Why Kings Confess

Chapter 17

Lord Peter Radcliff was one of those men who wore the dignity of his exalted birth with an easy grace and a good-natured smile. Born into a life of rare wealth and privilege, he was a duke’s second son, which meant that all responsibility for maintaining the family’s vast estates and managing their considerable investments fell not to him but to his elder brother. To Lord Peter came a handsome allowance and the freedom to spend his days as he saw fit, lounging in the famous bow window at White’s, hunting in Melton Mowbray, and surrounding himself with a circle of bon vivants known for their exquisite manners, their flawless taste, and their willingness to bet on almost anything.

Like his friends Beau Brummell and Lord Alvanley, he’d once enjoyed a brief career in a fashionable London regiment. But he soon sold out to devote himself to the less demanding activities of a man-about-town. His marriage eight years before to one of the most beautiful women in London had little altered his way of life. Which was why, rather than look for Lord Peter at his comfortable house in Half Moon Street, Sebastian spent the evening moving from one gentlemen’s haunt to the next, from White’s in St. James’s Street to Watier’s in Piccadilly, and then on to Limmer’s-all without success.

He was sipping a fine French cognac in a fashionable coffeehouse near Conduit Street when Lord Peter entered the room and walked straight up to him.

“Why the devil are you looking for me?” he demanded, the fingers of one hand tapping against his hard thigh.

Sebastian leaned back in his seat. “I think you know.”

Radcliff hesitated a moment, then ordered a brandy, pulled out the chair opposite, and sat. “I saw you at the French chapel.”

Sebastian brought his cognac to his lips and regarded the Duke’s son over the glass’s rim. “You were friends with Damion Pelletan?”

“Me? No.” Radcliff propped one exquisitely polished boot on the other knee. The posture was casual, relaxed. He had a reputation amongst his friends for easygoing charm and boundless generosity, although Sebastian knew there were those who had seen another side of him, a side that could be brusque and condescending and freezingly arrogant. “I went for the sake of my wife. He was a friend of hers when she was a child, in Paris.”

“But you did know him?”

“I met him once or twice.” He gave Sebastian a hooded, sideways glance. “To be frank, I don’t quite understand why you’ve involved yourself in this. The papers are saying he was killed by footpads in St. Katharine’s.”

“He was killed in St. Katharine’s, yes. But footpads had nothing to do with it.”

Radcliff was silent for a moment, his gaze dropping to the glass he twirled back and forth between his hands. He was still an attractive man, with a wide, winning smile. But in repose, one could see that the years of dissipation were beginning to leave their marks in telltale ways, coarsening the texture of his flesh and loosening the muscle tone of his still trim frame.

Sebastian said, “What can you tell me about him? You say your wife knew him in Paris?”

Radcliff seemed to rouse himself from his brown study. “She did, yes. They grew up next door to each other on the Ile de la Cite. His father is still a prominent physician at the Hotel-Dieu or some such place.”

“Oh?”

Radcliff frowned. “I seem to recall hearing about a dustup of some sort or another involving the father, but it was years ago. Something to do with the royal family during the Terror. I couldn’t tell you exactly what.”

“What do you know of Damion Pelletan’s politics?”

“Politics?” Radcliff shook his head. “I had the impression Pelletan had no interest in politics. His passion was medicine.”

It struck Sebastian as more than a little strange that someone with no interest in politics would join a peace delegation, even if simply in the capacity of a physician. But all he said was, “When was the last time you saw him?”

Radcliff took a slow, deliberate sip of his brandy, as if carefully considering his response. “I don’t recall, precisely. A week ago, perhaps? Maybe more.”

“Not last Thursday night?” asked Sebastian, thinking of the unidentified man and woman who had visited Pelletan at the Gifford Arms the night of his death.

Radcliff froze with his glass suspended just above the table. All traces of easygoing bonhomie had vanished, leaving him looking mulish and vaguely sulky. “No; not Thursday night. I spent Thursday night at home alone with my wife.”

