but plantations there were built on the backs of slaves, and I could not be a part of that vileness.
I rested my face in my hands and thought of Spain, of the long days and weeks as we slowly, slowly pushed Bonaparte back to France. Summer nights had been warm there, balmy. I had known a Spanish woman, a farmer's young wife. She had not been beautiful, but her cup of water, delivered to me with gentle hands, had brought me back from death.
She and her two small children had nursed me in a tiny farmhouse miles from anywhere. Her husband had been killed by French soldiers, and she lived off the remains of the farm, hidden far from the lines of battle.
Upon reflection, I ought to have remained there. The army and Brandon and Wellington had thought me dead. Easy to have let them believe it and finished my life on that Spanish farm with Olietta and her two little boys. But I had been fevered to get back to my regiment, to reassure everyone that I was still alive.
I wondered whether Olietta would welcome me back if I journeyed to Spain to find her again. More than likely she'd found a Spanish man returning from the wars, happy to share the farm and her life with her.
I sent a silent greeting to her while the flame danced higher.
Someone knocked on the door. A fleck of bight yellow plaster, the color of the Spanish sun, landed on my finger.
"Come," I said.
The door opened and shut behind me, but I remained staring at the fire. Melancholia took me that way sometimes, suddenly, rendering me unable to move.
A swish of silk and the scent of Janet's perfume, and she knelt beside me and smoothed my brow.
"Hello, my lad. Are you blue-deviled again?"
I turned my head and pressed a kiss to her palm. "As ever."
"Remember how I used to drive the blue-devils away?"
I remembered. She kissed me. I slid my hands around her waist. A wisp of heat floated to me from the igniting coals, resuming the battle against the chill.
I laid Janet down on the hearthrug and we loved each other on the hard and soot-stained floor. Not elegant, but we'd shared less comfortable bed spaces in the past. The coal flamed yellow, then settled into a steady red glow, prickling our skin with heat.
We took each other fiercely, hunger in our mouths and in our hands. As I loved her, I remembered everything, the laughter, the foolishness, the unbearable summer heat, the brief, intense time when she had meant everything to me.
When we'd finished, I drew her close. "I had just been thinking of Spain."
"I was thinking of Portugal." Her eyes glinted. "How I told you that first night that I may as well sleep in your tent, as I had nowhere else to go."
"And in my bed, as there was only the one."
"Exactly." She snuggled into my shoulder, her auburn hair snaking across my chest. "I never thought I would miss following the drum."
"We did not know what the world was like."
"And what one had to do to survive."
"No," I answered, heartfelt.
We lay there in silence for a while as the fire warmed our bodies. I breathed the scent of her, trying to forget the grim world outside, the cold beyond our circle of warmth.
Half an hour passed. She sat up and reached for her clothes.
I caught her around the waist and pressed a kiss to her belly. "Stay."
"I can't, my old lad."
"My bed is not very comfortable, but I offer it to you anyway."
She pressed her fingers to my lips. "I truly can't, Gabriel. I'm sorry."
I licked her fingers.
She withdrew them, her face reddening. "I ought to have told you right away. Sergeant-major Foster has found a house in Surrey. He wants me to go and live with him there. I came here today intending to say good-bye."
* * * * *
Chapter Seventeen
"You are quick to dash a man's hopes," I said, trying to keep my voice light.
We stood in the chill staircase hall, both of us dressed, Janet tying on a yellow straw bonnet with a blue feather.
"I meant to tell you at once. Truly I did."
I folded my arms and leaned against the doorframe, my pulse beating fast and hard. "So you should have. Before you took pity on a fellow in his melancholia."
She flushed. "Please don't be angry with me, Gabriel. I came here on purpose to tell you I could not see you again. But I found I couldn't. Not so abruptly as that."
I regarded her steadily. "You could not before either, remember? When you left me for England? No promises, you said, no hopes."
"It is better that way, is it not?"
"I don't find it so."
She studied me, her eyes still. "I thought you would understand."
"That you would rather live with a man who's come into money? Did you decide that after you saw the state of my rooms, my poverty--"
"He'd invited me months ago. He said that when he found a house he wanted, he'd ask me to come live with him. He might even marry me."
My lips tightened. "Then why were you so anxious to see me again? If you knew you already had better prospects?"
"Because when I saw you . . ." Janet broke off, her eyes filling. "How can you ask me that? When you looked at me, and I knew you hadn't forgotten me, I realized how much I'd truly missed you."
I nodded, my throat tight. "And you assured me that Foster was a mere acquaintance."
"I didn't lie. I truly do only see him in the pub. I never thought he would find his house. I thought he was just talking. But today, he asked me."
"You ought to have told me you were waiting for such an offer. I might have beaten him to it."
She shook her head until her feather twitched from side to side. "I never expected anything from you. I would not demand anything. I thought we would simply come together and talk over old times, that is all."
I traced patterns on the doorframe. "Perhaps I wish you to demand something of me."
She looked down and away. "Mrs. Brandon told me what you have become. I can't be a burden around your neck, Gabriel. I won't. You have burdens enough of your own."
I stilled, anger filling me. "What I have become? Dear God, what the devil did she say to you?"
"That you are hurt. That you were broken."
"So
you came to pity me, did you? Damn you. Why didn't you simply stay away?"
Her eyes flashed, answering my anger. "I didn't come to you out of pity. I promise you that. I came to find the man I'd left on the Peninsula."
"That man is gone, Janet. I see on your face that you realize that. And the man I am now is not the one you want, is it?"
"Gabriel, please don't."
I caught her chin, twisting her face up to mine. "You don't understand, do you?"
Her eyes told me she didn't. I leaned down and gave her a fierce kiss, and tears beaded on her lashes.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
I lingered there, drinking her in, wishing to God I could buy her with houses in Surrey and that I could still dash through a rain-drenched camp just to bring her coffee.
I released her. "Don't worry, Janet. I know when I've lost."
"There are reasons. I promise you, someday, I will tell you my life story, and we will have a good laugh."
"A good laugh. Is that what we are sharing now?"
Janet's gaze flicked to mine. "You always did know how to hurt, Gabriel. You have a cruelty in you that frightens me."
"Perhaps it keeps me from being pitied."
"God help whoever pities you."
I let out a breath. When I spoke, I forced my voice to soften, though the anger did not leave me. "To lose you again so soon after finding you is difficult to bear, Janet."
She touched my cheek. "You will never lose me. You can't imagine how fond I am of you, my old lad."
I seized her wrist and pressed a kiss to it.
And then, despite my pride and my temper, I let her go. She gave me a crooked smile, Janet's warm smile, and she turned away and went down the stairs. Her footsteps echoed in the cold staircase and then were gone.
I leaned back against a painted shepherdess and closed my eyes. I'd had nothing to offer her, no reasons to expect Janet to stay. I had known when she'd left me in Spain that we would drift together and then apart again, without bond, without promise. But I no longer wanted that. I wanted something more.
My wounded spirit told me to go after her and beg her to stay. My pride and anger forbade it. As I leaned there, I remembered another loss, years and years ago, that had torn me apart until I'd gone nearly mad with grief. Only Louisa's quiet voice and her hand in mine had saved my life that time. I reflected with ironic mirth that this loss was comparatively easy to bear.