When Maidens Mourn

“His wife says he made a trip into London yesterday, which may have been when he confronted the killer and offered his silence in exchange for gold.”

“With the payment to be made this morning at Camlet Moat.” Hero pushed up from her dressing table. “Interesting choice of locales—and telling, perhaps?”

“It might be more telling if it weren’t for the fact that Sir Stanley and his wife both happen to be in London at the moment.”

“I know.” She went to select a pair of long ivory gloves from her glove box. “My father has invited them to a dinner party tonight at Berkeley Square.”

“Ah. So that’s where you’re going.”

She looked over at him. “You are invited as well, if you’d like.”

He let his gaze rove over her face. She looked as calm and self-possessed as ever. Yet he was coming to know her better, and he was uncomfortably conscious of a sense of artifice, of concealment about her. And it occurred to him that in her own way she was as gifted an actress as Kat Boleyn.

As if aware of the intensity of his scrutiny, she gave a sudden laugh and said, “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

She tipped her head to one side, a strange smile lighting her eyes. “And would you have me believe that you have been entirely open with me?”

He started to tell her that he had. Then he remembered the folded paper that lay in his pocket, a note he had received just moments earlier that read, I have some information you might find interesting. Come to the theater before tonight’s rehearsal. K.

The words of assurance died on his lips.

He watched her eyes narrow. She had her father’s eyes: a pale silvery gray at the outer rim with a starlike burst of sooty charcoal around the pupil and a gleam of intelligence almost frightening in its intensity. She said, “I don’t imagine there are many couples who find themselves thrown into a murder investigation within days of their marriage.”

“No. Although I suppose it’s appropriate, given how we met.”

She turned away. “Am I to take it that you’re declining my father’s dinner invitation?”

“I have an appointment with someone who may be able to provide me with information about Jamie Knox.”

She waited for him to tell her more, and when he didn’t, he saw the flare of some emotion her eyes, although whether it was hurt or suspicion or a gleam of malicious satisfaction, he couldn’t have said.

Chapter 36

War was very much the topic of conversation that evening in the reception rooms of Lord Jarvis’s Berkeley Square residence. War in Europe, war on the high seas, war in America.

Hero discussed Wellington’s successes in Spain with Castlereagh, the depredations of those damnable upstart Americans on British shipping with Bathurst, and Napoléon’s newest rampage against Russia with Liverpool. Most of the members of Liverpool’s government were in attendance, along with the city’s premier bankers, for war was very much a financial enterprise.

She found the night almost unbearably hot and close, the air in the crowded rooms unusually stifling. The hundreds of candles burning in the chandeliers overhead only added to the heat, and she could feel her cheeks start to burn. Ignoring the discomfort, she was working her way through her father’s guests to where she could see Sir Stanley Winthrop in conversation with her mother, Lady Jarvis, when the Earl of Hendon stopped her.

“I’d hoped I might find my son here with you tonight,” said Devlin’s father, his intensely blue St. Cyr eyes narrowed with a combination of anxiety and hurt. She did not understand the obvious estrangement that had grown between father and son, yet at the same time she didn’t feel quite right inquiring into it.

“I fear it will take more than a mere wedding to affect a rapprochement between Devlin and my father,” she said lightly.

“But he is well?”

“Devlin, you mean? He is, yes.”

“I heard he was set upon the other night in Covent Garden.”

“A minor wound. Nothing serious.”

Hendon sighed. “I’ll never understand why he continues to involve himself in these murder investigations. Is it boredom? Some quixotic delusion that he can somehow make all right with the world?”

“I don’t think Devlin suffers from any such delusions.” She tipped her head to one side. “Who told you of the attack on Devlin in Covent Garden?”

An uncharacteristic softness stole over his features. “A mutual friend,” he said, then bowed and moved on, leaving her staring thoughtfully after him.

She was brought out of her preoccupation by a woman’s voice saying, “My dear Lady Devlin, please allow me to offer my felicitations on your recent marriage.”

Hero turned to find herself being regarded by Sir Stanley Winthrop’s wife, who was looking hot and vaguely sweaty in a gown of pink tulle and satin made high at the neck and with long sleeves.

It was the knowledge that Lady Winthrop would be at tonight’s dinner that had inspired Hero to attend.

“Why, thank you,” said Hero, smiling as she drew the banker’s wife a little to one side. “I’m so glad you were able to come tonight; I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Gabrielle Tennyson.”

Lady Winthrop’s own somewhat ingratiating smile vanished, her gaze darting anxiously from left to right as if she were embarrassed by the thought that someone might have overheard Hero’s remark. “But…do you think this is quite the proper place to discuss—”

“Did you know her well?” Hero asked, ignoring the woman’s discomfiture.

Lady Winthrop cleared her throat and swallowed. “Not well, no.”

“But you are an intimate of Miss Tennyson’s cousin, Mary Bourne, I believe.”

“I don’t know if I would describe myself as an intimate, precisely—”

“No? I thought someone told me you frequently study the Bible together with the Reverend Samuel at Savoy Chapel.”

“We do, yes. God’s chosen ones may be saved by his irresistible grace, but with God’s grace comes an imperative to examine and consider the wisdom and beauty of his teachings. Particularly in these dangerous times, when so many are tempted by the blandishments of Satan and the lure of those ancient pagan beliefs so hostile to God.”

“Ah, yes; I’d heard Mrs. Bourne is the author of a pamphlet warning of the dangers of Druidism—written under a pseudonym, of course. Is she familiar, I wonder, with the legends associating Camlet Moat with the ancient Celts?” Hero let her gaze drift, significantly, to where Sir Stanley, looking splendid in silk knee breeches and tails, stood in conversation with Liverpool.

Lady Winthrop followed her gaze, her jaw hardening; something very like hatred flashed in her eyes as she stared across the room at her tall, handsome husband. “I’m not certain I understand precisely what you mean to imply, Lady Devlin,” she said, her voice low.

“Only that it’s fascinating, don’t you think, the subtle linkages that can connect one person to the next?”

“We are all joined together in sin.”

“Some more so than others, I suppose,” said Hero wryly.

Lady Winthrop’s nostrils flared on a quickly indrawn breath. “Gabrielle Tennyson was a woman separated from God. St. Paul tells us that it is a woman’s place to receive instruction with utter submission. The Lord does not allow women to teach or exercise authority over men, but enjoins them to remain quiet. Eve was created after Adam, and it was she who was deceived and fell into transgression. That is why a godly woman does not seek to go forth into the world and challenge men, but submits herself to a husband and devotes herself to the care of her household. I sometimes find myself wondering, if she had lived, what Miss Tennyson would have done, once her brother married. I don’t imagine his recent betrothal sat well with her.”

“What recent betrothal?”

A slow, unpleasant smile slid across the other woman’s features. “Oh, dear; have I betrayed a confidence? I knew the betrothal was being kept quiet due to the death of Miss Goodwin’s maternal grandmother, but I had assumed that as an intimate of Miss Tennyson’s, you would have known. Did she not tell you?”

“No,” said Hero. “She did not. How came you to know of it?”

“Emily Goodwin’s mother is a dear friend of mine.”

Kat Boleyn was wiggling a heavy costume of purple velvet trimmed with gold braid over her head when Sebastian slipped into her cramped dressing room at Covent Garden Theater and closed the door behind him.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it before rehearsal,” she said, turning her back to him and lifting the heavy fall of auburn hair from her neck. “Here. Make yourself useful.”

It was a natural request, for she was pressed for time and they were old friends. As his fingertips brushed against her warm body, he tried to think of her as an old friend—as a sister, although he knew only too well that she was not.

“You’ve learned something?” he asked, his voice strained.

She busied herself clasping a bracelet around her wrist. “You were right about Jamie Fox. He is indeed involved with a group of smugglers plying the Channel. They work out of a small village near Dover, running mainly French wine and brandy.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “But there’s something more going on…something I can’t tell you about.”

He swung her around to face him, his narrowed gaze studying the gentle curve of her cheek, the childlike upturned nose, the full, sensuous lips. “I thought you knew you could trust me—that nothing I learn from you will ever go any further, no matter what it is.”

“This confidence is not mine to betray.” Her familiar blue eyes narrowed with some emotion he could not name. “The only thing I can tell you is that what’s going on here is dangerous—very dangerous. Jamie Knox is dangerous. He’s loyal to no one except himself—and perhaps to his friend, a fellow rifleman named Jack Simpson.”

“I’ve met him.”

She touched his arm lightly. “I heard you were set upon the other night and hurt. Are you all right?”

“Where did you hear that?”

She gave him a jaunty smile. “Gibson told me.”

“Gibson has a big mouth. It’s just a scratch.”

“Uh-huh.”

A warning bell sounded in the distance. He hesitated a moment, then took her hand in his and kissed her fingers. “Thank you,” he said, and turned toward the door.

“Sebastian—”

He paused to look back at her.

“They say Jamie Knox’s hearing, eyesight, and reflexes rival yours. And we both know he looks enough like you to be your brother—or at least your half brother. What’s going on here?”

All the noise of a theatrical troupe about to begin a dress rehearsal echoed around them—quickly stifled giggles, a hoarse shout for some missing prop, the thump of hurrying feet on bare floorboards. Sebastian said, “I don’t know. He claims his father was a cavalry captain.”

“But you don’t believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe. Amanda told me once that my father was probably a groom.”

Kat’s lip curled. “That sounds like something Amanda would say, just to be hurtful.” Sebastian’s sister, Amanda, had hated him from birth—for being male, for being eligible to inherit their father’s title and riches, and, as Sebastian had learned recently, for being living evidence of their mother’s endless, indiscriminate infidelities.

He said, “That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true.”

Sebastian was standing before the empty hearth in his library, a booted foot on the cold grate, a glass of brandy in his hand, when he heard a carriage draw up before the house and Hero’s quick steps mount to the front door. A single brace of candles burned on the mantel; the rest of the room lay in shadow. He listened to her low-voiced consultation with Morey. Then she appeared at the entrance to the library, one gloved hand raised to release the throat catch of her evening cloak.

“You’re home early,” he said, straightening as he turned toward her.

“I’m glad I found you,” she said, advancing into the room. “I’ve just learned the most astonishing information.”

In spite of himself, Sebastian found himself smiling. “Really? What?”

She swung off her cloak and draped it over the back of a nearby chair. “Hildeyard Tennyson isn’t just courting this Miss Goodwin; they’re betrothed!”

“I know.”

Hero stared at him, dawning indignation chasing incredulity across her features. “You knew!”

“Tennyson mentioned it when he first arrived back in London. He said the betrothal was arranged shortly before he left for Kent, but was never formally announced due to the sudden death of Miss Goodwin’s grandmother in the midst of the settlement negotiations.”

“But if you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought I did.”

“No. You told me he’d formed an attachment to the daughter of one of his colleagues; you said nothing of a betrothal.”

“I beg your pardon. I suppose I didn’t consider it significant. You obviously disagree; why?”

“Think about it. Gabrielle was still in the schoolroom when she took over the management of her father’s household after her mother died. She was mistress of the Tennyson town house in the Adelphi and their small estate in Kent for something like thirteen years. Can you imagine a woman like Gabrielle meekly turning over to her brother’s new eighteen-year-old bride the reins to two houses she’d considered hers for years, and then continuing to live there in any kind of comfort?”

Sebastian took a slow sip of his brandy. “To be honest, I never gave a thought to the effect his marriage would inevitably have on his domestic arrangements.”

The look on Hero’s face said so clearly, Men, that he almost laughed out loud.

He said, “So tell me exactly what all I’ve missed by being so, well, male about this.”

She jerked off her long gloves and tossed them on the chair beside her cloak. “The thing is, you see, if Gabrielle were penniless, she would have had no option but to continue living at the Adelphi with her brother and his new bride. But Gabrielle wasn’t penniless; her father had left her an independent income. It might not have been excessive, but it was enough to enable her to live on her own, or—”

“Or with the man she loved,” said Sebastian. “And under the circumstances, I can’t see his qualms about being seen as a fortune hunter stopping him.” The inclination to laugh was gone.

Hero walked to where she had left the book of English Cavalier poets lying on the table beside the chair. “I was thinking about that poem Arceneaux gave Gabrielle, the one by Robert Herrick. He copied out the last three stanzas to give to her. But it’s the first three that I think may be important.” She flipped through the book. “Here it is; listen:

Bid me to live, and I will live

Thy Protestant to be:

Or bid me love, and I will give

A loving heart to thee.

A heart as soft, a heart as kind,

A heart as sound and free

As in the whole world thou canst find,

That heart I’ll give to thee.

Bid that heart stay, and it will stay,

To honor thy decree—

Sebastian recited the poem from memory along with her, his gaze locked with hers, their voices blending together, tenor and contralto. “‘Or bid it languish quite away, / And’t shall do so for thee.’”

“Bloody hell,” he said, and drained his brandy to set the glass aside with a snap.

Chapter 37

Arceneaux’s lodgings lay in a dark, narrow lane not far from the church of St. Clements. While not exactly a slum, the once genteel area had long ago begun the slow slide into poverty. As Sebastian paused on the footpath, his gaze scanning the old house’s dusty windows and crumbling facade, a bedraggled woman well past her youth, her face gaunt and haunting, separated herself from the shadows of a nearby archway to hiss at him invitingly.

He shook his head and pushed open the street door.

The atmosphere inside the house was hot and close and filled with the smells of cooked cabbage and dry rot and the faint but inescapable odor of uncollected night soil. He climbed the worn, darkened stairs to the attic, trying to imagine Gabrielle’s gentle, scholarly French lieutenant in this place. From behind one door came a man’s hoarse, angry shouts and a woman’s soft weeping; from the next, the wail of a babe went on and on. Someone somewhere was coaxing a sad melody from a violin, the bittersweet notes mingling bizarrely with the yowl of mating cats in the back alley.

There were only two doors at the very top of the stairs. Neither showed any trace of light through their cracks, but Sebastian knocked on both anyway and stood listening for some hint of movement.

Nothing.

Under the terms of his parole, Arceneaux should have been in his lodgings by now. Sebastian turned back toward the stairs, hesitating a moment with one hand on the battered newel post. Then he headed for the Angel on Wych Street.

He found the coffeehouse nearly empty in the heat. Tobacco smoke and the smell of freshly roasted coffee hung heavy in the pale flickering light. As he closed the door quietly behind him, the barman looked up questioningly. Sebastian shook his head, his gaze drifting slowly over the desultory groups of men hunched sullenly around their tables, their conversations low voiced.

Arceneaux was not amongst them. But in a corner near the empty hearth, the big blond hussar captain, Pelletier, was playing chess with a gaunt infantry officer in a tattered blue coat. At Sebastian’s approach, the hussar lifted his head, the gold coins at the ends of his love knots winking in the candlelight, the fingers of one hand smoothing his luxurious mustache as he watched Sebastian cross the room toward him.

“Come to ruin another of my games, have you?” he said when Sebastian paused beside the table.

“Has Arceneaux been here tonight?”

The hussar pursed his lips and raised one shoulder in a shrug.

“Does that mean you haven’t seen him? Or that you don’t know where he is?”

“It means he is not here now.”

“Do you know where I might find him?”

The man’s lips parted in an insolent smile. “Non.”

“I thought under the terms of your parole you were confined to your lodgings after eight p.m.”

“Our lodgings are here,” said the infantry officer when the hussar remained silent. “We’ve rooms upstairs.”

Sebastian glanced down at the chessboard. “Interesting. Whose move?”

“Mine,” said the infantry officer, plucking at his lower lip with one thumb and forefinger, his brow knit in a puzzled, hopeless frown.

“Try queen to F-seven,” said Sebastian, turning away.

“Casse-toi,” hissed the hussar with an angry growl, half rising from his seat.

“Not a wise idea,” said Sebastian, turning back with one hand on the flintlock in his pocket.

For a moment, the hussar’s fiery eyes met his. Then the Frenchman sank back into his seat, his jaw set hard, his chest rising and falling with his rapid breathing.

Sebastian was aware of the man’s angry gaze following him to the door.

Outside, the night had taken on a strange, breathless quality, the air hot and heavy and oppressive. He stood on the flagway, aware of a rising sense of frustration. Where the hell was Arceneaux? For a paroled officer to be found outside his lodgings after curfew meant the revocation of his parole and consignment to the same hell holes as men from the ranks.

Sebastian felt the faintest suggestion of a breeze wafting through the streets, carrying with it a coolness and the promise of a change. He smelled the river and the inrushing tide and a touch of brine that hinted at faraway lands.

And he knew where the French lieutenant had gone.

Only ten months into its building, the new Strand Bridge rose from the bank of the river at the site of what had once been the Savoy, the grandest palace on the Thames. But the Savoy had long since degenerated from its days of glory, first into an almshouse, then a prison and barracks. Now it was only a shattered, half-demolished ruin that stretched between the Strand and the riverbank below, a wasteland scattered with rubble and piles of dressed stone and brick and timber that extended out onto the rising bridge itself. As Sebastian worked his way down the darkened slope, he could see the curving stone foundations of a small medieval guard tower and a long brick wall pierced by empty mullioned arches. Beyond the ruins, the jagged, looming bulk of the new bridgehead stood out pale against the blackness of the sky.

