A Body in Berkeley Square (17 page)

"It would serve you right if I let you rot,"
I said savagely. I wanted very much to throttle him, could feel the
satisfaction of my hands closing on his neck. "But I care too much
for Louisa to do that."

"I know you care for her. I am sure you will
now go to her and comfort her."

I backed away to prevent myself from
striking him. "You do not understand what you have. You never
did."

His eyes narrowed, chill and hard. "Get
out."

I left him.

I felt unclean as I made my way, angry and
shaking, back through Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street toward Covent
Garden.

Brandon hated me so much. I'd given up my
entire life for him, had tried to be the man he wanted to make, and
I'd failed. I'd tried to please him just as I'd tried to please my
father, and got nothing for my pains either time.

Louisa had once told me that what Brandon
could not forgive was that I'd taken her side when things had gone
wrong between them. I'd stood behind Louisa, and he'd hated me
since that day.

I had not tried very hard to heal the
breach. I'd been too wounded by him, both physically and inside my
heart.

Now Brandon needed me, and he knew it. Why
he was being so bloody obtuse, I did not understand. I could not
believe that even Brandon would take himself to the gallows to
spite me.

As I rolled along in the hackney, I tried to
calm myself and look at things logically. I went over the
conversation I'd just had with Brandon, pulling out the facts that
I'd learned.

If Brandon
had
made the exchange with
Turner at eleven o'clock--the letter for the five hundred
guineas--several of my assumptions had to change. Imogene Harper
would not have been searching Turner's rooms for the letter if she
knew Brandon already had it. She'd let me believe that had been her
purpose in looking through Turner's coat when she'd found him dead
and had not corrected me.

When Pomeroy had searched Turner's body, he
never would have missed something so obvious as a bank draft for
five hundred guineas. Therefore, if Brandon had given Turner the
money, then Imogene Harper had removed the cheque or the cash when
she'd delved the dead Turner's pockets.

What then,
my mind prodded me,
did
she come to Turner's rooms to find?

Brandon had done
something
with the letter
he'd purchased from Turner. He'd left the anteroom just after
eleven and stepped into a private alcove with Mrs. Harper. She was
the most logical person to whom he would have passed the
letter.

Perhaps Brandon had decided to trust no one but
himself and had refused to give Mrs. Harper the paper. Or perhaps
Turner had promised to bring him the letter at a later date, and
Brandon had paid him the money anyway like an idiot.

I rubbed my temples in frustration. If I could trace
the letter and the money, I would be happy, indeed.

Putting my hands on the murderer would make me even
happier.

By the time I arrived home, I had calmed somewhat
and turned back to my plans. Tonight at the theatre, I would meet
and interview Mr. Bennington and Mr. Stokes. If nothing else, they
might be able to give me more ideas about what had happened the
night of the ball.

I let Bartholomew draw a bath for me, then he helped
me dress in my dark blue regimentals. As I attached the last of the
silver cords across my chest, someone knocked on the outer door.
Bartholomew darted into the front room to answer and returned
quickly.

"Mrs. Brandon, sir," he said.

* * * * *

Chapter Ten

Louisa was staring mutely into the fire when
I emerged. She wore a drab, long-sleeved, high-waisted gown and a
woolen shawl that hung limply from her shoulders. A bonnet trimmed
in green silk ribbon lay on the table.

My usual course in greeting her would be to
take her hands and kiss her cheek, but when Louisa turned to me,
her white face and haunted eyes made me stop.

"I thought Lady Aline was preparing to take
you to Dorset," I said.

Louisa reached for my hands. "She is. But I
could not remain in the house any longer. The walls seemed to press
on me. Aline is a dear friend and my servants are loyal, but I
believe they mean to keep me prisoner in my rooms." She heaved a
sigh. "Why I ever thought yellow a cheerful color, I have no idea.
It glares at me--laughs at me. Bloody horrible color for a sitting
room."

I took her elbow and guided her to a chair.
"Well, there is nothing cheerful here, so that should not worry
you. You are in sore need of refreshment, and if I know
Bartholomew, he's already run off to obtain it."

