Denis looked up as I seated myself, but he didn’t greet me, going back to eating his meal in silence. Another lackey went to the sideboard, spooned out a complicated dish involving eggs, sausage, and fish from a silver covered tray, and set the plate in front of me.
I didn’t speak. There wasn’t much point. Any conventional politeness would be lost on Denis. He’d know what I truly thought, and I knew what he thought. So we ate in silence.
Not until the meal was complete and the footmen cleared the plates, did Denis turn his attention to me. His butler set down a cup of coffee, exactly centered in front of Denis, then brought a cup to me and slid out of the room.
I drank gratefully. I did not know where Denis obtained his coffee, but it was rich and good, better than any I could buy for myself.
Denis began as I sipped. “I do not like street girls,” he said. “They are like mongrel dogs, too apt to attack the hand stretched out to them, even if it contains their bread for the day. I have no dealings with them. You installed one in my house.” His cold eyes met mine, as he waited for me to explain my audacity.
“I promised her protection,” I said. “I could think of nowhere else to take her.”
“Mr. Grenville has several large houses at his disposal, as does your wife-to-be. You also are acquainted with gentlemen in this city who enjoy reforming prostitutes. And yet, you bring her to my doorstep.”
He was angry with me. Denis’s expression was cool, but I saw the deep irritation behind it. The anger surprised me. Was he put out because I’d brought a street girl here or at my audacity in thinking of his home as a refuge?
“My friends are in Oxfordshire,” I said. “Awaiting me, in fact. My reforming friends, the Derwents, are at their seat in Derbyshire for Christmas and New Year’s. Mrs. Brandon is likewise spending the winter out of London. I cannot be certain the skeleton staff left behind in either household would admit Felicity or protect her from this man she fears. I can’t risk that they won’t toss her out as soon as I depart. I know she can be wearying.”
“I’ve not met this woman before, but my men tell me that, yes, she is troublesome. I have put her in an attic room, but if she does not wish to stay there, I’ll not stop her leaving.”
“She might stay put. She’s more afraid of being sold back to Jamaica than she is even of you. I must ask you to give me your word you’ll not give her to slavers or to the man who is pursuing her.”
His chill stare froze me. I’d finally found a way to outrage Denis, but I still wasn’t certain how I’d done it.
“I have no interest in buying and selling human beings,” he said. “I tolerated her arrival last night only because my man failed in preventing your abduction. He saw it happen but lost you in the fog.”
Denis had put men to watching me and my street long ago, after he’d learned of my existence during the affair in Hanover Square. Everything I did in my life was now noted and reported to Mr. Denis. The lackey’s failure to prevent my abduction must have been punished. Denis’s men had beaten me senseless before, but I could have pity on the ones who had to face his wrath.
“Perry is the name of the man who took me,” I told him. “He questioned me about my visit to Drury Lane theatre, where I’d gone to inquire about an actress who might be missing.”
“Perry. I don’t know a man of that name.”
He surprised me, because Denis knew so much about everyone in London. I described my abductor with the large nose and side-whiskers, giving my conviction that he was not working class.
Whether this interested Denis, he made no sign. I hadn’t expected it to—Denis dealt in far darker crimes that involved a great deal of money. An actress fleeing a jealous rival and a middle-class man who’d beaten me wasn’t in his usual sphere of concern.
I also told him about the incendiary device, which interested him more. He did not say so, of course, but listened to the description of the device and its delivery without changing expression.
Before I finished my coffee, another of Denis’s pugilist footmen entered the room and leaned to murmur something into his ear. Denis looked at me again.
“Her ladyship’s carriage is here, Captain,” Denis said. “I imagine you’d better get into it.”
I masked surprise that Lady Breckenridge’s coachman had known to come here. But of course, the man Denis had stationed in Grimpen Lane would tell the coachman that I’d removed here for the night.
Denis rose, took a last sip of his coffee, and left the table. He paused at the door and looked at me with his usual unreadable expression. “Felicitations upon your nuptials.”
