She went on, her face pale. "When I met the man, I did not like him. He was wretched and stank and leered at me so. He wanted to lead me to this doctor himself. I suddenly did not want to follow."
I nodded. "You were no doubt wise. He and your high-flyer might have been conspirators, and he leading you off to rob you."
"I thought of that. I realized how utterly alone I was. I tried to run away. He took out his knife. And then you were there."
I ran my finger over the engraved brass head of my walking stick. "I am pleased that I at least saved you from danger."
"I was so grateful to you." She smiled a little. "Do you know, that was the first time in my life that someone had taken care of me. It has always been me, you see. I looked after Roe, and Chloe. Neither of them were ever very strong. I was the one who held my head up and faced it all, no matter how terrible, and kept them safe. But that night, I at last learned what it was to lay my head on someone else's shoulder. I so craved that comfort, and you offered it for nothing."
I remembered how she'd twined her arms about my neck, pressed her lips to mine, how she'd whispered, "Why not?"
"I am pleased I was able to help," I said.
She gave me a rueful smile. "Always so polite. By rights, you should hate me."
I looked away and let out my breath. "I cannot hate you, Lydia. I admit that I tried to when Louisa made it clear that the child was not mine." I paused. "I gather from your actions that the child was not your husband's either."
"It was not. Roe and I . . ." She stopped, grief filling her eyes. "No, it was not his."
"I know about your husband's--difficulties," I said.
She glared at me, suddenly indignant. "You know? How the devil could you? Did Richard Eggleston--"
I held up my hand. "You asked me to discover the truth and so clear your husband's name. I am afraid that when one searches for truth, one uncovers it all, not simply the parts that are not ugly. I am sorry."
She sank back. "Oh, it does not matter anymore. I resigned myself long ago that I would never have a natural marriage. After a while, I no longer cared. I could still be a partner to him, if nothing else."
"But he gave you Chloe."
She nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. "Yes, on a moonlit night in Italy. I was so happy. I thought everything would be all right after that. But it was not. It never was."
I felt sweet relief. If she told the truth, then Grenville had been wrong. She had not taken a lover to give herself Chloe. She was innocent of that at least.
We sat in silence for a time, listening to the crack of the flames and the wind in the trees outside the window.
I still did not have one piece of information. "I could have wished that you had told me from the start what Eggleston's hold over your husband was."
She glanced at me uneasily. "Hold?"
"The reason your husband promised to go to the gallows for what Eggleston and Breckenridge had done."
Color filled her cheeks. "I did tell you. For honor."
"That is true, in part. Colonel Westin, from all I have learned, held honor in high regard. But what was the other side of it? A gentleman might die for another when the cause is just, and worthy. Even Brandon is willing to chance death to save his fellows from harm, but I doubt he'd have crossed the street for Eggleston. What was your husband's reason?"
She gave me an anguished look. "Gabriel, must you?"
"Damn it, Lydia, might we at least have perfect clarity between us? If we can have nothing else?"
She hesitated a long time, then she sighed. "You are right, Gabriel. I can at least give you the courtesy of my trust. There was something. It happened ten years ago, but Eggleston could not leave it lie." She looked at me limply. "Roe had an affair with a young subaltern. Eggleston, the toad, brought it about, helped them meet in secret, and kept it quiet for them both."
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-two
I stared at her. "An affair? But I thought-- "
She toyed with a button on her cuff. "I believe it surprised Roe most of all. Eggleston instigated it, of course. He suggested that where Roe could not succeed with a woman, he might with a man. I suppose Roe was desperate. So he let Eggleston lead him, and discovered that, indeed . . ." She faltered.
"Good God."
Lydia nodded. "Roe was so ashamed. And yet, for a long time, he could not stop."
But he had at the last. He had returned to the good Dr. Barton, trying desperately to learn how to go to his wife.
"How did you discover the truth?" I asked.