“All night?”

“Yes, damn you.”

Sebastian thrust out his legs to cross his boots at the ankles. “You say you attended Pelletan’s funeral for the sake of your wife. Is she distressed by his death?”

“Of course she is. What do you expect? They were old friends.”

“Yet, having put in an appearance at her childhood friend’s funeral, you didn’t feel the need to return home and comfort her?”

Angry color mottled Radcliff’s cheeks. “What the bloody hell do you mean to imply by that?”

“Have you by any chance heard precisely how Damion Pelletan was killed?”

A faint wariness crept over the other man’s features. “I assumed he was bludgeoned to death. That’s what footpads normally do, is it not?”

“Actually, he was stabbed in the back with a dagger. Then the killer-or killers- dragged his body into a noisome passage and cut out his heart.”

Something flared in the other man’s eyes, something quickly hidden by his lowered lids.

Sebastian watched him closely. “Do you have any idea why someone would want to do that? It seems rather symbolic, don’t you think? To rip a man’s heart from his chest.”

For one fierce moment, Radcliff’s gaze met his.

Then he slammed his unfinished brandy on the table and thrust up to stride quickly from the coffeehouse, the amber liquid in the glass sloshing violently back and forth until, at last, it stilled.

• • •

Half an hour later, Sebastian arrived at Tower Hill to find Paul Gibson seated on the wooden chair at the injured woman’s bedside, his elbows propped on his splayed knees, his chin in his hands. A basin with a cloth stood on a nearby table, its surface splashed dark with spilled water. He raised his head at Sebastian’s entrance but did not stand. In the bed, the woman lay terribly still, her eyes closed. Sweat glistened on her white forehead and drenched the flame red hair dark at the temples.

“How is she?” Sebastian asked quietly.

Gibson shook his head and let out a long, strained breath. “She’s delirious. I’m afraid her fever is climbing.”

“From the chill she took the night of the murder? Or from her injury?”

“There’s no way to tell.” He raked the disheveled hair from his face, then linked his fingers behind his neck to arch his back in a stretch. “I asked one of my colleagues at St. Bartholomew’s-Dr. Lothan-to stop by and have a look at her. He wanted to blister her, bleed her, and purge her-the usual panoply of ‘heroic’ medicine.”

“Did you let him?”

“No. I swear I’ve seen more men killed by bloodletting and purging than by cannon- and musket balls combined. I thanked him for his advice and showed him out. But ever since, I’ve been sitting here wondering if I shouldn’t at least have let him try it. I mean, I’m just a simple surgeon. I can set your broken arm or cut off your mangled leg, and if you’re game I might even undertake to cut out your kidney stones. But I’m no physician. I never went to Oxford or Cambridge; my Latin is abysmal, my Greek nonexistent, and the one time I tried to read Galen I gave it up after a few pages. Who am I to question a medical tradition that’s endured for more than two thousand years?”

“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit. You know more about the human body than any physician I’ve ever met.”

Gibson gave a ragged laugh. “If you’re dead.” Reaching out, he squeezed the cloth over the basin and began again to bathe the woman’s face.

“Has she said anything more?” Sebastian asked, going to stand at the foot of the bed.

Gibson had reduced the size of the bandage on the woman’s head, so that Sebastian had his first good look at her. She was an attractive woman, in her late twenties or early thirties, with milky white skin faintly dusted with cinnamon across her high-bridged nose. Her eyes were closed, but Sebastian knew what color they would be if they were open: a deep, loamy brown.

“Nothing coherent,” said Gibson. But then he must have sensed the subtle shift in Sebastian’s posture, or perhaps a sudden charge in the air, because he turned to look at Sebastian. “What is it?”

Sebastian kept his gaze on the woman. “I’ve met her before.”

“You have? Where?”

“Portugal. Her name was Alexandrie Beauclerc then. The last time I saw her, she swore that if our paths ever crossed again, she would kill me.”