The Glass House (11 page)

A carriage rolled to a halt right in front of
me. Annoyed, I turned my steps to hobble around it, but the footman
jumped down and approached me.

I saw Lady Breckenridge silhouetted against
the coach's window, watching her footman extend her offer to take
me home in the comfort of her warm carriage. I was not particularly
in the mood for Lady Breckenridge again so soon, but the agony in
my leg made the decision for me.

I allowed the footman to help me into the
carriage and found myself opposite Lady Breckenridge for the second
time that day.

"You look in a bad way, Captain," she
said.

I expected her to mock me and my capering at
Inglethorpe's, but her brows were drawn, and she did not smile.

She'd obviously been to the opera--she wore a
pale pink, high-waisted gown beneath her heavy velvet mantle, and
her dark hair was curled fantastically and crowned with feathers.
She was a pretty woman, without the fragile, ethereal beauty so in
fashion these days.

"Indeed," I said. My left leg felt like
fire.

"My butler has a remedy for sore limbs and
joints. He wraps hot towels bathed in herbs about them. Swears by
it."

The thought of a scalding towel around my
knee nearly made me groan with longing. "I thank you for your
concern."

"I see you did not quite understand Mr.
Inglethorpe's magic gas, Captain. It gives one euphoria and removes
pain, but the pain returns and the joy fades. It is a pity, but
there it is."

A pity, indeed. When I'd breathed the gas,
I'd felt normal again, a whole man, not one dragging himself,
literally, through life. I'd enjoyed simply being a man dancing
with a woman, a pleasure that had been too long denied me.

"Still," Lady Breckenridge said, "it gives us
an afternoon free of life's little pains and troubles."

"Is that why you attend?" I asked, my jaw
clenched.

She smiled. "I go for the amusement of
it."

Well, I had certainly amused her. I ought to
have stayed with Grenville tonight and dulled some of the pain with
his brandy, but I'd known that if I sat in one of his comfortable
chairs, I'd have been unable to rise again until morning. Lady
Breckenridge's coach, lit by warm candles in lanterns and scented
with her spicy perfume, was having much the same effect. I leaned
back in the seat and stifled another groan.

"It distresses me to see you so," she said.
"Let Barnstable have a go, anyway."

It was then I became aware we were driving
back through Mayfair, slowly passing the houses of Piccadilly. "I
have laudanum at home," I said, "and a footman to give it to me.
You can take me there."

"Gracious, you are stubborn, Lacey."

"As you are, my lady."

Her smile returned. "Tit for tat, is that it?
I find you refreshing, Captain, with your rudeness. You have
perfect manners when necessary, but when needled, your comments are
clearheaded and most apt."

"I would be flattered were I not in so much
pain."

"Let Barnstable help you, then. He is a
wonder."

"He certainly will be if he can stop this." I
had not hurt so much since the original injury. And I only had
myself to blame.

She watched me with her dark, intelligent
eyes. "You shunned me in Kent last summer, Captain. Do you
remember?"

"In Kent, you mistook my character." She'd
been predatory then, backing off in coolness when I'd rejected her
advances.

"I did, I admit. I thought you a hanger-on of
Grenville, eager to rub elbows with the peerage, of which my
husband was so fine a representative. I never dreamed you'd come
there to investigate the Badajoz murder."

Over our billiards game, she had given me a
warning against the wife of the man I was investigating, and she,
unfortunately, had been right. I'd been angry with her, but I had
been angrier, later, with myself.

"I'd be pleased to call a truce with you,
Lacey. To be friends."

I only half-heard her through a haze of pain.
"If you'd like," I believe I said.

We pulled to a stop on South Audley Street,
in front of the house now held in trust for the current Viscount
Breckenridge, Lady Breckenridge's five-year-old son.

The façade was tasteful with fanlights on
doors and windows, the door black and cleanly painted. I'd visited
this house the year before during the Badajoz investigation and
remembered the almost painfully modern decor--the floors inlaid
with crosshatching reminiscent of Turkish screens, alcoves filled
with alabaster statuary, and black and gold Egyptian-style chairs
lining the walls.

