Free Hanover Square Affair, The by Ashley Gardner Page A

it in my outstretched hand.
    I inserted the small key into one of the locks and pulled open the door. It swung on its hinges, noiseless as mist, and I stopped in shock when I saw what was inside.
    Inside the wardrobe lay a young woman, her knees pulled against her chest, her hands twisted behind her back and tied. She lay motionlessly, her eyes closed, her pale lids waxen. A fall of yellow hair half hid her bruised face, and the brown tips of her breasts pressed the opaque fabric of a chemise.
    I felt the footman’s breath on my shoulder. “My God, sir.”
    I knelt and touched the girl’s bare neck. Her skin was cool, but her pulse beat under my fingers.
    “Who is she?” I demanded.
    The footman stammered. “That’s Aimee. I thought she’d gone.”
    Aimee. My heart beat thick and fast. Jane Thornton’s maid. “Where is the other girl? Where is Jane?”
    “Don’t know any Jane.”
    “Damn you, the young woman she came here with.”
    The footman took a step back, dark eyes bewildered. “The girl she came with weren’t Jane. She was Lily.”
    “Where is she?”
    “Don’t know, sir. She’s gone.”
    I drew a short knife from my pocket. The footman looked at me in alarm, but I turned away and gently cut the cords that bound the girl’s hands.
    I rose to my feet. “Lift her.”
    “Sir?”
    “I cannot carry her. You must. Is there a chamber we can take her to?”
    “I suppose a guest chamber, sir, but Mr. Bremer’s got the keys.”
    I assumed that Mr. Bremer was the butler. I glanced at the hall, but he’d crept away while we stared at Aimee.
    “I’ll find Bremer. When did this girl named Lily leave?”
    The footman’s brow wrinkled under his white wig. “Oh, weeks ago it was now.”
    “Where did she go?”
    He looked close to tears. “I don’t know, sir.”
    I let it go. “Take her to a guest chamber. I’ll fetch Bremer.”
    I left him lifting the girl in his beefy arms, looking down at her in undisguised awe. I found Bremer in the kitchen. He sat at a table, his head in his hands, the other staff gathered around him. They looked up at me, white-faced and anxious, while Grace’s wails echoed from the dark doorway beyond.
    A tall and bony woman, with an alert, almost handsome face, her apron dusted with flour, stepped in front of me. “Who are you?”
    I ignored her and went to Bremer. “I need your keys.”
    He unhooked them from his belt and handed them to me in silence, the keys jangling as his fingers shook.
    I pointed at a boy who leaned against a wall. “You. Run and get a constable. Then go to Bow Street and ask for Pomeroy. Tell him Captain Lacey sent you.”
    They all stared at me, and I clapped my hand around the keys. “Now.”
    The boy turned and banged his way out the scullery door into the rain. His thin legs flashed by the high window as he ran up the outside stairs.
    The servants continued to stare at me as I turned my back and tramped away. Behind me, Bremer began to weep.
    I found the footman waiting before a door in the upper hall. The young woman lay insensibly in his arms, her hair tangled on his chest. His wig had been knocked askew, which made him look still younger than his thick arms suggested—a child’s frightened face on a man’s body. The footman seemed unsurprised that I’d assumed command, and waited patiently for his next order.
    The room I unlocked was neat and cheerful, the first one with those qualities I’d seen in this house. I told the footman to lay the girl on the bed’s embroidered white counterpane and to start the fire.
    I shook out the quilt that lay at the bottom of the bed and draped it over the girl. She lay in a swoon, but her breathing was better, her chest rising and falling evenly, as though she were simply asleep. The footman watched her, a mixture of pity and fascination in his eyes.
    “Stoke the fire well,” I told him. “And tell the other maid to come up and sit here with her. Not Grace.”
    The footman dragged his gaze from