Louisa sank into my armchair. "I am sorry,
but I simply could not stay home. I legged it, as my maid would
say. Aline will be frantic, and I know it is childish of me, but at
the moment, I truly do not care."

"I think I understand."

"Thank you. I somehow knew that you would
enter the conspiracy with me instead of scolding me and taking me
home."

I smiled. "That, I will do later."

Bartholomew banged back in at that moment,
carrying a tray of steaming things. He set down the tray and poured
out a mug of coffee. "You get that into you, ma'am," he said,
handing it to her. "And a few of these sausages. You'll be right as
rain."

Louisa fell upon them hungrily. "My maids
believe that thin slices of bread and weak tea are all my
constitution will abide," she said as she ate. "Aline simply keeps
plying the brandy. I shall be in a sad state before long."

"I will send instructions to fatten you up,"
I said. "Is that why you fled? In search of food?"

Louisa dabbed her mouth with a handkerchief
when she finished, and Bartholomew removed the empty plate and the
tray. "The magistrate questioned me. Sir Nathaniel from Bow Street,
I mean, along with your Sir Montague Harris."

"In the Bow Street House? I hope not." I
thought of the smell of unwashed bodies in the lower rooms, the
dirty, callused palms thrust out for coins.

"No, they came to me. They asked me all
sorts of awful questions. Had I known that my husband was having an
affair with Mrs. Harper? What had he told me about Mr. Turner? Did
Aloysius behave in a peculiar fashion that night? How did he not
remember bringing the knife with him? Did I know beforehand that he
would kill Turner? And other nonsense."

"I will speak to Sir Montague," I said, my
temper rising. "They should not have harangued you."

"No, no, do not grow angry with him. The
pair of them obviously did not think me an accessory. They see me
as the poor, betrayed wife, deceived by her husband." She gave me a
bitter look. "Which is what I am."

I took her hand. "Louisa, I will do
everything in my power to restore him to you."

Louisa's fingers briefly tightened on mine
then flowed away. "I have been lying awake these last few nights
thinking of you trying to save him. And sometimes, in the small
hours of the morning, when I am most alone, I am not certain that I
still want you to."

I gazed pensively at her, unsure of what to
say.

She went on, "Oh, I do not mean I wish for
him to be hanged. Of course not. But I believe that I do not want
him to come home."

"Louisa . . ."

"I know now what you felt when Carlotta left
you. I felt sorry for you at the time, but I see that then I did
not truly understand. To live your whole life for someone, to stand
by them and to care for them, no matter what happens, and then to
have them betray you, throwing your devotion back in your face, is
the hardest thing a person can bear. You feel foolish for having
spent so much time on such an unworthy person. You feel as though
you've given everything but been found wanting." She broke off, her
eyes filling. "And I am so bloody tired of weeping. If you pat my
hand, Gabriel, I shall never forgive you."

I took a handkerchief from my pocket and
handed it to her in silence.

I knew that Brandon
had
found Louisa
wanting. He'd told her so once, and not tried very hard to hide his
disappointment in her inability to have children. Louisa had been
forced to stand by a few nights ago while Brandon was arrested, and
look into the face of the woman Brandon admitted was his mistress.
I thought she was holding up well, considering.

"What you do with him after his trial will
be your choice," I said. "Leave him, obtain a legal
separation--that is for you to decide. I will help you as much as I
can, use my few connections to bring about a happy ending for
you."

Louisa lifted her head. "Gabriel, take me to
France."

I started. "To France?"

"Yes." She crumpled my handkerchief in her
hand. "You told me that you wanted to go to France to find
Carlotta. I offered to accompany you. Let us go, and leave London
and all of this behind."

Her eyes blazed fire in her pale face.
Despite her anguish, she looked beautiful, resolute and glittering,
like a diamond.

"Louisa, if you hie off to France with me
while your husband endures a murder trial, you will never live it
down."

"What does it matter? We are ruined. I am
ruined. Even if Aloysius is found innocent, we shall always be
known for it--the colonel who was tried for murder, arrested in
front of his mistress and his wife. It will follow us all our
lives."

