A Regimental Murder (25 page)

"Yes."

"And that the child is gone?"

My hand sought the curved back of the nearest
chair. "Yes."

She looked at me for a long time. Emotions
chased themselves across her face, but those that lingered were
pity, and strangely, anger. After a long time, she said, "She did
it herself, Gabriel."

For a moment, I could not comprehend her
words. Then they sank into me, one after the other. My hand
tightened. "I do not understand."

"She went to a quack, and she asked him to
remove it. He did. What made her ill was the medicine he gave her
after. To rid her of any lingering bad humors, he'd said."

I was so cold. My hands were numb, my blood
moved like treacle. "But why should she?"

Louisa gave a little shrug. Anger burned deep
in her eyes, a palpable fury that her calm stance belied. "I do not
know. She would not tell me. I was a bit sharp with her, I am
afraid." She hesitated. "But she does feel great remorse. That is
certain."

I was silent. My mind, my entire body,
believed at that moment that if I did not speak of it, it would not
have happened. She had not wanted the child. Fury like a howling
demon rolled through me, and a voice from far away cried,
Why?

"The child was mine," I said.

Louisa gave me an odd look. "She was ten
weeks gone, Gabriel."

I stilled, staring at the lips that had
pronounced the words. The entire world dropped from beneath my
feet. "
What?
"

"Her lady's maid said so, and Mrs. Westin did
not correct her."

The enormity of it sent shock through me the
like of which I had not felt in years. Lydia and I had been
conducting our affair for five weeks. She had known. They all had
known, she and Montague and William and Millar. I remembered the
change in William when I had come to the house for the second time,
his suspicion gone, his greetings welcoming. He'd known what they
all had known, that I'd been brought in to become the father of
Lydia's child.

Rage and grief and burning coldness swam
through me. Louisa watched, powerless to help, Louisa who had stood
by me throughout every hardship in my life.

"I wanted . . ." My throat hurt. "I was going
to ask Lydia to marry me. I had taken steps to look for . . ." I
took a shaking breath. "To make certain I could marry."

Louisa only looked at me. I wanted to storm
and swear, I wanted to swarm upstairs and shake Lydia until she
told me why she had done it, I wanted to break down and weep until
I was sick.

I opened and closed my fists. "I do not . .
." I stopped. "Damn it."

She placed cool hands over my agitated ones.
"Go home, Gabriel." She squeezed my fingers when I started to
protest. "You cannot see her yet. She needs time to heal. As do
you."

I drew a breath. "I do not want to see her."
If I saw her now, I might hurt her. Anger was overtaking grief, and
I did not want to let it have full rein.

"Then go home," Louisa repeated. "I will stay
with her. I promise." She smiled faintly. "It is either that or
face my husband, and I am certainly not ready to do that yet."

I put my hands on her shoulders, held her
hard. I wanted to say things, but words lodged in my throat. But
she knew. She knew everything I wanted to say, and everything I
felt. She could read me like no other. It had ever been so, even to
the day that Aloysius Brandon had introduced me to her when she had
been twenty-two years old and I had been twenty.

I left her. I went home, but I did not
sleep.

*** *** ***

I lay awake long into the afternoon. The
events of the previous day jumbled themselves in my head--verbally
fencing with Lady Breckenridge, the tedious chore of sorting
through Breckenridge's papers, my excitement at what I had found,
then Lydia's illness.

Questions beat at me like the wings of a
terrified bird. She had lied to me, lied from the very start. She
had gone to the bridge that night because, as the vulgar women
there had put it, she'd been belly-full. I'd saved her life that
night. She had looked at me and seen what I'd told her she'd seen,
a fool who would fall on his knees and be her willing servant.

I had known even then I was being a bloody
fool, and I had taken great pains to prove myself right.

