'Did you really suppose I would?' I looked at her. 'It was good of you to come.'
'How could I not? Your Mr. Derwent came tearing in begging me to return with him as though the whole town were on fire. I feared…' Her smiled dimmed, and she stopped. 'We were halfway to London before he could tell a coherent story.'
I wondered what she had feared. That I, or Brandon, had done something foolish?
'How is Lydia?' I asked.
'Weak. Quite weak. And tired. But she will mend. She ate some bread and kept that down. I believe the danger has passed.'
'Good,' I said fervently. 'Thank you.'
She gave me an unreadable look. Her golden curls were mussed, tangled strands of hair glinting in the sunlight. 'You knew she was carrying a child?'
'Yes.'
'And that the child is gone?'
My hand sought the curved back of the nearest chair. 'Yes.'
She looked at me for a long time. Emotions chased themselves across her face, but those that lingered were pity, and strangely, anger. After a long time, she said, 'She did it herself, Gabriel.'
For a moment, I could not comprehend her words. Then they sank into me, one after the other. My hand tightened. 'I do not understand.'
'She went to a quack, and she asked him to remove it. He did. What made her ill was the medicine he gave her after. To rid her of any lingering bad humors, he'd said.'
I was so cold. My hands were numb, my blood moved like treacle. 'But why should she?'
Louisa gave a little shrug. Anger burned deep in her eyes, a palpable fury that her calm stance belied. 'I do not know. She would not tell me. I was a bit sharp with her, I am afraid.' She hesitated. 'But she does feel great remorse. That is certain.'
I was silent. My mind, my entire body, believed at that moment that if I did not speak of it, it would not have happened. She had not wanted the child. Fury like a howling demon rolled through me, and a voice from far away cried, Why?
'The child was mine,' I said.
Louisa gave me an odd look. 'She was ten weeks gone, Gabriel.'
I stilled, staring at the lips that had pronounced the words. The entire world dropped from beneath my feet. ' What? '
'Her lady's maid said so, and Mrs. Westin did not correct her.'
The enormity of it sent shock through me the like of which I had not felt in years. Lydia and I had been conducting our affair for five weeks. She had known. They all had known, she and Montague and William and Millar. I remembered the change in William when I had come to the house for the second time, his suspicion gone, his greetings welcoming. He'd known what they all had known, that I'd been brought in to become the father of Lydia's child.
Rage and grief and burning coldness swam through me. Louisa watched, powerless to help, Louisa who had stood by me throughout every hardship in my life.
'I wanted…' My throat hurt. 'I was going to ask Lydia to marry me. I had taken steps to look for…' I took a shaking breath. 'To make certain I could marry.'
Louisa only looked at me. I wanted to storm and swear, I wanted to swarm upstairs and shake Lydia until she told me why she had done it, I wanted to break down and weep until I was sick.
I opened and closed my fists. 'I do not…' I stopped. 'Damn it.'
She placed cool hands over my agitated ones. 'Go home, Gabriel.' She squeezed my fingers when I started to protest. 'You cannot see her yet. She needs time to heal. As do you.'
I drew a breath. 'I do not want to see her.' If I saw her now, I might hurt her. Anger was overtaking grief, and I did not want to let it have full rein.
'Then go home,' Louisa repeated. 'I will stay with her. I promise.' She smiled faintly. 'It is either that or face my husband, and I am certainly not ready to do that yet.'
I put my hands on her shoulders, held her hard. I wanted to say things, but words lodged in my throat. But she knew. She knew everything I wanted to say, and everything I felt. She could read me like no other. It had ever been so, even to the day that Aloysius Brandon had introduced me to her when she had been twenty-two years old and I had been twenty.
I left her. I went home, but I did not sleep.
I lay awake long into the afternoon. The events of the previous day jumbled themselves in my head-verbally fencing with Lady Breckenridge, the tedious chore of sorting through Breckenridge's papers, my excitement at what I had found, then Lydia's illness.
Questions beat at me like the wings of a terrified bird. She had lied to me, lied from the very start. She had gone to the bridge that night because, as the vulgar women there had put it, she'd been belly-full. I'd saved her life that night. She had looked at me and seen what I'd told her she'd seen, a fool who would fall on his knees and be her willing servant.
I had known even then I was being a bloody fool, and I had taken great pains to prove myself right.
What had Lady Breckenridge said? Gentlemen have dashed themselves to pieces on those rocks before. She had smiled at me with her world-wise eyes, knowing my fate better than I had.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Lydia's husband had only once been capable of copulation with her, no matter how many times he'd visited his doctor, no matter how many aphrodisiacs he'd tried. The chance that Colonel Westin had been the father of this child was remote. I remembered her declaring that she had gone to her husband's chamber the morning she discovered him dead, because, she'd said, I wanted to tell him everything, the entire truth.
I did not want to examine the truth.
The truth was that Breckenridge or Eggleston had murdered Colonel Spinnet that night at Badajoz. Westin had known the truth as well. And he'd died. They'd both died.
Another truth was that John Spencer had made an appointment with Westin the day of his death.
Kenneth Spencer did not like his brother trying to uncover the truth.
I did not blame him. Truth was a terrible thing.
I sensed the viscid fingers of my melancholia reaching through the hot, bright room to me. I had not been encased in my malady in months, and had even begun to believe myself free of it. Now it beckoned to me, dark and seductive.
Lie still, it said. If you do not rise, do not move, nothing can hurt you. Simply do nothing, say nothing, be nowhere.
I began to close my eyes to embrace it.
No. I slammed my eyes open. I would not. I forced myself from my bed, though it was like moving my limbs through heavy mud. Through great effort, I bathed, shaved, and dressed myself, then limped my way to Bow Street and the magistrate's house.
I found Pomeroy explaining to his patrollers that they were to go to Islington and wait for him. He looked up, annoyed, when I entered and asked to have a few words with him.
He dismissed his men with a sergeant-like bellow, and took me into the corridor. 'What is it, Captain? Thought you'd have dragged in Lord Breckenridge's murderer under your arm by now. What is keeping you?'
'The last link in the chain,' I replied tersely. 'What have the Spencers been up to these last few days?'
Pomeroy shook his head. 'Not much, sir. Living very quiet-like. Excepting Mr. Kenneth Spencer left London a few days ago.'
I came alert, and the melancholia slid away. 'Did he? Good lord, why did you not tell me at once? Did he go to Sussex?'
Pomeroy's brows climbed. 'Sussex? No- '
'Oxfordshire then?'
'No, sir.'
My heart pumped. 'Where then?'
