The Hanover Square Affair

by Jennifer Ashley

  Common practice was that the coachman would pull up and wait. The young lady would come with her maid, and one of the boys who waited about to sweep the street clean for nobs would assist her into the carriage, and then the carriage would roll on. The coachman never got down, or bought an orange, or had a chat, but the lady was always polite and sometimes bought something from her or the strawberry girl.

  I gave the young woman a few pennies, and walked home with an orange in my pocket.

  It was growing dark again when I approached the market at Covent Garden. The rain had slackened. Carts wound through the square, and housewives thronged the stalls, looking for last-minute bargains before the vendors shut down for the evening. Strawberry sellers, street performers, beggars, pickpockets, and prostitutes thronged among them. Cries of "Sweet strawberries, buy my ripe strawberries" vied with "Knives to grind, penny a blade."

  A girl sidled up to me and tucked her hand through my arm. "Hallo, Captain," she said. "Fancy a bit?"

  * * * * *

  Chapter Five

  I looked down. Black Nancy, so called because of her long, dyed, blue-black hair, sauntered along beside me, grinning at me to display her crooked teeth. A few of her colleagues sashayed just beyond her.

  Nance could not have been much more than sixteen, and my constant rejection of her offers was a great puzzlement to her. She pursued me with a doggedness almost comical, I suppose assuming that one day, she would eventually wear me down. In her world, she was considered to be growing elderly--in mine, she was still a child.

  She wore her favorite gown today, a worn russet velvet cut to show off her generous bosom. She'd topped it with a blue wool jacket at least ten years out of date. She was good-humored, but she hunted her flats--the gentlemen she lured to her--with a ruthlessness that made Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign to conquer Russia look like a frivolous Sunday outing.

  "I'm a poor man, Nance," I began, embarking on the familiar argument.

  She winked. "I know. Maybe I fancies ya."

  One of the other girls laughed. "He likes ladies as bathe, Nance. You ain't had a bath in a twelvemonth."

  "Shut your yap, Margaret. I seen him first."

  Nance tucked her arm more firmly through mine. The other girls grew bored with teasing me and dropped away, turning to likelier marks. Nance lingered, strutting along beside me, smiling with her red-painted mouth.

  "Ain't seen ya in a few days, Captain. You hiding from me?"

  "I've been busy." I stopped, thinking. Every day and well into the night, Nance moved all over Covent Garden, up and down the Strand, and everywhere in between. If anyone was likely to observe things there, it was she.

  "What're you thinking, Captain?" she asked. "Your eyes go all dark when you do that. Do you really know how handsome you are, or are you just teasing me?"

  I ignored her. "What would you say to earning a few shillings?"

  Her eyes lit, and she melted against me. "Ooo, thought you'd never ask."

  I frowned. "Not for that. I am looking for a coachman. Do you speak to the ones who wait at Covent Garden Theatre?"

  She gave me a look of disappointment and pushed herself away. "Sometimes. They share a nip of gin when the weather's cold. What you want with one of them? You don't have a coach."

  "I am looking for one in particular, a coachman for a family called Carstairs. Do you know him?"

  Carstairs was the name of the family who'd sent their coach for Miss Jane Thornton and her maid that fateful afternoon, so Alice had told me.

  Her look turned sly. "I could find him for ya. For a price."

  "I can give you a shilling now, and another when you find him."

  She smoothed the lapel of my coat. "You keep your money, Captain. I'll find this coachman to a gentry-cove. You pay me then. If I don't find him, you're out nothing." She slanted me an inquisitive look. "What you want him for?"

  "I need to ask him something. You find him and tell him to visit me in my rooms."

  "Now you got me curious. Ain't you going to tell me? I won't peep."

  "I'd rather not until I speak with him."

  Her fingers drifted down my coat. "You know how to string a girl along. I'll find him for you, Captain. Maybe you can pay me another way." She glanced at me from under her lashes.

  I tried to give her a severe look. "I am old enough to be your father."

  She cackled, but withdrew her hand. "You're older than me dad, but you're that much prettier."

  "You are too kind. Now I am hungry. Let me go and have my dinner."

