Payne scoffed. 'The evidence of game girls. Which is no evidence at all.'
'One game girl,' Pomeroy corrected him, 'and one very respectable daughter of a war hero. I believe a jury will not like that one bit, since many of them'll likely have respectable daughters of their own.'
'No,' Payne said, puzzled. 'She were a game girl. My master only touches the nastiest ones.'
My walking stick came up. 'That is my daughter you speak of, Payne. I have promised Pomeroy I will let you live to face your trial, but do not press me.'
Payne spat. 'You gentlemen and your pity for game girls disgusts me. They're dirty whores, full of the clap and ready to lay on their backs for any gent with a penny.'
'Most of them are driven to earn their living as they can,' I said tightly. 'That does not give you permission to kidnap them and murder them. Their lives are miserable enough without men like you making things worse.'
His lip curled. 'That's what they're for, Captain. They want to be used and thrown off. They're like rats in the sewers, waiting to be flushed out like the filth they are.'
'That's why you put them in that hole,' I said, realizing. 'Rats in a sewer.'
'That's where they belong. Look what they did to my master, a respectable gent before he started wallowing in them and writing it all down in his book. They pulled him down and made him as disgusting as they are. If your daughter was waltzing about Covent Garden market on her own, she's just like them.'
I had him pinned against the wall before Pomeroy could stop me, my walking stick hard across his throat. Auberge closed in beside me, but he in no way tried to hold me back. I heard Auberge's breathing, hoarse and tight with fury.
'Remember, Captain,' Pomeroy warned. 'He needs to be more or less upright.'
'You stole her,' I said, in Payne's face. 'You hurt her, and you terrified her, and you buried her. I'll give Pomeroy his conviction, but first you are going to learn exactly what you did to her.'
Payne's eyes widened. My fist caught him on the jaw, and his head rocked back. He was a big man, and tried to fight, but Auberge held him fast as I hit him again. And again. I sensed Pomeroy lurking behind us, ready to rescue Payne or cut off his escape, as need be.
Payne blinked at me from his bruised and bloody face then shifted his gaze to Auberge. 'Why are you doing this?' he bleated, as pathetic as Bottle Bill.
'I am Gabriella's father,' I said, drawing back my hand again.
'As am I,' Auberge said quietly.
What entered Payne's eyes then was abject terror, and the sight of it pleased me very much.
Chapter Eighteen
Several weeks later, as the Season wound to its conclusion and the ton began to drift to their country homes for summer, Lady Breckenridge hosted a private supper party for an exclusive slate of guests in her South Audley Street house. Present were Lucius Grenville; his friend Captain Gabriel Lacey; Colonel and Mrs. Aloysius Brandon; Sir Gideon Derwent, his wife and son Leland, and his son's faithful friend Gareth Travers; Lady Aline Carrington; and to everyone's surprise, Grenville's new paramour Marianne Simmons.
'We are all old enough and wise enough to allow one of the demimonde in our midst without fussing,' Lady Breckenridge told me when I'd discovered she'd invited Marianne. 'We are widows and wives or world-wise spinsters and will not faint because a woman has been an actress.'
Marianne, at least, behaved herself. She was well turned out in a modestly cut frock that breathed the same elegance as the gowns Lady Breckenridge wore. Her only jewelry was a thin string of diamonds in her hair that winked and shone as she turned her head.
Her manners were impeccable, and even Lady Derwent spoke to her without dismay. Occasionally Marianne flashed me a wry look, but I could see her trying hard not to embarrass Grenville.
All her polish did not come entirely from Grenville, in my opinion. Marianne, I had suspected before, might have once belonged to the middle or even upper-middle class. What circumstances had led her to the stage at Drury Lane, and whether the birth of David had anything to do with it, I had not yet learned. Marianne, as both Grenville and I had come to know, kept her secrets well.
After supper, we adjourned to the drawing room together, rather than having the gentlemen linger in the dining room over port. I preferred the company of the ladies, in any case, their softer voices and finer scents more appealing to me than loud-voiced gentlemen who smoked cheroots and became drunker by the hour.
Lady Breckenridge raised her glass of wine. 'To the safe return of Miss Gabriella Lacey.'
'An excellent toast,' Grenville said, looking at me.
Murmurs of 'Hear, hear' filled the room as glasses flashed upward, raised in honor of Gabriella.
Lady Breckenridge had invited Auberge and Carlotta with Gabriella, but Auberge had declined. Too soon, he said. Gabriella had agreed to give evidence at Payne's trial that afternoon, and she was recovering from the ordeal.
I had explained to Gabriella that she did not have to appear as a witness if she did not want to. She could go back to France, with no one the wiser to her ruin. Payne had not raped her, she'd told us when she could speak of it, but I knew that the abduction would scar her heavily even so. Society being what it was, there would be people who would blame Gabriella for making herself available to be abducted at all.
Gabriella, however, had resolutely decided to appear as a witness. Payne had frightened her very, very much, but he'd also made her deeply angry. She wanted justice and more than a little revenge. The stubborn outrage in her brown eyes I'd often seen in my own. She was her father's daughter.
'The trial was splendid,' Lady Aline said, beaming. 'So satisfying to see a beast get his comeuppance.'
'Pomeroy got his conviction,' I said. 'And his reward. He is most satisfied.'
'But he lost his sweetheart,' Grenville said.
Black Bess had also agreed to be a witness in the trial for Mary Chester's murder, and had spoken in loud, clear tones about everything the monster Payne had done. Gabriella had not had to answer many questions after all, only to confirm Bess's story. Bottle Bill, sober and meek, had sung Payne's guilt with the fear of a man still believing he'd be blamed for everything.
Sir Gideon Derwent and Sir Montague Harris had worked between themselves to fill the jury with gentlemen sympathetic to the plight of game girls, reformers who tended to blame men like Payne for the women's downfalls. Payne, standing fearfully in the dock with his face sporting half-healed bruises, was condemned to hang, and taken down.
Black Bess and her laborer lover, Tom, had been tearfully reunited, and Bess had scarcely let go of him when they'd met up again after the trial.
Pomeroy had been surprisingly cheerful even so. 'Got my man,' he said. 'Congratulate me, Captain.'
'And Bess has hers,' I remarked, shaking his hand.
Pomeroy shrugged. 'Aye, well, she's proved too fickle for me. Besides, I have me eye on another.' With that he flashed a grin across the cobbles in front of the Old Bailey. I followed the grin to see it caught by Felicity, who returned it with a sultry smile.
'Good Lord. I thought you did not trust her.'
'I don't,' Pomeroy said. 'But I know where I stand with Felicity, and just how far to take things. Besides, she's a beautiful lady, ain't she?'
'You are a brave man, Sergeant.'
He laughed. 'Right you are, Captain. I'm off then. Call on me when you find another dead body.' He'd strolled away in Felicity's direction, whistling.
Soon after, Black Nancy kissed me goodbye and departed for Islington and her hostler. 'He's a good man,' she said. 'He does well by me, and he must be missing his Nance.'
'Thank you, Nancy,' I said. 'For all your help.'
She grinned and patted me on the shoulder. 'Anytime for you, Captain. You know, I could take to this investigating business. Next time you hunt a kidnapper, or a murderer, you just sing out for me, and Nance will come a-running.'
I'd laughed and hugged her hard, to her delight. Giving me an impish wink and a pat on my backside, she'd
