The Thames River Murders (8 page)

My qualms were not eased. Brompton was not a great distance—south of Hyde Park and not far from Tattersall’s. But even so, why should Donata order Aline’s coach to Brompton or thereabouts and not return?

“Did he say which public house?” I asked irritably. Aline’s servants obviously expected me to run home quietly and wait for the return of my eccentric wife without fuss.

“The Hound and Hen,” the butler said, tight-lipped. “The publican is his cousin. I will tell her ladyship you called.”

They
would
throw me to the pavement in another minute. I growled a thanks at the butler and retreated.

Donata’s coachman, Hagen, sharing my concern for his mistress, readily drove me south to Piccadilly and west to Knightsbridge, then angled southwest on the Brompton Road. London began to turn to country here, with gardens and plant nurseries, cricket grounds, and farms in the distance.

The Hound and Hen, a pretty country inn, was on Brompton Lane. When we entered its yard, I saw Aline’s coachman emerging from the house. I descended as quickly as I could, making my way to him before he could vanish into the stables.

“Sir?” Aline’s coachman blinked at me in surprise. He was a large specimen of a man, filling out his red coat. He had a round face, canine teeth filed to points, a large nose, small eyes, and not much hair on his head. He made up for the lack of hair on top by growing a set of luxurious side whiskers.

Hagen had come off the top of our coach. “Don’t
sir
him,” he snapped. “You tell him where ye took the mistress.”

Unlike Aline’s man, Hagen was lean and ropy, with a leathery face, dark eyes, and a thick shock of brown hair. I always thought he looked more like a highwayman than a coachman, but he was a skilled driver and protective of Donata and her son.

Aline’s coachman was much more good-natured, apt to tell a joke he’d heard or talk horse with me in a spare moment, but at present, he looked nonplussed. “I took her nowhere,” he said in bewilderment.

“Then where is she?” I demanded.

“Answer him,” Hagen said. He took a belligerent step to Aline’s coachman, murder in his eyes. “She was with her ladyship, then you came here. What happened in between?”

“I set her down in Park Lane, as she told me,” the coachman said. “She gave me quite a few coins and suggested I visit my cousin. She’d send for her own conveyance to go home, she said. Kind of her, I thought.” He ended with a defiant look at Hagen.

I held on to my patience. “What house in Park Lane?”

“Near Brick Lane. I saw her go into the courtyard—she has friends there, she said.”

Since Donata had friends and acquaintance all over London, this sounded plausible. Less plausible that she’d sent the coach away and hadn’t bothered to tell Hagen and her own household.

“Her abigail descended with her?” I asked.

“Of course.” Aline’s coachman looked worried. “Is her ladyship well?”

“We don’t know, do we?” Hagen snarled. “Why do you think we’re asking ye?”

“I can take you to the exact place I set her down. I saw nothing wrong in it, sir. The viscountess was quite decided.”

As only Donata could be. The best thing for me was to go home and wait for her to return, but my agitation would not let me. Why should Donata suddenly decide to visit a friend in the middle of the night and not arrange transport for herself to get home?

If she were any other woman, I might suspect she’d gone covertly to meet a lover. With Donata, I could not fathom her motive.
 

Though she’d been quite willing to not bother with fidelity to her first husband, who’d paraded his mistresses before her, I doubted she had taken up those ways again. Donata did not much like or trust men, with very few exceptions, and she’d declared it a relief to be married to a man who wanted to be with none but her. Besides, if she had been dashing off to a paramour, the rest of Mayfair would have told me about him.

I began to have other, more worrying suspicions about what she’d done. I turned to Hagen. “Let us go there and fetch her.”

“Yes, sir.” Hagen brightened, happy to be commanded to do what he wished to anyway.

He turned to the carriage, then his eyes narrowed, and he pointed a long finger at the back of the coach. “You there! I see you—get out of it.”

Hagen charged toward the carriage, where I suspected someone had helped themselves to a ride by clinging to the back.

I did not expect the man who strode firmly into sight from the morning shadows. Although, I ought to have expected him.

“Captain,” Brewster said. “If you’re looking for your wife, I know exactly where she is.”