She lifted her head. Rage sparkled in her fine eyes. "Eggleston told me. He sat down with me one evening and told me all, giggling in that horrible way of his. He hoped, you see, that I would destroy my marriage with Roe, that I would shame him, perhaps go so far as to have him arrested. Eggleston kept suggesting ways I might go about proving a case of sodomy against my husband, which would have taken Roe to the gallows. I do not know why Eggleston wished that; he might have been jealous, or he might have been angry that Roe would not put through a promotion for his dear friend Lord Breckenridge." She fixed me with a steely gaze. "But Lord Richard Eggleston read me wrong. Perhaps I could not have a real marriage with my husband, and perhaps I had not loved him for a long time, but I was still his friend."
I could imagine her rising before the astonished Eggleston, rage and scorn radiating from her. I hoped she'd made Eggleston crawl away on his belly.
"Colonel Westin was lucky to have you," I said.
"Roe was a good man. I wish you could have known him. He did not deserve to be in thrall to someone like Richard Eggleston." Her expression softened. "I also recognize that you are a good man. And you did not deserve what I did."
"I did it to myself," I said, knowing the truth. "You beckoned to me, and I was willing to oblige. I would have done anything for you, even lived a lie."
She held up her hand. "Do not, please, Gabriel, I do not think I can endure gallantry just now."
"I did fall in love with you," I admitted. "But do not worry, the madness has passed."
She pressed her shaking fingers together. "I am so sorry. I had realized that day--the day you found me ill--that I could not go on deceiving you. But you had made me feel . . ." She broke off, smiling faintly. "I had never had a lover before. I had not known I could feel what you made me feel." She made a helpless gesture. "I so did not want to give that up."
"Few people do."
"But I realized how unfair it was to you. I was ready to lay my burden upon you, to let you ruin yourself to take it up. When I lay ill, Mrs. Brandon explained to me about your first marriage. You ought to have told me you were already married, Gabriel. I certainly would never have tried to trap you."
"My life was already in ruins. Taking up your burden could only have improved it."
She flushed and did not answer. We sat in silence again. "You are lying about one thing," I said after a time.
She looked startled. "Am I?"
My anger, nearly forgotten, began to simmer again. "You have just told me you'd never had a lover before. That is a lie. Someone fathered the child you destroyed. Who was he?"
Her face whitened, and she looked swiftly away.
Behind my stillness, the anger reached out and clawed the last of the fog away. "I believe I have guessed it," I said. "But name him."
She shook her head. "Please do not make me. He is gone. I have sent him away."
Outside, a sparrow began singing a belated summer song in the flowerless lilac tree. A soft September breeze whistled in the chimney.
I said, "I thought he was to marry your daughter."
Her eyes glittered. "I would never have let that happen. I persuaded her to cry off. Do you think I wanted him married to her?"
"Why did you go to him?" I asked in a hard voice.
When she looked up at me, her eyes held the imperious defiance I remembered from our first meeting. The great lady had returned. "Know this, Gabriel. I neve
r went to him, never. He looked upon me, and he wanted me." She shook her head. "Other gentlemen have done so in the past. I do not know why they should--when I look into a mirror, I see only Lydia the silly schoolgirl who has grown into a woman with wrinkles about her eyes."
If she did, she saw so little. Those eyes held a dark fire, a passion burning beneath her cool and aristocratic gaze. The elegant way she carried herself only made a gentleman wish to smooth that delicate skin, to feel her blood pulsing beneath his fingertips.
"But he wanted me," she went on woodenly. "He wanted my daughter as well, but he knew he must hold himself from her. Mr. Allandale always obeys the rules! He must keep pure the young maiden he was to marry, because to do otherwise would be wrong. Scandal must never touch their pristine marriage. But a married woman, she may take a lover if she is discreet."
Even if that lover was his fiancee's mother. The fury within me danced and snarled.
