'Why did you come to me and not her husband?' I asked.
'She does not want to see her husband,' he replied. 'Or so she said.'
'She is safe?'
Denis met my eye, cold clarity in his gaze. 'That depends very much on you, Captain.'
I hated him powerfully at that moment. He had me, and he knew it.
'I want your word,' he said.
A candle sputtered in the silence, loud as a pistol shot.
I nodded, my neck sore with it. 'I give you my word.'
'I will hold you to the bargain. Know that.' His voice went soft. 'I believe Louisa Brandon is very dear to you, is she not?'
'Just tell me where she is.'
He watched a bit of plaster float to the carpet. 'She is a clever woman, your Mrs. Brandon. She has hidden herself well.' And he told me.
I arrived at a respectable-looking boardinghouse down the Thames in Greenwich at two that afternoon. Denis had told me Louisa had moved into the house under the name 'Mrs. Taylor,' and had purported to be a widow who had recently lost her husband, found herself cut off by an indifferent son, and had nowhere to go. Her story was not far-fetched; by law, sons were not related to their mothers, and had no legal obligation to care for them. I wondered, on a sudden, what provisions Brandon had made, if any, for Louisa in case of his death.
The landlady who ran the household had a kind face and a softness about her eyes. She told me I'd been expected, and led me to the back of the house to a small, sunny parlor.
Louisa lay on a divan, a shawl over her knees. Her golden hair was loose about her, and a widow's cap similar to the one Lydia had worn rested on her head, verisimilitude for the part of the widowed Mrs. Taylor.
I meant to greet her with a jest about it, but I was struck with how thin she'd grown since I'd last seen her. Her fingers were white and frail, and her gray eyes were enormous in her nearly bloodless face.
My heart tightened. She had been ill, damned ill, if I were any judge. Life could be brutally short in these times, and to be sure, I had already seen a number of childhood acquaintance lost to disease and war, but Louisa had always seemed indomitable, strong, everlasting. The thought that she could be taken from me so easily made my pulse quicken with dread.
But her smile was welcoming. She held out her hands to me. I clasped them in mine and bent to kiss her cheek.
'Gabriel. I am so glad you've come.' She squeezed my fingers hard, to the bone.
I went down on one knee beside her. 'Louisa, what is it? Are you ill?'
She shook her head. 'Not any longer.'
'What has happened? Tell me.'
She smiled and released my hands. 'Oh, do take a chair, Gabriel. The floor must be devilish uncomfortable.'
I rose and dragged a rather shabby armchair with ball and claw feet to her side. When I seated myself, I took one of her hands in mine again. Her fingers curled against my palm, but she did not pull away.
'Please tell me what has happened,' I repeated.
'Nothing that has not happened before,' she said tiredly. 'I will weather it.'
I looked into her eyes, and I realized that what I read there was not illness, but great sorrow. Her eyelids were rimmed with red, and I saw a woman who had relinquished her last hope.
'Oh God,' I whispered.
'I wish I knew why I cannot do what every maid in the street can in a trice,' she said. 'They even pay to give up what I'd pay a thousandfold to have. It baffles one, does it not?'
'Louisa.' I caressed her cold fingers. Three times before, Louisa Brandon had been with child, and three times before, she had lost that child. The first had been born, a tiny little boy. But all too soon, he had began gasping for breath, and then he had died. The others had been born far too early, too weak to live. This one could not have been inside her for more than several weeks. 'I am sorry.'
Her gray eyes filled as her fingers tightened on mine.
'Does Brandon know?' I asked.
She shook her head. 'I said nothing to him. How could I have? It seemed little short of cruel. He would have hoped so much. I decided I'd go away. I'd met the woman who runs this boarding house during the Peninsular campaign before her husband was killed and she returned to England. She is a midwife now. We corresponded still, and I thought this would be an ideal place. I could wait here until I was certain all would be well.' She smiled shakily. 'But all was not well, was it? I do not know why I supposed it would be. I have always failed before.'
'It is hardly your fault.' My mouth hardened as I remembered a long-ago heated argument with Brandon. 'No matter what others might say.'
Brandon had once dared complain in my presence that Louisa had sorely disappointed him in the matter of children. He had said bitterly that she could not come up to scratch, and a childless wife was no wife at all. I understood later that he had been as hurt as Louisa by her latest miscarriage, but at the time, all I had seen was the misery in her eyes and the blatant blame in Brandon's. I'd lost my temper and said that perhaps it was not the receptacle that was to blame, but the seed.
That moment, I believe had begun the end of our friendship. Our feud had later taken a darker, grimmer twist, but my words that day had never been quite forgiven.
Louisa toyed with the fringe of her shawl. 'I went to Aline,' she said. 'She advised I go away, somewhere quiet, where I could be alone. I should have nothing that would upset me, she said, and Aloysius was certainly upsetting me.' She looked up, a ghost of a defiant glint in her eye. 'Agreeing to testify that Colonel Westin had been inebriated and committed murder. Rot and nonsense. I told him no good would come of such lies, but he can be so stubborn!'
She did not need to tell me of Brandon's stubbornness.
'I wondered how you had responded to his promise. I ought to have known you would see the thing for what it was.'
'Of course I did,' she said firmly. 'But he would preach to me about preserving the honor of the regiment. The Forty-Third should not be shamed. Colonel Westin had agreed to take the blame alone so that he could be singled out and punished. Of course Westin did not murder that captain.'
'I know.'
'I know you know. I have read the newspapers. You are in this up to your neck. I hope you came prepared to tell me everything.'
I raised a brow. 'If you have read the newspapers, then you already know.'
She gave me a deprecating look. 'Do not tease me. I am not in the humor for it. The newspapers print what they like, and you know it. I want the truth, Gabriel.' She slid her hand from mine and folded her arms. 'And I do mean all of it. I read that man Billings's salacious hints about you and Mrs. Westin. Well?'
A day ago, they would still have been lies. Today, I felt my cheeks grow warm.
'So,' she said softly. 'Not all lies.'
'But the truth is not what he makes out,' I said. 'Fortunately, Billings's stories are so outrageous they can be laughed off as improbable.'
She would not let me off so easy. 'What is the truth, Gabriel? Stop prevaricating and tell me at once.'
I hid a smile. I was pleased that I had sparked her interest. I was willing to let her scold me if doing so would soothe her.
I began my tale with the moment I'd caught sight of Lydia Westin making her way through the rain to the half-constructed bridge. I told of Westin's death, and Lydia's wish that I clear his name. I told her of Pomeroy's investigation, and how Grenville and I had journeyed to Astley Close and met Lord Richard Eggleston and Lord Breckenridge. I told her about all the events there, not leaving anything out, including the card game. I told her of Breckenridge's death, Brandon’s sudden appearance, the inquest, and my speculations there.
'Lady Breckenridge seemed not in the least upset by her husband's death,' I concluded. 'Almost as though she'd been waiting for it.'
'Some women do spend their marriages waiting for their husbands to die. Seems a rather uncomfortable
