eyes made her a child of Sir Gideon, and the slightly shy, innocently curious looks she darted at me confirmed it.
The fifth member of the group proved to be a lady I had met earlier that year-Mrs. Danbury, a young widow of the same blond hair and gray eyes of the Derwents. She was not, in fact, Sir Gideon's daughter, I was informed as she was presented, but his niece.
Lady Derwent did not rise, but lifted her hand for me. Her blond hair was darker than her son's and going gray, and her eyes were light blue. The hand she offered me was thin and worn. As I bowed over it, I saw in her face a weariness, a gray tinge that her smile could not disguise.
Melissa Derwent went brilliant scarlet and looked frantically at anything but me when I bowed to her and murmured a greeting. She did not offer her hand, but curled her fingers into her palms so tightly I feared she'd hurt herself.
Mrs. Danbury did profess to remember me. Her smile was crooked, slanting one side of her mouth. 'Captain Lacey and I have met before. At Lord Arbuthnot's, was it not?'
I agreed that it was.
They plied me with Madeira, then we went through another pair of palatial doors, opened by two footmen, to a dining room with a ceiling at least twenty feet high.
As the ambience promised, the food brought in by the deferential footmen on trolleys was on par with what Anton gave me at Grenville's. I ate from fine porcelain plates with a heavy silver knife and spoon, and drank from crystal goblets that never seemed to be empty of smooth, blood red wine.
I realized as we began that there was no other guest but me. I was the one they had lit the house for, had unfurled the red carpet for, had produced this meal for. Good lord.
By the time we reached the fish course, Sir Gideon had asked me to relate, in detail, my life in the army, from the time I'd volunteered to the day I'd decided to leave the life behind. I could not imagine why they'd want me to tire them with war stories, but they asked many eager questions, and Sir Gideon refused to let me steer the conversation elsewhere.
'Tell us of Mysore,' he'd say eagerly. 'Did you ride elephants? Was the Tippu Sultan as cruel as they say?'
'I have no idea,' I had to reply. 'When we at last stormed the city, the Sultan was dead, by his own hand or murdered, who could say. But yes, I did manage to ride an elephant.'
I then had to tell them exactly what that had been like. Unnerving, to say the least. The elephants kept in the town of Seringapatam were gentle enough, being generally used as beasts of burden, but to ride atop a creature as large as a house, who regarded you as no more significant than a flea, had been a bit unsettling.
I remembered the hot, baking sun, the smell of vegetation struggling to live in the heat and dense air, the overpowering scent of elephant, and the faint cries of a very young Mrs. Lacey, as white and golden as Melissa Derwent, screaming that the elephant would eat her, or me, or at least kill us in some horrible way. I had laughed at her.
Had I ever been such an arrogant, blind fool? Yes, my conscience whispered to me. You were exactly that.
I was aware I'd paused too long, and hurriedly resumed my narrative.
Mrs. Danbury, seated next to me, listened to my tales as avidly as the others did, but her eyes crinkled in amusement at the rapt attentions of her cousins. But at least she listened. She could have flicked her fingers and sighed and given other signs of growing boredom, but she never did.
Leland's stare on the other hand, fixed and filled with hero-worship, made me most uncomfortable. I hoped to God that tomorrow morning he would not run off to join a regiment.
Lady Derwent ate very little. She toyed with her food, her thin fingers shaking slightly. Her smiles were as eager as her son's and husband's, but I saw her strain to keep her lips still, saw the cough well up in her throat from time to time before she hastily buried it in a handkerchief.
A dart of sympathy pierced my heart. These people, these innocent, kind, genuinely friendly people would soon know grief. I wondered how long it would be. From the waxen tinge to Lady Derwent's skin, I thought it possible she would not live much past Christmas.
I sought to entertain them as I could, pulling their thoughts from sorrows to come. I tried to keep the more gruesome aspects of my stories to a minimum, attempting to relate only the light and humorous. Louisa would like these people, I reflected. I would introduce them, when she recovered from her own present grief. In fact, it might be just the thing for her. She hated to wallow in her own sorrows, and this unworldly, innocent family would tug at her heart.
After we had consumed the elegant desert-a decadent pudding decorated with spun sugar-we moved back to the drawing room. Despite its ostentation, the room was well lived in. Workbaskets rested by chairs, books lay about, a lady's sketchbook had been tucked into a rack near a settee. The Derwents obviously spent every evening here, guests or no. They occupied every inch of this grand house, and with their charming obliviousness, rendering what could be cold and grandiose warm and friendly.
Melissa performed a minuet for us on a satinwood pianoforte. She played competently but nervously. I clapped politely when she finished and smiled when she curtseyed. Sir Gideon and Leland both seemed very pleased with me.
It was very late before I could introduce into the conversation the purpose for which I'd come. I tried to casually lead to the topic of Sir Edward Connaught, Major in the Forty-Third Light Dragoons, but in the end I had to bluntly ask if he were their acquaintance.
'Of course, my dear fellow,' Sir Gideon replied. He handed me yet another tumbler of mellow, sweet brandy. 'I do know him. He was one of those involved at Badajoz, was he not? With this killing of the man, Captain Spencer.'
'Yes.' So they did read the newspapers after all.
Sir Gideon turned an eager gaze on me. 'I did not know Colonel Westin well, except from the club, poor chap. Did he really kill that wretched man at Badajoz?'
'No,' I answered. 'I believe Colonel Westin was innocent.'
My words rippled through the room like the faint approach of a summer storm. The four Derwents turned to me, breathless. Even the footman, who had come with a tray of exquisite chocolates, froze to listen.
There was nothing for it then that I should tell them every detail of the Badajoz investigation, as well as about the death of Lord Breckenridge.
Never in my life had anyone listened to me with complete interest, begging me to go on when I slowed. Another man might have been flattered; I realized early on that they simply had very little connection with the outside world. I must have seemed larger than life to them.
By the time I departed-Sir Gideon insisted on calling his own carriage for me-I had made an appointment to meet Connaught in the company of Sir Gideon and Leland four days hence.
I also garnered another invitation for supper in a week. They suggested they make my invitation to supper a standing one once a fortnight. This idea delighted the four Derwents; Mrs. Danbury smiled in the background. I was uncertain whether to be pleased or alarmed.
As we pulled away, I looked back at the warm, bright house that had welcomed me so. They wanted me back. I would oblige them.
I was just settling back when my eye caught a brief movement. I peered past the coach lights into the darkness. Gaslight had been laid here, but in the space between the pale yellow globes the darkness was complete. I had seen someone, a man I thought, duck back into shadows.
It had been Brandon trailing me to and about Astley Close, but he had no reason to do so now. Disquiet settled over me. I asked the coachman to stop, told him what I saw, and to drive back to the spot.
When we reached it, the footman and I climbed down and examined the lane between the houses, but we found nothing, and no sign that anyone had passed.
Chapter Seventeen