"And so he proposed it. I was shocked and showed him the door. The next day he had the audacity to return and ask if I'd changed my mind. Of course I had not. I threatened to tell my husband. And then . . . Oh, Gabriel it was horrible. He changed. He had always been polite and soft-spoken to all of us, so friendly, such a help. And then all that vanished in an instant. His face . . . He was like a beast. He terrified me. He said he would hurt Chloe if I did not oblige him. He said he had ways of hurting my husband. Still I defied him--I thought that I could go to my husband and we could defeat Mr. Allandale between us. And so . . ." She closed her eyes. "He took it from me. I tried so hard to stop him. I tried and tried, but he was too strong. I have never before not been strong enough to stop anything."
She trailed off. The room went silent.
Within me I was anything but silent. She had described a beast in Allandale's eyes, which I too had seen, but one also lurked inside of me, its red-hot rage holding me in its grip.
I did not think she lied. Her anguish was real. When she spoke his name, her voice filled with loathing. During the wars I'd served in, I'd known women who had been raped, by enemy soldiers, by our own soldiers. They had all shown what Lydia did now--fear, anger, remembered terror, the shrinking inside themselves when something startled them. Their trust had been ripped away, their comfortableness with themselves gone.
I forced my lips open. "You did not send for a magistrate?"
"To prosecute him for rape? Who would believe it? I am a married woman, older than he; I should know better. And there are those who knew that Roe could give me nothing. They would say that doubtless my own behavior must have provoked him. What a depraved thing I must be to cause Mr. Allandale to lose his respect for me . . ."
She was right, she likely would be blamed, I thought bitterly. And Allandale, with his soft-spoken politeness, his gentle smile, would have been viewed as the victim, perhaps even pitied.
I rose to my feet. She looked up in consternation. "I swear to you, Gabriel, I never meant to hurt you. I am ashamed. I have lived with so much shame. What I have done-- "
"Is done," I said.
I leaned down and gently kissed the tear that trickled down her cheek. She touched my face with trembling fingers. I straightened, and her hand slid away.
"Go to your daughter," I said. "She will need you."
Lydia nodded. Tears beaded on her lashes. "I am taking her away. Abroad." She smiled a little with a mother's fondness. "She wants to go to Italy and paint. She is romantic."
My lips should have curved into a returning smile, but they would not move. "Give her my compliments," I said. "Good-bye."
I turned and walked to the door, neither swiftly nor slowly.
She must have seen something in my face, because I heard her draw a sharp breath. "Gabriel?"
I did not answer. I reached the double doors, opened one. William, stationed down the hall, came alert.
Lydia's silk skirts rustled as she rose. "Gabriel?" Her slippers swished on the carpet behind me.
I pulled the key from the door's lock, shut the door before she could reach it, inserted the key, and turned it. She rattled the door handle. "Gabriel, what are you doing?" The imperious tones returned, though her voice was still weak with tears. "William!"
I passed the open-mouthed William on my way to the stairs. He started for me, but I gave him a hard look, and he stepped hastily back.
I pocketed the key and started down the stairs. "Let her out in an hour," I said. And I departed.
*** *** ***
Fate allowed Mr. Allandale to be out when I called. I knew he was truly out, and not simply "not at home," because I backed his valet to a wall and demanded he tell me where Allandale was. The man stammered that his master had gone out to his club. Which club, the valet could not say, though he looked quite unhappy that he could not.
I took pity on him and went away.
I expected to find Grenville ensconced at his own club at this time of day, but he was in fact at home in his dining room.
Bartholomew's brother Matthias, who opened the door, looked neither surprised nor dismayed when I appeared without invitation, but led me through the quiet stateliness of the hall to the main dining room.
Grenville was sitting at one end of his dining table, with Anton hovering at his left elbow. A maid, hands ready to snatch dishes away as soon as they were dirtied, lingered nearby. As I entered, Anton reached down and, with a flourish, removed a silver cover from a tray. Beneath it lay a small, perfect oval of pudding.