The first four of the bridge’s vast arches were already complete, although the wooden forms at their centers were still in place and a rope-suspended walkway and scaffolding ran beneath the beginnings of what would eventually be an entablature, cornice, and balustrade above. When finished, the bridge’s carriageway would rise even with the level of the Strand. But now it lay some feet below it, a rough, unpaved grade that stretched out toward the opposite bank only to end abruptly over the rushing water.

As he walked out onto the bridge, Sebastian could hear the tide splashing against the cofferdams at the base of the piers, feel the unexpected coolness of the breeze wafting against his sweat-sheened face. He kept his gaze focused on the solitary figure of a man that showed against the sliding expanse of the Thames beyond. The man sat at the jagged end of the bridge, his legs dangling over the water hundreds of feet below, one hand resting companionably on the brown and black dog at his side.

“How did you know where to find me?” Arceneaux asked when Sebastian paused some ten feet away from him.

“I remembered what you told me, about liking to come here.”

The Frenchman tilted back his head, the wind off the water ruffling the hair around his face. “Are you going to turn me in?”

“No.”

Arceneaux took a long breath, eyes closing, nostrils flaring, lips pressed into a tight smile as he drew the air deep within him. “Do you smell it? It’s the sea. The same sea that at this very moment is swelling the estuary of the Rance and battering the stone ramparts of Saint-Malo.”

Sebastian stood very still, the growing wind tugging at the tails of his coat.

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever see any of it again,” said Arceneaux. “We have the illusion of being free here, but we’re not really. Whatever happened to all the prisoners of the Hundred Years’ War? Do you know? What happens to the prisoners of a war that never ends? Is this my destiny, I wonder? To live out my life alone in a dusty, dark garret, scrabbling for a few shillings here and there, teaching bored little boys to speak French and—” His voice cracked and he shook his head.

Sebastian said, “Two weeks ago, Mr. Hildeyard Tennyson asked the daughter of one of his associates for her hand in marriage. Word of the betrothal was kept private due to the intended bride’s recent bereavement. But I can’t believe Miss Tennyson didn’t tell you, her dear, beloved friend.”

For a moment, Arceneaux sat motionless. Then Chien nuzzled his head against his friend’s side. The Frenchman ran one hand down the dog’s back, his attention seemingly focused on his companion. “She told me, yes.”

“I’ll admit the significance of Tennyson’s betrothal escaped me at first. But as my wife—far more acute in such matters than I—pointed out, a woman of Miss Tennyson’s temperament and independent ways would never have continued living as a mere sister-in-law and hanger-on in the houses where she herself had been mistress for more than a decade.”

Arceneaux continued to stare silently out over the river, his hand running up and down the dog’s back.

Sebastian said, “She must have been upset and in need of comfort. You had already declared your love for her. Yet you would have me believe that you still didn’t ask her to marry you? That you didn’t press her to marry you?”

“No.” The world was a soft, halfhearted lie nearly lost in the wind.

Sebastian quoted,

Bid that heart stay, and it will stay,

To honor thy decree

Or bid it languish quite away,

And’t shall do so for thee.

He paused, then said, “Were you thinking about violating your parole and going back to France?”

“No!”

“I think you were. I think you changed your mind because Gabrielle Tennyson finally agreed to marry you.” Sebastian suspected that was probably when the two lovers had first lain together, but he wasn’t going to say it.

Arceneaux scrambled to his feet and took a hasty step forward, only to draw up short. “All right, damn you! It’s true. I thought about escaping. Do you imagine there is a prisoner of war anywhere who doesn’t sometimes dream of breaking his parole and escaping? Who isn’t tempted?”

Sebastian stared at the young French lieutenant. In the fitful moonlight his face was pale, his eyes like sunken bruises in a pain-ravaged face. The wind ruffled the fine brown hair around his head, flapped the tails of his coat. Sebastian had the impression the man was holding himself together by a sheer act of will. But he was coming dangerously close to shattering.

“Did she agree to marry you?”

Rather than answer, the Frenchman simply nodded, his gaze turning to stare out over the wind-whipped waters of the river.

I’m half sick of shadows, thought Sebastian, watching him. He said, “There’s something you’re still not telling me. God damn it, Lieutenant; the woman you loved is dead. Who do you think killed her?”

Arceneaux swung to face him again. “You think if I knew who killed her, I wouldn’t make them pay?”

“You may not be quite certain who is to blame. But you have some suspicions, and those suspicions are weighing heavily on you. It’s why you’re here now, risking your parole. Isn’t it?”

The wind gusted up, stronger now, scurrying the tumbling dark clouds overhead and obscuring the hazy sickle of the moon.

“Who do you think killed her?” Sebastian demanded again.

“I don’t know!” The Frenchman’s features contorted as if the words were being torn from him. “I lie awake every night, wondering if I might somehow be responsible for the death of the woman I loved.”

“Why?” pressed Sebastian. “What makes you think you might be responsible?”

Chien rose to his feet, his gaze fixed on the rubble-strewn bank, ears at half cock as he trotted a few steps toward the bridgehead and then stopped.

Arceneaux went to rest a hand on the dog’s neck. “What is it, boy? Hmm?”

Sebastian was aware of an inexplicable but inescapable intimation of danger that quickened his breath and brought a burning tingle to the surface of his skin. He scanned the ruins of the ancient palace, his eyes narrowing as he studied the piles of stone and timber, the long line of broken wall with its empty windows a dark and melancholy tracery against the stormy sky.

“Arceneaux,” he said warningly, just as a belching tongue of flame erupted from the foundations of the old guard tower and the crack of a rifle shot echoed across the water.

Chapter 38

“Get down!” Sebastian shouted as he dove for cover behind the half-built cornice.

Looking back, he saw Arceneaux stagger, a bloom of shiny dark wetness spreading high across the center of his waistcoat.

“Arceneaux!”

The Frenchman’s knees buckled slowly, his head tilting back, his face lifted as if he were looking at the sky.

Sebastian scrambled into the open to grab the man as he fell and dragged him into the protective lee of the stonework. “Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, clutching the shuddering man to him.

Chien crouched beside them, his harsh barks splitting the night.

The entire front of the Frenchman’s waistcoat was wet with blood, his mouth open and gasping in great sucking wheezes that blew little bubbles in the wet sheen on his chest.

Sebastian knew only too well what that meant.

He ripped off his cravat anyway and rolled it around his fist to form a thick pad.

“No…point…” Arceneaux whispered as Sebastian pressed the cloth against the gaping, oozing wound in his chest. Then he choked and blood poured from his mouth and nose.

“You’re going to be all right,” Sebastian lied, hauling the wounded man up so that his back lay against Sebastian’s own chest in a desperate attempt to keep Arceneaux from drowning in his own blood.

Arceneaux shook his head, his eyes rolling back in his head. “Gabrielle…”

“Talk to me, Philippe,” shouted Sebastian, the Frenchman’s warm blood pouring over his hand as he desperately pressed the padded cloth to Arceneaux’s shattered, jerking chest. “Who would want to kill you?”

The jerking stopped.

“Philippe? Philippe!”

Beside him, the dog whined, his nose thrusting against the Frenchman’s limp hand.

“Damn,” said Sebastian on a hard expulsion of pent-up breath.

Despite the coolness of the rising wind, he was sweating, his breath coming in quick pants. Shifting carefully, he eased the Frenchman’s weight off his own body. He could smell the acrid pinch of burnt powder, see the drift of gun smoke as he slewed around to peer cautiously over the edge of the stone wall.

Nothing.

He focused his gaze on the remnants of the old medieval tower that lay to the right and just below the broken stretch of palace wall. Most of the tower’s superstructure was long gone, leaving only a curving section of stone foundation perhaps four feet high. Studying it, Sebastian estimated that the shooter’s position lay some two hundred yards from where he crouched, possibly three. It would have been a difficult shot to make in good light on a calm day. At night, with clouds obscuring the moon and a wind kicking up, most men would have said it was impossible.

But not a trained rifleman who could bring down a running rabbit at three hundred yards in the dark.

Sebastian swiped the back of his hand across his forehead. The problem was, why would Jamie Knox want to kill Gabrielle Tennyson’s French lieutenant? It made no sense.…

If the shooter was indeed Jamie Knox, and if his intended target was actually Arceneaux and not Sebastian himself.

A faint flicker of movement showed above the jagged top of the tower wall, then stilled. The shooter was still there.

Sebastian considered his options. He was essentially pinned down. He had a flintlock in his own pocket, but the pistol was small, its range limited. Against a rifle over any distance, it was useless.

Right now, he was protected by the solid length of the half-constructed cornice that ran along the edge of the bridge. But if the shooter was to shift—or if he had a confederate who could come in from the west—Sebastian would be as exposed at the end of that long, open bridge as a target in a shooting gallery.

He needed to move.

Shifting his gaze, he assessed the distance from where he lay to a stack of dressed stone that stood perhaps a third of the way back toward the bridgehead. Sebastian had heard enough Baker rifles in his day to know exactly what was shooting at him. The Baker was a single-shot weapon. But a good rifleman could reload and fire four times in a minute.

An exceptional rifleman could make it to five.

Sebastian had no doubt that the man shooting at him was an exceptional rifleman.

That meant that if Sebastian could lure the rifleman into firing, he would have at most twelve seconds to make it to the safety of that pile of stones before the shooter finished reloading and was able to fire again.

He was trying to figure out how he could trick the rifleman into firing—without actually getting shot—when Chien, who had been lying stretched out whining beside Arceneaux’s still body, suddenly stood up.

“Down, boy,” whispered Sebastian.

The dog hunkered into a lowered stance, eyes alert and fixed as it stared at the near bank.

“Chien,” cautioned Sebastian. Then he shouted, “Chien! No!” as the dog tore into the night, a black and brown streak against the pale stone length of the bridge.

He watched, helpless, as the dog raced up the slope. Chien was nearly to the guard tower when the rifle cracked again, spitting fire into the night.

The dog yelped, then fell silent.

“Bloody son of a bitch,” swore Sebastian, and took off running.

He could feel the wind off the water whipping at his coattails, the rubble of the roadway shifting dangerously beneath the soles of his boots as he mentally counted off the seconds since the last shot.

…six, seven…

He swerved around a pile of broken stone—eight, nine—and leapt a small chasm—ten, eleven—to dive behind the looming stones just as the next rifle shot reverberated across the open waterfront.

A cascade of pulverized grit exploded beside his face.

“Hell and the devil confound it,” he swore, wiping his sleeve across his bloody cheek. Then he was up and running again, this time for the pile of timbers he could see near the bridgehead.

…seven, eight…

He could hear the inrushing tide slapping against the cofferdam at the base of the first pier, the rumble of what sounded like distant thunder.

…ten, eleven…

The timbers were farther than he’d realized. He skittered the last ten feet flat out on his stomach, the rubble of roadway tearing at his clothes as he braced himself for the next shot.

It never came.

Clever bastard.

Sebastian lay stretched out prone behind the pile of timbers, his heart pounding, the blood rushing in his ears. The rifleman had obviously figured out exactly what Sebastian was doing. Rather than wasting his shot, the man now had a loaded weapon; all he needed to do was wait for Sebastian to fully show himself again, and then calmly squeeze the trigger.

He can shoot the head off a running rabbit at three hundred yards in the dark.

The wind gusted up, bringing with it the smells of the river and the creaking of the suspended walkways that ran along both sides of the partially built bridge, just above the summit of the arches. Sebastian hesitated for a moment, his gaze fixed on the darkened ruins, his ears straining to catch the least sound.

Nothing.

Rolling quickly to the far side of the bridge, he lowered himself carefully over the edge until he hung suspended, his fingers digging into a gap in the stonework, feet dangling in space above the narrow suspended walkway, the river rushing far below.

Then he let go.

He landed lightly on the boards of the walkway, the suspension ropes swaying dizzily as the structure took his weight. Then, with the massive stone bulk of the bridge now between him and the shooter, Sebastian sprinted for the riverbank, the walkway dancing and swaying beneath him.

The last arch of the bridge soared high above the tidal mudflats of the riverbed to butt into the rubble-strewn bank. He reached solid ground and paused for a moment, his senses straining to catch any movement, any sound. He scanned the dry, rutted slope of the bank, the matted half-dead weeds, the looming wreck of the ancient palace. He found himself remembering other nights in what seemed like a different lifetime, when death waited in each dark shadow and around every corner, when the rumble in the distance was artillery, not thunder, and the broken walls were Spanish villages blackened by the stains of fires not yet grown cold.

He drew a deep breath, suddenly aware of a powerful, raging thirst. He swallowed hard, his throat aching. Then, hunkering low, he darted across the open ground and ducked behind the broken fragment of the old palace wall.

Once, this section of the palace had overlooked the river, an elegant facade pierced by high, pointed windows and supported by massive buttresses. Now only the one wall remained, stretching eastward to end abruptly just above the small round tower where the shooter waited. Moving as quietly as possible, Sebastian crept through the ruins, painfully aware of the rustle of the long, dry weeds, of each broken stone that shifted beneath the soles of his boots. He passed the yawning opening of what had once been a massive medieval fireplace, an empty doorway, a spiral of steps going nowhere. Through the gaping windows he could see the massive works of the new bridge, the dark, sliding shimmer of the river, the low curve of the old guard tower’s stone foundations.

Pausing at the jagged end of the wall, he slipped his flintlock pistol from his pocket and quietly eased back the hammers on both barrels. He could hear the distant clatter of the carriages on the Strand up above, feel the powerful thrumming of his own blood in the veins of his neck. He took a deep breath. Then he burst around the end of the broken wall, his pistol pointing down into the foundations of the guard tower, his finger already tightening on the first trigger.

But the tower was empty, the weeds within it matted and scattered with debris. The shooter had vanished into the night, leaving only the Baker rifle leaning mockingly against the worn, ancient stones.

Chapter 39

Sir Henry Lovejoy was not fond of heights.

He stood well back from the jagged edge of the bridge’s last, half-constructed arch, his legs splayed wide against the powerful buffeting of the growing wind. He could see the river far below, the dark waters churning and frothing against the rough temporary coffer dams. The air was thick with the smell of the inrushing tide and the damp mudflats of the nearby bank and the coppery tang of freshly spilled blood.

“What did you say his name was?” Lovejoy asked, his gaze on the dead man sprawled in the lee of the bridge’s half-built cornice.

Devlin stood beside him, his evening clothes torn and dusty and soaked dark with the dead man’s blood. In one hand he gripped a Baker rifle, his fingers showing pale against the dark forestock. “Arceneaux. Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux, of the Twenty-second Chasseurs à Cheval.”

Grunting, Lovejoy hunkered down to study the French officer’s fine-boned features, the sensitively molded lips and lean cheeks. In death, he looked shockingly young. But then, Lovejoy thought, by the time a man reaches his mid-fifties, twenty-four or -five can seem very young indeed.

Pushing to his feet, he nodded briskly to two of the men he’d brought with him. Between them, they heaved the Frenchman’s body up and swung it onto the deadhouse shell they would use to transport the corpse through the city streets.

“You’ve no idea of the identity of the shooter?” Lovejoy asked Devlin.

“I never got a good look at him. He was firing from the ruins of the old guard tower. There, to the right.”

“Want I should go have a look?” asked Constable Leeper, a tall beanpole of a man with an abnormally long neck and a badly sunburnt face.

Lovejoy nodded. “Might as well. We’ll see better in the daylight, but we ought to at least do a preliminary search now.”

As the constable turned to go, Devlin stopped him, saying, “The Lieutenant had a medium-sized brown and black dog that the rifleman shot. I’ve searched the riverbank for him myself without success. But if you should happen to come upon him—and if he should still be alive—I would like him taken to someone capable of caring for his wounds.”

“Aye, yer lordship,” said the Constable, his torch filling the air with the scent of hot pitch as he headed back down the bridge.

Lovejoy squinted into the murky distance. From here, the near bank was only a confused jumble of dark shapes and indistinct shadows. “Merciful heavens. The ruins of that tower must be three hundred yards away.”

Devlin’s face remained impassive. “Very nearly, yes.”

“If I hadn’t seen the results myself, I would have said that’s impossible. In the daylight it would be phenomenal; how could anyone even see a target over such a distance at night, let alone hit it?”

“If he had good eyesight, good night vision, and a steady finger, he could do it. I’ve known sharpshooters who could hit a man at seven hundred yards, if the man is standing still and it’s a sunny day.”

Something in the Viscount’s voice drew Lovejoy’s gaze to him. He stood with his back held oddly rigid, his face stained with blood and dust and sweat.

Lovejoy said, “Are you certain Arceneaux was the shooter’s intended target? He did continue firing at you, after all.”

“He did. But that was only to keep me pinned down long enough for him to get away. I think he killed the man he came here to get.”

With a succession of grunts, the two men from the parish lifted the shell to their shoulders and headed back toward the riverbank. Lovejoy picked up the lantern and fell into step behind them, the rubble of the half-constructed bridge crunching beneath his feet. “Am I to take it this Lieutenant Arceneaux is the young Frenchman who befriended Miss Gabrielle Tennyson?”

“He is,” said Devlin. “Only, I gather they were considerably more than friends.”

“Tragic.”

“It is, yes.”

“And you have no notion at all who could have done this, or why?”

Devlin paused beside the ruins of the ancient palace, his strange yellow eyes glinting in the fitful light from Lovejoy’s lantern as he stared into the darkness.