I had no idea if he meant it, or mocked me, or simply mouthed the convention. I gave him a nod, thanked him, and went back to drinking every drop of the delicious coffee.
I wanted to talk to Felicity before I descended to the coach. The footman I waylaid to fetch her for me thought it amusing I felt it inappropriate to ascend to her bedchamber myself. He ran up the stairs, telling me he’d bring her down to the ground floor reception room.
I didn’t wait long there, after sending word to Lady Breckenridge’s impatient coachman that I would be ready soon. While I waited for Felicity, I asked for pen, ink, and paper, and composed a note to Marianne, telling her briefly what had happened to me and warning her to take care when she went out.
I gave the note to the lackey who brought in Felicity. He didn’t much like being my errand boy but promised to give the note to Denis, who would see it was delivered.
Felicity followed the lackey into the reception room, behaving as though she were a great lady, the footman a common servant. She’d availed herself of the plentiful soap and water in this house—her face was scrubbed clean, her blue-black hair combed until it shone. She had no change of dress, but her high-waisted frock of brown broadcloth was neither soiled nor torn.
Felicity dropped the gracious lady persona as soon as the half-amused, half-disgusted footman closed the door. “Lacey, let me leave.”
“You’re safe here,” I said. “He gave me his word.”
“You’d trust a word of one like Denis?” Felicity lowered her voice to a near whisper, as though fearing he had someone listening, which he likely did. “You’ve gone soft if you think he won’t play you wrong. I can’t stay in this house.”
“Mr. Perry will never dare try to harm you while you are here,” I said. “Mr. Denis has told me you are free to leave at any time. But he also said that, if you choose to go, his protection will not extend beyond this house.”
“Then take me with you.”
Her desperation was true. She was afraid, but I could hardly have her accompany me. “I doubt my bride would be happy to see me arrive with you in tow.”
“You mean with a black whore in tow.” Felicity scowled. “Pretend I’m a servant, a maid of all work, or some such. I don’t care. I can’t stay here.”
“Felicity . . .”
“How can I make you understand? You’re a man, a gentleman born, and no one will ever do anything bad to you because of that. But I have all counts against me, don’t I? If you think people out there aren’t above going around the law to do whatever they want to me, you’re wrong. If not Mr. Perry, then someone else.”
I did have compassion for her, but I’d come to know Felicity since she helped me during the terrible time of the Covent Garden abductions. She was ruthless, hard, smart, and determined. “You are an intelligent and resourceful young woman. You’ve managed very well for yourself thus far.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m safe now. Just tuck me on the top of the coach and pretend I’m a maid you hired. Her ladyship never need know.”
Her ladyship always knew everything, so that was not a consideration. What changed my mind was Felicity’s terror. I’d not seen her this deeply afraid before.
I made my decision. “Very well, but you’ll ride with the coachman, and you’ll behave yourself when you’re in her ladyship’s house. I aim to marry, and I’ll let nothing stand in the way
of that.”
“Right you are,” Felicity said in obvious relief. “I’ll not interfere, Captain, I promise.” She sent me her more usual smile. “And when you tired of married life, we can speak again. Every man does tire of it, you know. How do you think I make a living?”
I told her not to be impertinent, swallowed my misgivings, and left the room to make my way out of the house to the waiting coach.
Chapter Four
I’d grown to like Oxfordshire. I’d spent my boyhood in Norfolk, near the North Sea, flat lands under wide skies. The demarcation between land and sea hadn’t always been clear—the gray-green marsh grasses blended with the gray-green of the water. When the tide was out, the land stretched for miles; when it was in, we were surrounded by ocean.
The lands around Oxford could have been in a different country altogether. Gentle hills lined with woods surrounded farms, pastureland, and meadows; hidden villages were tucked along roads that bent around beckoning corners. In the midst of it all, the Thames rolled along, here a calm river that spoke of serenity rather than the industrial waterway of London. The city of Oxford, with the spires of its university threading the sky, could stir me with its beauty, never mind that I was a Cambridge man through and through.
