I realized then that when I had said to her, Captain Gabriel Lacey, at your service, Gabriella had given no beat of recognition. She had no idea who I was.
'You did not tell her,' I said to Carlotta.
'Not now,' Carlotta repeated. 'Please, Gabriel, let us speak of this later. For heaven's sake.'
The haze cleared from my mind, and I realized that the denizens of Covent Garden teemed about us, watching with interest. Gabriella looked as though she would shout for help at any moment. The peach seller and the ale seller next to him observed us with blatant curiosity, Londoners always keen for an impromptu drama. A large black carriage with fine gray horses shouldered its way through the crowd, people brushing us as they flowed away from it.
I moved my walking stick. I could not very well seize my daughter and drag her away with me, much as I wanted to. We could not split her in two, Solomon-like, in the middle of Covent Garden.
'Where do you stay?' I asked.
'King Street,' Carlotta answered. 'I promise you, we will speak of it. We will settle it.'
'We shall indeed. I will send a man round to fetch you.'
Carlotta shook her head. 'No, there will be an appointment. He will see to it.'
'Who will?'
Carlotta grasped Gabriella's arm again. 'Come,' she said to her. 'Your father is waiting.'
That statement startled me a moment before I realized that Carlotta must mean the Frenchman she'd eloped with. The officer who'd thought nothing of living with another man's wife for fifteen years.
Gabriella, with one last bewildered glance at me, let her mother lead her away. Carlotta hurried with her to the north and west side of Covent Garden and out to King Street, and the crowd swallowed them.
I stood in a daze, watching until I could no longer see the two women, the younger one a little taller than the older, walking close, their heads together.
The black carriage still making its way through the market halted nearly on top of me. A woman flung open the window and leaned out, her fashionable hat tilted back to reveal a quantity of golden curls and a childlike, pointed face.
'Devil take it, Lacey,' Marianne Simmons cried. 'Have your brains addled?'
Chapter Two
The carriage belonged to Lucius Grenville. Those were his perfectly matched grays pulling it, his liveried coachman on the roof, his family crest on the door, and his footman on the back. The footman, who had been helping me into and out of Grenville's carriage for the last year, gave me a grin of greeting.
'I was on my way to see you, Lacey,' Marianne called down. 'I didn't realize that was you until we'd near run you down.'
The footman on back leapt to the ground, fanned away the beggars who gathered around the conveyance like moths round a lantern, and opened the door for me.
I obeyed Marianne for two reasons. First, I was dazed by the encounter with Carlotta, and the real world seemed a bit distant and hazy. Easier to obey orders than argue. Second, I knew that Marianne would not come all this way in a carriage if she did not need to speak to me on some matter of importance. She rarely made any effort without hope of reward.
The footman assisted me into the coach, careful of my bad left knee, and I settled myself facing Marianne. He shut the door, and the carriage jerked forward to continue through the crowd of Covent Garden to nearby Russel Street. I lived in Grimpen Lane, a tiny cul-de-sac that opened off Russel Street, nestled between the buildings of Covent Garden and the houses of Bow Street.
'You are white as plain paper, Lacey,' Marianne said. 'What is the matter with you?'
When I sat, unable to speak as we creaked our very slow way through Covent Garden, she persisted. 'Who were those women you were speaking to? Were they blackmailing you?'
The odd question pulled me out of my haze. 'Blackmail? What put that idea in your head?'
'Because it is the sort of thing respectable-looking women turn their hands to. I knew a seamstress that you never would believe was anything but well-spoken and kind, until she demanded payment to keep quiet about one's peccadilloes. I know you. You poke your nose into so many things that I'm certain someone like Mr. Denis would be delighted to find out something about you.'
'You have an interesting imagination, Marianne.'
'Well, something they said overset you. Are you going to tell me what is the matter? Something clearly is.'
I wondered why she wanted to pry. Had I had more of my wits about me, I would have put her off. As it was, with my mouth dry and my head pounding, I found myself letting out the truth.
'They are my wife and daughter.'
Marianne's mouth became a pink O, and she blinked at me. 'Good Lord, Lacey, are you telling me that you are married?'
'I was. I am. I have not seen my wife-or daughter-for fifteen years. Gabriella was two when my wife took her away.'
'Good Lord,' Marianne repeated. She stared at me some more, reassessing all she knew about Gabriel Lacey. 'No wonder you look pole-axed. Let's have some brandy. Grenville's best.' She opened a pocket beside the seat and drew out a box I recognized. Grenville's servants always stocked this carriage with the best drink and crystal glasses in case their master grew thirsty traveling the streets of London.
Marianne lifted the bottle from the box just as the carriage stopped, reaching our destination. The coach was too big to fit into Grimpen Lane, so we descended in Russel Street, the efficient footman opening the door for us. Marianne shoved the brandy at me and snatched two glasses. 'Come along. We'll drink it in your rooms.'
The house that held my flat was narrow and tall. The ground floor was devoted to a bake shop, where my landlady, Mrs. Beltan, sold bread and seed cakes to passersby. She did well out of the shop and rented the rooms in the two floors above it. The first floor held my rooms, reached by a dim staircase from a door to the street.
The house had been grand in the time of Charles II, but its elegance had long since faded. My two rooms, bedchamber and sitting room, had once been a bedchamber and grand salon. Now they housed my eclectic mix of furniture-chest-on-frame and huge tester bed from the era in which the house had been built, a writing table and chair from the middle of the last century, a wing chair from 1780, and a low bookcase, carved and gilded in the Egyptian style, a gift from Grenville, which had been made in the last year.
The rooms above mine, identical but with lower ceilings, once had been rented by Marianne, before Grenville had taken her away to live in luxury. In the attics above those, my valet-in-training, Bartholomew, kept himself as comfortably as possible.
Since March, when I'd returned from a brief stay in Berkshire, two different lodgers had taken the rooms above mine, but neither had stayed more than a month. The rooms were currently empty. I'd pondered taking both floors for myself, so that I'd have an extra room and so Bartholomew would not have to sleep in the chilly attics, but Mrs. Beltan and I had not come to an agreement. She was a kindhearted lady but steely hard about money.
Bartholomew was not in evidence when we arrived upstairs. Marianne plopped herself on the wing chair and held out her glass. I filled it with brandy, then I drew up the straight chair from the writing table for myself.
'You knocked me over with a feather, you know,' Marianne said. 'A wife? You?'
'Few people know.' I drank a swallow of brandy, absently noting its rich texture, in too much shock to appreciate it.
'Does he?'
'Grenville?' I wondered how long it would be before Marianne could bring herself to say Grenville's name in conversation. 'Yes. And the Brandons know. Colonel Brandon was the one who helped me procure a special license so I could marry Carlotta without having the banns read.'
'Thought someone would object, did you?' Marianne asked.
'Plenty of people should have. My father. Hers. Her entire family, in fact. Carlotta was quite ready to board the ship that took us away from England.' I rolled the goblet in my hands. 'In those days, we thought our lives
