She shook her head vehemently. 'No.' Her voice was little more than a scratch. 'Not home. Not there.'
'Where, then?'
But she would not give me an alternate direction, no matter how much I plied her. I wondered where she had left her conveyance, where her retinue of servants waited for her. She offered nothing, only moved swiftly along beside me, head bent so I could not see her face.
'You must tell me where your carriage is,' I tried again.
She shook her head, and continued to shake it no matter how I pleaded with her. 'All right, then,' I said, at my wit's end. 'I will take you to a friend who will look after you. Mrs. Brandon is quite respectable. She is the wife of a colonel.'
My lady stopped, pale lips parting in surprise. Her eyes, deep blue I saw now that we stood in the light, widened. 'Mrs. Brandon?' Suddenly, she began to laugh. Her hands balled into tight fists, and she pressed them into her stomach, hysteria shaking her.
I tried to quiet her, but she laughed on, until at last the broken laughs turned to sobs. 'Not Mrs. Brandon,' she gasped. 'Oh, please, no, never that. I will go with you, anywhere you want. Take me to hell if you like, but not home, and not to Mrs. Brandon, for God's sake. That would never do.'
In the end, I took her to my rooms in Grimpen Lane, a narrow cul-de-sac off Russel Street near Covent Garden market.
The lane was hot with the summer night. My hardworking neighbors were in their beds, though a few street girls lingered in the shadows, and a gin-soaked young man lay flat on his back not far from the bake shop. If the man did not manage to drag himself away, the game girls would no doubt rob him blind, if they hadn't already.
I stopped at a narrow door beside the bake shop, unlocked and opened it. Stuffy air poured down at us. The staircase inside had once been grand, and the remnants of an idyllic mural could be seen in the moonlight- shepherds and shepherdesses pursuing each other across a flat green landscape, a curious mixture of innocence and lust.
'What is this place?' my lady asked in whisper.
'Number 5, Grimpen Lane,' I answered as I led her upstairs and unlocked the door on the first landing. 'In my lighter moments, I call it home.'
Behind the door lay my rooms, once the drawing rooms of whatever wealthy family had lived here a century ago. The flat above mine was quiet, which meant that Marianne Simmons, my upstairs neighbor, was either on stage in Drury Lane or tucked away somewhere with a gentleman. Mrs. Beltan, the landlady who ran the bake shop below, lived streets away with her sister. The house was empty and we were alone.
I ushered the woman inside. She remained standing in the middle of the carpet, chafing her hands as I stirred the embers that still glowed in my grate. The night was warm, but the old walls held a chill that no amount of sun could leach away. Once a tiny fire crackled in the coals, I opened the windows, which I'd left closed to keep birds from seeking shelter in my front room. The breeze that had sprung up at the river barely reached Grimpen Lane, but the open window at least moved the stagnant air.
By the fire's light, I saw that the woman was likely in her late thirties, or fortyish as I was. She had a classic beauty that the bloody scratches on her cheek could not mar, a clean line of jaw, square cheekbones, arched brows over full-lashed eyes. Faint lines feathered from her eyes and corners of her mouth, not age, but weariness.
I took her wet cloak from her, then led her to the wing chair near the fire and bade her sit. I stripped her ruined slippers from her ice-cold feet then fetched a blanket from my bed and tucked it around her. She sat through the proceedings without interest.
I poured out a large measure of brandy from a fine bottle my acquaintance Lucius Grenville had sent me and brought it to her. The glass shook against her mouth, but I held it steady and made her drink every drop. Then I brought her another.
After the third glass, her shaking at last began to cease. She leaned against the worn wing chair, her eyes closing. I fetched a cloth, dampened it with water at my wash basin, and began to wipe the blood and grime from her hands.
Sitting this near to her let me study her closely. Her eyes were dark blue, wide, and handsome, and her hair, now tangled and loose, was darkest brown, bearing only a few strands of gray. Her mouth was regal and straight, the mouth of a woman not much given to laughter.
She was a lady, highborn and wealthy, who had been to a ball or soiree or opera. Who had managed to get herself away from her carriage and servants to walk alone to the unfinished bridge at the Strand for her secret errand.
I still did not know who she was.
Grenville would know. Lucius Grenville knew everyone who was anyone in London. Every would-be dandy from the Prince of Wales to lads just down from Eton copied his dress, his manners, and his tastes in everything from food to horses to women. This famous man had befriended me, he'd said because he found me interesting, a relief from the ennui of London society. Most Londoners envied me my favored position, but I had not yet decided whether I should be flattered or insulted.
'Will you tell me who you are?' I asked as I worked.
'No.' The voice was matter-of-fact, the timbre rich and warm.
'Or why you went to the bridge?'
Her closed eyes tightened. 'No.'
'Who was the man who accosted you? Did you have an appointment to meet him?'
She opened her eyes in sudden alarm. Then she focused her gaze on my left shoulder, holding it there as if it steadied her. 'He was a beggar, I told you. I thought to give him a coin, because he was pitiable. Then I saw he had a knife and tried to flee him.'
'Happy chance I was there to stop him.' My palm still throbbed from the cut he'd given me, but it was shallow, my glove having taken the brunt of it. 'That still does not answer the question of why you went to the bridge in the first place.'
She lifted her head and bathed me in a haughty stare. 'That is my own affair.'
Of course she would not tell me the truth, and I had not thought she would. I wondered if the women at the bridge had been right, that she'd gone there to end her life. Suicide was a common enough means of ending one's troubles in these times-a gentleman ruined by debt, a soldier afraid to face battle, a woman raped and abandoned.
I was no stranger myself to melancholia. When I'd first returned to London from Spain, the black despair had settled on me more times than I cared to think about. The fits had lessened since the turn of the year, because my sense of purpose was slowly returning to me. I had made new friends and was beginning to find interest in even the most wretched corners of London.
She offered nothing more, and I carefully touched my cloth to the scrapes on her cheek. She flinched, but did not pull away.
'You may rest here until you feel better,' I said. 'My bed is uncomfortable, but better than nothing. The brandy will help you sleep.'
She studied me a moment, her eyes unfocussed. Then, with a suddenness that took my breath away, she lifted her slim arms and twined them about my neck. The light silk of her sleeves caressed my skin, and her breath was warm on my lips.
I swallowed. 'Madam.'
She did not let me go. She pulled me into her embrace and pushed her soft mouth against mine.
Primal blood beat through my body, and I balled my fists. I tasted her lips for one heady moment before I reached up and gently pushed her from me. 'Madam,' I repeated.
She gazed at me with hungry intensity. 'Why not? Does it matter so much?' Her eyes filled and she whispered again, 'Why not?'
I could easily have accepted what she offered. She was beautiful, and her lips were warm, and she had quite entranced me. It was devilish difficult to tell her no.
But I did it.
She sat back and regarded me limply. I picked up the cloth I had dropped and resumed dabbing the blood from her face. My hands trembled.
