The flush reappeared. “That was something to tell the magistrate, as he was keen for a reason for me to go into the ship’s hold. Keeping an eye on my meager belongings wasn’t convincing him. Which reminds me, I never did manage to collect my baggage yesterday.”
“I thought you went to the Custom House after you left Bow Street.”
The redness deepened. “Meant to. Was distracted, and it takes a blasted long time to move through this town. I gave up and came back to St. James’s. Looked in at Brooks’s but saw nobody I knew there. I think everyone’s forgotten about me.”
“Most of London are in the country riding after foxes and preparing to shoot game,” I said, pretending not to notice how he’d deflected the topic. “If you’d arrived during the high Season, you’d have plenty to do. Not now. My wife told me last night she only had three or four invitations, none of any consequence.”
I contrived to look amazed at this, and Eden burst out laughing. “Jove, I have missed you, Lacey. You can look at a thing and see it for what it is. The only time you were a soppy fool was over your wee daughter … Oh …” Eden trailed off. “I forgot. Please, forgive me.I’mthe fool.”
“Not at all.” Eden had been in Paris with us when my wife had taken Gabriella and deserted me for a French officer. I’d been hauled in front of high commanders to assure them that Carlotta hadn’t been a French spy all along.
“I have found my daughter again.” My pride surged. “She is a beautiful young lady, already engaged to a young man I will meet soon.” I stifled a growl—I was still not happy about her engagement and had yet to form an opinion about her suitor. “I ended my marriage to Carlotta, which is how I was free to marry Donata. Lady Breckenridge.”
“I’d assumed you’d claimed abandonment,” Eden said lightly. “I truly am sorry for bringing up such a painful subject. You ought to call me out.”
“As everything has turned out happily, I will spare you meeting me at dawn.”
“Good.” Eden held out a hand, and I shook it. “I say, why don’t you come with me to the Custom House? I still need my baggage, and perhaps you and your well-wielded sword can convince the customs fellow to hand them to me without delay. Quite a handy weapon you’ve made that walking stick into.”
“It has proved useful.” I set aside my coffee. “Now, if we discuss our troubles any longer, we will head into melancholia, so let us make for the Custom House at once. Perhaps we can discover where Mr. Laybourne has taken up lodgings.”
“Do you supposehekilled Warrilow?” Eden rose at once, ever ready to make words actions. “He seemed a quiet, harmless little chap, more interested in numbers than conversation.”
“One never knows.” I’d met plenty of harmless-looking people who’d turned around and committed murder when provoked.
“He should be the first ye nab then.” Brewster drained his glass of ale and joined us. “I can have an ask about, while you hunt up the major’s bags.”
Eden pronounced this an excellent idea, and off we went.
BREWSTER SCRUTINIZEDthe hackneys at the stand in St. James’s Street, letting a few be hired while we waited, until he pronounced one safe.
“I know this bloke. Doesn’t belong to Creasey or His Nibs.” Brewster lifted a hand to the coachman before he more or less pushed me inside the hackney. He then proceeded to scramble to the top of the coach while Eden took a seat across from me.
During the ride, Eden and I studiously did not speak about the murder, the attack, Eden’s actions regarding Warrilow, or any such harrowing topic. As do most army men who are suddenly reunited, we reminisced. Along Piccadilly and down into the Strand, we relived the tedium, mud, blood, fear, triumph, and exhaustion of the war with France, letting the safety of the years between us and battles paint the scenes with misty colors.
Eden spoke of a few ladies he’d known, with fondness. Eden’s affaires de coeur had tended to be less intense than mine, he flirting with all the wives and having true affairs with a few Spanish ladies who flowed away from him as happily as they’d come to him.
I told him of my life since I’d last seen him just before the battle at Toulouse. I made light of the hardships I’d experienced—I knew all about having land but a bankrupt estate. I danced over my meeting with Grenville and Donata, and ended with my delight in becoming reacquainted with my daughter.
“Bravo, Lacey.” Eden clapped when I’d finished. “I worried about you greatly when you came in from that mission with your leg shattered, but you’ve landed in the pink of things. I must meet Lady Breckenridge. Her husband was a dolt and a knave, if I may speak ill of the dead.”
“You may,” I said. “I loathed the man, and so did she. The only good thing Breckenridge did in his life was produce Peter, my stepson.”
“He sounds a grand lad. Ah, we have reached the Custom House.”
The hackney stopped at the busy space before the wide building, which teemed with even more people than yesterday. The wharves were crammed with ships, men busily trundling barrels and crates up and down gangplanks or hoisting cargo via ropes and pulleys. More ships anchored in the river, awaiting their berths.
Brewster climbed rapidly down from the top of the coach to land on the pavement as soon as we alighted. He darted his gaze everywhere, hand inside his coat on his knife.
“Don’t forget Creasey’s squatting in his lair not a block away,” Brewster told me. “I’ll see ye inside, then do my asking.”
“His men attackedyou, remember,” I told him. “Take care.”
“I know how to, guv.” Brewster tramped directly behind us and did not turn away until we’d opened the great wooden doors of the Custom House and stepped inside.
Noise flowed down as we climbed a flight of stairs to take us above the ground-floor warehouses. The din grew as we reached the long room at the top, where the cacophony was deafening.
A hundred or so men thronged the huge space, lit by a row of arched windows that looked out to the Thames. A counter lined each long wall, behind which a row of men faced the crowd. They were the customs clerks, with their ledgers, quills, and blank countenances, explaining to those who leaned on the counters before them how much they owed.
