The Glass House by Ashley Gardner Read Free Book Online Page A

her fortune. Twenty years old and arrogant, I had
told my father to go to the devil.
    He’d shouted at me for days, and I had
shouted back. Grown man though I was, he’d still been fond of
beating me across the backside with his stout cane whenever he
could reach me. I’d felt the brunt of that cane most of my life.
I’d witnessed many a flogging in my Army life, but no soldier had
ever beaten another with the vicious thoroughness of my father.
    "I need an excuse to go poking about the
Middle Temple," I said. "You could put on a suit and pretend you
are looking to apprentice to a barrister. You are about the right
age."
    Bartholomew grinned. "Any of that lot will
peg me for a slavey right off, I open my mouth."
    "Then keep it closed." I chewed through
another hunk of Mrs. Beltan's cheapest bread and downed the coffee.
"Stay behind me and look shy. I'll be your uncle or some such,
happy to be getting you off my hands."
    His smile widened. "I'm your man, sir."
    Bartholomew was as fascinated as Grenville by
the fact that I investigated things. His last adventure with me had
resulted in him receiving two bullets in his arm and leg, but that
fact had not dimmed his interest. Bartholomew had recovered with
the exuberance of youth and didn’t even sport a limp.
    Unlike myself. I had received a nasty knee
injury courtesy of French soldiers on the Peninsula and had to lean
on a walking stick. The stick sported a sharp sword within it,
which had come in handy more than once since my return to London
and civilian life.
    When Bartholomew was ready, we departed. As I
closed my door, I was surprised by the sight of Marianne Simmons
coming up the steps. She wore yellow straw bonnet tied with a green
ribbon that made her girlish face more fetching than ever. Marianne
scowled when she saw me, golden brows drawn over eyes of cornflower
blue.
    "Where the devil have you been?" I asked,
startled into rudeness. She'd been away longer than usual, and
Peaches' death had worried me.
    Marianne’s scowl deepened. "None of your
business, Lacey." She paused halfway to her floor to glower down at
me. "None of his either."
    She did not mean Bartholomew, who hovered
behind me. She meant Grenville, who'd taken an interest in Marianne
and twice given her money, asking for nothing in return.
    I did not pursue it. Marianne was
correct--what she got up to when she was far from here was none of
my business. I shut my door but did not lock it. "There's half a
loaf of bread on my table. Take it if you want it."
    She gave me a freezing look. "I do not need
your leavings."
    I shrugged but still did not lock the door. I
followed Bartholomew down the stairs, hearing Marianne ascend to
her own rooms behind us. I had no doubt that when I returned the
bread would be gone.
    Bartholomew and I set off along the Strand
through Temple Bar to Fleet Street, then walked south, down Middle
Temple Lane, which bisected the Middle and Inner Temples. The
environs of the two Temples overlapped somewhat, with buildings
belonging to Middle Temple straying into the areas of the Inner
Temple.
    I led Bartholomew past the courts and
chambers and toward the hall and gardens.
    Bartholomew wore the plain suit in which he
visited his mother, and he slowed his exuberant stride for my
slower one. His suit was cheap, though not shabby, but it did not
matter. The middle-class men and young gentlemen who apprenticed
here did not always come from families of wealth.
    Pupils fluttered about the lanes and gardens
like students anywhere--some with the frightened but determined
looks of young men resolute to prove they were good at something;
some with the superior looks of those who already knew they were
good; some with the devil-may-care looks of young men who lived for
larks, studies getting done when they got done. At Cambridge, I,
unfortunately, had been a member of the latter group.
    Bartholomew stayed quiet as instructed, and I
behaved like an uncle anxious to rid myself of a lad I was at