forgive me until I ground my teeth with it.
I tapped my left boot with my walking stick. 'I do believe you already had your vengeance.'
As usual, when I made any reference to my injury, he grew furious. 'God damn you, Lacey. Get out of my house.'
'I am pleased to.'
If Louisa did not return soon, we certainly would murder each other.
As I turned away, I nearly stumbled into the little cabinet house, called a 'baby house,' that Brandon had commissioned a cabinetmaker to construct for Louisa. It was a miniature replica of a fine mansion and opened at the front in two doors. The interior was bisected by a hall with a tiny, elegant staircase that led to a tiny, elegant drawing room and bedchamber. Cabinetmakers had fashioned the small furniture, perfect replicas of full-sized chairs and tables, in exact detail.
The thing had always fascinated me. Louisa delighted in showing me any new piece she had obtained for it. Her eyes would light as she demonstrated a miniature highboy's working drawers or the cunning sliding panels in the tiny secretary.
Nearly smashing the house now brought me up with a cold start. Louisa had gone. Forever? If she abandoned her husband, he could divorce her, disgrace and leave her. He had contemplated such a step once before, and I knew it was not beyond him.
My heart chilled as I thought of the possibility of my life without her cool presence. That event would be much like the breaking of this precise little house; something precious and unique destroyed.
I swallowed hard, avoided looking at Brandon, and went away.
Chapter Six
Grenville wrote to me the next morning that he had succeeded in discovering a manner in which to slip me into aristocratic society. Lady Mary Fortescue, sister of Lord Fortescue, a minor baron, had invited Grenville to the house she shared with her brother at Astley Close, in Kent, where both Breckenridge and Eggleston were to stay. Grenville had had no trouble persuading the lady to allow him to bring me down with him.
I was not surprised. Any house party that contained Grenville would likely be the most fashionable of the summer. Other hostesses would gnash their teeth in envy. We would leave on the morrow.
I replied that I would gladly accompany him. In happier times as a lad-which meant whenever my father was away or I visited a mate from school-I had reveled in the country. I remembered long, rambling walks through orchards and over gentle hills, fishing barefoot in the streams between grassy banks, following a buxom maid who would entice me with her smile before her father ran me off with a stout plank.
Retrospect made it more idyllic than it had been, but even so, the English country evoked the happiest memories of my life. I looked forward to sampling it again, even if I would be cross-questioning two former army officers, and even if a buxom maid's offerings would pale beside the cool, elegant beauty of Lydia Westin.
I also received a reply to the letter I'd penned to Lady Aline Carrington. In it she told me that she knew perfectly well where Louisa was, but had no intention of telling me. She said that Louisa was fine and well and that I should leave her the devil alone.
I felt a little better upon reading this. Lady Aline was a fifty-year-old spinster, a firm disciple of Mary Wollstonecraft and who believed women should involve themselves in politics and champion artists and writers. She had never married, but she had many male friends-friends only; she preferred a good gossip to any other activity. She had taken Louisa under her wing, and I knew she would protect her like the fiercest mastiff. Though it frustrated me not to know where Louisa was, at least I was reassured that she was in no danger. If Lady Aline was looking after her, all would be well. Probably.
I wrote a polite note back thanking her then wrote to Lydia, asking leave to call and look through her husband's papers. She granted permission by return messenger. I gathered shillings to pay for a hackney and set off for Grosvenor Street.
William the footman met me at the door. Yesterday he'd watched me in cool suspicion; today, he readily ushered me into the house and showed me into Colonel Westin's study on the first floor.
I did not see Lydia at all, to my disappointment, but William gave me the keys to Colonel Westin's desk and left me to it.
I settled myself and for the next few hours studied the recent life of Colonel Roehampton Westin. I learned two things about him that day. First, the colonel had been a very meticulous and careful man, noting in his diary the routines of a cavalry officer, most of which were quite familiar to me. Second, he had borne affection for his wife, but seemed to have regarded her as a comfortable family partner, not as a lover. His letters were warm, but never touched upon intimacy.
He spoke only once of the Badajoz event.
'I was sickened,' he wrote, 'as I have never been before, even through the carnage I have seen since I began soldiering. Spinnet was shot, poor fellow, in the face, by a marauder in an English uniform. Breckenridge raised a toast to him, which makes him a hypocrite; they had never liked one another.'
After Badajoz, Westin's mood became black, and the letters for the remainder of 1812 were depressed. 'I find home and peace so far from me in these times. Why have I traded walks through the dusk over the farms for this slaughter of men like cattle?'
He grew more hopeful later, as Wellesley and the English army began to push the French from Spain, but his letters still held formality: 'Millar sends his respects. It is hard for him, poor fellow, to be far from home-and he is French, of course, which makes him the butt of many cruelties, though I try to prevent them. You did right not to open the Berkshire house this year. It is too much time and expense for only a few weeks. Give dear Chloe my warmest regards and my letter for her enclosed.'
I sat back when I'd finished and neatly piled the letters together. From them I had seen that Westin had been an ordinary man caught up in a war he did not like, in a profession he had taken to satisfy the pride of his father and grandfather. Nowhere did I a find a man who would dream of drinking himself into a frenzy and gleefully rushing about a fallen city looting homes and raping its inhabitants. Unless he had painted a very misleading portrait in these letters to his wife, I had to agree with Lydia. It was unlikely that Westin had murdered Captain Spencer in a fit of drunken madness.
Lydia herself entered the room as I laid the letters back in the desk where I'd found them. I sensed her presence before I looked up, or perhaps her faint perfume had alerted me.
Rest and food had erased the ravages of the last few days, though she was still pale, and her eyes bore smudges like bruises beneath them. She wore a black silk gown trimmed with dark gray piping, and a white widow's cap fixed to her carefully curled hair. Against this monotone, her blue eyes stood out like patches of sky on a cloud- filled day.
'Have you found anything?' she asked.
I rose to my feet. She motioned me to sit again, but I remained standing, manners beaten into me long ago winning out.
'Only what you told me I would find. The letters of a moral, conscientious man who abhorred violence. He makes no mention of Captain Spencer, by name or otherwise.'
She pressed her slim hands together. 'I do wish he had confided in me.'
I mused. 'Who would he have confided in? A friend, a colleague? Millar, perhaps?'
She shook her head. 'He was not one for confidences. Or even for conversation, for that matter. At least not with me.' She laughed a little.
Not every man made a friend of his wife. I had not, to my own shame. I had always found it easy and natural to speak to Louisa Brandon on almost any subject, but speaking to my own wife had been most awkward. I had tried, but Carlotta had only regarded my speeches with glazed-eyed boredom if not trepidation.
'I dislike to ask this,' I began. 'Do you know if your husband had a mistress?'
I waited for the icy scorn that she did so well, but she did not look offended. 'Because he might have confided in her?' She shook her head. 'I have not seen any hint of one. But then, Roe was not a man who enjoyed pleasures of the flesh. He believed in moderation in all things.'
