"As is mine."

I looked up, remembering that she had not sought me out to discuss my troubles. "You wanted to speak to me about something? Grenville, I assume. I thought he had loosened the leash a bit."

Marianne poured herself another helping of brandy. "I want to go to Berkshire."

"Ah." I had discovered, earlier this spring, that Marianne Simmons had a son, a halfwit boy she'd borne years ago and kept in a cottage in the Berkshire countryside. A kindly woman looked after both cottage and son, and Marianne traveled to see them when she could. She'd spent almost everything she'd earned as an actress plus any money or trinkets she could coerce gentlemen into giving her on the keeping of the boy, David.

When Grenville had first met Marianne, he'd handed her twenty guineas. She'd promptly and secretly sent the money to Berkshire, and Grenville had gone slightly mad trying to decide what had happened to his gift.

I had learned Marianne's secret by chance when I'd stayed in Berkshire at the Sudbury School in March. She'd made me swear to tell no one, especially not Grenville. I had no desire to interfere between Grenville and Marianne, and so kept my silence.

"You have not spoken to him of David, yet," I said.

"No, and you know why. As I've just declared, he enjoys arranging people's lives for them. He would try to take David away from the home he's always known to lock him away somewhere, however plush, and hire hordes of people to look after him. David would be frightened. I cannot let that happen."

She spoke determinedly, but her eyes held worry.

I could not reassure her that Grenville would do no such thing, because though I'd known him a few years now, I could not predict the things that Grenville might do. Lucius Grenville was one of the wealthiest and popular men in England. He was intelligent, generous, gossipy, curious, friendly, and frank-although he could turn his cool, sardonic man-about-town personality on those of whom he disapproved and destroy them socially with one quirk of his eyebrow. Gentlemen in clubs all over London feared the cold scrutiny of his black eyes, trembled when he raised a quizzing glass, and went pale when he dismissed them in his chill voice.