  She obeyed, uncharacteristically. I felt her small hand on my backside as she departed, and I watched her dart away, her hair swinging in a black wave.

  As I walked on toward the Gull at the end of the square, I surreptitiously checked my pockets to make sure that all my coins were intact.

  * * * * *

  Much later that night I was wandering Cockspur Street near Charing Cross, on foot, in my regimentals.

  My coat was a deep blue, with white facings and silver loops and braid. This uniform--which had cost me almost a year's pay--I had kept fine for social occasions, but on the Peninsula, I had worn another like it to ruin with sweat and mud and blood. With a carbine on my saddle and a saber at my side, I and the light and heavy dragoons had charged at everything: French cavalry, squares of French infantry we wanted to scatter, and even artillery. We'd been trained to draw our sabers at the last instant before our lines merged and met--the sound of ringing steel and the sight of a glittering forest of sabers were meant to strike fear into the enemy. But I never discovered if the enemy even noticed this spectacle, because at that very moment, they had been busy trying to shoot us, bayonet us, or slice us to pieces in return.

  Now I fought a different battle, one for social acceptance and good public opinion. Both Louisa and the loathsome Horne had been right when they'd told me that recognition by Grenville was an advantage to me. Those who might not have spoken to me or even noticed the existence of an obscure gentleman from a remote corner of East Anglia--a captain who'd made no famous name for himself on the Peninsula--now sent me invitations to some of the most sought-after events in the social season.

  I had been correct, too, when I'd told Louisa that they invited me only to speculate why Grenville had taken up with me.

  I'd met Grenville earlier that year, at a New Year's rout at his own house. Lady Aline Carrington, a spinster who loved gossip and Mary Wollstonecraft's Rights of Women, in that order, had persuaded Grenville to allow her to bring me along. I had escorted her and Mrs. Brandon to the rout, and there met the famous Mr. Grenville.

  Admittedly, I had not thought much of him on first glance, dismissing him as a dandy too full of his own opinion. I believe he sensed that, because he was cool to me, though he did not actually turn me out of his house.

  Things changed when I discovered, quite by accident, that several of the extra staff he, or rather his butler, had hired for the evening, had planned to rob him. Grenville kept rare artwork and antiquities in his private upstairs sitting rooms; only a privileged few were ever allowed to view them. The gang of thieves, led, as it turned out, by the butler, had arranged an elaborate scheme to carry off these artworks.

  I had made so bold as to approach the disdainful Grenville and tell him my suspicions. To his credit, he dropped his pose, listened to me, then asked me why the devil I thought so. I told him, because the footman's livery did not fit him.

  The staff hired for the night had not been allowed anywhere but the kitchens and the grand reception rooms on the ground floor. It turned out that several had laid out Grenville's large footman, Bartholomew, and one had stolen his livery in order to access the upper floors. They supposed that great gentlemen never noticed what their own footmen looked like--they were hired by butlers, housekeepers, or stewards. True, very few people at the rout looked into the faces of the servants circulating with champagne and macaroons.

  But Grenville had hand-picked his servants--though, he
confided later, he had made a grave mistake with the butler. When we found Bartholomew, trussed up, sore, and most angry, in a retiring room upstairs, Grenville had been furious. We had rushed to the sitting room and caught the thieves in the act. Bartholomew had returned the blows laid on him in a fine show of pugilism, and I of course had the sword in my walking stick.

  The next morning, Grenville had sent his carriage for me, inviting me to breakfast with him and to discuss the incident. Thus had begun our interesting acquaintanceship.

  This acquaintanceship with Grenville gave me another advantage--he knew nearly everything about everyone in London, being a cultivator of minute gossip about his fellow human beings. He'd know about Horne, and possibly the Carstairs family, and what he did not know, he could easily discover.

  The advantage of his acquaintance at the moment seemed small, because I couldn't run the devilish man to ground. I'd written, and he'd not replied, and I refused to write again pleading to be allowed to speak to him. I would not reject his friendship, but I refused to be his sycophant.