"I know," I said.

She sprang to her feet and began pacing. "I
want no part of it. Take me to France. I am certain that Paris will
be slightly more exciting than a country village in Dorset."

"Suggest a journey to Paris to Lady Aline. I
will persuade her to accompany you."

Louisa stopped and faced me, two dark red
spots on her cheeks. "I do not wish to go with Aline. I wish to go
with you."

I studied her flushed face, her brittle
eyes, her bosom as it rose with her agitated breath. If she had
offered me this in 1814--after Napoleon had been temporarily
defeated, when France was open again--I would have gone with her in
a flash.

I would have taken her to Paris and bought
her frocks and drunk wine with her while the English delegation
decided what to do with France and the restored Bourbon king. I
would have abandoned honor and everything else to be with her, to
take her hand and explore the world with her, to never to return to
England again.

I would have done it. I would have done it
in 1815, after Waterloo, when my life was nothing and the Continent
was free and open once again. I would have fled with her to begin
anew.

But not now. Now, I'd begun to build
something from the wreck of my life. I'd laid a foundation with my
friendship with Grenville, discovered an interest in investigating
crime with Pomeroy and Sir Montague Harris. I had made friends with
the Derwents and Lady Aline Carrington, Mr. Thompson of the Thames
River patrol, and my landlady, Mrs. Beltan.

And I had met Lady Breckenridge.

I thought that in Lady Breckenridge I'd
found a friend who understood me, one who could keep me from making
too great an idiot of myself. I remembered her lips on mine the day
before I'd journeyed to Epsom, and how much I'd liked that
feeling.

I had forged tenuous things that were new
and needed to be explored. I now had something to lose.

I cared for Louisa more than I'd ever cared
for myself. But I no longer wanted to give up my entire life for
her.

She saw that in my eyes as I gazed at her.
Her expression became one of defeat, and her shoulders drooped.

"I am sorry," I said, as though it would
make any difference.

She shook her head. "I ought to have known
that in the end, you would abandon me, too."

I got to my feet. "No, never abandon you.
Never that." I took her hands. "I will never leave you to face
anything alone. You have my word. But if we did dash away together
to France, or Italy, or any number of places, you would soon grow
ashamed. You would dislike yourself, and you would grow angry at me
for not stopping you. You would begin to dislike me, and that I
could not bear."

Tears stood in her eyes. "Gabriel."

"In any case, I am horrible to live with.
Ask Bartholomew."

She did not smile. Louisa stood looking at
me for a moment longer, then she lowered her gaze and walked away
from me. She moved to the window and stood looking out at the gray
drizzle that had begun.

I did not know what else to say to her. I
felt numb.

"I should not have asked you," Louisa said.
"Forgive me."

Her back was slim, but straight and strong.
She might not believe she could weather this problem, but I knew
that she could. Louisa had a core of strength that the stoutest
general would envy. Her strength had taken her through the hellish
living on the Iberian peninsula, and through the grief that both
Brandon and I had put her through.

"Louisa," I said gently. "I swear to you
that I will get his charges dismissed. I will bring Aloysius
Brandon home. Because as much as I despise him for what he has done
to you, I do not believe that he committed murder."

"Why not? The rest of the world does."

"What did Sir Montague and Sir Nathaniel
tell you?"

She turned around. "They said that Aloysius
had reason to kill Mr. Turner. He had been seen growing angry with
him, they had gone off alone together where Aloysius claims he
called the man out. Aloysius named Mr. Turner a coward when he
refused, and the knife was his."

"The knife." I paused. "Was the knife truly
Brandon's, without question?"

"I do not know. I did not know all of his
private possessions. And in any case, he admitted that the knife
was his."

"But he does not remember carrying it into
the party. Or at least, so he says."

Louisa made an exasperated noise. "The two
magistrates asked me that as well. As though I go through my
husband's pockets before we leave the house. I'm not the sort of
wife who dresses her husband. He has a valet for that."