A Body in Berkeley Square (34 page)

"Where do you stay?" I asked.

"King Street," Carlotta answered. "I promise you, we
will speak of it. We will settle it."

"We shall indeed. I will send a man round to fetch
you."

Carlotta shook her head. "No, there will be an
appointment. He will see to it."

"Who will?"

Carlotta grasped Gabriella's arm again. "Come," she
said to her. "Your father is waiting."

That statement startled me a moment before I realized
that Carlotta must mean the Frenchman she'd eloped with. The
officer who'd thought nothing of living with another man's wife for
fifteen years.

Gabriella, with one last bewildered glance at me, let
her mother lead her away. Carlotta hurried with her to the north
and west side of Covent Garden and out to King Street, and the
crowd swallowed them.

I stood in a daze, watching until I could no longer
see the two women, the younger one a little taller than the older,
walking close, their heads together.

The black carriage still making its way through the
market halted nearly on top of me. A woman flung open the window
and leaned out, her fashionable hat tilted back to reveal a
quantity of golden curls and a childlike, pointed face.

"Devil take it, Lacey," Marianne Simmons cried. "Have
your brains addled?"

* * * * *

About the Author

Award-winning Ashley Gardner is a pseudonym
for
New York Times
bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. Under
both names--and a third, Allyson James--Ashley has written more
than 30 published novels and novellas in mystery and romance. Her
books have won several RTBook Reviews Reviewers Choice awards
(including Best Historical Mystery for
The Sudbury School
Murders
), and the Romance Writers of America’s RITA (given for
the best romance novels and novellas of the year). Ashley’s books
have been translated into a dozen different languages and have
earned favorable reviews in
Publisher's Weekly
and
Booklist.

More about the Captain Lacey series can be
found at

http://www.gardnermysteries.com

Or email Ashley Gardner at

[email protected]

Books in the series

The Hanover Square Affair

A Regimental Murder

The Glass House

The Sudbury School Murders

The Necklace Affair (
a novella)

A Body in Berkeley Square

A Covent Garden Mystery

A Death in Norfolk

And more to come!