  However, I needed his knowledge, so I'd accepted an invitation tonight, issued by one Colonel Arbuthnot, who was hosting a viewing of the latest work by an up-and-coming painter called Ormondsly. I'd accepted because I had every expectation of finding Grenville there.

  Grenville was foremost in the art world, and artists cultivated his every opinion. The cream of society would wait, breaths held, as Grenville would lift his quizzing glass, candlelight glinting on the gold eyepiece, and run his slow gaze down the painting. I'd seen crowds biting lips, pressing fingers to mouths, or shifting from side to side while Grenville cocked his head, pursed his lips, backed a few steps, and then started the process all over again. At last he would render his judgment--he would either pronounce the painting a work of genius, or an abysmal failure. With his words, an artist would be made, or broken. He'd be certain to be at Arbuthnot's.

  Before I could leave my rooms for the outing, my upstairs neighbor, Marianne Simmons, opened my door and tripped blithely inside. "Got any snuff, Lacey?"

  Unsurprised, I took up my gloves and pulled them on. "In the cupboard." I nodded at the aging chest on frame that stood against the wall next to the door. Grenville had recently given me a fine blend from his suppliers in Pall Mall, complete with ornate ebony box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I did not take much snuff, nor did I smoke the small cigarillos or larger cheroots that many army men did. It was an odd gentleman who did not like tobacco in some form or other, but I'd always found I could take it or leave it alone.

  Marianne did not even thank me. She moved to the chest and began rummaging through the drawer in which I usually kept my supply of snuff. She'd caught up her yellow ringlets in a ribbon, a la greque, a style a little out of date, but one that suited her childlike face. Her prettiness made her liked on stage and popular with gentlemen offstage. And she was certainly pretty. Even I, who'd come to know her well, could still appreciate her round bosom, her wide blue eyes, and the slender turn of her ankle.

  But I'd come to see that behind her prettiness lay the hardness of a woman who had looked upon the world and found it unkind. Where Black Nancy bantered with her mates and faced her hardships with good nature, Marianne Simmons could be hard and cold and ruthless.

  Knowing I was poor, she spoke to me only when she wanted to borrow coal and tapers or a few pence for tea. That is, when she did not simply help herself. She also considered me a convenient supply of the snuff she was addicted to but could not afford.

  She pulled out the ebony box. "If this Grenville is so rich, why does he not simply give you money?"

  When Marianne had discovered that the famous Lucius Grenville had taken me under his wing, she'd pestered me with questions about him, although she seemed to know more about him than I did. I imagined that the gentlemen she took up gossiped heavily about him.

  "A gentleman does not offer money to another gentleman. "

  "Bloody inconvenient for you." She clutched the box to her chest. "I suppose he does not take up with actresses?"

  "He does." In fact, I'd seen him the night before at the theatre with Hermione Delgardia, the latest sensation on the Continent, who was visiting England for a time.

  Marianne wrinkled her nose. "None who dance in the chorus, I'd wager. No, he sets his sights loftier, does he not?"

  I ushered her out the door without asking for the box back. "I couldn't say."

  I shut the door and locked it with a key. I did not miss Marianne's disappointed look that she would not be able to creep back downstairs and filch candles while I was out.

  As it turned out, I would not be able to query Grenville that night about either his taste in actresses or his opinion of Josiah Horne, because he never appeared at Arbuthnot's. The party there consisted of a duke, another actress of considerably more note than Marianne, several other people I knew only slightly, Lady Aline Carrington, and a very pretty young widow called Mrs. Danbury. The latter mostly ignored me, though I attempted to include myself in any conversations around her.

  I waited most of the night, but Grenville never arrived. The painting hadn't much to recommend it either.

  Tired, annoyed, and at the last of my resources, I took a hackney as far as I could afford the fare and ended up in St. James's. I strolled along, hoping I'd chance upon Grenville arriving at or departing from one of his clubs, but the man remained elusive.

  I'd walked slowly down to Pall Mall and onto Cockspur Street, making my weary way back toward Covent Garden. As I approached Charing Cross, a man hailed me.

  "Captain Lacey, is it? It's me, sir, remember? Sergeant-major Foster?"