The roads that wound through all this beauty led to spreads of magnificent estates, and the coach took me to one of those now.
A thin dusting of snow coated the ground to either side of the wide, mile-long drive to Pembroke Court. The drive ended in front of the large manor, its bricks golden even in the weak winter sunshine. The house had been built—or rebuilt—in the early eighteenth century, and was a Palladian mansion with plenty of many-paned windows, arched pediments, and classic columns. A rotunda had been built onto the front part of the house, the main doors opening into it.
When I’d visited last summer, this house had been a haven of peace. The gardens had been in full bloom, my afternoons spent walking their paths or eating ices with Donata and her mother on the terrace. My evenings had passed in quiet conversation with Donata’s father, Earl Pembroke, the nights after supper filled with music, games, and interesting discussions between the four of us. The mornings had been for riding and reading the reams of newspapers delivered to the earl at breakfast. My visit here had been tranquil, a balm to my soul.
On this winter’s day, the atmosphere was much different. Two footmen and a butler came out to greet me and help me from the landau, but they were harried and rushed. The butler, a tall man with stately gray hair, tried to be as cool as usual, but I saw that he wished himself elsewhere. Even the bridegroom’s arrival was not as important as whatever events were taking place inside, his demeanor said. But the servants were polite as always, the butler taking in my swollen eye, bruised face, and the bulk of bandages under my clothes without a blink.
Felicity, true to her word, kept to the top of the coach, riding it around to the back with the coachman after my luggage and I disembarked. I walked alone into the house to find it transformed.
Instead of the calm quiet I’d come to think of as embodying Pembroke Court, I found chaos. The whole of the house’s staff hurried up or down the stairs, hanging garlands, carrying furniture, nailing up streaming ribbons, some barking orders, others racing to follow them. I’d observed a construction team tear down and rebuild a house near mine with much less noise and anxiety.
Several ladies, including my betrothed, supervised, gave orders, and even helped with the manual labor. Lady Breckenridge saw me and broke away, leaning over the stair railing to take in my sorry state. “Gabriel, what the devil has happened to you?”
“Tedious story,” I said, but I knew I wouldn’t put her off.
As she started down the stairs to me, I paused a moment to drink her in. Lady Breckenridge, the only daughter of Earl Pembroke, matched the elegance that was Pembroke Court, her childhood home. She was now thirty, had a weight of dark hair that today was knotted up out of her way, a sharp nose in a comely face, and shrewd blue eyes that noticed everything. At eighteen she’d married Viscount Breckenridge, who took her to live on his vast estate in Hampshire. Breckenridge had been a cavalry officer, a boor, and a womanizer, and Donata had shed no tears when he’d died. Her six-year-old son, Peter, was the current Lord Breckenridge, and the huge manor house in Hampshire and its lands now belonged to him.
Breckenridge might have broken a lesser woman with his brutality, but Donata had gritted her teeth, swatted back at him with his own game, and survived. The survival had made her acerbic and unlikely to hold back her opinions, but I’d come to admire her spirit and intelligence.
This afternoon she wore a dress of moss green cotton embroidered with gold stitching at its cuffs and hem, with tiny embroidered flowers and gold stems flowing up the bodice to embrace her bosom. A white fichu made the gown modest but exposed her long neck. I thought her a vision in finery, but I knew she’d consider this a plain day dress, appropriate for supervising the decorating.
“Weary me with the tale then,” Donata said. She frowned at a footman who’d squashed a flower while trying to weave a garland around the banisters, then stepped off the last stair to meet me.
She put her hands in mine, rose on tiptoe, and kissed my cheek, a subdued greeting, though we’d long since become lovers. But her father’s household staff surrounded us, and she would behave nothing but respectably in front of them.