“My lord?”

Devlin glanced over at him, as if only suddenly reminded of Lovejoy’s presence. “Excuse me, Sir Henry,” he said with a quick bow and turned away.

“My lord?”

But Devlin was already gone, his long legs carrying him easily up the dark, rubble-strewn bank, the rifle in his hand casting a slim, lethal shadow across the night.

Sebastian strode into the Black Devil with the Baker rifle still gripped in his fist. His shirt front and waistcoat were drenched dark red with Arceneaux’s blood; his cravat was gone. His once elegant evening coat hung in dusty tatters. He’d lost his hat, and a trickle of blood ran down one side of his dirty, sweat-streaked face.

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints,” whispered the buxom, dark-haired barmaid as Sebastian drew up just inside the door, the Baker propped at an angle on his hip, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the smoky, low-ceilinged room.

“Where’s Knox?” he demanded, his words carrying clearly over the skittering of chairs and benches, the thumps of heavy boots as the tavern’s patrons scrambled to get out of his way.

The girl froze wide-eyed behind the bar, her lips parted, the half-exposed white mounds of her breasts jerking and quivering with her agitated breathing.

“Where the bloody hell is he?” Sebastian said again.

“You do favor the dramatic entrance, don’t you?” said a sardonic voice from a doorway that opened off the back of the room.

Sebastian turned. His gaze met Knox’s across the now empty expanse of the public room, twin pairs of yellow eyes that shared an ability to see great distances and at night with an accuracy that struck most normal men as inhuman.

Or evil.

Sebastian laid the Baker on the scarred surface of the bar with a clatter. “I’m returning your rifle.”

A faint smile curled the other man’s lips. “Sorry. Not mine. Did someone lose it?”

“Where were you an hour ago?”

Jamie Knox advanced into the room, still faintly smiling. He wore his usual black coat and black waistcoat and black cravat, his face a dark, handsome mask. “Here, of course. Why do you ask?”

“Ever meet a Frenchman named Philippe Arceneaux?”

“Arceneaux?” Knox frowned as if with the effort of concentration. “Perhaps. It’s rather difficult to say. I own a tavern; many men come here.”

“Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux.”

“Does he say I know him?”

“He’s dead. Someone shot him through the heart tonight from a distance of some three hundred yards. Know anyone who could make a shot like that?”

“It’s a rare talent. But not unheard of.”

“Your friend tells me you can shoot the head off a running rabbit at more than three hundred yards. In the dark.”

Knox glanced over to where the wide-eyed girl still stood behind the bar. “Leave us.”

She let herself out the front door, pausing on the threshold to throw him a last, questioning glance that he ignored. The public room was now empty except for the two men.

Knox sauntered behind the bar and reached below the counter for a bottle of brandy. “You’ve obviously been talking to my old mate, Jack Simpson.” He eased the stopper from the brandy. “He’ll also tell you that I can catch a will-o’-the-wisp out of the air and hear the whispers of the dead. But just between you and me, I wouldn’t be believing everything he says.”

Sebastian wandered the room, his gaze drifting over the low-beamed rafters, the massive old stone fireplace, and broad hearth. “I’ve heard it said you won this place at the roll of the dice—or that you killed a man for it. Which was it?”

Knox set the bottle and two glasses on the counter beside the Baker. “Like I said, you don’t want to be believing everything you hear about me.”

“I also hear you were at Corunna. Lieutenant Arceneaux was at Corunna, as well. Is that where you met him?”

“I never met your Lieutenant Arceneaux, God rest his soul.” Knox poured brandy into the two glasses and tucked the bottle away. “Here. Have a drink.”

“Thank you, but no.”

Knox laughed. “What do you think, then? That I’m trying to do away with you?” He pushed both glasses across the bar. “There. You choose one; I’ll drink the other. Will that allay your superstitions?”

Moving deliberately, Sebastian came to select one of the glasses of amber liquid.

His yellow eyes gleaming, Knox lifted the other to his lips and drank deeply. “There. Now, shall we wait to see if I drop to the floor and start thrashing about in my death throes?” He took another sip, this time letting the brandy roll around on his tongue. “It’s good stuff, this. Comes from a château just outside Angoulême.”

“And how did it make its way into your cellars?”

Knox smiled. “Would you have me believe you’ve no French brandy in your cellars, then?”

“Arceneaux hailed from Saint-Malo, another wine region. He told me once his father owned a vineyard. Perhaps that’s how you met him.”

Knox was no longer smiling. “I told you. I never met him.”

“I’ll figure it out eventually, you know.”

“When you do, come back. But as it is, you’ve nothing against me but conjecture.”

“So sure?”

“If you had anything you thought might begin to pass as proof, I’d be down at Bow Street right now, talking to the magistrates. Not to you.”

“Thanks for the brandy.” Sebastian set his glass on the bar and turned toward the street.

“You’re forgetting your rifle,” Knox called after him.

“Keep it. You might need it again.”

The tavern owner laughed, his voice ringing out loud and clear. “You remember how I told you my father was a cavalry officer?”

Sebastian paused with one hand on the doorjamb to look back at him.

Knox still stood behind the bar. “Well, I lied. My mother never knew for certain which of the three bastards she lay with had planted me in her belly. She was a young barmaid named Nellie, you see, at the Crown and Thorn, in Ludlow. According to the woman who raised me, Nellie said her baby’s da could’ve been either an English lord, a Welsh captain, or a Gypsy stableboy. If she’d lived long enough, she might have recognized my actual sire in me as I grew. But she died when I was still only a wee babe.”

Sebastian’s skin felt hot; the abrasions on his face stung. And yet he knew the strangest sensation, as if he were somehow apart from himself, a disinterested observer of what was being said.

Knox said, “I saw the Earl of Hendon in Grosvenor Square the other day. He looks nothing like me. But then, it occurs to me, he don’t look anything like you, either. Now, does he?”

Sebastian opened the door and walked out into the warm, wind-tossed night.

Chapter 40

The storm broke shortly before dawn, with great sheets of rain hurled through the streets by a howling wind and thunder that rattled the glass in the windowpanes with all the savage power of an artillery barrage.

Sebastian stood on the terrace at the rear of his Brook Street house, his outstretched arms braced against the stone balustrade overlooking the garden. He had his eyes closed, his head tipped back as he let the rain wash over him.

When he was a very little boy, his mother used to take him for walks in the rain. Sometimes in the summer, if it was warm, she’d let him out without his cap. The rain would plaster his hair to his head and run off the tip of his nose. He’d try to catch the drops with his tongue, and she wouldn’t scold him, not even when he waded and splashed through every puddle he could find, squealing as the water shot out from beneath his stomping feet.

But his favorite walks were those they took in the rain in Cornwall, when the fierce winds of a storm would lash the coast and she’d bundle him up and take him with her out to the cliffs. Together they would stand side by side, mesmerized by the power of the wind and the fury of the waves battering the rocks with an awe-inspiring roar. She’d shout, Oh, Sebastian; feel that! Isn’t it glorious? And the wind would slam into her, rocking her back a step, and she’d laugh and fling wide her arms and close her eyes, surrendering to the sheer exhilaration of the moment.

So lost was he in the past that he failed to mark the opening of the door behind him. It was some other sense entirely that brought him the sudden certainty that he was no longer alone.

“Devlin?”

He turned to find Hero standing in the doorway. She still wore the ivory gown with the dusky pink ribbons, and he wondered if she had awakened and dressed to come in search of him, or if she had not yet made it to her bed.

He had stripped off his torn, blood-soaked coat and waistcoat, but he still wore his ruined shirt, his collar askew. “My God,” she said, her eyes widening when she saw him. “You’re covered in blood.”

“It’s not mine. Philippe Arceneaux is dead.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Why would I kill him? I liked him.”

She walked out into the rain, the big drops making dark splotches on the fine silk of her dress as she reached up to touch his cheek. “You’re hurt.”

“Just scratched.”

“What happened?”

“Whoever killed Arceneaux shot him from a distance of three hundred yards. In the dark.”

“Who can shoot accurately at such a distance?”

“A Bishopsgate tavern owner and ex-rifleman named Jamie Knox, for one.”

“Why would a tavern owner want to kill Arceneaux?”

“I don’t know.” He stared out over the wind-tossed garden, a jagged flash of lightning splitting the sky. The rain poured about them. “There’s too much I don’t know. And because of it, people keep dying.”

“It’s not your fault. You’re doing everything you can.”

He looked at her again. “It’s not enough.”

She shook her head, an odd smile hovering about her lips. In the darkness, her eyes had a strange, almost luminous quality. The rain ran down her cheeks, dripped off the ends of her wet hair, soaked the bodice of her gown so that her high, round breasts showed clearly through the thin silk of her gown.

His voice hoarse, he said, “You’re ruining your dress. You need to go inside.”

“So do you.”

Neither of them moved.

Slowly, she slipped her hand behind his neck, her thumb flicking across his throat in a soft caress, her gaze tangling with his. Then, her eyes wide-open, she tilted her head and touched her lips to his.

He opened his mouth to her, drank deeply of her kiss, swept his hands up her back. He felt her tremble. But before he could pull her to him, she slipped away from him.

She paused at the door to look back. He saw a succession of raw, naked emotions flash across her face—guilt and regret and a fierce, hopeless kind of longing. She said, “When this is all over, we need to…begin again.”

The rain pounded down on him, the wind billowing his wet, bloodstained shirt and plastering his hair to his head. He was aware of the lateness of the hour, the fullness of her lips, the unexpected raw wanting that surged through him for this woman who was his wife, the mother of his unborn child…and his enemy’s daughter.

He said harshly, “And what if it’s never over?”

But she had no answer, and long after she had gone, the question remained.

Friday, 7 August

The next morning, the rain was still falling out of a gunmetal gray sky when Sebastian climbed the steps of the elegant Mayfair town house of his sister, Amanda, Lady Wilcox.

The door was opened by Lady Wilcox’s well-trained and normally stoic butler, who took a step back and said, “My lord Devlin!” in a voice pregnant with consternation and a touch of fear.

“Good morning,” said Sebastian, handing his hat, gloves, and walking stick to the butler before heading for the stairs. “I assume my sister is still in the breakfast room?”

“Yes, but…My lord—”

Sebastian took the steps two at a time. “Don’t worry; I’ll announce myself.”

He found his sister seated at a small table overlooking the rain-washed rear gardens, an empty plate before her. She’d been reading the Morning Post but looked up at his entrance, a delicate pink floral teacup arrested halfway to her puckered lips.

“Good morning, Amanda,” he said cheerfully.

She set the cup down with enough force to send its contents sloshing over the rim. “Good God. You.”

The first child born to the Earl of Hendon and his beautiful, errant countess, Amanda had never been a particularly attractive woman. She had inherited her mother’s slim, elegant carriage and striking golden hair. But there was a bluntness to her features that she owed to Hendon, and at forty-two she had reached an age at which her disposition showed quite clearly on her face.

She wore a simple morning gown of dove gray made high at the waist and edged along the neckline with a dainty ruffle of lace, for she had been widowed just eighteen months and was not yet completely out of mourning. The role Sebastian had played in the death of her husband was a subject brother and sister did not discuss.

She reached for her tea again, her lips turning down at the corners as she took a sip. “What do you want?”

Without waiting for an invitation he suspected would not be forthcoming, Sebastian drew out the chair opposite her and sat. “And I’m delighted to see you too, dear sister.”

She gave a delicate sniff. “I’ve heard you’re doing it again—that you’ve involved yourself in yet another murder investigation, this time of some mere barrister’s sister, of all things. One might have hoped that your recent nuptials would put an end to this plebeian nonsense. But obviously such is not the case.”

“Obviously not,” said Sebastian dryly.

She sniffed again but said nothing.

He let his gaze drift over the familiar features of her face, the tightly held lips, the broad, slightly bulbous nose that was so much like her father’s, the piercing blue St. Cyr eyes that had come to her, too, from her father. He was her brother—or at least, her half brother, her only surviving acknowledged sibling. And yet she hated him with a passion so raw and visceral that it could at times steal his breath.

As Hendon’s firstborn child, she would have inherited every-thing—land, wealth, title—had she been a boy. But because she was a girl, she had been married off with only a dowry—a handsome one, to be sure, but still a mere pittance compared to all that would someday pass to Sebastian. Her two children, Bayard, the new Lord Wilcox, and Stephanie, his eighteen-year-old sister, were Wilcoxes; by the laws of male primogeniture, they had no claims on the St. Cyr estates.

It was the norm in their society. And yet for some reason, Amanda had always felt cheated of what she still somehow stubbornly believed in her heart of hearts should by rights have been hers. Even Richard and Cecil, Hendon’s first- and second-born sons, had earned her resentment. But her true hatred had always been reserved for Sebastian. For she had known—or at least suspected—from the very beginning that this last son born to the Countess of Hendon had not in truth been begotten by the Earl.

She set her teacup down again. “Whatever it is you are here for, say it and go away so that I can read my paper in peace.”

“I’m curious about the December before I was born; how well do you remember it?”

She twitched one shoulder. “Well enough. I was eleven. Why do you ask?”

“Where did Mother spend that Christmas?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Lumley Castle, near Durham. Why?”

Sebastian remembered Lady Lumley quite well, for she’d been one of his mother’s particular friends, nearly as gay and beautiful—and faithless—as the Countess herself.

He saw Amanda’s eyes widen, saw the faintly contemptuous smile that deepened the grooves bracketing her mouth, and knew that she understood only too well his reason for asking. “I can do sums, Sebastian. You’re trying to figure out who her lover was that winter. Well, aren’t you?”

Pushing up, he went to stand at the window overlooking the garden, his back to her. In the rain, the daylight was flat and dim, the shrubbery a sodden green, the slate flagstones of the terrace dark and shiny wet. When he didn’t respond, she gave a sharp laugh. “An understandable exercise, given the circumstances, but unfortunately predicated upon the assumption that she took only one lover at a time. She could be quite shameless, you know.”

Her scornful words sent a surge of raw fury through him. It startled him to realize that no matter how much Sophie had lied to him, no matter how cruel and destructive her betrayal and abandonment, the protective urge he’d felt for her as a boy still flared in him.

“And that Christmas?” he asked, keeping his voice level with difficulty, his gaze still fixed on the scene outside the window.

“I actually can’t recall.”

He watched the long canes of the arbor’s climbing roses bend in the wind, watched the raindrops chase each other down the window glass.

Amanda rose to her feet. “You really want to know who begat our mother’s precious little bastard? Well, I’ll tell you. It was her groom. A lowly, stinking groom.”

Turning, he looked into her familiar, pinched face and didn’t believe her. Refused to believe her.

She must have read the rejection of everything she’d said in his eyes, because she gave a harsh, ringing laugh. “You don’t believe me, do you? Well, I saw them. That autumn, on the cliffs overlooking the sea, in Cornwall. He was lying on his back and she was riding him. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever witnessed. Jeb, I believe his name was. Or perhaps Jed, or something equally vulgar.”

He stared into his sister’s hate-filled blue eyes and knew a revulsion so intense as to be physical. “I don’t believe you,” he said out loud.

“Believe it,” she sneered. “I see him every time I look at you. Oh, his hair might have been darker than yours, and he might not have been as tall. But there has never been any doubt in my mind.”

A sudden gust of wind blew rain against the window with a startlingly loud clatter.

He wanted to say, Was the groom a Gypsy? But he couldn’t so betray himself to this cold, angry woman who hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone in her life. So instead he asked, “What happened to him?”

“I neither knew nor cared. He went away. That was all that mattered to me.”

Sebastian walked to the door, then paused to look back to where she still stood, her hands clenched at her sides, her face red and twisted with hatred and some other emotion.

It took him a moment to recognize it, but then he knew.

It was triumph.

Sir Henry Lovejoy hesitated at the entrance to the Bow Street public office, his face screwing into a grimace as he stared out at the ceaseless torrent driven sideways by the force of the wind. Water sluiced in sheets from the eaves, swelled in the gutters, pinged off the glass of the building’s tall windows. Sighing, he was about to unfurl his umbrella and step out into the deluge when he became aware of a gentleman crossing the street from the Brown Bear toward him.

A tall, military-looking gentleman, he seemed oblivious to the elements, the numerous shoulder capes on his coat swirling about him as he leapt the rushing gutter. “Ah, Sir Henry, is it not?” he said, drawing up on the flagway. “I am Colonel Urquhart.”

Swallowing hard, Lovejoy gave a jerky bow. The Colonel was well-known as Jarvis’s man. “Colonel. How may I help you?”

“I’m told you are heading up the search for the killer of the Tennyson family.”

“I am, yes. In fact, I was just about to—”

Urquhart tucked his hand through Lovejoy’s elbow and drew him back into the public office. “Let’s find someplace dry and private where we can have a little chat, shall we?”

Chapter 41

It had become Kat Boleyn’s habit of late to frequent the flower market on Castle Street, not far from Cavendish Square. She’d discovered there was a rare, elusive peace to be found amidst the gaily colored rows of roses and lavender and cheerful nosegays. Sometimes the beauty of a vibrant petal or the faintest hint of a familiar scent was so heady it could take her far back in time to another place, another life.

The morning’s rain had only just eased off, leaving the air cool and clean and smelling sweetly of damp stone. She wandered the stalls for a time, the handle of her basket looped casually over one arm. It wasn’t until she paused beside a man selling small potted orange trees that she became aware of being watched.

