Why Kings Confess

Chapter 43

That evening, Sebastian was in the library reading Augustin Barruel’s work on the Revolution when he heard a peal at the front door. Lifting his head, he listened to a woman’s soft French voice. A moment later, Morey appeared in the doorway.

“A Madame Sauvage to see you, my lord. She says it is in regards to the murder of her brother, Monsieur Damion Pelletan.” The majordomo’s expression remained remarkably bland. But then, he had been in Sebastian’s employ for more than two years; like Tom and Calhoun, he wasn’t easily overset.

“Show her in,” said Sebastian, and set aside his book.

He came from behind his desk as Alexi Sauvage entered the room. She drew up just inside the doorway, one hand knotted in the strap of her reticule, the other holding close the worn plaid shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders.

“Please, have a seat,” he said, indicating the chairs before the fire.

She shook her head. “What I have to say will not take long. I am only here because of Paul.”

Paul.

His reaction to her use of Gibson’s given name must have shown on his face, because her chin came up. “He says that I should trust you, that I have been wrong to keep back information that might help you to make sense of what happened to Damion. That Jarvis is your enemy too.” She paused, then added, “I hope he is right.”

Sebastian was aware of Hero coming down the stairs toward them. But all he said was, “What information?”

“The day before he was killed, Damion told me he had overheard a conversation between Vaundreuil and Charles, Lord Jarvis. He couldn’t catch everything that was said, but it was enough to convince him that Vaundreuil is engaged in a double game-that rather than representing France’s interests, he is deliberately playing into Jarvis’s aims, which are basically to see that these peace overtures go nowhere.”

It fit only too well with what Lady Peter had told him. Yet Sebastian found it difficult to accept anything this woman said at face value. He said, “It’s my understanding that both Andre Foucher and Camille Bonderant were included in the delegation specifically to prevent that sort of connivance.”

“Yes. And now Foucher is dead too.”

Sebastian leaned back against his desk, his arms coming up to cross at his chest. “You’re suggesting Foucher might also have discovered Vaundreuil’s activities? Or that Damion might have told him?”

“I don’t know. But it seems reasonable, does it not?”

“And the attack on Golden Square?”

“Was presumably meant to kill me, on the assumption that Damion must also have told me what he knew.”

“And how does any of this explain the macabre mutilation of the bodies? Pelletan’s heart and Foucher’s eyes?”

“That I do not know.”

Sebastian walked over to pour two glasses of burgundy. He held one out to her, and after a moment, she took it.

He said, “Vaundreuil may well be playing a double game; he would hardly be the first to do so. But I find it difficult to believe him ghoulish enough to desecrate the bodies of his colleagues. To what purpose?”

“I’m not suggesting Vaundreuil is the killer.”

Sebastian studied her fine-boned, tightly held face. And he understood why she had withheld such a vital piece of information from him for so long. “I see. Not Vaundreuil, but Jarvis. That’s why you didn’t tell me before? Because you think Jarvis is the killer, and you feared I would betray you to him because he happens to be my father-in-law? Or is it because you suspected me of being in collusion with him?”

When she remained silent, he said, “I’d be the last person to deny that Jarvis is both ruthless and brutal. He would unblinkingly murder ten thousand men if he thought it would save England-or at least, England as he thinks it should be. But I can’t imagine him cutting out the hearts and gouging out the eyes of his victims for amusement.”

“I believe that was intended to throw suspicion on someone else.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not exactly an effective tactic, then.”

His words brought a flush of angry color to her cheeks. “I didn’t expect you to listen to me.” She set aside her wine untasted. But rather than leave, she said, “Have you given more thought to attempting to turn your child in its mother’s womb?”

The question took him by surprise. “I told Lady Devlin of your offer.”

“And?”

Sebastian looked beyond her, to where Hero now stood in the doorway.

Hero said, “You accuse my father of murdering your brother, then offer to help save my child. Why?”

