Hanover Square Affair, The by Ashley Gardner Read Free Book Online Page A

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 on to 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 politeness 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