Looking up, she found herself staring at a tall gentlewoman in an exquisitely fashioned walking gown of green sarcenet trimmed in velvet. She had her father’s aquiline nose and shrewd gray eyes and a surprisingly sensuous mouth that was all her own.

“Do you know who I am?” asked Devlin’s new Viscountess in a husky voice that could have earned her a fortune on the stage, had she been born to a less elevated position in society.

“I know.”

By silent consent, the two women turned to walk toward Oxford Market, pushing past a Negro band and shouting costermongers hawking everything from apples to fried eels. After a moment, Kat said, “I assume you have sought me out for a reason.”

“I wonder if you know someone nearly killed Devlin last night.”

Kat felt a quick stab of fear that left her chest aching, her breath tight. “Is he all right?”

“He is. But the man who was standing beside him is dead, shot through the heart from a distance of some three hundred yards.”

Kat knew of only one man with the ability to make such a shot. Two, if she counted Devlin. But she kept that knowledge to herself.

The Viscountess said, “I believe you are familiar with a tavern owner named Jamie Knox.”

“I have heard of him,” Kat said warily.

The Viscountess glanced over at her. “I should tell you that I know quite a bit about Russell Yates and his various…activities.” She paused, then added, “My information does not come from Devlin.”

Kat understood only too well what that meant. Kat’s own encounters with this woman’s father, Lord Jarvis, had been brutal, terrifying, and nearly fatal. He had promised her torture and a heinous death, and while that threat had abated, it had not disappeared. Kat knew he was simply waiting for the right opportunity to strike. She had to call upon all of her years of theatrical training to keep her voice sounding calm. “And?”

“I gather this Knox is one of your husband’s…shall we call them ‘associates’?”

Kat drew up abruptly and swung to face her. “Exactly what are you trying to say?”

The Viscountess met her gaze. “I think Knox is a danger to Devlin. I also think you know more about the man than you are willing to let on—even to Devlin.”

Kat was aware of the darkening clouds pressing down on them, promising more rain. She could feel the dampness in the breeze, smell the earthy scent of the vegetables in the market stalls.

When she remained silent, the Viscountess said, “I can understand the problems that are created by divided loyalties.”

Kat gave a startled laugh and turned to continue walking. “Well, I suppose that’s one more thing you and I have in common, is it not?”

“My father at least is not trying to kill Devlin.”

Kat glanced over at her. “Can you be so certain?”

Something flared in the other woman’s eyes, quickly hidden. They continued along the side of the square for a moment; then the Viscountess said, “I don’t know exactly what happened to cause the estrangement between you and Devlin last winter. But I believe you still care for him—at least enough not to want to see him hurt. Or dead.”

“I think you underestimate your husband.”

“He’s mortal.”

Kat stopped again. The wind was flapping the draping on the market stalls, scuttling handbills across the wet cobbles. She said, “Why did you come here?”

A gleam of unexpected amusement shone in the woman’s eyes. “I should have thought that was rather obvious.”

“My God,” whispered Kat as understanding suddenly dawned. “You love him.”

Rather than respond, the Viscountess simply tilted her head and turned away.

“Why are you so afraid to admit it?” Kat called after her. “You don’t want to acknowledge it even to yourself, do you?”

She thought the woman would keep walking. Instead, the Viscountess paused to look back at her. “I would have expected you to understand that better than anyone.”

“He is no longer my lover,” said Kat, knowing exactly what the other woman meant. “He hasn’t been, for nearly a year.”

“No. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t still in love with you…as you are with him.”

“Devlin will always love me,” said Kat. “No matter who else he comes to love. He doesn’t love easily, but once he lets someone into his heart, they are there forever. It’s simply the way he is. It’s the same reason he will always love Hendon, however much he might wish it were otherwise.”

Kat saw the puzzlement in the other woman’s eyes, and she thought, Oh, Sebastian; you haven’t told her. Why haven’t you told her?

Aloud, Kat said, “Have you ever seen Jamie Knox?”

“No; why?”

Because if you were to see him, thought Kat, you would know. But all she said was, “You’re right; he is dangerous. For your sake as well as Devlin’s, you would do well to stay away from him.”

With any other woman, the warning might have worked. But this woman was Jarvis’s daughter. Kat watched a thoughtful gleam light the Viscountess’s eyes.

And knew she’d just made a terrible mistake.

Sebastian left his sister Amanda’s house and drove through the slackening rain to the Strand.

He paused at a butcher shop near Villers Street to buy a side of ham, then continued on to the half-cleared stretch of land that fell away steeply from the street to the site of the new bridgehead. The river was running swollen and sullen with the rain, a pockmarked expanse of muddy water that frothed and boiled around the new piers. Against the dull gray sky, the soaring arches of the bridge itself stood out pale and stark.

Reining in, he let his gaze drift over the work site. Far to the left rose the massive neoclassical elevation of the new Somerset House, bustling now with its usual assortment of functionaries; to the right lay the Savoy Chapel and its burial ground, the sole surviving relics of the vast medieval palace that had once stood here. In the dreary light of day, the rain-washed expanse of churned mud, sodden weeds, and broken walls looked forlorn and empty.

The night before, in the hour or more that had elapsed between when he sent word of Arceneaux’s shooting to Bow Street and the arrival of Sir Henry, Sebastian had scoured these ruins in an increasingly wide but ultimately futile search for a certain scruffy black and brown dog with a white blaze down his nose and a weakness for ham. He wasn’t entirely certain what he thought he could do today that he hadn’t done the previous night, but he felt compelled to try.

“If you were an injured dog,” he said to Tom, “where would you go?”

The tiger screwed up his face with the labor of thought, his gaze, like Sebastian’s, studying the rain-drenched riverbank. After a moment, he said, “Ain’t we just downriver from the Adelphi?”

“We are.”

“Well, if that Frenchy lieutenant used to ’ang around Miss Tennyson and them two boys, then I reckon maybe ’is little dog’d go there—if ’e could make it that far. Plenty o’ places to ’ide in them vaults under the terrace.”

Sebastian reached for the ham. “Tom, you are a genius.”

Chapter 42

Ignoring the curious stares and ribald comments that followed him, Sebastian plunged deep into the dank, shadowy subterranean world of the Adelphi.

“Chien,” he called, unwrapping the ham. “À moi, Chien. Chien?”

He tromped through the warehouses of the wine merchants, their owners’ angry shouts and threats following him; he scrambled over dusty coal piles and penetrated deep into the dank recesses of the wharf’s vast stables.

“Chien?”

He stood with one hand on his hip, watched the dust motes drift lazily in the gloom, breathed in the odor of manure and moldy hay. “Chien!” he bellowed, his voice echoing through the cavernous, high-vaulted space.

Blowing out a long, frustrated breath, he turned to leave…

And heard a faint, plaintive whimper.

“Can you help him?” Sebastian asked.

Paul Gibson stared down at the dog that lay stretched out and panting on the table in the front room of his surgery. “Well, I don’t suppose dogs are that much different from people, when it comes right down to it.” He probed the bloody wound in the dog’s shoulder with gentle fingers and frowned. “Leave him with me. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian, turning toward the door.

“But if word of this ever reaches my esteemed colleagues at St. Thomas’s,” Gibson called after him, “I’ll never forgive you.”

The ancient, soot-stained church of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate squatted like a ragged wet hen in the midst of its swollen graveyard.

Wearing a plain cloak with the hood drawn up against the drizzle, Hero wandered amongst the overgrown churchyard’s gray, lichen-covered headstones and broken tombs, her gaze narrowing as she studied the yard of the gable-ended public house that backed onto the ancient priory grounds. The sky had taken on the color of old lead, the leafy boughs of the elms overhead hanging heavy with the weight of the day’s rain. She could easily trace the line of the Roman wall that Gabrielle had once come here to examine; it ran from the rear of the churchyard along the inn’s court to disappear between the Black Devil and the decrepit structure beside it.

So absorbed was she in her study of the ancient masonry that it was a moment before she became aware of a tall gentleman dressed all in black walking toward her. He wore black trousers tucked into high black boots, a black coat, and a black waistcoat. Only his shirt was white, the high points of his collar standing out stark against the darkness of his cravat. He had the lean, loose-limbed carriage of a soldier and the grace of a born athlete. His hair was dark, darker even than Devlin’s, although he had Devlin’s high cheekbones and fine facial structure. But it was his eyes that instantly drew and held her attention. And she knew then why Kat Boleyn had warned her away from this man—understood exactly what the actress had been trying to keep her from seeing—and guessing.

“I know who you are,” he said, pausing some half a dozen feet before her.

“Then you have the advantage of me.”

He swept her a bow tinged with just a hint of mockery. “I beg your pardon. Please allow me to introduce myself. Mr. Jamie Knox, at your service.”

His accent was not that of a gentleman.

“Ah,” she said noncommittally.

He straightened, his gently molded mouth curving into a smile that did not touch those strange yellow eyes. “Why are you here?”

“What makes you assume I am here for any reason other than to study the architecture and monuments of St. Helen’s? Did you know it was once the parish church of William Shakespeare?”

“No. But I don’t think you’re here because of some long-dead scribbler. Are you spying on us, then?”

“And if I were to do so, would I see anything interesting?”

His smile broadened unexpectedly, a genuine if somewhat sardonic smile, and for a moment he looked so much like Devlin that the resemblance nearly took her breath. He said, “I see you left your carriage up the lane. That was not wise.”

She raised one eyebrow in a deliberately haughty expression. “Are you threatening me?”

He laughed. “Me? Ach, no. But the neighborhood’s not the best. You never know what might happen to a young gentlewoman such as yourself, all alone on a wet, gloomy day such as this.”

She slipped her right hand into the reticule that hung heavily against her. “I am better able to defend myself than you may perhaps realize.”

A gust of wind swelled the canopy of the trees overhead, loosing a cascade of raindrops that pattered on the aged tombstones and rank grass around them.

“That’s good to know,” he said, his gaze locked with hers. He took a step back and tipped his head. “Do tell your husband I said hello.”

And he walked away, leaving her staring after him and wondering how he had known who she was when she herself had never seen him before that day.

Sebastian was stripping off his bloody, coal-stained shirt in his dressing room when he heard the distant pounding of the front knocker. Reaching for the pitcher, he splashed hot water into the washbasin.

An angry shout drifted up from the entry hall below, followed by a scuffle and the thump of quick feet on the stairs.

“Sir!” came Morey’s outraged cry. “If you will simply wait in the drawing room, I will ascertain if his lordship— Sir!”

Sebastian paused, his head turning just as Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt, the honorable member from Lincolnshire, came barreling through the dressing room door.

“You bloody interfering bastard,” d’Eyncourt shouted, drawing up abruptly in the center of the room. His face was red from his run up the stairs, his hands curled into fists at his sides, his cravat askew. “This is all your fault. You’ve ruined me! Do you hear me? You have positively ruined my hopes of having any significant future in government.”

Sebastian nodded to the majordomo hovering in the open doorway. “It’s all right, Morey; I can handle this.”

The majordomo bowed and withdrew.

Sebastian reached for a towel. “Tell me how, precisely, am I supposed to have injured you?” he said to d’Eyncourt.

Gabrielle’s cousin stared at him, his nostrils flaring, his chest lifting with his agitated breathing. “It’s all over town!”

Sebastian dried his face and ran the towel down over his wet chest. “What is all over town?”

“About Gabrielle and her French lover. This is your fault—you and your damnable insistence on pushing your nose into other people’s private affairs. I’ve been afraid this would come out.”

Sebastian paused for a moment, his head coming up. “You knew about Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux?”

Suddenly tight-lipped and silent, d’Eyncourt stared back at him.

Sebastian tossed the towel aside. “How? How did you know?”

D’Eyncourt adjusted the set of his lapels. “I saw them together. Indeed, it was my intention to alert Hildeyard to what was happening as soon as he returned to town. Not that anyone ever had much success in curbing Gabrielle’s wild starts, but still. What else was one to do?”

“When did you see them together? Where?”

“I fail to comprehend how this is any of your—”

Sebastian advanced on him, the pompous, arrogant, self-satisfied mushroom backing away until his shoulders and rump smacked against the cupboard behind him. “I’m going to ask you one last time: when and where?”

D’Eyncourt swallowed convulsively, his eyes going wide. “I first came upon them quite by chance in the park, last—last week sometime. They were so nauseatingly absorbed in each other that they didn’t even see me. I thus had the opportunity to observe them without being perceived myself. It was quite obvious what direction the wind was in with them.”

Sebastian frowned. “You said that was the first time you saw them. When else?”

D’Eyncourt’s tongue slipped out to moisten his lower lip. “Thursday. He was there, you know—when she had that confrontation with the tavern owner I was telling you about, at the York Steps. The two men nearly came to blows.”

“Arceneaux was with her when Gabrielle quarreled with Knox?”

“If Knox is the rogue’s name, then, yes.”

“And when you told me about the incident, you left Arceneaux’s presence out—why?”

“I should think my reasons would be self-evident. My first cousin—my female cousin—involved in a sordid affair with one of Napoléon’s officers— Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my political career?”

Sebastian was aware of a bead of water from his wet hair running down one cheek. “A man is dead because of you, and you stand there and bleat about your bloody political career?”

D’Eyncourt put up a hand to straighten his cravat, his chin lifting and turning to one side as if to ease a kink in his neck. “What man are you suggesting is dead because of me?”

“Arceneaux!”

D’Eyncourt looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know how you think you can hang his death on me, but who cares if he is dead? The man killed Gabrielle and my nephews. Or hadn’t you heard?”

Sebastian swiped the back of his arm across his wet cheek. “What the devil are you talking about?”

A condescending smirk spread over d’Eyncourt’s self-satisfied face. “Seems that the night before he died, Arceneaux confided to one of his fellow French officers that he killed Gabrielle and the boys.” D’Eyncourt’s tight smile widened. “What’s the matter? Did Bow Street forget to tell you?”

Chapter 43

Sir Henry Lovejoy paused beneath the protective arches of the long arcade overlooking the market square of Covent Garden. The rain had started up again, sweeping in great windblown sheets over the shuttered stalls and lean-tos in the square. He was not a man prone to profanity, but at the moment the urge to give vent to his anger against Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt was undeniably powerful.

He swallowed hard and said to the man who stood beside him, “I would like to apologize, my lord. I had not intended for you to learn of this development in such a manner.”

“Never mind that,” said Devlin. “How did this come about?”

“A gentleman approached us this morning with word that Arceneaux’s death had inspired one of his fellow French officers to come forward with the information.”

“What’s this officer’s name?”

“Alain Lefevre—an infantry captain, I believe, taken at Badajos. He says Arceneaux confessed whilst in his cups to having stabbed Miss Tennyson in the midst of a lover’s quarrel.”

“And the two boys, Alfred and George?”

“He says Arceneaux claimed at first to have been overcome with remorse for what he’d done, so that he set out to drive the boys back to London. Only, he panicked and decided to kill the boys too, in an attempt to cover up his guilt. The children’s bodies are hidden in a ditch or gully somewhere. We’ve set men out searching the routes between the moat and the city, but at this point it’s becoming doubtful the poor lads’ bodies will ever be found.”

Devlin kept his gaze focused on the square, where loose cabbage leaves fluttered in the wind. “I’d be interested to speak with this Lefevre.”

“Unfortunately, the man is already on his way back to France.”

Devlin swung his head to stare at him. “He what?”

“As a reward for his cooperation. I understand they thought it best to get him out of the country quickly, for his own protection.”

An eddy of wind blew a fine mist in their faces. Lovejoy removed his spectacles and wiped them with his handkerchief before carefully fitting them back on his face. “His information does fit the facts as we know them.”

“Only if one were unacquainted with Philippe Arceneaux.”

When Lovejoy remained silent, the Viscount said, “What was the basis of Arceneaux’s quarrel with Miss Tennyson supposed to have been?”

“Lefevre did not know. But there are some recent developments that may shed light on the subject. Earlier today, four paroled French officers were captured attempting to escape to France. One of the men retaken—a hussar captain named Pelletier—was reputedly one of Arceneaux’s intimates.”

Devlin frowned. “Is this Pelletier a big bear of a man with blond lovelocks and a long mustache?”

“That sounds like him, yes. Do you know him?”

“I’ve seen him. When did the escaping men leave London?”

“Sometime before dawn this morning, we believe. They were found hidden in the back of a calico printer’s cart that had been fitted out with benches on the inside. The speculation is that there were originally to have been six men involved in the escape attempt, with Arceneaux being one of the missing men, and the other being the French officer you killed when he attacked you in Covent Garden the other night. There appears to have been some sort of falling out amongst the conspirators, which is doubtless why Arceneaux was killed—for fear that he meant to betray them.”

“Does this hussar captain, Pelletier, confirm that?”

“All of the fugitives taken up are refusing to speak to anyone about anything. One of the constables attempting to retake the men was shot and killed, which means they’ll all now hang for murder.” Lovejoy shook his head. “Shocking, is it not? For officers to go back on their sworn word…It displays such an utter want of all the feelings and instincts of a gentleman.”

Lovejoy expected Devlin, as a former military man himself, to be particularly harsh in his condemnation of any officer who so dishonored himself. The Viscount was silent for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he stared out at the rain. But when he finally spoke, his voice was oddly tight. “I suppose they were homesick and despaired of ever seeing France again. Sometimes it does seem as if this war will never end.”

