“Because I know Brandon well.”
“Because you did not want to deal with the aftermath, including his distraught widow.”
I chortled at her demure glance over her teacup, consciously making light of the strained agitation we’d both experienced at that time. “Nonsense. I knew Brandon had done nothing more heinous than being a fathead, though it was devilish tricky to prove it. Eden might be just as much of a fathead as your husband.”
At this auspicious moment, the door burst open and Colonel Brandon strode inside.
My former commander, who was as robust as when I’d met him twenty-three years ago, took in his wife and his one-time rival companionably sharing a beverage in her morning room. His brow clouded, then forcibly cleared, no doubt as he recalled that I’d married a beautiful society woman who held my devotion.
“Lacey,” Brandon greeted me as I rose. “Just bought a fine hunter. Goes phenomenally well. Come riding with me when you return from the country, and I’ll show him off to you.”
“I will,” I said. I was as mad about horseflesh as Brandon ever was.
“Now.” Brandon threw himself into a chair and held out a cup for Albert, who’d rushed in behind him, to fill it from the silver coffeepot. “Why are you here irritating my wife?”
I waited until Albert had finished fussing around Brandon and departed before I leaned to him and spoke in a low voice.
“Why would new British carbines show up in Antigua, available for smuggling back to England?”
Brandon had been taking a casual sip of coffee. His face went purple, and he quickly set down the cup and swallowed.
“Where have you heard such rubbish?”
“Not rubbish. I held one such carbine in my hands, before I turned it over to Mr. Thompson of the Thames River Police. He said he gave it to the Seventh Regiment.”
“It’s a cavalry weapon,” Brandon said. “Nothing to do with foot-wobblers.”
“That may be, but Thompson isn’t an army man. I imagine it’s all the same to him.”
Brandon scoffed, as though every person should be born understanding the contention between cavalry, artillery, and infantry.
“Are the regiments being rearmed?” I asked. “I must wonder how a smuggler came upon these weapons.”
Brandon heaved a long sigh. He glanced sideways at Louisa, as though contemplating commanding her to leave, so the men could discuss important issues. She returned his gaze serenely, remaining in place.
“The weapons aren’t British,” Brandon said, resigned. “That is, they are not meant to be. The Spanish are losing their holds on the countries of South America. Those countries—Venezuela, for instance—are pushing for independence. Almost no one is coming to their aid. But arms find their way across the ocean, though no one knows a thing about it, do they? Also, and this is something you will tell no man, Lacey …” Brandon leaned to me and lowered his voice. “The regiments are on alert, with new weapons being made ready, in case the disaster at Manchester is repeated.”
We descended into uncomfortable silence. Earlier that summer, workers in Manchester had gathered to listen to Henry “Orator” Hunt who was leading rallies, agitating for more of the laboring classes to gain the vote. On a hot day in August, hussars and local yeomanry were sent in to disperse the crowd in St. Peter’s Field who’d come to hear his speeches, and arrest Hunt. Those gathered had resisted, and in the ensuing chaos, nineteen had died, and hundreds more, including children, had been hurt. The fact that many of these attacking hussars had been heroes of Waterloo goaded the newspapers to label it the “Peterloo Massacre.”
The tragedy had been terrible, but the government had quickly brought forth acts banning all such meetings and allowed local magistrates to search homes for weapons. The memory of the revolution in France was fresh, and many feared such an uprising in Britain. Even the press had been gagged, though I scarcely saw any obedience there.
“So they are minting new weapons in case of an uprising?” I asked.
“That is what I hear.” Brandon spread his fingers in a gesture of uncertainty. “The surplus goes to South America, via the Caribbean islands.”
“Where the shipments are waylaid.” I pondered. “Stolen outright, perhaps, and sold where a profit can be had. Shipped straight back through London and presumably to the Continent.”
“There would be plenty of customers,” Brandon said somberly. “The Greeks are working themselves up to battle the Turks. The Austrians are trampling over the Italian states, and anyone else who bothers them. Anarchists in France stalk the king’s family, wanting no more monarchy. The absence of Bonaparte simply lets whatever his menace kept buried bubble to the surface.”
“Bloody hell,” I said softly. I glanced at Louisa to apologize for my language, but she appeared as unhappy about Brandon’s story as I was. “I’ve not been paying much attention to the wider world, I admit.”
“Best that way,” Brandon answered. “Especially if you are prone to melancholia.”
He had a point. There was little I could do about much of this. Better to be concerned with my daughter learning to walk and Peter going off to school than about who stole guns meant for one revolution and sold them to men planning another.
On the other hand, I certainly did not want my son and daughter to be hurt by all the machinations that might rise to engulf us.
“Gabriel fears that Miles Eden might be involved,” Louisa said in her gentle voice. “I told him those fears are ungrounded.”
Brandon did not dismiss them. “I knew Eden well. I can imagine his hand in this.”
“Can you?” I asked as Brandon sipped his coffee. “Louisa has only finished convincing me he would never stoop to such a thing.”
Brandon shot us both a dark look. “He was always a charmer, was Eden. A good man in a fight. But I noticed he never did anything that did not benefit himself in some way. Saved men in battle—then earned a medal, a promotion, more pay. Volunteered to join the regiment in Antigua, then left when drilling for nothing became dull. I correspond with the colonel in charge there, and he was disappointed in Eden. Eden found nothing in peace for heroics, so he bought a plantation and rescued the slaves working there. But if Eden was so adamant about saving the enslaved, he could work to ban slavery altogether, as others have done. But he does not. When he could not make a fortune in the islands, he came home—obviously. Perhaps he discovered the gun smuggling along the way and decided it was dangerous enough to interest him.”
“That is possible,” I had to acknowledge. Eden had always enjoyed charging into bad situations. I noted that when I’d first gone to see Creasey, Eden had immediately leapt in beside me to face him.
However, he’d vanished for my second encounter with Creasey, and I still did not know why.
“The murders were rather cold-blooded,” I said. “Not like Eden at all.”
“Were they?” Brandon asked. “Or were they the result of quarrels? A man refusing to … what? Give Eden his share?”
“Or, he was crusading against them,” I said slowly. “Stopping the smugglers the most daring way he knew how—by confronting and killing them. Though I still believe Warrilow was a blackmailer, not a smuggler. He seemed to pride himself discovering the faults in others.”