'Are you certain you want to lodge here?' I began. 'While the accommodations in Sudbury are not elegant, they are at least quiet.'
'Ah, but here, I am in the thick of things.'
I wondered whether Marianne knew he'd arrived. Had she seen his coach as she'd hurried across the fields toward Hungerford?
As though reading my thoughts, Grenville glanced at me, slightly defiant, and said, 'I hired the Runner.'
We regarded each other in silence. We were so different, the pair of us, he a smallish man with clean dark hair brushed in the latest style, his dark eyes quick and lively. I, on the other hand, was a tall man, muscular from my days in the army, brown from the same, although my tan had somewhat faded. My hair was only a shade lighter than his, but wiry and thick and never stayed down, no matter how much I might slick it with water. My eyes, too, were a shade lighter brown than his, too light, I thought for that lively look he had.
I did not think either of us had a face to attract a lady's attention, but Grenville had a constant string of admirers. His status as the most eligible bachelor in England caused every mother in the haut ton to eagerly plot. Grenville neatly avoided their snares by rarely appearing at Almack's, the rooms in King Street where each Season's crop of debutantes were paraded. Admission to this bastion was more difficult to obtain than presentation at court. The hostesses expected applicants to conform to a strange and stringent code of behavior and ancestry that few could meet.
Needless to say, I had not been granted a voucher to purchase a ticket to Almack's. I refused Grenville's offers to intercede for me. I was too old to care for attending, and in any case, I did not have the clothes for it. Ironically, my lack of interest in Almack's had made me a focus of social curiosity. As a consequence, I had more invitations to events in the ton than did other hopeful nobodies.
Grenville was everything to the polite world. And yet, he faced me now, caring that he had my disapproval.
'I am concerned for her well-being, Lacey,' he began.
'She is a resourceful woman and survived long before you knew she existed,' I said.
His eyes darkened. 'If you can call it survival.'
Marianne and I had lived in identical rooms in Covent Garden, hers above mine. 'I do,' I said stiffly.
'Damnation, Lacey. If I defend myself, I insult you. You are making this bloody difficult.'
'If you had read my letter, you'd know I advised you to let her go.'
'I did read it,' he growled.
We regarded one another again.
After a time, I said, 'I should not interfere in your business.'
'You are making it your business,' he snapped. 'The devil if I know why.'
'Perhaps because you like to stride over people, and I understand how that feels. Your intentions are always benevolent, of course.'
'Of course? What would you have me do, Lacey, cease bestowing money on the London poor? Because they might take offense? Or fear that I am interfering in their business?'
I shook my head. 'The situation is not the same. When you give money to the poor, you hand it to the parishes to use as they see fit. You do not enter into each person's life and tell him or her how to live it.'
'And you claim I am doing so with Marianne?'
I tried another tack. 'Marianne has survived on her own for a long time. She has had other protectors, some of whom did not treat her well. You cannot blame her if she has learned to distrust.'
Grenville thumped the arms of his chair. 'The pair of you will drive me mad. I am not an evil villain of the stage. I have given her a house to live in and clothes to wear and money to spend. A woman with those amenities should be content to stay at home.'
I smiled dryly. 'It is apparent that you have never been married.'
'I have kept mistresses in the past, Lacey. Even the most greedy and extravagant of them lived quietly in my houses.'
'Because those ladies stood in awe of you. Marianne never will. She's been knocked about most of her life, many times by wealthy gentlemen. Why should she trust you?'
He looked offended. 'I have shown her nothing but kindness.'
'Perhaps, but also great irritation when she does not do exactly as you like.'
He threw up his hands. 'I have never attempted as benevolent an act that tried me as much as this one. So you would like me to cease looking for her? Cease wondering whether she is with a brute who is even now beating her because she will not give him the money that I handed her? Cease wondering whether in her haste to run away she did not fall among thieves who abandoned her somewhere along the Great North Road?'
I felt suddenly cruel. I knew good and well that Marianne was safe. But I could not tell him this; I had given her my word.
I wished she had told me her secret so that I might know whether holding my tongue helped or hurt. I wished still more that she'd simply confide in Grenville herself. I would be saved much trouble, and so would they.
'If you will trust me,' I said, 'I will make certain she is restored to you.'
He stared. 'How?'
'You must dismiss the Runner,' I answered, 'or you will make a muck of things.'
'But how can you- ' He broke off, and his eyes went black with anger. 'You know where she is.'
I said nothing. I turned my brandy glass in my hands, not looking at him. I sensed his rage grow.
'Damn you, Lacey.'
'I will see that she returns home,' I interrupted. 'You must not ask me to choose which view I will take in the matter. I choose no views. Trust me to restore her to the Clarges Street house, and then the two of you may come to your own arrangement.'
I had rarely seen Grenville angry, and never this angry. He remained still, his fingers white upon the arms of the chair. His dark eyes were sharp, tense, regarding me with fury.
The mantel clock chimed nine, notes of small sweetness. In the silence that followed, I grew to respect Lucius Grenville. At that moment, he might have chosen to quit me, to leave behind our friendship forever. By speaking a few words at White's, he could ruin my character. He could make certain I was received nowhere, simply with the lift of an eyebrow, the shrug of a shoulder.
He also could have shouted at me, accused me of all kinds of things, just as Colonel Brandon did whenever I angered him, which was often.
Grenville did neither. What he did instead was sit still and let his anger course through him. Then, quietly and slowly, he mastered his emotions. I watched his gaze cool as he drew upon his sangfroid and good breeding, becoming more and more remote as his grip on the arms of the chair relaxed.
'I will send word to Bow Street,' he said quietly, 'and tell them I no longer need the services of a Runner.'
I gave him a quiet nod. 'I will make certain she returns home. Although I cannot guarantee the state of her temper.'
He rose from his seat and casually poured out another glass of brandy. I admired him greatly at that moment.
'I am certain she will be quite annoyed,' Grenville said, returning to his chair. 'But let us speak no more of it.' He gave me a wry smile. 'Let us return to the somewhat safer topic of murder.'
In some relief, we immersed ourselves again in the problem at hand. We talked over everything I knew and the steps I had begun to take. We did not mention Marianne again.
Later, a servant came to tell Grenville that rooms had been made ready for him. Grenville left with the servant to seek rest, and I made my way to Rutledge's study and the day's correspondence.
Rutledge was disinclined to talk of the morning's events. Instead he growled as he read his morning's post and dictated responses in a rush. He was already receiving letters from worried families about the murder. He told me to answer all with a statement that a Romany had been arrested and all was well. He eyed me balefully and read over each letter I wrote for him, as though fearing I'd put forth my idea that Sebastian did not commit the crime. The wealthy men whose sons attended this school would not care who did the murder, Rutledge implied, as long as somebody had been arrested.