“I suppose so, but—”

Devlin turned toward him suddenly, an arrested expression on his face. “Did you say a calico printer’s cart?”

Lovejoy blinked. “Yes. Although I fear we may never determine precisely which calico printer is involved—if indeed one is. You find that significant for some reason, my lord?”

“It just may be.”

Jamie Knox was supervising the loading of a dray in the rain-washed courtyard of Calvert’s Brewery in Upper Thames Street when Sebastian came to stand under the arch. Propping one shoulder against the rough bricks, he crossed his arms at his chest and watched the tavern owner at work.

The air was heavy with the yeasty smell of fermenting hops, the tang of wet stone and brick, the odor of fish rising off the nearby rain-churned river. Knox threw him one swift glance but continued barking orders to the men lashing barrels to his wagon’s high bed. He conferred for a moment with his driver. Then he walked over to stand in front of Sebastian, rainwater running down his cheeks, his yellow eyes hooded.

“You’re obviously here for a reason; what is it, then?”

Sebastian stared into the lean, fine-boned face that was so much like his own. “I know why you killed Philippe Arceneaux.”

Knox let out a bark of laughter. “That’s rich. So tell me, then; what reason would I have for killing this young French—ah, lieutenant, was he not?”

“He was.” Sebastian stood back as a cart piled with sacks of hops and drawn by a bay shire horse turned in under the arch, steam rising from the animal’s wet hide, hooves clattering over the cobbles. “I noticed there’s a calico printer’s shop across the lane from your tavern.”

“So there is. But there must be several dozen or more calico printers scattered across London. So if you’re thinking there’s any connection between the calico printer’s cart I hear those four escaping French officers were taken up in and my tavern, then let me tell you right now, you’re fair and far out.”

“I might have believed you if I hadn’t discovered that Philippe Arceneaux was present at that little set-to you had with Miss Tennyson last Thursday at the York Steps. I’m thinking there’s a reason you left that detail out, and this is it.”

Knox stood with his hands on his slim hips, his cheeks slightly hollowed, a faint smile dancing around his mouth as if he were amused.

Sebastian said, “You see, I’m thinking there were originally supposed to be six Frenchmen in that cart, with Arceneaux being one of them. Only, somehow the woman he loved—that would be Miss Tennyson, by the way—found out he was planning to escape and begged him to stay. So he backed out.”

“An interesting theory, to be sure. Although I fail to see what the hell any of this has to do with me.”

Sebastian watched the team of heavy dapple grays hitched to Knox’s beer wagon lean into their collars. “I’m told that six hundred and ninety-two paroled French officers have escaped—or attempted to escape—from England in the past three years. That’s an extraordinary number of men. Is that how you pay for the French wine and brandy you smuggle in? With escaped prisoners of war?”

The rain drummed around them, pounding on the puddles in the courtyard and sluicing off the brewery’s high roof. Knox stared back at him, silent, watchful.

Sebastian said, “It’s a clever, lucrative rig you’re running, but it’s also dangerous. Did Gabrielle Tennyson discover what you were doing? Is that why you were quarreling with her by the York Steps last Thursday? Because there’s some men who might consider that kind of threat a good motive for murder, if they thought a woman was going to give their game away. Did Arceneaux accuse you of killing her, I wonder? Did you decide to kill him before he could cause you any trouble?”

A cold, dangerous light glittered in the depths of the rifleman’s eyes. “And the two lads? Am I to have killed them too, just for the sport of it?”

“In my experience there’s a certain kind of man who can turn decidedly lethal when he’s feeling cornered. Maybe you saw an opportunity to strike against her and you didn’t let the fact that the boys were there, too, stop you.”

“And what was I doing out at that moat with Miss Tennyson and the two brats? Mmm? You tell me that. You think she drove out there with me? Her in love with Arceneaux and thinking me a smuggler and all-around degenerate character?”

It was the one inescapable flaw in Sebastian’s theory, and he’d known it when he decided to approach the rifleman. “I don’t know why she went out there with you. Maybe you followed her. Maybe she wasn’t even killed at the moat. Maybe that’s why the two lads’ bodies have never been found, because you killed and buried them someplace else.”

The tight smile was back around Knox’s lips. “Someplace such as St. Helen’s churchyard, perhaps? Now, there’s a clever place to hide a couple of bodies, don’t you think? In a graveyard full of moldering corpses?”

“Perhaps,” said Sebastian. “Then again, it’s always possible you didn’t kill Miss Tennyson at all—that someone else killed her for a different reason entirely. But Arceneaux would have no way of knowing that, would he? Something he said to me the other day suggested he was afraid he might be responsible for what had happened to her. So maybe he accused you of killing her, even when you hadn’t. Maybe he threatened to expose you once his friends escaped. The timing of his death is curious, wouldn’t you agree?”

All trace of amusement had drained from the rifleman’s face, leaving it hard and tight. “I’ve killed many men in my day; what soldier hasn’t? But I’ve never killed a woman or a child, and I’ve never murdered a man in cold blood.”

The two men stared at each other. The rain poured around them, loud in Sebastian’s ears. He settled his hat lower on his forehead. “If I find out you shot Philippe Arceneaux, I’ll see you hang for it.”

Brother or no brother, he thought. But he didn’t say it.

Chapter 44

Sebastian stood at the top of the Cole Harbour Steps, the storm-churned waters of the Thames slapping the ancient masonry at his feet. Behind him loomed the soot-covered brick walls of the brewery and the steelyard beyond that. Dark clouds pressed down on the city, heavy with the promise of rain.

More and more, he was beginning to think there was something in Gabrielle Tennyson’s life that he was missing, something that would explain the puzzle that was her death and the mysterious disappearance of her two young cousins. He had pieced together much of it—her love for the scholarly young French lieutenant, the conflicts swirling around her work on the legends of King Arthur and Camelot, the ill-fated escape attempt by Arceneaux’s fellow officers. But something still eluded him. And he couldn’t shake the growing conviction that the missing children were the key.

Had Gabrielle and the two boys driven up to Camlet Moat in the company of their killer? Or was her body simply planted there for reasons Sebastian could only guess at? Why would the killer leave Gabrielle at the moat and then take her young cousins elsewhere to kill or bury them? Had the cousins been killed, or were they even now out there, somewhere, alive?

Sebastian turned, his gaze narrowing as he stared up the river. From here he could look beyond the soot-blackened expanse of Blackfriars Bridge to the distant bend marked by the rising arches of the new Strand Bridge. Farther beyond that, lost in the mist, lay the imposing facade of the Adelphi. An idea was forming in his mind, a scenario that made more sense as the different possibilities he was looking at spiraled narrower and narrower.

Swinging away from the river, he darted through the rain to Upper Thames Street, where he flagged down a hackney and directed the driver to Tower Hill.

“Come to collect your dog, have you?” asked Gibson, limping ahead of Sebastian down his narrow hall.

Sebastian swung off his wet cloak and swiped his sleeve across his dripping face. “Is he going to be all right, then?”

Gibson led the way into his tattered, cluttered parlor, where the little black and brown dog raised his head, his tail thumping against the worn rug in welcome. But Chien made no effort to get up, and Sebastian could see blood still seeping through the thick bandage at his shoulder.

“It might be better if you left him with me a wee bit longer, just so I can keep an eye on him.” Gibson rasped a hand across his chin, which from the looks of things he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning. “Although there’s no denying he’s a sore trial.”

“What have you been doing, Chien? Hmm?” Sebastian went to hunker down beside the dog. “Stealing the ham Mrs. Federico had intended for our good surgeon’s dinner?”

“As a matter of fact, he tried. But that’s not the worst of it. I let him out in the yard to answer nature’s call, and what does he do but bring me back a bone. Thankfully, he wasn’t chewing on it—just presented it to me like he’d found something precious and expected a reward.”

“Did Mrs. Federico see it?” Gibson’s housekeeper, Mrs. Federico, was both extraordinarily squeamish about her employer’s activities and blissfully ignorant of what lay buried in his yard.

“Fortunately, no. But if he starts digging holes out there, I’m going to be in trouble.” Gibson eyed Sebastian darkly. “Go on, then, laugh if you want. But if you’re not here for the dog, then why are you here?”

“Do you still have the clothes Gabrielle Tennyson was wearing when she was murdered?”

“I do, yes. Why?”

“Something’s been bothering me.”

Sebastian found Hero sipping a hot cup of tea in the drawing room. She wore a sarcenet walking dress and her hair was damp, as if she had just come in out of the rain. He set a brown paper–wrapped bundle on the table beside her and said, “I’m beginning to think it’s more and more likely that Gabrielle Tennyson was actually murdered in London and then taken up to Camlet Moat.”

Hero looked at him over the rim of her cup. “I thought Gibson said there was no evidence that she’d been moved after death.”

“He did. But just because he found no evidence of it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” He untied the string holding the bundle together. “This is what Gabrielle was wearing when she was killed. Is it the sort of thing she would be likely to put on to go up to Enfield?”

She reached out to touch one of the gown’s short puffed sleeves, a quiver passing over her features as she studied the bloodstained tear in the bodice. “The material is delicate, but it is a walking dress, just the sort of thing a woman might wear for a stroll in the country, yes.” She turned over the froth of petticoats to look at the peach half boots. Then she frowned.

“What is it?” asked Sebastian, watching her.

“Is this everything?”

“Yes. Why?”

“She had a pretty peach spencer with ruched facings and a stand-up collar I would have expected her to be wearing with this. Only, it isn’t here.”

“Sunday was quite hot. She might have left the spencer in the carriage. The shade in the wood is certainly dense enough that she wouldn’t have needed to worry about protecting her arms from the sun.”

“True. But I wouldn’t have expected her to take off her bonnet, as well. She had a lovely peach silk and velvet bonnet she would have worn to pick up the color of the sash and these half boots. And it’s not here, either.”

“Would you recognize the spencer and bonnet if you found them in her dressing chamber?”

Hero met his gaze. Then she set aside her tea and rose to her feet. “I’ll get my cloak.”

“Hildeyard could have already directed Gabrielle’s abigail to dispose of her clothes,” said Hero as they drove through the rain, toward the river.

“I doubt it. His energy has been focused on the search for the missing children. And even if he did, the woman will surely remember what was there.”

Hero was silent for a moment, her gaze on the wet streets. “If you’re right, and Gabrielle was killed here in London, then what do you think happened to the children?”

“I’d like to think they’re in the city someplace, hiding—that they ran away in fear after witnessing the murder. But if that were true, I think they’d have been found by now.”

She turned to look at him. “You think it’s d’Eyncourt, don’t you? You think he killed George and Alfred over the inheritance and hid their bodies someplace they’ll never be found. And then he drove Gabrielle up to Camlet Moat to make it look as if her death were somehow connected to the excavations or her work on the Arthurian legends.”

Sebastian nodded. “I keep going back to the way he was just sitting there, calmly reading The Courier in White’s. What kind of man wouldn’t be out doing everything he could to search for his own brother’s children? He’s either more despicable than I thought, or—”

“Or he knew they were already dead,” said Hero, finishing the thought for him.

They arrived at the Adelphi to find Hildeyard Tennyson still up at Enfield.

Rather than attempt to explain their mission to the servants, Hero claimed to have forgotten something during her previous visit and ran up the stairs to Gabrielle’s room, while Sebastian asked to see the housekeeper and returned George Tennyson’s poem to her.

“Oh, your lordship, I’m ever so grateful for this,” said Mrs. O’Donnell, tearfully clasping the paper to her ample bosom. “I thought sure you must’ve forgotten it, but I didn’t feel right asking you for it.”

“My apologies for keeping it so long,” said Sebastian with a bow.

Looking up, he saw Hero descending the stairs. Their gazes met. He bowed to Mrs. O’Donnell again and said, “Ma’am.”

He waited until he and Hero were back out on the pavement before saying, “Well?”

Hero was looking oddly flushed. “All her things are still there; Hildeyard obviously hasn’t had the will to touch any of it yet. I found the spencer and bonnet immediately. In fact, it looked as if Gabrielle had worn them to church that morning and hadn’t put them away properly because she was planning to wear them again.”

The mist swirled around them, thickening so fast he could barely see the purple skirt and yellow kerchief of the old Gypsy fortune-teller at the end of the terrace. Sebastian said, “Well, we can eliminate Sir Stanley from the list of suspects; he would never have taken Gabrielle’s body to the one place certain to cast suspicion on him. And while I wouldn’t put it beyond Lady Winthrop to cheerfully watch her husband hang for a murder she herself committed, the logistics—” He broke off.

“What?” asked Hero, her gaze following his.

Today the Gypsy had a couple of ragged, barefoot children playing around her skirts: a girl of perhaps five and a boy a few years older. “That Gypsy woman. I noticed her here on Monday. If she was here last Sunday as well, she might have seen something.”

“The constables questioned everyone on the street,” said Hero as Sebastian turned their steps toward the Gypsies. “Surely they would have spoken to her already.”

“I’ve no doubt they did. But you can ask a Rom the same question ten times and get ten different answers.”

The Gypsy children came running up to them, bare feet pattering on the wet pavement, hands outstretched, eyes wide and pleading. “Please, sir, lady; can you spare a sixpence? Only a sixpence! Please, please.”

“Go away,” said Hero.

The boy fixed Hero with a fierce scowl as his wheedling turned belligerent and demanding. “You must give us a sixpence. Give us a sixpence or I will put a curse on you.”

“Don’t give it to them,” said Sebastian. “They’ll despise you for it.”

“I have no intention of giving them anything.” Hero tightened her grip on her reticule. “Nor do I see why we are bothering with this Gypsy woman. If she lied to the constables, what makes you think she will tell you the truth?”

“The Rom have a saying: Tshatshimo Romano.”

Hero threw him a puzzled look. “What does that mean?”

“It means, ‘The truth is expressed in Romany.’”

Chapter 45

“Sarishan ryor,” Sebastian said, walking up to the fortune-teller.

The Gypsy leaned against the terrace’s iron railing, her purple skirt and loose blouse ragged and tattered, her erect carriage belied by the dark, weathered skin of a face etched deep with lines. Her lips pursed, her eyes narrowing as her gaze traveled over him, silent and assessing.

“O boro duvel atch pa leste,” he said, trying again.

She snorted and responded to him in the same tongue. “Where did you learn your Romany?”

“Iberia.”

“I should have known.” She turned her head and spat. “The Gitanos. They have forgotten the true language of the ancients.” She eyed him thoughtfully, noting his dark hair. “You could be Rom. You have something of the look about you. Except for the eyes. You have the eyes of a wolf. Or a jettatore.” She touched the blue and white charm tied around her neck by a leather strap. It was a nazar, a talisman worn to ward off the evil eye.

Sebastian was aware of Hero watching them, her face carefully wiped free of all expression. The entire conversation was taking place in Romany.

He said to the Gypsy, “I want to ask you about the lady who used to live in the second house from the corner. A tall young woman, with hair the color of chestnuts.”

“You mean the one who is no more.”

Sebastian nodded. “Did you see her leave the house last Sunday?”

“One day is like the next to the Rom.”

“But you know which day I mean, because the next day the shanglo came and asked you questions, and you told them you had seen nothing.”

She smiled, displaying tobacco-stained teeth. “And what makes you think I will tell you anything different? Hmm?”

“Because I am not a shanglo.”

No one was hated by the Rom more than the shanglo—the Romany word for police constable.

“Did you see the woman and the two boys leave the house that day?” Sebastian asked.

The light had taken on an eerie, gauzelike quality, the mist eddying around them, wet and clammy and deadening all sound. He could hear the disembodied slap of oars somewhere unseen out on the water and the drip, drip of moisture nearer at hand. Just when he thought the Gypsy wasn’t going to answer him, she said, “I saw them leave, yes. But they came back.”

He realized she must have seen Gabrielle Tennyson and the two children leaving for church that morning. He said, “And after that? Did someone come to visit them? Or did they go out again?”

“Who knows? I left soon after.” The Gypsy’s dark gaze traveled from Sebastian to Hero. “But I saw her.”

Sebastian felt his mouth go dry and a strange tingling dance across his scalp.

The old woman’s lips stretched into a smile that accentuated the high, stark bones of her face. “You didn’t want to hear that, did you? But it’s true. She came here not that day, but the day before, in a yellow carriage pulled by four black horses. Only, there was no one home and so she went away again.”

As if aware that she had suddenly become the topic of conversation, Hero glanced from him to the Gypsy, then back again. “What? What is she saying?”

Sebastian met the old woman’s dark, unblinking eyes. “I want to know the truth, whatever it might be.”

The old woman snorted. “You just heard it. Now the question becomes, what will you make of it?”

They walked along the edge of the terrace, the sound of their footsteps echoing hollowly in the white void. Sebastian could feel the mist damp against his face. The opposite bank, the wherries on the river, even the tops of the tall brick houses beside them had all disappeared behind the thick white blur of fog.

It was Hero who broke the silence, saying, “Where did you learn to speak Romany?”

“I traveled with a band of Gypsies for a time, in the Peninsula.”

She stared at him, her gaze solemn. “And are you going to tell me what the woman said?”

“She says you came to see Gabrielle on Saturday. And don’t even think about denying it because she described your carriage and horses. Did you not notice her? Or did you simply assume she wouldn’t recognize you?”