Alexi Sauvage pivoted to face her. Physically, the two women could not have been more dissimilar. Where the Frenchwoman was small and almost unnaturally thin, Hero stood tall and strong. Yet both possessed a comfortable sense of self combined with a rare willingness to buck the conventions and expectations of their day.

Alexi Sauvage said, “I am a physician. That is what I do.”

“Yet you’ll understand, surely, if I distrust your motives?”

Something wafted across the Frenchwoman’s face. “If you are unwilling to allow me to attempt to turn the child, there are certain positions which sometimes achieve the same objective. You must kneel with your arms folded on the floor or mattress before you and your head resting on your hands. Do this for fifteen or twenty minutes, every two hours. It might be enough to nudge the child into turning itself.”

When Hero remained silent, Alexi Sauvage said, “Try it, please. But if the child still refuses to turn. . Do not wait too long. I promise, I mean you no harm.” She glanced over at Sebastian. “Good evening, monsieur.”

Then she swept from the room.

They listened to her light step descending the front steps. Hero’s gaze met his. “Do you trust her?”

“No,” he said, and took a long swallow of his wine.

Hero went to the window to watch the Frenchwoman climb into a waiting hackney. After a moment, she said, “Do you think she’s right, that Jarvis is behind this?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

She turned to look at him. “I think you need to talk to Hendon.”

He knew she was right. Not only was Hendon directly involved in the preliminary peace discussions, but no one knew better than Hendon what Jarvis was capable of.

That didn’t make what Sebastian was about to do any easier.

• • •

Once, Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, had been the proud father of one daughter and three strong sons.

The two older boys were his favorites, a reality the youngest child, Sebastian, accepted even as it grieved him more than he ever let anyone know. Over the years, he had sought endless explanations for his father’s harshness, for the undisguised mingling of anger and bemusement that so often pinched the Earl’s features when his gaze fell on his youngest and least satisfactory son. Was it because Sebastian was so unlike the Earl, in temperament and interests as well as in appearance? Or was it for some other reason entirely? Sebastian could never decide.

And then, one by one, Hendon’s sons died, first the eldest, Richard, and then his middle son, Cecil, leaving only the youngest, Sebastian, as the Earl’s heir. It wasn’t until Sebastian was a man grown that he’d learned the truth: that Hendon’s beautiful, laughing, golden-haired Countess had played her husband false. That Sebastian was not, in fact, the Earl’s own son, but a bastard sired by one of the Countess’s nameless, faceless lovers. As Hendon had always known.

Always.

• • •

The Earl was dozing in a chair beside the library fire in his massive Grosvenor Square town house when Sebastian came to pause in the doorway. Hendon was in his late sixties now, his body stocky and slightly stooped with age, his heavily jowled face lined and sagging, his hair almost white and beginning to thin.

Sebastian paused in the doorway, his gaze on the man he’d thought of as his father for twenty-nine years-the man the world still believed to be his father. Sebastian supposed that, in time, he would be able to forgive Hendon for all the lies of his growing-up years. But he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive the Earl for allowing those lies to drive Sebastian from the woman he’d once loved with all his heart and soul. The fact that Sebastian had found a new love in no way diminished either his anger or the hurt that fueled it. Yet as his gaze traveled over the old man’s familiar, once well-loved features, he felt an upswelling of powerful, unwanted emotions that he quickly suppressed.

He closed the door behind him with a click and watched Hendon draw in his breath in a half snore, then straighten with a jerk.

“Devlin.” The Earl swiped one thick hand over his lower face. “Didn’t hear you come in. This is. . unexpected.”

Since the two men had barely exchanged half a dozen painful, polite greetings for many months now, that was something of an understatement. Sebastian said, “I understand you’re involved with the delegation sent by Napoleon to explore the possibility of peace negotiations between our two countries.”

Hendon cleared his throat. “Heard about that, have you?”

“Yes.”

Hendon pushed to his feet and went to where his pipe and tobacco rested on a table near the hearth. “I expected you might, once you started looking into the death of that French physician-what was his name?”

“Pelletan.”

