Grace's eyes widened, her voice rising with hysteria. 'You can't prove that. A magistrate would never believe you.'
But a magistrate most likely could and would. From the fear in her eyes, she knew that.
'I never killed him,' she repeated breathlessly. 'I never would.'
I left her standing in the middle of the dingy sitting room, her mouth open in fear and outrage. I opened the door to the dark rain and let myself out.
My rooms in Grimpen Lane gave me a cold and cheerless greeting. The fire had died and flakes of plaster floated down as I slammed the door. I limped to the fireplace, shivering, knelt, and began the tedious process of striking a spark to ignite the coal.
As the tiny flame licked over the dead black coals, I remained kneeling, staring into the fireplace. London was so damn cold and dank and dreary after the bright heat of India and Portugal and Spain. In Wellington's army, I had fought for my life and watched men die, endured disease and heat and the near madness of grief.
But I had lived. Every day, I had lived, as Grenville said I had. He envied me for it. Here, I simply existed. I did not fit in to London, and it did not know what to do with me. A career required money, connections, and influence, and I had none of those. Marriage required the same. Many a man without wealth or the right family might ship himself to the colonies of Jamaica or Antigua, but plantations there were built on the backs of slaves, and I could not be a part of that vileness.
I rested my face in my hands and thought of Spain, of the long days and weeks as we slowly, slowly pushed Bonaparte back to France. Summer nights had been warm there, balmy. I had known a Spanish woman, a farmer's young wife. She had not been beautiful, but her cup of water, delivered to me with gentle hands, had brought me back from death.
She and her two small children had nursed me in a tiny farmhouse miles from anywhere. Her husband had been killed by French soldiers, and she lived off the remains of the farm, hidden far from the lines of battle.
Upon reflection, I ought to have remained there. The army and Brandon and Wellington had thought me dead. Easy to have let them believe it and finished my life on that Spanish farm with Olietta and her two little boys. But I had been fevered to get back to my regiment, to reassure everyone that I was still alive.
I wondered whether Olietta would welcome me back if I journeyed to Spain to find her again. More than likely she'd found a Spanish man returning from the wars, happy to share the farm and her life with her.
I sent a silent greeting to her while the flame danced higher.
Someone knocked on the door. A fleck of bight yellow plaster, the color of the Spanish sun, landed on my finger.
'Come,' I said.
The door opened and shut behind me, but I remained staring at the fire. Melancholia took me that way sometimes, suddenly, rendering me unable to move.
A swish of silk and the scent of Janet's perfume, and she knelt beside me and smoothed my brow.
'Hello, my lad. Are you blue-deviled again?'
I turned my head and pressed a kiss to her palm. 'As ever.'
'Remember how I used to drive the blue-devils away?'
I remembered. She kissed me. I slid my hands around her waist. A wisp of heat floated to me from the igniting coals, resuming the battle against the chill.
I laid Janet down on the hearthrug and we loved each other on the hard and soot-stained floor. Not elegant, but we'd shared less comfortable bed spaces in the past. The coal flamed yellow, then settled into a steady red glow, prickling our skin with heat.
We took each other fiercely, hunger in our mouths and in our hands. As I loved her, I remembered everything, the laughter, the foolishness, the unbearable summer heat, the brief, intense time when she had meant everything to me.
When we'd finished, I drew her close. 'I had just been thinking of Spain.'
'I was thinking of Portugal.' Her eyes glinted. 'How I told you that first night that I may as well sleep in your tent, as I had nowhere else to go.'
'And in my bed, as there was only the one.'
'Exactly.' She snuggled into my shoulder, her auburn hair snaking across my chest. 'I never thought I would miss following the drum.'
'We did not know what the world was like.'
'And what one had to do to survive.'
'No,' I answered, heartfelt.
We lay there in silence for a while as the fire warmed our bodies. I breathed the scent of her, trying to forget the grim world outside, the cold beyond our circle of warmth.
Half an hour passed. She sat up and reached for her clothes.
I caught her around the waist and pressed a kiss to her belly. 'Stay.'
'I can't, my old lad.'
'My bed is not very comfortable, but I offer it to you anyway.'
She pressed her fingers to my lips. 'I truly can't, Gabriel. I'm sorry.'
I licked her fingers.
She withdrew them, her face reddening. 'I ought to have told you right away. Sergeant-major Foster has found a house in Surrey. He wants me to go and live with him there. I came here today intending to say good- bye.'
Chapter Seventeen
'You are quick to dash a man's hopes,' I said, trying to keep my voice light.
We stood in the chill staircase hall, both of us dressed, Janet tying on a yellow straw bonnet with a blue feather.
'I meant to tell you at once. Truly I did.'
I folded my arms and leaned against the doorframe, my pulse beating fast and hard. 'So you should have. Before you took pity on a fellow in his melancholia.'
She flushed. 'Please don't be angry with me, Gabriel. I came here on purpose to tell you I could not see you again. But I found I couldn't. Not so abruptly as that.'
I regarded her steadily. 'You could not before either, remember? When you left me for England? No promises, you said, no hopes.'
'It is better that way, is it not?'
'I don't find it so.'
She studied me, her eyes still. 'I thought you would understand.'
'That you would rather live with a man who's come into money? Did you decide that after you saw the state of my rooms, my poverty-'
'He'd invited me months ago. He said that when he found a house he wanted, he'd ask me to come live with him. He might even marry me.'
My lips tightened. 'Then why were you so anxious to see me again? If you knew you already had better prospects?'
'Because when I saw you…' Janet broke off, her eyes filling. 'How can you ask me that? When you looked at me, and I knew you hadn't forgotten me, I realized how much I'd truly missed you.'
I nodded, my throat tight. 'And you assured me that Foster was a mere acquaintance.'
'I didn't lie. I truly do only see him in the pub. I never thought he would find his house. I thought he was just talking. But today, he asked me.'
'You ought to have told me you were waiting for such an offer. I might have beaten him to it.'
She shook her head until her feather twitched from side to side. 'I never expected anything from you. I would not demand anything. I thought we would simply come together and talk over old times, that is all.'