He watched as her lips parted on a suddenly indrawn breath. Then she said, “Ah,” and turned her head away to gaze out at the fog-choked river.

He studied her tense profile, the smooth curve of her cheek, the faint betraying line of color that rode high along the bone. “There’s only one reason I can come up with that would explain why you’ve kept this from me, and that’s because Jarvis is somehow involved. Am I right?”

“He says he didn’t kill her.”

“And you believe him?”

She hesitated a moment too long. “Yes.”

He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “You don’t exactly sound convinced.”

The figure of a man materialized out of the mist and walked toward them, a workman in rough clothes with what looked like a seaman’s bag slung over one shoulder.

Sebastian saw the flush along her cheekbones darken now with anger. He said, “Tell me what’s going on.”

“You know I can’t.”

He gave a ringing laugh. “Well, I suppose that answers the question about where your loyalties lie.”

“Does it?” She brought her gaze back to his face. “You think I should betray my father to you? So tell me, would you expect me to betray you to him?” She laid her hand on the soft swell of her belly. “And twenty years from now, if this child is a girl, would you think it right that she betray you to whatever man she marries?”

When he remained silent, she said, “Have you been so honest with me, Devlin? Will you tell me why you can’t even bear to be in the same room with your father? And will you tell me about Jamie Knox? Will you tell me why a common ex-rifleman and tavern owner looks enough like my husband to be his brother? Neither one of us has been exactly open with the other, have we?”

“No,” said Sebastian, just as the man passing them pivoted quickly, his bag slumping to the pavement as he raised a cudgel and brought it down hard across Sebastian’s back.

The breath left his body in a huff, the pain of the blow dropping him to his knees.

Sebastian fumbled for the dagger in his boot, fought to draw air back into his lungs. He saw the man raise his club to strike again, was aware of Hero beside him, her hands at her reticule.

Then she drew a small walnut-handled pistol from her reticule, pulled back the hammer, and fired point-blank into the assailant’s chest.

“Jesus Christ,” yelped Sebastian as the man staggered back and went down, hard. He gave a jerking kick with one leg, the worn heel of his boot skittering over the wet paving.

Then he lay still.

“Is he dead?” Hero asked.

His dagger held at the ready in his hand, Sebastian went to crouch beside the man.

He looked to be somewhere in his thirties or early forties, his body thick and hard, his face darkened by the weather, his hair a light brown, badly cut. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth; his eyes were already glazing over. Sebastian dropped his gaze to the pulverized mess that was the man’s chest.

“He’s dead.”

“Are you all right?”

He twisted around to look at her over his shoulder. She stood straight and tall, her face pale but composed. But he could see her nostrils flaring with her rapid breathing, and her lips were parted, as if she were fighting down an upsurge of nausea. “Are you?”

She swallowed, hard. “Yes.”

His gaze dropped to the pistol in her hand. It was a beautiful if deadly little piece, a small muff flintlock with a burnished walnut stock and engraved gilt mounts. “Where did you get that?”

“My father gave it to me.”

“And taught you to use it?”

“What would be the point in my having it otherwise?”

Sebastian nodded to the dead man. “Is he one of your father’s men?”

“Good heavens, no. I’ve never seen him before.”

Sebastian drew in an experimental deep breath that sent a white flash of pain shooting across his back and around his side, so that he had to pause with one arm propped on his bent knee and pant for a minute.

She watched him, a frown drawing her brows together. “Are you certain you’re all right? Shall I get one of the footmen to help you up?”

“Just give me a moment.” He tried breathing again, more cautiously this time. “Are you going to tell me about the connection between Childe and your father?” he asked when he was able. “That is how Jarvis comes into this, isn’t it?”

She met his gaze. “You know I can’t do that. But I see no reason why you can’t ask him about it yourself.”

Sebastian grunted and reached out to grasp one of the dead man’s arms and haul the lifeless body up over his shoulder.

She watched him. “Is that wise, considering you are hurt?”

He pushed to his feet with another grunt, staggering slightly under the dead man’s weight.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Taking your father a present.”

He thought she might object.

But she didn’t.

Chapter 46

Sebastian’s knock at the house on Berkeley Square was answered by Jarvis’s butler, who took one look at the bloody corpse slung over Sebastian’s shoulders and staggered back with a faint mew of horror.

“Good afternoon, Grisham,” said Sebastian, pushing past him into the elegant entrance hall.

“Good gracious, Lord Devlin; is that…is that man dead?”

“Decidedly. Is his lordship home?”

Grisham stared in awful fascination at the dead man’s flopping arms and blue-tinged hands. Then he seemed to recollect himself, swallowed hard, and cleared his throat. “I fear Lord Jarvis is not at present—”

A burst of male laughter filtered down from the floor above.

“In the drawing room, is he?” Sebastian headed for the delicately curving staircase that wound toward the upper floors, then paused on the first step to look back at Grisham. “I trust there are no ladies present?”

“No, my lord. But—but— My lord! You can’t mean to take that—that corpse into his lordship’s drawing room?”

“Don’t worry; I suspect Bow Street will want to come collect it. Perhaps you could dispatch someone to advise them of the need to do so?”

Grisham gave a dignified bow. “I will send someone right away, my lord.”

Charles, Lord Jarvis stood with his back to the empty hearth, a glass of sherry in one hand. “The Americans have shown themselves to be an abomination,” he was telling the gentlemen assembled before him. “What they have done will go down in history as an insult not only to civilization but to God himself. To attack Britain at a time when all our resources are directed to the critical defense against the spread of atheism and republican fervor—”

He broke off as Viscount Devlin strode into the room with a man’s bloody body slung over his shoulders.

Every head in the room turned toward the door. A stunned silence fell over the company.

“What the devil?” demanded Jarvis.

Devlin leaned forward and shrugged his shoulder to send the slack-jawed, vacant-eyed corpse sprawling across Jarvis’s exquisite Turkey carpet. “We need to talk.”

Jarvis felt a rare surge of raw, primitive rage, brought quickly under control. “Is this your version of a brace of partridges?”

“The kill isn’t mine. He was shot by an elegant little muff pistol with a burnished walnut handle and engraved brass fittings. I believe you’re familiar with it?”

Jarvis met Devlin’s glittering gaze for one intense moment. Then he turned to his gawking guests. “My apologies, gentlemen, for the disturbance. If you will please excuse us?”

The assemblage of men—which Sebastian now noticed included the Prime Minister, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and three other cabinet members—exchanged veiled glances, and then, murmuring amongst themselves, filed from the room.

Sebastian found himself oddly relieved to notice that Hendon was not one of them.

Jarvis went to close the door behind them with a snap. “I trust you have a damned good explanation for this?”

“Actually, that’s what I’m here to ask you. I want to know why the hell my wife and I were attacked by—”

“Hero? Is she all right? My God. If my daughter has been harmed in any way—”

“She has not—with no thanks to you.”

“I fail to understand why you assume this has anything to do with me. The world must be full of people only too eager to put paid to your existence.”

“He’s not one of your men?”

“He is not.”

Devlin’s gaze narrowed as he studied Jarvis’s face. “And would you have me believe you didn’t set someone to follow me earlier this week?”

Jarvis took another sip of his sherry. “The incompetent bumbling idiot you chased through the Adelphi was indeed in my employ—although he is no longer. But I had nothing to do with”—he gestured with his glass toward the dead man on the carpet—“this. Who is he?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here.”

Jarvis went to peer down at the dead man. “Something of a ruffian, I’d say, from the looks of him.” He shifted his gaze to the dead man’s torn, bloody shirt. “Hero did this?”

“She did.”

Jarvis looked up, his jaw tightening. “Believe it or not, until my daughter had the misfortune of becoming involved with you, she had never killed anyone. And now—”

“Don’t,” said Devlin, one hand raised as if in warning. “Don’t even think of laying the blame for this on me. If Hero was in any danger this afternoon, it was because of you, not me.”

“Me?”

“Two days before she died, Gabrielle Tennyson stumbled upon a forgery that involved someone so ruthless and powerful that she feared for her life. I think the man she feared was you.”

Jarvis drained his wineglass, then stood regarding it thoughtfully for a moment before walking over to remove a crumpled broadsheet from a nearby bureau and hold it out. “Have you seen these?”

Devlin glanced down at the broadsheet without making any move to take it. “I have. They seem to keep going up around town faster than the authorities can tear them down.”

“They do indeed, thanks to certain agents in the employ of the French. The aim is to appeal to—and promote—disaffection with the House of Hanover. I suspect they’ve succeeded far better than Napoléon ever dreamt.”

“Actually, I’d have said Prinny does a bang-up job of doing that all by himself.”

Jarvis pressed his lips into a flat line and tossed the broadsheet aside. “Dislike of a monarch is one thing. The suggestion that he sits on his throne as a usurper is something else again. The Plantagenets faced similar nonsense back in the twelfth century. You might think people today wouldn’t be as credulous as their ancestors of six hundred years ago, but the idea of a messianic return has proved surprisingly appealing.”

“It’s a familiar concept.”

“There is that,” said Jarvis.

“I take it that like the Plantagenets before you, you’ve decided to deal with the situation by convincing the credulous that King Arthur is not, in fact, the ‘once and future king,’ but just another pile of moldering old bones?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“So you—what? Approached a scholar well-known for his skepticism with regards to the Arthurian legend—Bevin Childe, to be precise—and somehow convinced him to come forward with the astonishing claim of having found the Glastonbury Cross and a box of ancient bones amongst Richard Gough’s collections? I suppose a competent craftsman could simply manufacture a copy of the cross from Camden’s illustrations, while the bones could be acquired from any old churchyard. Of course, history tells us the cross was separated from the relevant bones long ago, but why allow details to interfere with legend?”

“Why, indeed?”

“There’s just one thing I’m curious about: How did Miss Tennyson realize that it was a forgery?”

Jarvis reached into his pocket for his snuffbox. “I’m not certain that’s relevant.”

“But she did quarrel with Childe and throw the forgery into the lake.”

“Yes. A most choleric, impetuous woman, Miss Tennyson.”

“And determined too, I gather. Which means that as long as she was alive, your plan to convince the credulous that you had King Arthur’s bones was not going to succeed.”

Jarvis opened his snuffbox with the flick of one finger. “I am not generally in the habit of murdering innocent gentlewomen and their young cousins—however troublesome they may make themselves.”

“But you would do it, if you thought it necessary.”

“There is little I would not do to preserve the future of the monarchy and the stability of the realm. But in the general scheme of things, this really wasn’t all that important. There would have been other ways of dealing with the situation besides murdering my daughter’s troublesome friend.”

“Such as?”

Jarvis lifted a small pinch of snuff to one nostril and sniffed. “You don’t seriously expect me to answer that, do you?”

Devlin’s lips flattened into a thin, hard line. “Last night, someone shot and killed a paroled French officer named Philippe Arceneaux. Then, this morning, one of Arceneaux’s fellow officers supposedly stepped forward with the information that before his death, Arceneaux had confessed to the killings. As a reward, our conveniently community-minded French officer was immediately spirited out of the country. The only person I can think of with the power—and the motive—to release a French prisoner that quickly is you.”

Jarvis closed his snuffbox. “Of course it was I.”

“And you had Philippe Arceneaux shot?”

“I won’t deny I took advantage of his death to shut down the inconvenient investigation into the Tennysons’ murders. But did I order him killed? No.”

“The inconvenient investigation? Bloody hell. Inconvenient for whom?”

“The Crown, obviously.”

“Not to mention you and this bloody Glastonbury Cross scheme of yours.”

When Jarvis remained silent, Devlin said, “How the devil did you convince Childe to lend his credibility to such a trick?”

“Mr. Childe has certain somewhat aberrant tastes that he would prefer others not know about.”

“How aberrant?”

Jarvis tucked his snuffbox back into his pocket. “Nothing he can’t indulge at the Lambs’ Pen.”

“And did Gabrielle Tennyson know about Childe’s aberrations?”

“Possibly.”

“So how do you know Childe didn’t kill the Tennysons?”

“I don’t. Hence the decision to shut down the investigation. It wouldn’t do to have this murder be seen as linked in any way to the Palace.” Jarvis straightened his cuffs. “It’s over, Devlin; a murderer has been identified and punished with his own death.”

Devlin nodded to the dead man before them. “Doesn’t exactly look over to me.”

“You don’t know this attack was in any way related to the Tennyson case. The authorities are satisfied. The populace has already breathed a collective sigh of relief. Let it rest.”

Devlin’s lip curled. “And allow the real murderer to go free? Let those boys’ parents up in Lincolnshire live the rest of their lives without ever knowing what happened to their children? Let Arceneaux’s grieving parents in Saint-Malo believe their son a child killer?”

“Life is seldom tidy.”

“This isn’t untidy. This is an abomination.” He swung toward the door.

Jarvis said, “You’re forgetting your body.”

“Someone from Bow Street should be here for it soon.” Devlin paused to look back at him. “I’m curious. What exactly made Hero think you killed Gabrielle Tennyson?”

Jarvis gave the Viscount a slow, nasty smile. “Ask her.”

Chapter 47

Rather than return directly to Brook Street, Sebastian first went in search of Mr. Bevin Childe.

The Cheese, in a small cul-de-sac known as Wine Office Court, off Fleet Street, was a venerable old eating establishment popular with antiquaries and barristers from the nearby Temple. A low-voiced conversation with a stout waiter sent Sebastian up a narrow set of stairs to a smoky room with a low, planked ceiling, where he found Childe eating a Rotherham steak in solitary splendor at a table near the bank of heavy-timbered windows.

The antiquary had a slice of beef halfway to his open mouth when he looked up, saw Sebastian coming toward him, and dropped his fork with a clatter.

“Good evening,” said Sebastian, slipping into the opposite high-backed settee. “I was surprised when your man told me I might find you here. It’s my understanding you typically spend Fridays at Gough Hall.”

The antiquary closed his mouth. “My schedule this week has been…upset.”

“How distressing for you.”

“It is, yes. You’ve no notion.” Very slowly, the antiquary retrieved his fork, took a bite of steak, and swallowed, hard. “I…” He choked, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I had hoped I’d explained everything to your wife’s satisfaction yesterday at the museum.”

Sebastian kept his face quietly composed, although in truth he didn’t know what the bloody hell the man was talking about. “You’re quite certain you left nothing out?”

“No, no; nothing.”

Sebastian signaled the waiter for a tankard of bitter. “Tell me again how Miss Tennyson discovered the cross was a forgery.”

Childe threw a quick, nervous glance around, then leaned forward, his voice dropping. “It was the merest chance, actually. She had made arrangements to drive out to Gough Hall on Friday to see the cross. I’d been expecting her early in the day, but as time wore on and she never arrived, I’d quite given up looking for her. Then the craftsman who’d manufactured the cross showed up.” Childe’s plump face flushed with indignation. “The scoundrel had the unmitigated gall to come offering to make other artifacts. I was in the stables telling him precisely what I thought of his suggestion when I turned and saw her standing there. She…I’m afraid she heard quite enough to grasp the truth of the situation.”

“How did she know Jarvis was involved?”

Childe’s tongue flicked out nervously to wet his lips. “I told her. She was threatening to expose the entire scheme, you see. So I warned her that she had no idea who or what she was dealing with.”

“The knowledge didn’t intimidate her?”

“Unfortunately, no. If anything, it only enraged her all the more.”

Sebastian let his gaze drift over the stout man’s sweat-sheened face. “Who do you think killed her?”

Childe tittered.

“You find the question amusing?”

Childe cut another bite of his steak. “Under the circumstances? Yes.”

“It’s a sincere question.”

He paused in his cutting to hunch forward and lower his voice. “In truth?”

“Yes.”

The antiquary threw another of his quick looks around. “Jarvis. I think Lord Jarvis killed her—or rather, had her killed.”

“That’s interesting. Because you see, he rather thinks you might have done it.”

Childe’s eyes bulged. “You can’t be serious. I could never have killed her. I loved her! I’ve loved her from the moment I first saw her. Good God, I was willing to marry her despite knowing only too well about the family’s fits.”

Sebastian stared at him. “About the what?”

Childe pressed his napkin to his lips. “It’s not something they like to talk about, I know. And while it’s true I’ve never seen any indication that either Hildeyard or Gabrielle suffered from the affliction, there’s no doubt it’s rife in the rest of the family. Their great-grandfather had it, you know. And I understand the little boys’ father—that Reverend up in Lincolnshire—suffers from it dreadfully.”

Sebastian stared at the man across the table from him. “What the devil are you talking about? What kind of fits?”

Childe blinked at him owlishly. “Why, the falling sickness, of course. It’s why Miss Tennyson always insisted she would never marry. Even though she showed no sign of it herself, she feared that she could somehow pass it on to any children she might have. She called it the family ‘curse.’ It quite enraged d’Eyncourt, I can tell you.”

“D’Eyncourt? Why?”

“Because while he’ll deny it until he’s blue in the face, the truth is that he suffers from it himself—although nothing to the extent of his brother. When we were up at Cambridge, he half killed some sizar who said he had it.” Childe paused, then said it again, as if the implications had only just occurred to him. “He half killed him.”

Chapter 48

Sebastian found Hero at the library table, one of Gabrielle Tennyson’s notebooks spread open before her.

