Grenville’s staff were working to keep up the magnificence of his household. Two footmen industriously polished a large quantity of silver in the servants’ hall. Maids were in the laundry room, steam rolling out as they applied whatever magic they knew to Grenville’s linens. The chef, Anton, hovered in the large kitchen, closely watching his assistant, a rather harried young man, as he stuffed a bird lying spread on a platter.

Anton glanced up when he heard our steps in the corridor, the displeased look on his face turning to rapture when he saw me.

“Captain!” Anton was a rather small man with a round stomach and stooped shoulders, but a wide, beaming smile. I have no idea how much of a martinet he was in his kitchen, but when it came to guests to feed, he was benevolence itself. “You are here,” he announced. “Sit, sit. I will give you a déjeuner not to forget.”

I bowed. “I thank you, sir, but I am here only briefly.”

Anton’s look turned scornful. “Nonsense. You are a gentleman. You have these …” His fluttering fingers took in Matthias and Brewster “… to do your work, while you are fed by me.” He shouted to one of the footmen across the hall. “Lay a place upstairs for the captain. He will dine.”

Brewster lifted brows at me, but he trudged on after Matthias, taking his burden through the door to the wine cellar that Matthias opened for him.

Matthias nodded to me. “Go on, sir. I’ll take care of everything. Mr. Grenville would likely have my head for bringing you below stairs anyway.”

I was left standing in the kitchen with the good scents of Antoine’s fine cuisine floating around me. I succumbed.

***

After the fine meal Anton forced upon me, alone in Grenville’s dining room, I returned home.

I believe Anton enjoyed feeding me, because I was apt to eat everything in sight and praise it to the skies. With Grenville, Anton expected a certain amount of criticism; which he asked for to further his quest to be the best chef in the world. I simply enjoyed.

“Her ladyship is awake, sir,” Barnstable informed me as I entered. “Asking for you.”

I brushed dust from my sleeves. “I am hardly in a fit state to see her at the moment.”

I had grime from the London streets embedded in my clothes, and who knew what dirt from the cellar to which Thompson had ushered me. Anton had let me wash my hands and face in a basin before I sat down to eat, but he was less scrupulous about my state of cleanliness than in wishing me to polish off every morsel.

Barnstable gave me an apologetic look. “She said she needed to see you the moment you stepped foot in the door.”

“She will hardly thank me if I smear her pristine silk sofa with London’s black mud. Send her word I will attend upon her once I’ve changed my clothes.”

Barnstable’s expression remained stoic, but I saw the flicker of dismay in his eyes. Donata was not a despot in her own home, but she did like her whims obeyed. I took pity on Barnstable.

“I’ll tell her myself,” I said. “I realize her delicate state makes her a bit impatient.”

Barnstable’s relief was apparent, but he only answered with a neutral, “Yes, sir.”

The relief told me that Donata had been a bit peevish when she’d risen. She was in possession of a sharp tongue, which could sting if one did not know how to withstand her barbs.

I moved past Barnstable, who gave me a silent look of thanks, and up the stairs to my lady’s chamber.

Donata Anne Catherine St. John, nee Pembroke, the daughter of an earl, widow of a viscount, and now simply Mrs. Captain Gabriel Lacey, reclined as gracefully as ever on a chaise in her boudoir.

Coffee reposed at her elbow as did an empty glass with a small amount of film clinging to its interior. Conclusion—she’d been ill soon after she woke.

The casual observer would never suspect it but for that glass with a draught to settle her stomach. Her color was high, her golden silk peignoir flowed over her limbs, and her dark hair was caught in a bandeau with careless elegance. The only thing missing was the cigarillo wafting its smoke about her face—she’d declared the things made her queasy when she was with child and had reluctantly given them up.

Donata held several letters in her hand and did not look up when she heard my step.

“There you are, Gabriel. Barnstable said you’d gone out. Where on earth did you find to run to in the small hours of the morning?”

“It was nine,” I said. “It is one o’clock now. Which is the small hours of the morning for you.”

I did not move from the doorway, knowing I could not be surrounded by the best of odors, in spite of my contact with Anton’s kitchen. Death has a miasma of its own.

Donata looked up. Her dark hair held a gloss that picked up the sunlight through the windows, burnishing a gold streak in it that matched her garment. Her fine-boned face held the arrogance of the aristocrat—her family’s ancestors had graced this land from Saxon times, integrating themselves with the upstart Normans and continuing from there.

Her eyes were her best feature, in my opinion, dark blue and bottomless. When I looked into those eyes, my cares and pain fell away, and I drowned in her.

Few cracked the hard shell she’d formed around herself through years of unhappiness, but I’d found the way to the true Donata.

“Will you prop up the doorframe or come in?” Donata asked, an edge to her voice. “I do hate to shout across the room.”

“I have been to Wapping and back in not the cleanest of hackneys,” I said. “Let me change to something more suitable, and I will attend you.”

“Nonsense, Gabriel. You are perfect as you are. Please, do come closer. If you fear to put dust on the furniture, you may stand, or I will have Barnstable fetch towels for you to sit upon. But I really must speak to you.”

Her adamance made me curious. I had expected her to flap her hand and say, Yes, yes, if you think it best, instead of insisting I stay.

“What is it?” I came to her, but halted about six feet away. If her stomach was a perilous place, and I smelled of horse, dank cellar, and death, it might lead to a headlong rush to her basin.

She lifted the papers she’d been reading. “I’ve been perusing these letters again. The ones accusing you of being an imposter. I think—I am not entirely certain—but I might know who wrote them.”

Chapter Three

The crease between Donata’s brows and her lack of amusement with which she had previously regarded the blackmailing missives, gave me some disquiet.

“Well?” I asked when she paused. “Will you tell me a name?”

“Only if you will promise me you will not rush from here and stab him through the neck with your sword. You are rather precipitous at times.”

Since I found the letters in bad taste but ridiculous, I did not think they’d drive me to murderous frenzy. I saved that for more worthy endeavors.

“I give you my word,” I said. “I will remain calm until we know for certain who is the author of these profane letters.”

Still Donata hesitated, as though debating whether to speak. “There was a man,” she began slowly. “Before I married Breckenridge, I rather foolishly encouraged a gentleman into pursuing me, believing I’d marry him if he asked me. I was young and silly enough to think I could follow my heart in matters of matrimony.”

“I am pleased you have come to your senses,” I said dryly.

She flicked me a glance. “You know what I mean. I imagine you were full of glorious fantasies of romance and love when you were seventeen.”

“Worse,” I admitted. “I was twenty, and married the lady.”

Donata knew all about that. I did not regret having a child with my first wife—I now had my beautiful daughter, Gabriella—but the marriage was a disaster on all other counts.

“Then you understand,” Donata said. “I was besotted, as only a girl can be. He was a thorough blackguard, of course. But oh, so charming. Breckenridge was horrible in his own way, but from a respectable and ancient family, which made all the difference to my father and mother. If I had married with my heart, eloped with my charming gentleman, I would be destitute, ruined, and cut off from everyone I hold dear. Alas, such thoughts do not enter one’s head at seventeen.”