themselves or he had paid Kensington to do it. Or perhaps Peaches had left with her killer and met her death somewhere between here and the Temple Gardens.
Kensington was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs when we came down. He told me that he'd chosen Room Five for me and that he wanted three hundred guineas for the pleasure.
Chapter Seven
I nearly told Mr. Kensington exactly what I thought of his three hundred guineas. Grenville, on the other hand, coolly handed it over. 'I will wait for you,' he said.
He returned to the front room, while Kensington bade me follow him. I wondered what vice Kensington had decided a man like me would want.
We did not return to the main room but entered the front staircase hall. Kensington produced another key from his pocket and took me to a small door a little way along the gallery that encircled the stairwell. He opened the door, gestured me inside, and closed and locked the door behind him.
We stood in a narrow corridor lined with doors on our left. I realized that this hall ran behind the main room and the small rooms that encircled it. I wondered briefly what the builders brought in to alter the house had thought about the bizarre floor plan.
Kensington led took me to a door in the middle of this hall and produced another key. He had put the key in the lock and turned it, when I heard a cry. A child's cry.
It did not come from the room Kensington was opening for me but from the one next door. I turned to Kensington, my countenance frozen. 'Let me in there.' I pointed to the blank door to the right.
His pleased smile sealed his fate. 'That room is taken.'
'Nonetheless.'
'The bid for that room was considerably higher than yours,' he said, giving me a patient look. 'It has already been spoken for.'
Every spark of rage that had been building inside me since I'd seen pretty Peaches dead on the riverbank surged and focused on the small man with the oily smile.
I had Kensington against the wall in a trice, the handle of Grenville's walking stick pressed against his throat. My leg ached and throbbed, berating me for the punishment I'd given it that afternoon. It was likely that Peaches had either met her death in this house or met her killer here, and Kensington knew that too. He might be the murderer himself.
Kensington eyes held fear but also a deep glint of confidence. 'You do not know what you are doing, Captain.'
'On the contrary, I believe I do.'
He had mistaken me for a weak man. I was not. I pressed the handle of the walking stick harder into Kensington's throat, cutting off his air. I could kill him. I saw him realize that.
'If you insist,' he said. His voice was still icy, if hoarse.
I eased the walking stick away. Kensington gave me a long look as he cleared his throat, reassessing me. Straightening the cravat I'd put askew, he unlocked and opened the door of the second room.
What I saw within made my previous anger at Kensington seem as nothing.
A girl who could have been no more than twelve stood against the wall on the other side of the room. Her cheeks and lips were red with rouge, and her hair had been died a dull yellow. She resembled the girls that prowled the environs of Covent Garden, the younger ones in the shadows of their older colleagues. I always grew angry when I saw them, and angry at the gentlemen who exploited them, thereby teaching them that they could earn money at so early an age. This girl was locked in, unable to leave, lacking even the feeble protection the street girls gave one another.
The infantryman I had seen in the outer room was with her, now in shirtsleeves and trousers, his coat tossed over a chair. He looked up in surprise when I banged in, and opened his mouth to protest, but closed it and rapidly backed away when I came at him.
The drapes to this room stood open. Two gentlemen peered in through the window, enraging me further. I lifted a chair and threw it at them. The glass in the window broke with a satisfying shatter, and the casement splintered.
The infantryman swore. The girl watched silently. Kensington merely looked on, as though resigned to my tantrum. His lack of worry puzzled me, or would have puzzled me had I not been so furious. This place was vile, and knowing that it had played a part in Peaches' death made me angrier still.
I grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her out of there. She came silently, her eyes round with fear, but she did not fight me. Neither did Kensington. He simply watched me with that knowing look and stood aside to let me pass.
I took the girl to the main staircase, down, and out of the house. The doorman tried to stop me, but I slammed the walking stick into his midriff, and he fell away with a grunt, arm across his belly.
The night outside had turned bitterly cold and was still wet. Matthias blinked when he saw me charging at him with the wretched girl in tow, but he opened the carriage door and quickly helped us in.
Grenville ran from the house and sprang into the carriage, shouting at his coachman to go. We moved out into the street, and Matthias slammed the door and jumped onto his perch behind.
'Good lord, Lacey,' Grenville said, breathless, then he chortled. 'You ought to have seen their faces when that chair came flying through the window. It was most gratifying.' He switched his gaze to the girl.
She stared back at him, her kohl-rimmed eyes wide.
I wondered what to do with her now that I'd rescued her. I had taken a Covent Garden girl to Louisa Brandon last spring, though Black Nancy had been a few years older than this mite in grown-up clothes. I did not like to continue inflicting Louisa with my rescued strays, though I certainly could not take the girl home with me, nor could Grenville.
Then I remembered that I knew a family who would be both sympathetic to the girl's plight and able and eager to help her. Sir Gideon Derwent was a philanthropist and a reformer, and though I hesitated to impose upon him, I could think of no other solution. I asked Grenville to take us to Grosvenor Square, and he gave his coachman the direction.
'I had a chance to speak to the doorman while you went off on your adventure,' Grenville said as the carriage rolled into the rainy night. 'He told me that Peaches did indeed arrive near to four o'clock on Monday, but he never saw her leave.'
'He is certain?'
'He said he was at the door all that day. She came in but did not go out.'
I sat back, trying to ease my abused leg. 'Well, that tells us much, then.'
'She went out the back,' the girl said.
Both Grenville and I started, swiveling gazes to her. She looked back at us with no less fear but now with some curiosity.'You saw her?' I asked, too startled to gentle my voice.
She nodded, her artificially blond curls bobbing. 'Down the back stairs, through the scullery. Didn't stop to say ta.'
'Was she alone?'
The girl blinked, and I realized that my abrupt tone frightened her. 'It is important,' I said, trying to soften my voice. 'Did she leave with someone?'
'Not that I saw.' She glanced from me to Grenville. 'Are you going to arrest her?'
'No. I am afraid she died.'
The girl's mouth became a round O. 'She died?' She went silent a moment. 'She was nice to me.'
'Did she come often to The Glass House?' I asked.
The girl shrugged too-thin shoulders. 'Sometimes. She didn't speak to anyone much.'
'But she was nice to you.'
'Let me stay in her room sometimes. Would tell me stories about when she was on the stage. Asked if I wanted to go on the stage.'