The pose appeared relaxed. But he could practically see the tension thrumming in every line of her being. She looked up when he paused in the doorway, a faint flush touching her cheeks. He was aware of a new sense of constraint between them, a wariness that hadn’t been there before. But he couldn’t think of anything to say to ease the tension between them.

She said it for him. “We haven’t handled this situation well, have we? Or perhaps I should say, I have not.”

He came to pull out the chair opposite her and sit down. The raw anger he’d felt, before, along the Thames, had leached out of him, leaving him unexpectedly drained and weighed down by a heaviness he recognized now as sadness.

He let his gaze drift over the tightly held lines of her face. “I’d go with ‘we.’”

She said stiffly, “I might regret the situation, but I can’t regret my decision.”

“I suppose that makes sense. I can admire you for your loyalty to your father, even if I don’t exactly agree with it.”

He was surprised to see a faint quiver pass over her features. But she still had herself under rigid control. Only once had he seen her self-control break, in the subterranean chambers of Somerset House when they faced death together—and created the child she now carried within her.

He said, “I spoke to Jarvis. He said to ask you how you came to know of his involvement with Gabrielle. Did she tell you?”

“Not exactly. I was visiting my mother Friday evening when I heard angry voices below. I couldn’t catch what they were saying—” A hint of a smile lightened her features. “We aren’t all blessed with your hearing. But I thought I recognized Gabrielle’s voice. So I went downstairs. I’d just reached the entrance hall when she came out of my father’s library. I heard her say, ‘I told Childe if he attempts to go ahead with this, I’ll expose him—and you too.’ Then she turned and saw me. She just…stared at me from across the hall, and then ran out of the house.” Hero was silent for a moment, her face tight with grief. “I never saw her again.”

“Did you ask your father what it was about?”

“I did. He said Gabrielle was an overly emotional and obviously imbalanced woman. That she’d had some sort of argument that day with Childe but that it was nothing that need concern me.”

“He doesn’t know you well, does he?”

She met his gaze; the smile was back in her eyes. “Not as well as he likes to think.” She closed the notebook she’d been reading and pushed it aside. He realized now that it was Gabrielle’s translation of The Lady of Shalott. She said, “I went to the Adelphi the next day to try to talk to her. Unfortunately, she was still out at the moat.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know, precisely. Midafternoon sometime. I left her a message. Later that evening, I received this from her.” She withdrew a folded note from the back cover of Gabrielle’s book and pushed it across the table to him.

He flipped open the paper and read,

Hero,

Believe me, I would be the last person to blame anyone else for the actions of their family. Please do come up to see the excavations at Camlet Moat on Monday, as we’d planned. We can discuss all this then.

Your friend,

Gabrielle

Sebastian fingered the note thoughtfully, then looked up at her. “Did Gabrielle ever tell you why she was so determined never to marry?”

His question seemed to take Hero by surprise. She looked puzzled for a moment, then shook her head. “We never discussed it. I always assumed she’d decided marriage wasn’t compatible with a life devoted to scholarship.”

“Bevin Childe claims it was because there is epilepsy in her family and she feared passing it on to her own children.”

Hero’s lips parted, her nostrils flaring as she drew in a quick breath. “Epilepsy? That’s the falling sickness, isn’t it? Do you think Childe knows what he’s talking about?”

“I’m not certain. I went by the Adelphi to try to ask Hildeyard, but he’s still out searching for his cousins. There’s no denying it makes sense of a number of things—all the strange statements made about the Reverend Tennyson’s health, d’Eyncourt being made his father’s heir, even some of the things said about the two boys.”

“You think the children could suffer from it?”

“I don’t know. You never saw any sign of it?”

“No. But the truth is, I know almost nothing about the affliction. Do you?”

“No.” Sebastian pushed to his feet. “But I know someone who does.”

“The falling sickness?”

Paul Gibson looked from Sebastian to Hero and back again. They were seated on the torn chairs of the Irishman’s cluttered, low-ceilinged parlor, the black and brown dog stretched out asleep on the hearth rug beside them.

Sebastian said, “It’s the more common name for epilepsy, isn’t it?”

Gibson blew out a long breath. “It is, yes. But…I’m not sure how much I can tell you about it. I’m a surgeon, not a physician.”

“You can’t know less about it than we do.”

“Well…” Gibson scrubbed one hand down over his beard-shadowed face. “It’s my understanding no one knows exactly what causes it. There are all sorts of theories, of course—one wilder than the next. But there does seem to be a definite hereditary component to it, at least most of the time. I suspect there may actually be several different disorders involved, brought on by slightly different causes. Some affect mainly children; others don’t seem to start until around the age of ten or twelve.”

“The age at which the Old Man of the Wolds disinherited his firstborn son and changed his will to leave everything to d’Eyncourt,” said Sebastian.

Hero looked at Gibson. “There’s no treatment?”

“None, I’m afraid. The usual advice to sufferers is to take lots of long walks. And water.”

“Water?”

“Yes. Both drinking water and taking soaking baths or going for swims is said to help. Sufferers are also—” Gibson looked at Hero and closed his mouth.

“What?” she said.

The Irishman shifted uncomfortably and threw Sebastian a pleading look. “Perhaps you could come with me into the kitchen for a wee moment?”

“You may as well say it; I’ll just turn around and tell her.”

Gibson shifted again and cleared his throat. “Yes, well…There are indications…That is to say, many believe that the attacks can be brought on by certain kinds of activities.”

“What kind of activities?”

Gibson flushed crimson.

Hero said, “I gather you’re referring to activities of a sexual nature?”

The Irishman nodded, his cheeks now darkened to a shade more like carmine.

Sebastian said, “I suspect that belief is a large part of why there is such a stigma attached to the affliction.”

“It is, yes. Smoking and excessive drinking have also been identified as bringing on seizures. The interesting thing is, when we think of epilepsy, we tend to think of full seizures. But the malady can also manifest in a milder form. Sometimes sufferers will simply become unresponsive for a few minutes. They appear conscious, but it’s as if they aren’t there. And then they come back and they’re totally unaware that anything untoward has occurred.”

Sebastian noticed Hero leaning forward, her lips parted. “What?” he asked, watching her.

“Gabrielle used to do that. Not often, but I saw it happen twice. It was as if she’d just…go away for a minute or so. And then suddenly she would be all right.”

Gibson nodded. “Sometimes the malady progresses no further. But occasionally a moment of great stress or excitement or something else we don’t even understand can trigger a full seizure.”

Hero glanced over at Sebastian. “If you think this is the key to Gabrielle’s murder, I still don’t understand it.”

“I keep thinking about something Childe said to me, that Charles d’Eyncourt half killed one of the poor scholars at Cambridge who suggested he suffered from it. Most people see epilepsy as something shameful, a family secret to be kept hidden at all costs, like madness.”

“And no one is more ruthless and ambitious than d’Eyncourt,” said Hero. “So what are you suggesting? That young George started showing signs of epilepsy? And that when Gabrielle refused to bundle the child back up to Lincolnshire, d’Eyncourt killed her? Her and the boys, both?”

Chien lifted his head and whimpered.

“It wasn’t George and d’Eyncourt I was thinking about,” said Sebastian, going to hunker down beside the dog. “There’s no doubt the man is an arrogant, unprincipled liar, but he’s also a coward. I’m not convinced he has what it takes to haul his cousin’s dead body ten miles north of London to some deserted moat he’s probably never heard of and surely never seen. And I suspect if someone like Rory Forster tried to blackmail him, he’d pay the bastard off—he wouldn’t arrange to meet him in a dark wood and shoot him in the chest.”

Hero watched him pull the dog’s ears, her eyes widening. “Good lord. You can’t think Hildeyard— Because of Gabrielle?” She shook her head. “But that’s impossible. He was in Kent.”

“He was. But his estate is only four hours’ hard ride from London. He could conceivably have left Kent early Sunday morning, ridden up to London, killed Gabrielle, driven her body up to Camlet Moat, and then ridden back to Kent late that night. We know he was there when the messenger arrived from Bow Street on Monday with word of Gabrielle’s death, but I seriously doubt the man inquired into Mr. Tennyson’s movements the previous day.”

A flicker of lightning showed outside the room’s narrow window, illuminating Hero’s face with a flash of white that was there and then gone. “But why? Why would he do such a thing?”

“I think Gabrielle had a seizure—one much worse than anything she’d ever had before. It was probably provoked by the emotional turmoil of learning the man she loved was thinking about escaping to France, or perhaps by their lovemaking, or maybe even by the fear and anger she experienced when she discovered the truth about Childe’s deception. I think she wrote her brother about it and told him he needed to warn his betrothed that there was epilepsy in the family. And that’s when he rode up to London.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance. “To kill her? I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t think he came here with the intention of killing her. I think he came here to argue with her. Then he lost his temper and stabbed her in a rage.”

“And murdered the children too?” Hero shook her head. “No. He’s not that…evil.”

“I seriously doubt he sees himself as evil. In fact, I suspect he even blames Gabrielle for driving him to do it. In my experience, people kill when their emotions overwhelm them—be it fear, or greed, or anger. Some are so stricken afterward with remorse that they end up destroying their own lives too. But most are selfish enough to be able to rationalize what they’ve done as necessary or even justified.”

“The problem is,” said Gibson, “you’ve no proof of any of this. Even if you discover Tennyson did leave his estate on Sunday, that would only prove that he could have done it, not that he did. D’Eyncourt could have done it too. Or Childe. Or Arceneaux.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Hero, “is if you’re right—and I’m not conceding that you are—then why would Hildeyard hide the children’s bodies someplace else? D’Eyncourt would have a clear reason—to shift the investigation away from the children’s deaths onto Gabrielle. But not Hildeyard. He’s been up at Enfield every day, looking for them.”

Sebastian let his hand rest on his thigh. “Has he? We know he went up there on Tuesday and made a big show of organizing a search for his cousins. But do we know for certain he’s actually been there all day, every day, since then?”

She thought about it, then shook her head. “No.”

“For all we know, he could have been spending the bulk of his time scouring London in the hopes of finding the children—and silencing them.”

“But if they’re not dead, then where are they?”

Chien nudged Sebastian’s still hand, and he moved again to stroke the brown and black dog’s silken coat. He was thinking about a nine-year-old boy telling Philippe he should have called his dog “Rom.” Not Gypsy, but “Rom.” He had a sudden image of a blue and white nazar worn on a leather thong around the neck of an old Gypsy woman, and an identical talisman lying on a nursery table beside a broken clay pipe bowl and a horse chestnut.

“What?” said Hero, watching him.

He pushed to his feet. “I think I know where the children are.”

“You mean, you know where they’re buried?”

“No. I don’t think they’re dead. I think they’ve gone with the raggle-taggle-Gypsies-oh.”

Chapter 49

They drove first to the Adelphi Terrace in hopes the Gypsy woman might still be there. But the angry clouds roiling overhead had already blotted out much of the light from the setting sun. The windows in the surrounding houses gleamed golden with lamplight, and the terrace lay wet and deserted beneath a darkening sky.

“Now what do we do?” asked Hero, shouting to be heard over the din of the wind and driving rain.

Sebastian stared out over the rain-swollen river. Lightning flashed again, illuminating the underbellies of the clouds and reflecting off the choppy water. A charlie on his rounds came staggering around the corner, headed for his box. He wore an old-fashioned greatcoat and held one hand up to hold his hat against the wind; his other hand clutched a shuttered lantern.

“Sure, then, ’tis a foul night we’re in for,” he said when he saw them.

“It is that,” agreed Sebastian. “We were looking for the Gypsy woman who’s usually here reading palms. Do you know where we might find her?”

“Has she stolen something from you, sir? Nasty thieving varmints, the lot of ’em.”

“No, she hasn’t stolen anything. But my wife”—Sebastian nodded to Hero, who did her best to look credulous and eager—“my wife here was desirous of having her palm read.”

The charlie blinked. But he was obviously inured to the strange ways of quality, because he said, “I think she belongs to that band what camps up around Nine Elms this time of year. I seen her leaving once or twice by wherry.” The hamlet of Nine Elms lay on the south side of the river, beyond Lambeth and Vauxhall in a low, marshy area known for its windmills and osier stands and meadows of rue and nettle.

“Thank you,” said Sebastian, turning to shout directions to his coachman and help Hero climb into the carriage.

“Funny you should be asking about them,” said the charlie.

Sebastian paused on the carriage steps to look back at him. “Why’s that?”

“Mr. Tennyson asked me the same thing,” said the charlie, “not more’n a couple of hours ago.”

They found the Gypsy camp in a low meadow near a willow-lined brook, where some half a dozen high-wheeled caravans were drawn up in a semicircle facing away from the road. Wet cook fires burnt sluggishly in the gloaming of the day, their blue smoke drifting up into the mist, the penetrating smell of burning wood and garlic and onions carrying on the wind. At the edge of the encampment, a herd of tethered horses sidled nervously, their heads tossing, their neighs mingling with the thunder that rolled across the darkening sky.

As Sebastian signaled to his coachman to pull up, a motley pack of lean yellow dogs rushed barking from beneath the wagons. A tall man wearing a broad-brimmed black hat and a white shirt came to stand beside the nearest caravan, his gaze focused on them. He made no move to approach, just stood with one hand cupped around the bowl of his clay pipe, his eyes hidden by the brim of his hat as he watched the dogs surround them.

“Now what do we do?” asked Hero as the pack leapt snapping and snarling around the carriage.

“Stay here.” Throwing open the door, Sebastian jumped to the ground to scoop up a rock and hurl it into the pack. They all immediately drew back, ears flattened, tails low.

“Impressive. Did you learn that in Spain too?” Hero dropped down behind him. But he noticed she kept one hand in her reticule.

“Even if you don’t have a rock, all you need to do is reach down and pretend to throw one, and the effect is the same.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

They crossed the waterlogged meadow toward the camp, the tall, wet grass brushing against their clothes. They could see more men, and women in full, gaily colored skirts, crouched around the fires, pretending not to notice their approach. But the children hung back in the shadows, still and quiet as they watched with dark, sullen eyes.

“O boro duvel atch pa leste,” called Sebastian to the lone man standing beside the nearest caravan.

The man grunted, his teeth clenching down on the stem of his pipe, his eyes fierce. He had weathered, sun-darkened skin and a bushy iron gray mustache and curly dark hair heavily laced with gray. A pale scar cut through his thick left eyebrow.

“The woman who tells fortunes near the Adelphi and the York Steps,” said Sebastian, still in Romany. “We would like to speak to her.”

The Gypsy stared at Sebastian, not a line in his face moving.

“I know you have two Gadje children here with you,” said Sebastian, although the truth was, he didn’t know it; he was still only working on a hunch. “A boy of nine and a younger child of three.”

The Gypsy shifted his pipe stem with his tongue. “What do you think?” he said in English. “That we Rom are incapable of producing our own children? That we need to steal yours?”

“I’m not accusing you of stealing these children. I think you’ve offered them protection from the man who killed their cousin.” When the Gypsy simply continued to stare at him, Sebastian said, “We mean the children no harm. But we have reason to think that the man who murdered their cousin now knows where they are.”

Hero touched Sebastian’s arm. “Devlin.”

He turned his head. The old woman from the York Steps had appeared at the front doorway of the nearest caravan. She held by the hand a small child, his dark brown hair falling around his dirty face in soft curls like a girl’s. But rather than a frock he wore a blue short-sleeved skeleton suit. The high-waisted trousers buttoned to a tight coat were ripped at one knee, the white, ruffle-collared shirt beneath it grimy. He stared at them with wide, solemn eyes.

“Hello, Alfred,” said Hero, holding out her arms. “Remember me, darling?”

The Gypsy woman let go of his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he went to Hero. She scooped him off the platform into her arms and held him tight, her eyes squeezing shut for one betraying moment.

Sebastian said, “And the older child? George?”

It was the woman who answered. “He went down the river with some of our boys to catch hedgehogs. They were coming back to camp along the road when a man in a gig drove up behind them and grabbed the lad.”

“How long ago?” said Sebastian sharply.

“An hour. Maybe more.”

Hero met his gaze. “Dear God,” she whispered.

Fishing his engraved gold watch from his pocket, Sebastian turned back to the mustachioed Gypsy. “I’ll give you four hundred pounds for your fastest horse and a saddle, with this standing as security until I can deliver the funds. And to make damned certain you give me your best horse, I’ll pay you another hundred pounds if I catch up with that gig in time.”

“But we don’t know where they’ve gone,” said Hero.

“No. But I can guess. I think Hildeyard is taking him to Camlet Moat.”

Chapter 50

The Gypsies sold him a half-wild bay stallion that danced away, ears flat, when Sebastian eased the saddle over its back.

“I don’t like the looks of that horse,” said Hero. She had the little boy balanced on her hip, his head on her shoulder, his eyelids drooping.

“He’s fast. That’s what matters at this point.” He tightened the cinch. “Lovejoy should still be at Bow Street. Tell him whatever you need to, but get him to send men out to the moat, fast.”

“What if you’re wrong? What if Hildeyard isn’t taking George to Camlet Moat?”

“If you can think of anyplace else, tell Lovejoy.” Sebastian settled into the saddle, the stallion bucking and kicking beneath him.

“Devlin—”

He wheeled the prancing horse to look back at her.

For one intense moment their gazes met and held. Then she said, “Take care. Please.”

