“No, sir. Chap with a funny name. Isher. Something like that.”
Amid relief that Brandon was well and whole, memories slammed into me, not nice ones. “Isherwood? Good God.”
Colonel Hamilton Isherwood of the Forty-Seventh Light Dragoons, the cavalry regiment who’d served alongside the Thirty-Fifth—my regiment—at Salamanca. He’d had the rank of major then, and I hadn’t seen him again until he’d walked into the supper room at the Pavilion last night.
“He’s been killed, you say?” I asked in amazement.
Bartholomew gave me an odd look. “You toldus,sir. When you returned early this morning.”
In a chill, I sank back, searching the haze of my memory, but I found nothing but a blank.
After the tedious supper with the Regent and his aristocratic acquaintances, from which the Regent had excused himself fairly early, Donata had gone on to another outing with friends, and Marianne had departed to visit some theatrical acquaintances. I vaguely remembered Grenville and I strolling together after that in the dark in the Steine—the park near the Pavilion—and the taste of a cheroot. But I had no recollection of returning to the Pavilion, or wandering about Brighton after that in the small hours.
“You must be mistaken,” I said uneasily.
“No, sir.” Bartholomew came at me with the razor again, and I made myself subside so he could work. “You said and did all I have related.”
He shaved me swiftly and competently, and when he finished, I snatched up the towel he handed to me and dried off my face. “I must have been far deeper in my cups than I thought, but Brewster will know what happened. He follows me about like a damned hound.”
Bartholomew moved off to clean up the shaving things. “He was as confounded as me, sir. It appears you eluded him in the dark.”
I emerged from the towel. “Send word to him, will you, Bartholomew? I’ll need to speak to him.”
“He’s downstairs, sir. Wouldn’t move, even when his wife came to fetch him home.She’sworried about you too.”
Mrs. Brewster, a minuscule woman, had a strength about her that could unnerve the strongest man. She certainly had the brutish Brewster under her thumb.
“I’d better be dressed then,” I said.
Not long later, I indeed found Brewster waiting for me in the lower hall, seated on a bench near the front door. I forestalled his growled questions by bidding him to follow me into the dining room.
Brewster never liked entering the main rooms of the house, feeling uncomfortable in luxury. He took a few steps into the chamber and halted, standing like a stone. Bartholomew discreetly vanished, closing the door behind him.
“Before you shout your disapprobation at me,” I said as he drew a breath, “tell me exactly what happened last night. My memory is vague.”
Nonexistent, in fact, as though I’d been drunker than I’d let myself become in a while, but I wanted to hear Brewster’s version of the tale.
“Huh.” Brewster wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “If I’ve caught a chill chasing you about … After you come out of the Pavilion once your supper was done, you and Mr. Grenville decided a walk in the dark under the trees would be entertaining. The pair of you wandered about that Steine place, then Mr. Grenville said he’d been invited to a soiree in one of the fine houses on the Grand Parade. You decline to go and headed past the Regent’s stables once you parted from him. It was dark as a tomb back there, and all of a mist too. You took a turn I missed and vanished like smoke. I searched up and down, but never saw you again until I caught sight of you coming out of the market down by the sea, sweet as you please, the church clocks striking five.” He finished, scowl firmly in place.
“Ah.” I moved to the sideboard, hoping to find breakfast, but it was empty, and I remembered it was evening, the morning meal long since finished. “Well, it appears I am unharmed,” I said, trying to speak lightly. “No need to report to Mr. Denis.”
Brewster sent me an aggrieved look. “He’ll want to know anything odd. You turning up out of nowhere bleating about this Isherwood bloke being dead is right odd.”
Memories of the Peninsula rose again, of Salamanca, with the domes of its cathedral golden in the sunlight, the roar of men converging on the battlefield, the high heat of July, the screams of the dying. The aftermath, the exhaustion, giddy victory, the celebrations, the warm sun in a high room inside the city’s walls.
Isherwood had turned up at supper last night, resplendent in his uniform. I’d regarded him in surprise and dismay, and he’d done the same to me. Not a happy reunion.
I shut out the thoughts. “I should begin with Isherwood, then. To discover whether he is alive and well. If he was killed, surely there’d be a mention in the newspapers?” Several had been left for me on the table, but a quick glance at the first pages showed no report of a murder at the Regent’s Pavilion.
“Wasn’t in any papers I read as I was awaiting for you to wake, and her ladyship or Mr. Grenville didn’t know nothing about it. Would be all over town, wouldn’t it? If a dead body turned up at His Royal Highness’s house?”
He had a point. It would be too much of a sensation, and Brighton, and soon the rest of the country, would be abuzz.
“I might have dreamed his death,” I said uncertainly. “My mind is in such confusion I can’t be certain. So let us find out whether he is alive or dead.”
“How do you intend to do that?” Brewster demanded. “Walk about the town and shout his name?”
“Go to the Pavilion and find out what I can.” I spoke as though this would be a simple matter, cleared up in an hour.
