Brewster continued to glower. “My advice? Which I know you will not take.” He hardened his glare. “Leave it.”
“Pardon?” My mind had drifted again. Meeting Isherwood last night after seven years almost to the day had been rattling.
Isherwood had remembered me well—I’d seen it in his eyes. He’d chosen to ignore that fact and pretend we’d never met. He’d kept up the pretense until after supper when we’d shared port … Not so much shared it as drunk it while he snarled invective at me in a heated whisper.
“I said leave it,” Brewster repeated. “Go with your wife and wee ones to the sea and forget you went strolling about Brighton in the middle of the night bleating about dead colonels. Let that be the end of it.”
“Do not stir things up, you mean?” I considered this. “Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps I only dreamed it.”
“That’s right, guv. Ye were restless and wandered about to clear your head. Came home and fell asleep so hard you don’t remember none of it.”
What he said was possible. Also untrue.
I knew that if I consulted with Donata and my friends before I departed to look for Isherwood, they, like Brewster, would try to stop me. Brewster had a point—I’d come to Brighton as Grenville’s guest, to celebrate his happiness in his new marriage. My two daughters and my stepson were with me, and I wanted this time to embrace my family.
I equally knew the missing hours would haunt me until the end of my days and that I wouldn’t be able to rest until I pieced together what had happened.
I left the dining room, still hungry, fetched my hat and coat, and stepped out the front door. Brewster, heaving an aggrieved sigh, followed.
* * *
It wasan easy walk from our hired house along Bedford Row that skirted the sea, even for me with my injured leg. The mist of the previous night had gone. Daylight lingered for quite some time in midsummer, and Brewster and I moved through a golden evening toward the avenue that would take us into the main part of Brighton.
I had decided to begin at the Pavilion, to discover if anyone had reported a death, before I moved on to Isherwood’s house if I found no news. I knew where Isherwood lived, because he’d boasted of it at supper, but I was in no hurry to encounter the man again if he were still alive.
Had I not been so uneasy, I would have noted what a lovely hour it was. The sea, a hue of gray-blue, stretched away at our right hand, and a brisk wind cooled what heat the day had brought. Out on the water were fishing boats, and among them, twisting and turning in the wind, glided the pleasure sailing craft of gentlemen.
Walkers had emerged to take advantage of the fine weather, husbands strolling with wives and daughters, gentlemen wandering in search of entertainment, and women walking together, followed closely by a servant or two. Plenty of taverns fronted the sea, along with restaurants for families—many such places has sprung up now that the Prince Regent had made Brighton fashionable for a seaside holiday.
I decided to head north up Ship Street instead of continuing along the sea walk. There were plenty of crowds along the waterfront—easier to cut through the town than follow the shore, or so I told myself. However, when I reached the small brick cottage that housed the Quaker meetings, I paused, something nagging at me.
I had learned since our arrival in Brighton that this cottage had been built fifteen years previously when the Regent had decided to tear down houses and close off streets to expand his Pavilion. One of those houses destroyed had been the meeting place of the Society of Friends. They’d been given no choice but to move, and they’d built this new cottage on grounds owned by one of the Quakers.
“I was here,” I said to Brewster after some moments of indecisiveness. “I think.”
Brewster scowled. “Turned Dissenter, have ye?”
“No.” I was too impatient to banter with him. “I do not mean I attended a meeting, but I was here.” I tapped the pavement. We stood outside a gate that led to a garden laid out in neat rows, the green tops of vegetables bright against the soil. “I spoke to someone.”
The Meeting House was quiet now, its small windows unlighted, but I saw movement in the open doorway. As I peered through the garden, a man emerged and paused on the doorstep to regard me. He was small in stature, wore a plain gray coat and knee breeches, and held a wide-brimmed hat.
As though making up his mind, he set the hat on his head and walked briskly out of the house and down the path to me, bathing me in a kind smile.
“I am pleased to see thee well again, Gabriel,” he announced. “We won’t have a meeting this evening, but thou art welcome to sit quietly in the lecture room and reflect.”
Chapter 3
Again?” Brewster gazed at me incredulously as the Quaker man nodded at us. “Give me strength. Youhavebeen here, guv.”
The man turned to Brewster with no less deference than he had shown me. “Indeed, Gabriel Lacey and I spoke last night. He was quite disturbed about something but looks much better this evening.”
I gazed hard at the man, nonplussed. “I spoke to you?”
“We spoke together.” He addressed me gently, as though not wishing to startle me. “I met thee in the Steine as I took a moonlight stroll, and thou walked here with me. Thou had much agitation.”
I chewed my lip, my stomach knotting. “I have no memory of this.”
The man nodded. “I thought thou wert inebriated and looked regretful for it.”
