Jemmy stepped back in alarm. I stared him down, the man who'd caused Jane Thornton's ruin and death, even if indirectly. Jemmy had made the abduction possible and was as much to blame as Horne.
I unsheathed my sword. The blade rang, and raindrops glittered on the bright steel as bitter anger burned through me. I wanted nothing more than to press that sharpness through the terrified coachman's heart and watch him bleed until he died.
Behind me Alice sobbed. 'Please don't, sir. It won't bring her back.'
It was as though my conscience had spoken aloud. I pressed my anger down, slid the blade back into its sheath, and helped Alice to her feet. In silence, I led her back up the path to the stairs.
Not until we approached the waiting carriage did I realize that Jemmy and Denis's two footmen had not returned with me. I glanced back through the rain to the bank below, but I couldn't see them.
The footman who'd remained with the carriage opened the door and hoisted both Alice and myself back inside. Alice huddled, damp and miserable, into a corner. I took the seat next to her, forcing the footman to sit next to Denis.
We rode in silence back through Southwark, winding into the traffic heading across the bridge to the City. Denis studied me in the soft lantern light, the only one of us dry and unmussed.
'Revenge, Captain, is usually a waste of time,' he said. 'I don't deal in it.'
'Jane was avenged,' I said quietly.
'With the murder of Horne by the butler? I suppose she was, indirectly.'
'But it will not be enough. I want the procuress and anyone else who helped them.'
Denis shook his head. 'You are a hard man, Captain Lacey.'
'If Horne had taken an innocent child and dashed out its brains, it would have been no different. All she'd ever known was happiness and people who cared for her. Suddenly all that was ripped from her, and she faced a monster. I cannot even begin to imagine her terror. She must have found it unbelievable that such a thing could happen.'
Alice whimpered. I wanted to pat her hand, to comfort her, but I had no comfort to give. Sometimes there is no comfort, only the knowledge that the worst has happened.
'I want everyone who was a part of that to face a magistrate and be punished for their sins.'
Denis gave his head a slight shake. 'Jemmy will not face a magistrate. He will face me. He had no business dealing directly with Horne without my knowledge.'
I looked into his blank, handsome face and cold eyes, and my anger grew hot and heavy. 'You are filth.'
Denis held up his hand in its immaculate, expensive glove. 'Have no doubt, I will make him name his accomplices.'
'And send them to a magistrate? I want them tried before God.'
He looked idly out the window. 'It will do you no good to take them to court. First, you would have to prove what you say. I told you, I will not give you Jemmy, and without him, you will have no eyewitness. Second, you would have to tell the story of your Miss Thornton in all its sordid details, a story that would be sensational enough to be printed in the newspapers for all the world to see. Her family will always bear the stigma of having a daughter abducted, ruined, and murdered. Is that what you want?'
My lips moved with difficulty. 'No.'
'I know you want vengeance, but the conventional way is not the best in this case. I will obtain your revenge for you, as a favor.'
'I do not want to owe favors to you.'
'You already owe me favors, Captain. You will get nowhere without Jemmy, and I will not give him to you. You will have to let me do this my way.'
I met Denis's eyes, clear, cold, and unforgiving. He knew I was dangerous to him, and he'd already begun taking precautions against me. I knew I would not win.
'So I let him,' I said.
Louisa twined her cool fingers through mine. She reposed next to me on the low divan in my sitting room, where she'd sat for the last three hours while I poured out my story.
Five days had passed since I'd discovered Jane's fate. Four of those I'd spent sunk in melancholia, unable to rise from my bed, barely able to eat the broth Mrs. Beltan forced upon me. Even today, every movement of my limbs hurt me, every motion was made with the greatest effort.
I had gone to the Brandons' Brook Street house after I'd helped Alice break the news to Mrs. Thornton that her daughter was dead. Louisa had been out, but her husband had been there, and I'd made him tell me where she was. He insisted on accompanying me to the card party at Lady Aline's, where Louisa was happily gambling and chatting with friends.
Louisa's mirth had evaporated when her husband and I entered to pull her from the sitting room. I explained what had happened, barely able to speak, my mind already pulling away from me. I was never sure what happened after that, because after a long, long time traveling back through London and the hour it took to climb my stairs to my rooms, I'd had strength enough only to crawl into bed and lie there.
I learned later that Louisa had gone to the Thorntons and given them what aid she could, including arranging for Jane's body to be retrieved and decently buried in a churchyard with the proper service. She told me that Mr. Thornton would survive his gunshot wound, but she suspected he would always be weak. The heart had gone out of him.
I never did discover what had happened to Jemmy and the procuress and anyone else involved in the matter. I came across a terse letter from Denis as I leafed through the post that had piled on my writing desk in the intervening time. In brief sentences, he told me that everything had been taken care of, giving me no details. From that day forward, I heard nothing, not from Denis, not in newspapers, not in rumor.
I told Louisa everything, the words tumbling from my lips, as though she were a papist confessor and I a contrite sinner.
'So I turned my back on Jemmy and left him to Denis's mercy. God knows what he did to him.'
Louisa lifted her head, and firelight glistened on a sleek, golden curl that fell to her neck. 'I confess that I do not feel much sympathy for him. Not after spending these past days with Mrs. Thornton. Not for Horne, not Jemmy, not the procuress.'
'You didn't see Denis's eyes. I have never seen anything so cold. It's as though he's not even alive, Louisa.'
She shivered. 'I think I never want to meet this man. Although I am very angry about what he did to you, and I would like to tell him so.'
I smiled at the image of Louisa Brandon scolding James Denis, her finger extended, then I sobered. 'He wanted to punish Jemmy himself, not because Jemmy had done a terrible thing, but because he'd disobeyed Denis. And, Denis sees it as a way to have power over me.'
'Mr. Denis also could not let Jemmy in court for fear of what he might confess in the dock-or on the scaffold,' Louisa pointed out.
'Denis does have the magistrates in his pocket, but gossip and public opinion can still ruin him.' I ran my hands through my hair. 'But I did the same, didn't I? I let my own will prevail over the law and justice.'
'By letting Aimee's aunt take her to France?'
I rested my head against the back of the divan. 'Ease my conscience, Louisa. Was I right to let her go?'
Louisa met my eyes, hers clear gray and filled with compassion. 'What Horne did was unforgivable. Aimee took his life in desperation, and in defense of her own. He never would have paid for what he'd done, if she hadn't.'
'But does one crime negate another?' I asked. 'I've shot men who were doing their best to shoot me, I've plunged my saber into men who were trying to plunge their bayonets into me. Does it make me-or Aimee, or Josette-any less guilty?'
'I cannot answer that, Gabriel. Please don't ask me to. What was right for Aimee, and what was wrong, I do not know. Perhaps the choice was neither right nor wrong, it simply existed.' Louisa laid her hand on my knee. 'I am afraid that, in this case, you'll not have the comfort of knowing you did right.'
I closed my eyes. 'If I let Aimee and Josette escape to France, then I say that murder under certain circumstances is perfectly acceptable. And who are we to judge what those circumstances are? But if I go to Bow