Donata pulled me away from the activity into the drawing room. “Mama and Papa are somewhere about, as is Grenville. I apologize for none of us greeting your carriage, but we had no idea when you were to arrive.”
She looked pointedly at my injuries, which would mar my face when I stood up with her tomorrow.
“I was waylaid.” I told her the story then, leaving nothing out, including bringing Felicity with me. Donata listened to everything I said with steely calm.
Her first comment was, “As usual, you’ve landed yourself in something dire. I am familiar with rivalries—society hostesses I know wake in the morning planning how they will best their enemies that day. The way they scheme would make your generals against Napoleon look feeble. But the fact that Mrs. Collins was sent an explosive device hints at more danger than a mere jealous rival, do you not think? I do not blame the poor woman for running away. Are you supposing Mr. Perry sent the device?”
We’d moved to a sofa by then, a long couch made of rich satinwood with gold cushions, and Donata rested her hand on mine.
“The possibility occurred to me. Mr. Perry never told me why he was interested in my journey to the theatre, but he might be looking for Mrs. Collins so he can try again. Who he is and why he wants her are questions that need answering, but I’m more concerned with the whereabouts of Mrs. Collins herself.”
“You will find her,” Donata said with every confidence. “Grenville will help; you know that, and I will as well.”
The idea of Donata being caught and questioned by Perry and the ruffians who’d blackened my ribs made me cold. She’d been put into danger before because of me poking into gentlemen’s affairs.
“Is Gabriella well?” I asked, firmly changing the subject.
Donata’s eyes flickered, knowing full well I was trying to put her off. She let me, though I knew we’d return to it.
“She is upstairs,” Donata said. “Having a last-minute fitting to her gown. She is a robust young lady, not liking to sit still for long.”
I couldn’t stop my smile. “She is a Lacey.”
“I must tell you that she is a bit nervous about meeting you again.”
My own nervousness was rising, but I strove to hide it. “Why should she be? She must know by now I’m not a monster. Or at least, not much of one.”
Donata touched my cheek, her fingers cool on my hurts. “Discovering after so many years she has a second father has been unnerving for her. Half a year has not been that much time to grow used to it.”
The revelation had been shattering for us all. I’d believed for fifteen years that my only
child was dead and gone, and to come upon her one morning in Covent Garden market, buying peaches of all things, had stunned me senseless. To find that Gabriella’s mother had never told her I’d fathered her had stunned me further, and angered me beyond imagining.
I swallowed a hard lump in my throat. “I want to see her.”
Donata got to her feet with me. “Let me warn her you’ve arrived. And that you look like a pugilist who’s lost his final match.”
I caught sight of myself in a mirror with a heavily gilded frame. I did look bad—bruises on my face and my cheek puffy.
I did not want to frighten Gabriella, but the need to see my daughter, to hold her hand, erased all worries about my appearance. Donata said nothing more, only walked away from me and out of the room, her green skirts making an agreeable rustling. I followed her, not one who enjoyed waiting tamely in overly ornate reception rooms while others decided whether or not to fetch me.
In the hall I caught sight of Bartholomew, my valet who’d once been Grenville’s footman, and his brother, Matthias. The two were lending their strong frames to helping the Pembroke servants shift furniture. At the moment, the two lads were carrying a heavy table across the large rotunda. They saw me, gave a collective stare to my beaten face, and went back to their task. I knew I’d be relating the tale all over again to Grenville soon.
I went on up the staircase, which wound around the rotunda, watching Donata’s green skirt as it rippled softly around her leather slippers. Her ankles in white stockings were fine and slender.
Donata stepped off the staircase two floors from the bottom of the house and turned down a hall that was a series of rooms rather than a single corridor, one room leading into the next. Each antechamber was small but sumptuously furnished with paintings and ornate furniture, little jewel boxes leading to the main rooms at the end. I imagined Pembrokes of the previous centuries in their silks and powdered wigs rustling through these stately rooms, on their way to meet about important government business or for private assignations.