“That’s right; Pelletan.” He fussed with his pipe, filling the bowl with tobacco and tamping it down with the pad of his thumb. Then he cast Sebastian a sideways glance. “You know I can’t discuss the progress of the negotiations with you.”

“I realize that. What I’m interested in is the attitude of various individuals toward the possibility of peace. I’m told Jarvis favors continuing the war until our troops are in Paris and Napoleon is ousted from the throne.”

“I’d say that about sums it up, yes.”

“And Liverpool?”

“Ah. Well, the Prime Minister’s attitude is slightly different. He’d like to see Boney gone as much as anyone. But he’s also sensitive to the economic and political costs of the war. I suspect that if France would agree to withdraw to its original borders, Liverpool could find a way to live with the Corsican upstart. After all, Napoleon is now married to the sister of the Emperor of Austria; there’s something to be said for viewing their young child as a living union of the traditional with the modern. A reconciliation, of sorts.”

“True,” said Sebastian. He knew without being told where Hendon stood on the issue. As much as Hendon hated radicalism and republicanism, he’d been growing increasingly troubled by the toll that twenty years of war was taking on Britain and her people. “In other words, you and Liverpool are receptive to the negotiations, whereas Jarvis wants them to fail.”

“You said it; I didn’t.”

Sebastian watched the Earl light a taper and apply it to his pipe. “In my experience, Jarvis usually achieves what he wants.”

Hendon looked up, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked on his pipe, their gazes meeting through the haze of blue smoke. “Yes.”

“Any chance Jarvis could be actively working to ensure that the negotiations fail?”

“By literally butchering the members of the delegation, you mean?” Hendon sucked some more on his pipe, his eyes narrowing with thought. “Bit ghoulish, even for Jarvis, wouldn’t you say?”

“Perhaps. What about the possibility that Jarvis has suborned Vaundreuil himself?”

“To be honest, I’ve wondered about that. I’ve no proof, mind you; it’s just a feeling I have.”

Sebastian nodded and started to turn away. “Thank you.”

“Devlin?”

He glanced back at the Earl.

Hendon’s teeth clamped down on the stem of his pipe. “How does Lady Devlin?”

“She is well.”

“And my grandson? When is he expected to make his appearance?”

The child would be no true grandchild to Alistair St. Cyr. But if a boy, he would someday become, in turn, Viscount Devlin and eventually Earl of Hendon. “Soon,” said Sebastian after only a moment’s hesitation.

Hendon nodded, his lips relaxing into a faint smile. And Sebastian knew again the whisper of an old emotion he did not want, a sensation all tangled up with every painful and joyous memory of a childhood he had no desire to revisit.

“You’ll let me know?” Hendon asked gruffly.

“Yes.”

And then, because there was nothing more to say, Sebastian left.

• • •

The night was cold, the fog a thick, foul presence that seemed to press down on the city. Sebastian walked through empty streets, his footsteps echoing hollowly in the moisture-laden air. He was trying to sort through a tangle of evidence and explanations surrounding this baffling series of murders. But his thoughts kept returning, unbidden, to a lonely old man standing beside his hearth, his pipe in his hand, his startlingly blue eyes clouded with a host of contradictory emotions that Sebastian suspected the Earl himself never completely understood.

He was about to turn and climb the steps to his house when he became aware of someone running behind him.

He whirled, his hand going to the dagger in his boot just as a breathless voice exclaimed, “My lord Devlin?”

One of Lovejoy’s constables appeared out of the fog, his open mouth sucking air painfully, his somewhat ponderous stomach jiggling with his half trot.

Sebastian relaxed. “Yes; what is it?”

The constable drew up, his full, florid face slick with sweat despite the cold, his hands on his knees as he hunched over and sought to even his breathing. “Begging your lordship’s pardon, but there’s been a murder. Sir Henry thought you might like to know.”

“What’s happened?”

“A gentleman’s been murdered in Birdcage Walk.” The constable straightened, his breath still coming in panting gasps. “Leastways, the lady-er-gentleman with her-er, him-says it’s a gentleman. A gentleman dressed up like a lady, it is. Never seen nothing like it in all my born days!”