  I looked down into a leathery face and twinkling blue eyes. I hadn't seen the man in three years, but he'd been a mainstay of the Thirty-Fifth, rising through the ranks quickly until he attained his final one of sergeant-major. I knew he'd gone to Waterloo but had heard nothing of him since.

  "Of course." I held out my hand.

  He grinned at it, then took a step back and saluted. "Can't get used to civilian life, sir, that's a fact. Once a sergeant, always a sergeant. And you, sir? I heard you'd hurt yourself bad and came home to convalesce."

  I smiled faintly and tapped my left boot with my walking stick. "I did. Still a bit stiff, but I get around all right."

  "Sorry to hear it, sir. You were a fair sight on the battlefield, you were, riding hell-for-leather and screaming at us to stand and fight. An inspiration you were." His grin widened.

  "I suspect 'inspiration' was the kindest of the words used."

  Foster chuckled. "You always were a sharp one, sir, begging your pardon. Ah, here is someone else you might remember. Mrs. Clarke, here's our Captain Lacey."

  The plump young woman who'd been peering into dark shop windows a little way away from us turned and stepped back to the sergeant-major. The polite smile I'd put on my face in expectation of a half-remembered acquaintance froze.

  I hadn't known her as Mrs. Clarke; I'd known her as Janet Ingram, and seven years ago, she'd briefly been my lover. I hadn't seen her since the day she'd left the Peninsula to return to her dying sister in Essex. She smiled into my eyes and I felt the years between us slide away, as if the pain, the betrayal, the empty ache of them, had never existed.

  She looked little different now than she had all those years ago and all those miles away in Portugal when she'd been a corporal's widow. Her waist was as plump, her arms as round, her hair, now adorned with a flat straw hat, as richly auburn. Her brown eyes sparkled as they had of old--the sparkle of a woman who faced life on her own terms, whatever it dealt her. Our affair had lasted only six months, but every day of those months was sharp and clear in my memory.

  I don't know if Sergeant-major Foster remembered the circumstance of our acquaintance. He stood by, beaming and grinning, as if he'd played a joke on me. My throat was paper dry, and I did my damndest to smile and politely tip my hat.

  "Mrs. Clarke."

  She bypassed my stilted polite
ness with a smile that took my breath away. "Gabriel." She ran her gaze from the dark brown hair at my forehead to the tops of my boots. "I am pleased to see you, though you do not look the same. What happened to you?"

  "That," I said, "is a very long story."

  Sergeant-major Foster rubbed his hands. "Well, well, quite a reunion tonight. How's the colonel, Captain?"

  I dragged my gaze from Janet back to Foster's tanned and smiling face. "I beg your pardon?"

  "Bless me, he's forgotten already. Our commander, sir. Colonel Brandon. Your best mate."

  I flinched as the truth wanted to come out, but I masked it in politeness. "The colonel is in good health. As is his wife."

  Janet cocked her head, her eyes skeptical, but she said nothing.

  "Pleased to hear it," Foster said. "I've had a bit of luck meself. Me old uncle passed on and it seems he had quite a bit of money laid by. All came to me. I'm thinking of going to Surrey and finding a nice little house in the countryside. What do you think of that for an old sergeant, eh, Captain?"

  "I think it excellent news, Sergeant-major."

  "When I'm all settled in, I'll send word, and we'll have a nice long talk over old times."

  "I'd like that."

  My mouth spoke the expected responses, but my thoughts, and eyes, were on Janet. She looked back at me, her smile pulling me to her and telling me all I needed to know.

  "We'll let the captain get on now, Mrs. Clarke," the sergeant-major was saying. He saluted again, stiff and exact. "Good night, then, sir."

  I saluted back. "Good night, Sergeant-major. Mrs. Clarke." I wondered who the devil Mr. Clarke was, but that question would have to wait.

  Janet took my offered hand, and the brief, warm pressure sent a slight tremor through me. I realized then that although I'd sent Janet away all those years ago, I'd never truly let her go.

  They said their good-byes and walked on together. My feet led me the other way, toward Long Acre. After I'd gone perhaps ten paces, I stopped and looked back. Janet walked beside Foster, equal to the small man's height. She turned her head and looked back at me.