Chapter Eight

Brewster spoke calmly, though he shot Hagen a fierce glance.
 

“What the devil?” I approached Brewster, barely keeping my temper. I wanted to strike at the man, though I knew I’d only land on my back with his boot in my stomach for my pains. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you rush off early this morning,” Brewster said. “’S’my job to follow you, innit? Almost missed you—had to hop on the back in passing.”

Hagen did not look happy, both with the fact that Brewster had taken the liberty and that Hagen hadn’t noticed.

“Where is her ladyship?” Hagen asked, fists balled. “If you’ve done somefink w’ her …”

“I haven’t touched her.” Brewster’s face was calm. He directed his words at me. “She’s in Covent Garden, Captain. In your old rooms, in fact.”

“What the devil is she doing there?” I demanded in a near shout.

“Couldn’t say. Didn’t ask her. She spies me hanging about the opera last night, and tells me to be useful and squire her to your rooms. Was to meet her in Park Lane after the music was done, and I’d arrange a hackney there. I did as she asked.”

“And you said nothing to me?”

“This was after I said good night to you. Went back to the opera to keep an eye on her—and she gave me her orders.”

“Even so.” I gripped the head of my walking stick—which Donata had given me. “You could not send word to me?”

“Don’t work for you, Captain,” Brewster said. “I work for his nibs. If your wife asks me a favor on the side, that’s her business. Not for me to go telling tales to the husband. But since you seem so worried, thought I’d better say she’s well.”

“Damnation.” I yanked open the carriage door. “Hagen, please take me to Grimpen Lane. Get in, Brewster. I know you’ll only follow—you may as well ride where I can keep an eye on
you
.”

***

I found Donata breakfasting in my front room on a large repast from Mrs. Beltan’s bakeshop. Brewster, likely anticipating a storm, stepped into the shop itself while I rushed upstairs.

Bread, a fresh crock of butter, ham, cream, coffee, and some sort of cake lay before her. When I entered—barreled through the unlocked door is a better description—Donata dropped the hunk of buttered bread she held, then let out her breath, hand to her heart.

“Really, Gabriel, I’m sure every beetle has fled into the nearest hole. I had hoped Mr. Brewster would be more discreet. I intended to return home before you woke.”

“I have not slept.” I slammed the door, sending loose plaster from the ceiling down to float upon her coffee. The window was open, letting in soft June air and harsh June odors. “I have been awake, waiting for your return.”

Donata gave me a look of surprise. “Indeed, you usually do not wait up for me. I return home at three or four to find you fast asleep.”

“I had something to tell you, and then you did not return. Did you not think to send word? Why the devil are you here?”

“To meet someone I did not wish to meet in South Audley Street of course.” Donata lifted her dropped bread and fished plaster flakes from her coffee. “You do the same, do you not?”

“It is to do with the letters, isn’t it?” I said, not bothering to lower my voice. “You confronted the man you believed wrote them. Bloody hell, Donata.”

Color flushed Donata’s cheeks. She laid down her bread and pushed to her feet. “Please do not swear at me. It is rather early for that sort of thing.”

“What other words can I use? You leave your friends, instruct Lady Aline’s coachman to set you down in an alley in Park Lane, and coerce Brewster into putting you into a hackney for Covent Garden. Wandering about London in the middle of the night, meeting a man who might be a danger to you—”

“Goodness knows,
you
never do the same.” Donata’s eyes flashed as she interrupted me. “Gone from the house at any hour as soon as you receive a message about something that might interest you. Meeting with ruffians, confronting criminals to tweak their noses when you disapprove of what they do, coming back to me battered and bruised. And I am to smile at you and understand.”

“It is different for a lady!” I shouted. “London is dangerous, Donata. Or do you not know this, sheltered in your well-run house? It is not only for propriety that ladies do not wander about alone. That is a nice pretense. At every corner, you could be robbed, beaten, abducted, raped, and dragged off and murdered. It happens. I have seen the victims it has happened to.”

My voice rose in volume with each sentence, until I was roaring every word, my fists balled, my blasted horrible temper coming out of me to bash itself on her.