Lady Breckenridge's footman helped me from
the carriage and into the house. I leaned heavily on my borrowed
walking stick as he half-carried me up the stairs to a little
first-floor parlor where a fire had been stirred high.

I welcomed the warmth, but I was in a bad
way. Spasms of pain nearly made me ill. The footman lowered me to a
sofa, and I gripped my leg and tried not to rock in pain.

Lady Breckenridge leaned down to me, her
breath smelling of mint and lemonade. "I leave you in Barnstable's
hands, Captain. You will be better, I promise." She patted my
shoulder and glided out of the room.

The butler bustled in with his accoutrements.
Barnstable was a man of about forty, with jet black hair slicked
back with pomade. He set a wooden rack before the fire then used
tongs to lift steaming towels from a metal box, and laid them
across the rack. Calmly, he knelt and removed my boots then told me
to take off my trousers.

I unbuttoned and slid the trousers down over
my hips to the floor, revealing wiry black hair twisting down my
shins. My left leg looked little different from my right except for
the cross-hatch of scars that puckered my knee. The
innocent-looking leg at the moment was causing me devilish
pain.

I sat down again, and Barnstable draped the
first towel around my knee and pulled it tight. I sucked in a
breath. He applied several more towels, handling each with the
tongs. I closed my eyes as heat began to seep into my muscles.

"Let those work for a time," he said. "Then
I'll rub in some of my liniment. Loosen you right up, sir."

Already the scalding towels had eased some of
the tension. The smell of mint on the steam reminded me of my
nursery, of days I'd taken cold as a child. My nurse had used
similar herbs in boiling water to clear my congestion.

"You are a fine man, Barnstable," I said
without opening my eyes.

"My wife had the rheumatics something
terrible, sir. This always eased her."

Barnstable let me soak up the heat for a
while longer then, when the towels started to cool, he removed
them. He opened a glass jar and scooped out a rather watery, white
concoction that smelled of oil of vitriol, and rubbed it hard all
over my knee and the muscles behind it. After wiping his hands,
Barnstable replaced the towels with a fresh set, hot from the fire.
He left me to steep, taking the used towels and liniment away with
him.

I leaned back on the settee and let out
breath. The throbbing had ceased, whether because of the liniment
or the heat of the towels, I did not much care. I hoped Barnstable
would share the recipe for his liniment so that I could use it
myself the next time my knee seized up.

I found myself drifting in and out of sleep.
In half-dreams I pictured Peaches lying on the bank of the Thames,
dead and quiet, her body ruined with water. I had never seen her in
life, but I imagined what she must have looked like--with her
round, girlish face, bright gold hair, her smile that of a person
intrigued by life.

She seemed to smile at me now. "Take care,
Captain," she said. "You are most impetuous." I agreed. My
impetuousness had led me to trouble many times before.

I came out of the dream, thinking of the real
Peaches. She must have been a very charming young woman. She'd
charmed Lord Barbury into loving her, had charmed the dour Mr.
Chapman into marrying her, had charmed Kensington into letting her
stay at The Glass House when she wanted peace from her husband.
She'd charmed me, as well, into wandering about London looking for
the man who'd killed her. The small hand with its too-large ring,
the slender feet in pretty shoes had touched my heart.

Lady Breckenridge had called Peaches common.
I recognized that Peaches was the sort of woman men liked and women
did not. Peaches had not only liked men, she'd been content to live
in their world. But a man had betrayed her, had killed her.

I doubted a woman had struck that blow; it
had been vicious and thorough. Her husband, jealous of her lover?
Her lover, jealous of someone else? Or Kensington, for some unknown
reason?

I would find out.

I drifted back to sleep. I dreamed of Peaches
again, but this time, it was Louisa Brandon's lifeless body on the
bank of the Thames, and my heart was breaking. I knelt beside her,
touched her cheek. "I'm sorry, Louisa," I whispered. "I'm sorry I
couldn't save you."

I awoke to Barnstable shaking me, and found
my face wet with tears.

*** *** ***

Barnstable took me to a tiny bedroom painted
Wedgwood green with delicate plaster moldings. The bed with green
and gold hangings took up most of the room, leaving only a small
space for a bedside table and a fantastic black and gold chair
upholstered in leopard skin with gilt claws for feet.

