I was puzzled, but Grenville nodded at him and tapped the side of his nose.
Hawes thawed. He jumped up from the seat, no longer feeble, and rushed into his vestibule, returning with a ring of keys. “If you will follow me, sir.” He spoke to Grenville alone, ignoring me entirely.
The footman seemed as baffled by Hawes’s change in behavior as I was but opened the door to let us out without a word.
We left the club for the house next to it, whose door Hawes opened with one of the largest keys.
Inside was a quiet hall paneled in white-painted wood, the only furnishing a single tapered-legged table in the niche formed by the turn of the staircase. The table’s top was bare, suggesting a place a gentleman might set his valise or hat while he removed his coat. A row of greatcoats hung on the back wall of this hallway beside a rear door, which probably led to a small yard.
Hawes ascended the rather steep staircase, which was carpeted with a blue-and-gold runner. I held on to the polished banister as we went up, and up, and up, finally emerging to the low-ceilinged third floor.
Pickett could not be that wealthy or powerful, Pickett’s own words notwithstanding, if his rooms were so high in the house. The first-floor flats would be the most costly, the prices decreasing as we climbed.
Hawes opened a door just off the landing and ushered us inside. The rooms we entered faced the rear of the house, another reduction in rent.
At first glance, all was tidy, the front room containing little furniture or personal possessions that I could see. A closed door across the room presumably led to the bedchamber.
“I thank you, Mr. Hawes.” Grenville turned to him. “We will be very careful, I promise.”
His words were dismissing, Grenville more or less blocking Hawes from following us in. Hawes took the hint, winked, backed out of the room, and shut the door. He took the keys with him but did not lock us in.
Grenville waited until we heard his footsteps retreat down the stairs before speaking.
“How interesting.” He laid his hat and stick on the table next to the door. “Now we know that Hawes, at least, is a member of a secret society.”
I regarded him in bewilderment. “How do you conclude that? Is that why you and he were winking and blinking at each other?”
Grenville opened a cupboard that stood between two small windows and ran his fingers across the coats hung on pegs inside it.
“In a way,” Grenville said as he studied the coats. “Hawes made a signal with his fingers, as members of such societies do for one another, and I thought it best I acknowledge it. Therefore, Hawes believes I am a fellow member, but you, unfortunately, are not.”
“Which is why he suddenly behaved as though I no longer existed.” There were no other cupboards or tables with drawers in the front room, so I moved to the door to the bedchamber. “What secret society is this? Are you truly a member, and if so, why haven’t you seen Hawes there?”
“My dear Lacey, every gentleman in London is a member of some secret society or other.” Grenville sounded amused. “I have no idea which ones Hawes attends. I didn’t know what signal to make in return, so I only nodded and pretended I knew what he meant but was being discreet.”
I’d opened the bedchamber door—which fortunately wasn’t locked—but turned back in amazement.
“Every gentleman in London is a member of a secret society?” I demanded. “What the devil are you talking about?”
Grenville slid past me into the bedchamber, as though we were speaking about nothing more remarkable than the weather. “It is fashionable for anyone who calls himself a gentleman to be in a secret society—the Freemasons, for instance. The men who led the War of Independence in the Americas were Freemasons, many with ties to gentlemen in the same body here. General Arnold, whom my American friends call their most famous traitor, was a prominent Mason. But it’s more than that. When our new Majesty, King George, was Prince of Wales, he was a member of several societies meant to oppose the policies of his father. He’s left all that behind now, of course.”
I listened to this with my mouth open so long it was beginning to dry out. I snapped it closed. “Are you a member of all these societies?”
“Quite a number of them, yes.” Grenville moved to the wardrobe in this room, which held more garments. “I was hotheaded in my youth, ready to announce my views on reform to any who would listen. In fact, many of the guests who grace the door of your wife’s soirees were in them with me. Mostly, we wasted a lot of breath and consumed buckets of port without changing a thing. But from many of these societies come the seeds for policies made in Westminster.”
“I thought that happened in the clubs.” I understood that the rulers of Britain drew allies to their positions over bowls of punch at White’s or Brooks’s. Parliament formalized those backroom agreements, with the king more or less an afterthought.
“It does.” Grenville turned from the wardrobe to a tall bureau. “But by the time discussions reach the clubs, we have already narrowed down the arguments. In the secret meetings—which I doubt are very secret at all—we can air our opinions and disagree openly. The gentlemen are sworn not to repeat what we discuss with outsiders, and a good thing too. A hundred years ago, we’d have been arrested and carted off to hang simply for blustering about the Corn Laws.”
Grenville opened a drawer in the bureau, gently moving the garments inside.
“Grenville,” I said.
He looked up in inquiry. “Yes?”
“Yes?” I repeated. “Is that all you have to say? You’ve just told me that you, and Hawes, and apparently every man in London except me, are in secret political societies ready to overturn the government. And you behave as though it is nothing of consequence.”
Grenville’s brows rose. “You were never in such an organization in the Army? Not even the Masons?”