What had Lady Breckenridge said?
Gentlemen
have dashed themselves to pieces on those rocks before.
She had
smiled at me with her world-wise eyes, knowing my fate better than
I had.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Lydia's husband had
only once been capable of copulation with her, no matter how many
times he'd visited his doctor, no matter how many aphrodisiacs he'd
tried. The chance that Colonel Westin had been the father of this
child was remote. I remembered her declaring that she had gone to
her husband's chamber the morning she discovered him dead, because,
she'd said,
I wanted to tell him everything, the entire
truth.

I did not want to examine the truth.

The truth was that Breckenridge or Eggleston
had murdered Colonel Spinnet that night at Badajoz. Westin had
known the truth as well. And he'd died. They'd both died.

Another truth was that John Spencer had made
an appointment with Westin the day of his death.

Kenneth Spencer did not like his brother
trying to uncover the truth.

I did not blame him. Truth was a terrible
thing.

I sensed the viscid fingers of my melancholia
reaching through the hot, bright room to me. I had not been encased
in my malady in months, and had even begun to believe myself free
of it. Now it beckoned to me, dark and seductive.

Lie still, it said. If you do not rise, do
not move, nothing can hurt you. Simply do nothing, say nothing, be
nowhere.

I began to close my eyes to embrace it.

No. I slammed my eyes open. I would not. I
forced myself from my bed, though it was like moving my limbs
through heavy mud. Through great effort, I bathed, shaved, and
dressed myself, then limped my way to Bow Street and the
magistrate's house.

I found Pomeroy explaining to his patrollers
that they were to go to Islington and wait for him. He looked up,
annoyed, when I entered and asked to have a few words with him.

He dismissed his men with a sergeant-like
bellow, and took me into the corridor. "What is it, Captain?
Thought you'd have dragged in Lord Breckenridge's murderer under
your arm by now. What is keeping you?"

"The last link in the chain," I replied
tersely. "What have the Spencers been up to these last few
days?"

Pomeroy shook his head. "Not much, sir.
Living very quiet-like. Excepting Mr. Kenneth Spencer left London a
few days ago."

I came alert, and the melancholia slid away.
"Did he? Good lord, why did you not tell me at once? Did he go to
Sussex?"

Pomeroy's brows climbed. "Sussex? No-- "

"Oxfordshire then?"

"No, sir."

My heart pumped. "Where then?"

"I would tell you if you'll give me half a
minute, Captain. He went to Hertfordshire."

I stopped. "Hertfordshire? Why?"

"Now I don't know, Captain. I'm only watching
him to find out where he goes. Not why. That's your lookout."

"Well, what is he doing there?"

"I don't know." Pomeroy frowned. "I pulled my
men off him, soon as he went somewhere harmless. None of your
lordships live in Hertfordshire. And I need my men in Islington.
Someone's gent killed his wife--at least so his wife's sister says,
but no one's found the wife's body. Not the first time the gent's
murdered his wife, so this sister says. Not the same wife twice,
you understand, but wife one and wife two. Either he is very
clever, or the sister's for Bedlam."

I could get nothing more helpful from him. I
left Bow Street and returned to my rooms.

The cure for melancholia, or at least a
method of staving it off awhile, was action. I acted. I wrote to
John Spencer, asking to meet with him. I wrote to Eggleston in
Oxfordshire, also requesting a meeting.

I then wrote Grenville to apprise him of what
I had discovered. I had not spoken to him in some days, and he had
not sent for me in his imperious way. I wondered what the devil he
was doing, and at the same time was a bit relieved that I had not
seen him and would not have to explain my current agitation.

I heard nothing from Louisa, and I sent no
inquiry to her. If Lydia had wanted to see me, or if she had grown
worse, Louisa would have informed me. Likewise I heard nothing from
Brandon, from which I concluded Louisa had not yet returned to him
or even sent word.

John Spencer replied by the next post that
he'd see me. We met the next day in the same tavern we had before.
He confirmed that his brother had gone to Hertfordshire to visit an
old school friend, then I discussed Colonel Spinnet and my
speculations with him.

He admitted that when he'd read Colonel
Spinnet's diaries, he'd found references to Breckenridge wanting
promotion, but he'd drawn no conclusion but that Breckenridge had
been incompetent and annoying.