Barnstable helped me undress completely in
front of the fire and put me to bed. I found the bed cozy and
drifted to sleep almost at once. When I awoke again, it was still
dark, but I sensed daylight nearing.

I'd awakened because the door had opened. The
intruder wasn't Barnstable looking in on me, but Lady Breckenridge
in a dressing gown, her dark hair over her shoulder in a long,
thick braid. She watched me from the threshold for a moment then
closed the door, crossed the room, and climbed into the bed with
me.

"Friends, you said," I murmured.

"Yes, indeed." She lay down next to me, slid
her arm around my waist, and rested her head on my shoulder.

I liked her there. Her hair smelled of
lavender, and her hand resting over my heart was light and
soothing. It had been a long while since I'd felt the touch of
affection from another human being, and I'd missed it.

"I ought to go home," I said.

"It is raining." It had been raining all
night.

We lay quietly for a moment, listening to the
water on the window panes. "I see Barnstable has done well by you,"
she said.

"Excellently well."

She did not answer, but the hand on my chest
smoothed the blankets.

Lady Breckenridge lay beside me for a long
time. She did nothing but rest her head on my shoulder, her hair
soft against my cheek. The situation was pleasant. This was what a
man and wife might do, lie side by side in comfortable silence,
listening to the rain and thinking separate thoughts. I could not
guess what Lady Breckenridge meant by it or what she wanted, and I
did not want to break the spell to ask.

I drifted into sleep again. When I awoke, she
was gone.

*** *** ***

Barnstable's cure worked wonders. When I rose
from the bed, my knee hurt only a little, and my usual morning
stiffness was much diminished.

Barnstable shaved me and helped me dress,
took me downstairs and put me into a carriage. It was still dark,
still raining, still cold. Lady Breckenridge did not appear.
Barnstable gave me a jar of his liniment to take home with me, and
it was to him that I said my good-byes.

*** *** ***

The inquest for Amelia Chapman began that
morning at ten o'clock in a public house near Blackfriar's Bridge.
Because the death had been by means of violence, the coroner had
called a jury. The rather blank-looking gentlemen of this jury sat
upright in their chairs near the middle of the room.

Chapman stood and testified that the dead
woman had been his wife. The surgeon who'd examined the body gave
evidence that the deceased had met her death from a blow to the
head sometime after four in the afternoon on Monday. Thompson put
forth his theory that she had been thrown into the river from the
Temple Gardens, near to half-past four.

The coroner called Chapman again and asked
him all about his wife, his relations with her, her movements on
the day he'd last seen her, and his on the day she died. Chapman
trembled a little, unused to being on this side of the questioning,
but his voice was steady. He produced a fellow barrister who could
claim that Chapman had sat next to him in Middle Temple Hall all
through dinner on Monday afternoon. Chapman's red-haired pupil also
volunteered that he had seen his master dining in the Hall between
four and five. I wondered if life as Chapman's pupil had finally
become less dull for Mr. Gower.

Thompson had had no luck discovering how
Peaches had gotten to Middle Temple or the Temple Gardens. He'd
questioned hackney drivers, but none remembered driving Mrs.
Chapman anywhere. Thompson had discovered that Mrs. Chapman had
indeed boarded a coach bound for Sussex, but had left the coach at
a coaching inn near Epsom and disappeared. How she'd gotten back to
London was a mystery. No other public coach admitted to having had
her as a passenger.

During Thompson's evidence, Mr. Chapman
claimed to feel faint, and he was allowed to leave the room with
Pomeroy to attend him. Thompson proceeded to tell how a ring had
been found on Peaches' finger, discovered to belong to one Lord
Barbury. I wondered if Chapman, knowing this revelation was coming,
had decided to retreat before he'd have to sit, humiliated, while
Thompson revealed how he'd be cuckolded.

Lord Barbury had admitted to being the lover
of Mrs. Chapman. No, Barbury was not in court today, but Thompson
had questioned him thoroughly, and Barbury had been able to satisfy
Thompson that he'd stayed at White's club the whole of Monday
afternoon.