I traced patterns on the doorframe. 'Perhaps I wish you to demand something of me.'
She looked down and away. 'Mrs. Brandon told me what you have become. I can't be a burden around your neck, Gabriel. I won't. You have burdens enough of your own.'
I stilled, anger filling me. ' What I have become? Dear God, what the devil did she say to you?'
'That you are hurt. That you were broken.'
'So you came to pity me, did you? Damn you. Why didn't you simply stay away?'
Her eyes flashed, answering my anger. 'I didn't come to you out of pity. I promise you that. I came to find the man I'd left on the Peninsula.'
'That man is gone, Janet. I see on your face that you realize that. And the man I am now is not the one you want, is it?'
'Gabriel, please don't.'
I caught her chin, twisting her face up to mine. 'You don't understand, do you?'
Her eyes told me she didn't. I leaned down and gave her a fierce kiss, and tears beaded on her lashes.
'I'm sorry,' she whispered.
I lingered there, drinking her in, wishing to God I could buy her with houses in Surrey and that I could still dash through a rain-drenched camp just to bring her coffee.
I released her. 'Don't worry, Janet. I know when I've lost.'
'There are reasons. I promise you, someday, I will tell you my life story, and we will have a good laugh.'
'A good laugh. Is that what we are sharing now?'
Janet's gaze flicked to mine. 'You always did know how to hurt, Gabriel. You have a cruelty in you that frightens me.'
'Perhaps it keeps me from being pitied.'
'God help whoever pities you.'
I let out a breath. When I spoke, I forced my voice to soften, though the anger did not leave me. 'To lose you again so soon after finding you is difficult to bear, Janet.'
She touched my cheek. 'You will never lose me. You can't imagine how fond I am of you, my old lad.'
I seized her wrist and pressed a kiss to it.
And then, despite my pride and my temper, I let her go. She gave me a crooked smile, Janet's warm smile, and she turned away and went down the stairs. Her footsteps echoed in the cold staircase and then were gone.
I leaned back against a painted shepherdess and closed my eyes. I'd had nothing to offer her, no reasons to expect Janet to stay. I had known when she'd left me in Spain that we would drift together and then apart again, without bond, without promise. But I no longer wanted that. I wanted something more.
My wounded spirit told me to go after her and beg her to stay. My pride and anger forbade it. As I leaned there, I remembered another loss, years and years ago, that had torn me apart until I'd gone nearly mad with grief. Only Louisa's quiet voice and her hand in mine had saved my life that time. I reflected with ironic mirth that this loss was comparatively easy to bear.
Footsteps clattered above me. I opened my eyes to see Marianne Simmons tramping down the steps, a folded newspaper in her hand. She peered at me in the gloom, her yellow ringlets a golden halo around her sweetly rounded face.
'Devil a bit, Lacey, I thought she'd never go. Who was she?'
I straightened up. 'Someone I knew long ago.'
Marianne gave me a cynical look. 'So I concluded from your argument. In my opinion, you are better rid of her. That kind of woman wants to be sheltered, is afraid of being alone. She truly would be a burden around your neck. You need a girl with more pluck. One who does not need you.'
I smoothed my hair back from my brow, trying to cool my temper. 'My private affairs are my own business, Marianne.'
She shrugged. 'Then best not discuss them in an open stairwell. But that isn't why I came down. Did you put this advertisement in the newspapers?' She held up a copy of the Times. 'Wherever did you find ten guineas?'
'Grenville is paying it.'
'Ah, the famous Mr. Grenville. But I may be able to help you.'
'Help me how? What do you mean?'
'I might know where this girl went. Was she belly-full?'
I nodded, trying to suppress my twinge of hope. I knew enough about Marianne not to take her words for absolute verity, especially not where money was involved. 'Very likely.'
'All right then. I know a place she might have gone.'
'Where?'
'Show me the ten guineas.'
I made an impatient noise. 'Grenville will pay it.'
'Let us pay a call on Mr. Grenville, then.'
'He's gone to Somerset,' I said.
'Then I'll wait.'
I took a swift step toward her. Marianne backed away, clutching the newspaper. 'If you beat me, Lacey, I won't tell you a thing.'
'I am not going to beat you. The girl's father is dying. Each day I delay finding her might mean the end of him. If you know where she is, I swear to you on my honor you will get your ten guineas when Grenville returns.'
Marianne pursed her childlike lips and tilted her head to one side. I imagined that when she regarded her rich dandies thusly, they fell all over themselves to please her. 'I suppose if I have your word. You usually keep it.'
'A gentleman's word is his honor.'
She gave me a pitying look. 'You have not met some of the gentlemen I know. Very well. Shall we go?'
I rented a hackney at a stand and made Marianne accompany me to the Strand first, where I asked Alice to come with us. I did not know what Jane Thornton looked like, and I didn't trust Marianne not to play a trick on me for the dazzling prospect of ten guineas.
Marianne directed us to Long Acre then along Drury Lane toward High Holborn. After traveling this thoroughfare for a few minutes, we turned to a narrow lane and a little house that looked no different from the somber brick houses surrounding it. I raised a hand to ply the knocker, but Marianne stepped square in front of me and seized the knocker herself.
The door was open by a sullen maid with greasy hair and clean apron. 'What'ya want?' was her greeting.
Marianne walked right in. 'I'm looking for my sister.'
The maid glared at me and Alice. 'Who're they?'
'My brother and my maid.'
The woman's look told me she no more believed her than if she'd said it had suddenly become July. But she stood aside and let us in.
The house had seemed quiet on the outside, but noise filled the inside. Voices poured down the stairs, women's voices: laughing, weeping, shouting, cursing, singing. An angry tirade rose in the upstairs hall.
'Give that back, ye thieving bitch!' A door slammed, cutting off the rest of the argument.
This was no brothel. The house had no comfortable front parlor for gentlemen to gather for cards or to talk sport before seeking a different sort of sport upstairs. No madam or abbess met us to rub her hands and offer me her finest-or call her bully-boys when she realized she'd not get any money out of me. But this was not a boardinghouse either. It resembled a boardinghouse, but the atmosphere was wrong.
'What is this place?' I asked Marianne. The maid had tramped away down the back stairs.
'It's a house where girls can come who need a rest. Or to lie low. Or for a lying in. Mostly for that.'
I craned my head and looked up the dark, dusty stairs. 'Who is the benefactor who lets them stay?'
'There is no benefactor. They pay to stay here, same as any boardinghouse. Nine pence a week, bed and board.'