I asked Spencer if he would show me what he
had found, and after regarding me sourly for a time, he took me to
the rooms in Piccadilly he shared with his brother and fished out
Spinnet's diaries.

I flipped through them eagerly.
Breckenridge
, Spinnet had written early in 1812,
that
ass, yearns to be a major. He is the sort who likes to strut about
in braid and lace, and knows nothing of commanding or warfare. Old
Nappy will not go away because Breckenridge waves his balls about.
I have told Westin to not, for God's sake--for all our sake's--give
him major. Such a thing would make a mockery of all other majors in
the Army.

No doubt Breckenridge had not been pleased to
hear this news.

It all fit now. Breckenridge and Eggleston
had contrived between them to murder Colonel Spinnet and remove him
from Breckenridge's road to promotion. Lydia's husband had known,
and they had somehow persuaded him to take the blame when the deed
came to light.

I thanked John Spencer, took a hackney back
to Covent Garden market. As I emerged onto Russel Street, two large
men closed on either side of me. Startled from my thoughts, I
quickened my pace, but they kept with me. They steered me toward a
finely appointed carriage, and when I turned, a third man had
closed behind me.

I raged, but they had me penned in. I could
not flee without a fight. James Denis had gotten wiser. I wondered
if he would call in his favor today.

I would know soon enough. The three bullies
more or less loaded me into the carriage, and there I found Denis
waiting.

* * * * *

Chapter Nineteen

His gloved hands rested on his elegant cane
and he looked me over with cold eyes.

"Well," I said. "I am here. What do you
want?"

"As blunt as ever. To answer you just as
bluntly, nothing. Not yet."

The footmen closed the door, shutting me in
the elegant, satin-lined box with the man I fervently despised. He
was not very old--barely thirty if that, but he had already
acquired more power than most dukes knew or understood.

"I have come to do you another good turn,"
Denis went on.

"Can I stop you?"

Sometimes, he smiled at my sallies, but
today, his face remained mirthless.

He dipped his kid-gloved fingers inside his
coat and pulled out two papers, each folded and sealed.

"I have information here that could be of
great help to you, Captain. I offer to share it."

I eyed the crisp, folded sheets tucked
between his gloved fingers. "Why should you believe I will be
interested?"

His expression did not change. "I know."

I shifted uneasily. "For what price? I
already agreed to what you asked for Mrs. Brandon."

"The same price. You aid me when I need
it."

"You are keeping tally of favors?" I asked
dryly. "Favors in the debit column versus favors in the
credit?"

His brow lifted the slightest bit. "Exactly,
Captain. You are perceptive. I told you before that I wanted to
tame you, but that is not quite true. What I want is to own you
utterly."

I regarded him in silence. Outside, the daily
life of Russel Street went on, the wagoners moving through to
Covent Garden market, vendors crying their wares, street girls
teasing passing gentlemen.

For years, I had given my life to the King's
army, and I had given myself and my loyalty to a man I had admired
more than any other. That man had at the last spit upon me, and the
King's army had not done much better.

My freedom from both had been bitter. A man
who could not give himself to another was useless and alone. But I
at least wanted to choose who received my loyalty. James Denis did
not deserve it.

"You need have no interest in me," I tried.
"I care nothing for your business and what you get up to."

His fingers twitched on his cane. "That is
not what I perceive. You dislike me and what I do and I foresee a
time when you will try to stand against me. I cannot afford that."
He paused. "You should take my precautions as a compliment. You at
present are my most formidable enemy."

I snorted. "I am a half-crippled man with no
fortune. I can hardly be a threat to you."

"I disagree. But we digress." He held out the
first paper. "This is the name of the house in which Lord Richard
Eggleston has hidden himself."

I scowled at the stiff edge of the paper
hovering before me. "That is no secret. Eggleston went to his
country house in Oxfordshire."

"He did not. You took the evasive word of his
butler as fact. He is not in Oxfordshire. He has gone to visit a
paramour. I have written here the name of the paramour and the
house in which they now dwell in lovers' bliss."