Donata was nothing like my first wife. Carlotta, when she had enraged me, cringed and shrank from my outbursts, sometimes falling at my feet in sobs.

Donata’s eyes glittered, blue-black and snapping, and her voice was ice-cold to my hot.
 

“I took far more precautions than you do, Gabriel. I was sensible enough to bring my abigail and Mr. Brewster to look after me.”

“Brewster! A ruffian who likely has committed murder. You trusted your safety to him …”

“You do every day. He is a man for hire—I paid him to guard me. I also know he has orders from Mr. Denis to look after you. Looking after
me
aids that cause.”

“Only until Denis decides to tell him to dispose of me! Recall whom Brewster works for, first and foremost. But you are leading me from the point. Why the
hell
did you decide to confront this letter-writer—alone, here? Did you think to rush him around the corner to Bow Street and accuse him of blackmail—”

“
If
you would let me explain, Gabriel, I would tell you I did no such thing. I confronted his wife.”

The surprise of her words cut off the breath I was drawing for my next shout. I let my mouth hang open, which must have looked very foolish.

Donata’s anger did not ease, but she took on a satisfied look. “She is a timid thing. I did not wish to alert this gentleman that I thought he might be sending the letters, and I could not openly meet with his wife. He would question her, so I thought to divert her to where we could meet in private. I did not wish Aline to know what I was about either, which is why I allowed her to drive me all the way back to Mayfair. I had the idea at the interval, when I could not find you, and spied this lady among the crowd. It worked very well. We had our chat, and I sent her home. By then I was so absolutely exhausted that I saw no reason not to avail myself of the bed here. I have Jacinthe, who is sleeping upstairs—I kept her up very late, and she needs the rest. Your landlady and her assistant very kindly looked out for me this morning.”
 

Donata resumed her seat. She moved gracefully, but I noted a tremor in her hands.

“Bloody hell, Donata,” I repeated. It was all I could think to say.

“Back to swearing, are you? Did you come in our coach? Leave it for me as you go about your business. I will be home as soon as I am finished with breakfast, and Jacinthe is awake.”

“No, we will return home together.” I scrubbed my hands through my hair as I paced the room. When I reached the window, I banged it shut, unable to take the combined odors of baking bread, the stale scent of the nearby market, and the stench of waste over it all. “This place is not fit for you. It never was.”

“And yet, you lived here for years, too proud to take the hospitality of your friends.”

I could have argued that when I’d arrived in London, I’d had no acquaintance whose hospitality I could count on. Colonel Brandon had returned with me, taking up residence in Brook Street, but as he had tried to kill me, albeit in a roundabout fashion, I did not fancy sharing a house with him.

I could have argued this, but then she’d have reminded me that I’d been befriended by Grenville and several other people in the meantime. I might have saved myself wretchedness, in her opinion, if I hadn’t been enjoying it.

I had nothing more to say on the matter.

“We will return home together,” I said firmly. “I will wait downstairs while you finish your breakfast.”

Donata snatched up a knife, scraped it through butter, and slapped it across her bread. “You are a high-handed, foul-tempered, officious … man … at times, Gabriel.”

“Yes.” I ran a hand through my hair again. “Hence, I will wait downstairs.”

“No, you will not. You will sit down and tell me where
you
ran off to in the middle of the opera. I know you find my acquaintance tedious, but I would have hoped you’d have made it past the interval.”

Donata was furiously angry with me. I did not blame her, but at the same time, she had been foolishly reckless, and I was angry with her.

When Donata was at her most angry, she became cold, retreating into aristocratic hauteur. Her bursts of temper and acid observations were not pique, I’d come to know. The cool disdain meant fury.
 

I saw her trying to decide whether I was as bad as her first husband, a boor of a man who’d mostly ignored Donata when he wasn’t humiliating her with everything he did. Breckenridge had been high-handed, foul-tempered, and officious, as she’d just accused me.

I’d ruined my first marriage because of my rages. My wife, weary of them, had fled with a man who was gentle with her. I was commencing my second marriage in the same fashion.

“Donata,” I began.

“Say nothing more, please.” Donata took a bite of bread. “I find myself ravenously hungry after my first sickness, and I would like to eat in peace.”