"This is it, is it?" Grenville looked the pudding over, turning the silver tray all the way around. "The grand masterpiece?"
Anton nodded, clearly beyond speech. At his signal, the maid produced a ladle and decanter of brandy. Anton poured brandy into the ladle, then set fire to it by holding it over one of the candles. He poured this burning liquid straight over the pudding, and the whole thing flamed merrily.
I tramped into the room. The members of the tableau started, looked up.
"Lacey," Grenville said. "You are just in time. Anton has just perfected his summer pudding. Berries and custard and cream, he tells me. Flamed without, cold within."
The little fire burned itself out. Anton lifted a silver cream boat, and carefully poured yellow-white thick cream around the base of the pudding. He pressed two raspberries into the pudding, in its precise center. He stood back and let out a sigh of satisfaction.
"I need to find Mr. Allandale," I said abruptly.
Grenville's famous eyebrows elevated. "On the moment?"
"Yes." At any other time, I would have eagerly seated myself and rubbed my hands in anticipation of another of Anton's concoctions, but rage and darkness churned within me, leaving no room for elegant puddings.
"I must find him," I repeated.
"Now?" Grenville said, his voice cooling considerably.
"Yes."
"Lacey," he said with forced patience, "Anton has spent three days creating this."
I dragged out a chair and dropped into it. "Enjoy it, then."
Grenville stared at me for a long time, then gave Anton a curt nod to proceed.
Any other time, I might have found the whole thing amusing. Anton handed Grenville a spoon. With exaggerated care, Grenville scooped up a minute portion of custard, and inserted it into his mouth. He closed his eyes. Anton held his breath. Grenville chewed, very slowly. He swallowed. He remained motionless for a long moment, then he opened his eyes, and sighed.
"Exquisite," he said. "You have outdone yourself."
The maid relaxed. Anton beamed. All was well in Grenville's world.
"Certain you will not have some, Lacey?"
I shook my head. It would have been dust in my mouth. I rose. "Just tell me where to find Allandale. I will go alone if I must."
"No, you will not." Grenville gave his chef a placating nod. "Set this aside for me. I will have it with my supper."
No one in that room was terribly happy with Gabriel Lacey.
Once we were settled in Grenville's carriage, he said to me,
"I know you rarely do anything without purpose, usually good purpose. So why are you so eagerly pursuing the very dull Mr. Allandale?"
I told him. I told him the entire story, not even suppressing the bits that wounded my pride. When I was finished, he stared at me in astonished horror. "Dear God, Lacey, if that is true, I apologize to you for my coolness. I ought to have known you would not ask favors lightly." He paused. "Are you certain he has done this?"
"Yes," I said. "I do not think she was lying. But, of course, I will ask him."
He cast me a wary glance, but subsided.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-three
We found Allandale at Brooks's. He was playing billiards with a few desultory members who looked bored in the extreme. They brightened when Grenville appeared.
Allandale looked a query. "Gentlemen?" he asked in his smooth, polite voice.
I wanted to smash my fist into his face right then and there. "A word with you in private." My teeth were so tightly clenched I could barely speak.
His brows flickered. "Of course." He laid down his cue and excused himself from the other gentlemen. They did not look in the least displeased to see him go.
Allandale led the way down a short hall to another room. I came behind him, my fists clenching. Before we'd gone halfway, Grenville stopped me. "Lacey," he said. "Let me just hold your walking stick."
He eyed me steadily, his hand out. I frowned, but slapped the walking stick into his open palm.
Allandale had already entered the little room. I quickened my pace and gained the threshold several steps ahead of Grenville. I turned, abruptly closed the door in his face, and locked it.
"Lacey!" Grenville's alarmed cry came through the panels. Like Lydia had, he rattled the handle.
Allandale faced me, puzzled. The room we stood in was quite small, containing only a table and chair, a small bookcase, and a window. Here a club member could pen a letter or read away from the noise and bustle of the billiards and card rooms.