The wind billowed her skirts, fluttered a stray lock of dark hair against her pale face. He said, “Don’t worry; I have a good reason to be careful.”

“You mean, your son.”

He smiled. “Actually, I’m counting on a girl—a daughter every bit as brilliant and strong and fiercely loyal to her sire as her mother.”

She gave a startled, shaky laugh, and he nudged the horse closer so that he could reach down and cup her cheek with his hand. He wanted to tell her she was also a part of why he intended to be careful, that he’d realized how important she was to him even as he’d felt himself losing her without ever having actually made her his. He wanted to tell her that he’d learned a man could come to love again without betraying his first love.

But she laid her hand over his, holding his palm to her face as she turned her head to press a kiss against his flesh, and the moment slipped away.

“Now, go,” she said, taking a step back. “Quickly.”

Sebastian caught the horse ferry at the Lambeth Palace gate. The Gypsy stallion snorted and plunged with fright as the ferry rocked and pitched, the wind off the river drenching them both with spray picked up off the tops of the waves. Landing at Westminster, he worked his way around the outskirts of the city until the houses and traffic of London faded away. Finally, the road lay empty before them, and he spurred the bay into a headlong gallop.

His world narrowed down to the drumbeat of thundering hooves, the tumbling, lightning-riven clouds overhead, the sodden hills glistening with the day’s rain and shadowed by tree branches shuddering in the wind. He was driven by a relentless sense of urgency and chafed by the knowledge that his assumption—that Hildeyard was taking his young cousin to Camlet Moat to kill him—could so easily be wrong. The boy might already be dead. Or Hildeyard might be taking the lad someplace else entirely, someplace Sebastian knew nothing about, rather than bothering to bury him on or near the island in the hopes that when he was eventually found the authorities would assume he’d been there all along.

A blinding sheet of lightning spilled through the storm-churned clouds, limning the winding, tree-shadowed road with a quick flash of white. He had reached the overgrown remnant of the old royal chase. The rain had started up again, a soft patter that beat on the leaves of the spreading oaks overhead and trickled down the back of his collar.

The Gypsy stallion was tiring. Sebastian could smell the animal’s hot, sweaty hide, hear its labored breathing as he turned off onto the track that wound down toward the moat. He drew the horse into a walk, his gaze raking the wind-tossed, shadowy wood ahead. In the stillness, the humus-muffled plops of the horse’s hooves and the creak of the saddle leather sounded dangerously loud. He rode another hundred feet and then reined in.

Sliding off the stallion, he wrapped the reins around a low branch and continued on foot. He could feel the temperature dropping, see the beginnings of a wispy fog hugging the ground. As he drew closer to the moat he was intensely aware of his own breathing, the pounding of his heart.

The barrister’s gig stood empty at the top of the embankment, the gray between the shafts grazing unconcernedly in the grass beside the track. On the far side of the land bridge, a lantern cast a pool of light over the site of Sir Stanley’s recent excavations. Hildeyard Tennyson sat on a downed log beside the lantern, his elbows resting on his spread knees, a small flintlock pistol in one hand. Some eight or ten feet away, a tall boy, barefoot like a Gypsy and wearing only torn trousers and a grimy shirt, worked digging the fill out of one of the old trenches. Sebastian could hear the scrape of George Tennyson’s shovel cutting into the loose earth.

The barrister had set the boy to digging his own grave.

Sebastian eased down on one knee in the thick, wet humus behind the sturdy trunk of an ancient oak. If he’d been armed with a rifle, he could have taken out the barrister from here. But the small flintlock in his pocket was accurate only at short range. Sebastian listened to the rain slapping into the brackish water of the moat, let his gaze drift around the ancient site of Camelot. With Hildeyard seated at the head of the land bridge, there was no way Sebastian could approach the island from that direction without being seen. His only option was to cut around the moat until he was out of the barrister’s sight, and then wade across the water.

Sebastian pushed to his feet, the flintlock in his hand, his palm sweaty on the stock. He could hear the soft purr of a shovelful of earth sliding down the side of George’s growing dirt pile. The fill was loose, the digging easy; the boy was already up to his knees in the rapidly deepening trench.

Moving quietly but quickly, Sebastian threaded his way between thick trunks of oak and elm and beech, the rain filtering down through the heavy canopy to splash around him. The undergrowth of brush and ferns was thick and wet, the ground sloppy beneath his feet. He went just far enough to be out of sight of both boy and man, then slithered down the embankment to the moat’s edge. Shoving the pistol into the waistband of his breeches, he jerked off his tall Hessians and his coat. He retrieved his dagger from the sheath in his boot and held it in his hand as he eased into the stagnant water.

Beneath his stocking feet, the muddy bottom felt squishy and slick. A ripe odor of decay rose around him. He felt the water lap at his thighs, then his groin. The moat was deeper than he’d expected it to be. He yanked the pistol from his waistband and held it high. But the water continued rising, to his chest, to his neck. There was nothing for it but to thrust the pistol back into his breeches and swim.

Just a few strokes carried him across the deepest stretch of water. But the damage was already done; his powder was wet, the pistol now useless as anything more than a prop.

Streaming water, he rose out of the shallows, his shirt and breeches smeared with green algae and slime. He pushed through the thick bracken and fern of the island, his wet clothes heavy and cumbersome, the small stones and broken sticks and thistles that littered the thicket floor sharp beneath his stocking feet. Drawing up behind a stand of hazel just beyond the circle of lamplight, he palmed the knife in his right hand and drew the waterlogged pistol from his waistband to hold in his left hand. Then he crept forward until he could see George Tennyson, up to his waist now in the trench.

He heard Hildeyard say to the boy, “That’s enough.”

The boy swung around, the shovel still gripped in his hands. His face was pale and pinched and streaked with sweat and dirt and rain. “What are you going to do, Cousin Hildeyard?” he asked, his voice high-pitched but strong. “The Gypsies know what you did to Gabrielle. I told them. What do you think you can do? Shoot all of them too?”

Hildeyard pushed up from the log, the pistol in his hand. “I don’t think anyone is going to listen to a band of filthy, thieving Gypsies.” He raised the flintlock and pulled back the hammer with an audible click. “I’m sorry I have to do this, son, but—”

“Drop the gun.” Sebastian stepped into the circle of light, his own useless pistol leveled at the barrister’s chest. “Now!”

Rather than swinging the pistol on Sebastian, Tennyson lunged at the boy, wrapping one arm around his thin chest and hauling his small body about to hold him like a shield, the muzzle pressed to the child’s temple. “No. You put your gun down. Do it, or I’ll shoot the boy,” he added, his voice rising almost hysterically when Sebastian was slow to comply. “You know I will. At this point, I’ve nothing to lose.”

His knife still palmed out of sight in his right hand, Sebastian bent to lay the useless pistol in the wet grass at his feet. He straightened slowly, his now empty left hand held out to his side.

Hildeyard said, “Step closer to the light so I can see you better.”

Sebastian took two steps, three.

“That’s close enough.”

Sebastian paused, although he still wasn’t as close as he needed to be. “Give it up, Tennyson. My wife is even as we speak laying information before Bow Street.”

The barrister shook his head. “No.” His face was pale, his features twisted with panic. He was a proud, self-absorbed man driven by his own selfishness and a moment’s fury into deeds far beyond anything he’d ever attempted before. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe it. We know you left Kent at dawn on Sunday morning and didn’t return to your estate until long past midnight.” It was only a guess, of course, but Tennyson had no way of knowing that. Sebastian took another step, narrowing the distance between them. “She wrote you a letter, didn’t she?” Sebastian took another step forward, then another. “A letter telling you she’d had an epileptic seizure.”

“No. It’s not in our side of the family. It’s not! Do you hear me?”

“Did she think you owed it to your betrothed, Miss Goodwin, to warn her that you might also share the family affliction? Is that why you rode into town to talk to her? And when you told her you wanted her to shut up and keep it a secret, did she threaten to tell Miss Goodwin herself?” Sebastian took another step. “Is that when you killed her?”

“I’m warning you, stay back!” Hildeyard cried, the gun shaking in his hand as he swung the barrel away from the boy, toward Sebastian. “She was going to destroy my life! My marriage, my career, everything! Don’t you see? I had to kill her.”

For one fleeting moment, Sebastian caught George Tennyson’s frightened gaze. “And the boys?”

“I forgot they were there.” Hildeyard gave a ragged laugh, his emotions stretched to a thin breaking point. “I forgot they were even there.”

Sebastian was watching the man’s eyes and hands. He saw the gun barrel jerk, saw Hildeyard’s eyes narrow.

Unable to throw his knife for fear of hitting the boy, Sebastian dove to one side just as Hildeyard squeezed the trigger.

The pistol belched fire, the shot going wide as Sebastian slammed into the raw, muddy earth. He lost the knife, his ears ringing from the shot, the air thick with the stench of burnt powder. He was still rolling to his feet when Hildeyard threw aside the empty gun and ran, crashing into the thick underbrush.

“Take the gig and get out of here!” Sebastian shouted at the boy, and plunged into the thicket after Hildeyard.

Sebastian was hampered by his heavy wet clothes and stocking feet. But he had the eyes and ears of an animal of prey, while Hildeyard was obviously blind in the darkness, blundering into saplings and tripping over roots and fallen logs. Sebastian caught up with him halfway across the small clearing of the sacred well and tackled him.

The two men went down together. Hildeyard scrabbled around, kicked at Sebastian’s head with his boot heel, tried to gouge his eyes. Then he grabbed a broken stone from the well’s lining and smashed it down toward Sebastian’s head. Sebastian tried to jerk out of the way, but the ragged masonry scraped the side of his face and slammed, hard, into his shoulder.

Pain exploded through his body, his grip on the man loosening just long enough for Hildeyard to half scramble up. Then Sebastian saw George Tennyson’s pale face looming above them, his jaw set hard with determination, the blade of his shovel heavy with caked mud as he swung it at his cousin’s head.

The flat of the blade slammed into the man’s temple with an ugly twunk. Tennyson went down and stayed down.

Sebastian sat up, his breath coming heavy. “Thank you,” he said to the boy. He swiped a grimy wet sleeve across his bloody cheek. “Are you all right?”

The boy nodded, his gaze on his cousin’s still, prostrate body, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a quick breath of air. “Did I kill him?”

Sebastian shifted to rest his fingertips against the steady pulse in Hildeyard’s neck. “No.”

Stripping off his cravat, Sebastian tied the man’s hands together, then used Hildeyard’s own cravat to bind his ankles, too. He wasn’t taking any chances. Only then did he push to his feet. His shoulder was aching, the side of his face on fire.

George Tennyson said, “I still don’t understand why he killed her. She was his sister.”

Sebastian looked down into the boy’s wide, hurting eyes. He was aware of the wind rustling through the leaves of the ancient grove, the raindrops slapping into the still waters of Camelot’s moat. How did you explain to a nine-year-old child the extent to which even seemingly normal people could be blindly obsessed with fulfilling their own personal needs and wants? Or that there were those who had such a profound disregard for others—even their closest family members—that they were willing to kill to preserve their own interests?

Then he realized that was a lesson George had already learned, at first hand; what he didn’t understand was how someone he knew and loved could be that way. And with that, Sebastian couldn’t help him.

He looped an arm over the boy’s shoulders and drew him close. “It’s over. You’re safe, and your brother’s safe.” Inadequate words, he knew.

But they were all he had.

Chapter 51

Saturday, 8 August

Gustav Pelletier sat on the edge of his hard bunk, his laced fingers tapping against his mustache.

“You’re going to hang anyway,” said Sebastian, standing with one shoulder propped against the prison cell’s stone wall. “So why not tell the truth about Arceneaux?”

The tapping stopped. “You would like that, yes? So that you can make all tidy?” The hussar’s lips curled. “Casse-toi.” Then he turned his face away and refused to be drawn again into conversation.

Lovejoy was waiting for Sebastian in the corridor outside. “Anything?” he asked as the turnkey slammed the heavy, ironbound door closed behind him.

Sebastian shook his head.

They walked down the gloomy passageway, their footsteps echoing in the dank stillness. “If he did shoot Philippe Arceneaux,” said Sebastian, “he’s going to take the truth of it to the grave.”

Sebastian had already identified one of the recaptured French officers, a Lyonnais by the name of François LeBlanc, as the second of the two men who had jumped him that night in Covent Garden. The man confessed that he and his fellow officer had attacked Sebastian out of fear the Viscount’s persistent probing might uncover their escape plan. But the Frenchman swore he knew nothing about Arceneaux’s death.

Lovejoy sighed. “You think Arceneaux abandoned his plans to escape with his comrades for the sake of Miss Tennyson?”

“I think so, yes.”

“But then, why, once she was dead, didn’t he reconsider?”

“Perhaps he’d come to regret the decision to break his parole. Although I think it more likely because he suspected his comrades of killing the woman he loved. He said as much to me right before he was shot, only at the time I didn’t know enough to understand what he was saying.”

They walked out the prison gates into the brilliant morning sunlight. The rain had cleared the dust and filth from the city streets to leave the air blessedly clean and fresh. Lovejoy said, “I’m told the children’s father, the Reverend Tennyson, has arrived from Lincolnshire. Fortunately, Hildeyard provided us with a full confession, so young George shouldn’t need to testify against him.”

“Thank God for that,” said Sebastian. The previous night, while they were waiting for Bow Street to reach Camlet Moat, Sebastian and the boy had sat side by side in the golden light of the lantern, the rain falling softly around them. In hushed tones, George had told Sebastian of how they’d been playing hide-and-seek that morning after church. Gabrielle was “it” and the two boys were hiding behind the heavy velvet drapes at the dining room windows when Hildeyard came barging into the house. Much of the argument between brother and sister had gone over George’s head. But the confrontation had ended in the dining room, with Hildeyard grabbing the carving knife from the table in a fit of rage to stab Gabrielle.

The boys had remained hidden, silent and afraid, until Hilde-yard stormed from the house—probably to fetch a gig. Then George grabbed Alfred’s hand and ran to his friends the Gypsies.

Lovejoy said, “To think the man went out every day looking for his young cousins—even posted a reward! I was most impressed with him. He seemed such an admirable contrast to the boys’ uncle.”

“Well, unlike d’Eyncourt, Hildeyard sincerely wanted to find the boys—and silence them. He might have made a great show of hiring men to comb the countryside around the moat, but he advertised the reward he was offering here in London—and set up a solicitor in an office in Fleet Street to screen any information that might come in.”

Lovejoy nodded. “The solicitor has proved most anxious to cooperate with us, for obvious reasons. Seems he received a tip yesterday from a wherryman who’d seen the two lads with the Gypsies. Of course, he claims he was utterly ignorant of Tennyson’s real reason for wanting to find the boys.”

“I suspect that he’s telling the truth.”

“One would hope so. He also admits to having put Tennyson in contact with the ruffian who attacked you beside the Thames yesterday—once again claiming no knowledge of Tennyson’s purpose in hiring such an unsavory individual.”

“A most incurious gentleman, if he’s to be believed.”

“He claims it’s an occupational hazard.”

“I assume he’ll hang?”

“Tennyson, you mean? I should think so.” Lovejoy paused to look back at the prison’s grim facade. “Unfortunately, he insists he knows nothing about the death of the French lieutenant. I’d like to believe Pelletier or one of the other escaping officers was responsible. But I don’t know. I just don’t know.…”

He glanced over at Sebastian, the magistrate’s brows drawing together in a frown as if he knew there was something Sebastian was keeping from him.

But Sebastian only shook his head and said, “I wonder if the boys would be interested in a dog.”

He came to Hero in the quiet of the afternoon, when the sun streamed golden through the open windows of her bedchamber and the breeze wafted clean and sweet.

She was watching a small boy and girl roll a hoop along the pavement, their joyous shouts and laughter carrying on the warm breeze. She didn’t realize she was crying until he touched his fingers to her wet cheeks and turned her to him.

“Hero,” he said softly. “Why now?”

The night before, she had insisted on driving out to Camlet Moat with Lovejoy and his men. The magistrate hadn’t wanted her to come, but she had overridden his objections, impatient with every delay and tense but silent until they arrived at the old chase. Then, for one intensely joyous moment, her gaze had met Devlin’s across the misty dark waters of the moat. But she had turned away almost at once to focus all her attention on the comfort and care of her dead friend’s nine-year-old cousin.

And she hadn’t shed a tear.

Now she laid her head against his shoulder, marveling at the simple comfort to be found in the strength of his arms around her and the slow beat of his heart so close to hers. She said, “I was thinking about Gabrielle. About how she felt as if she were missing out on all the joys and wonders that make life worth living. And so she gave in to her love for Lieutenant Arceneaux. And then she died because of it.”

“She didn’t die because she loved. She died because she was noble and honest and wanted to do the right thing, whereas her brother wanted only his own pleasure. Her choice didn’t need to end in tragedy.”

“Yet it did.”

“It did, yes.”

A silence fell between them. And she learned that the silence of a shared sorrow could also bring its own kind of comfort.

His hand shifted in a soft caress. She sucked in a shaky breath, then another, and raised her head to meet his gaze. His lips were parted, the sunlight glazing the high bones of his cheeks.

“Did you close the door behind you?” she asked, her voice husky with undisguised want.

“Yes.”

Her gaze still locked with his, she brushed her lips against his. “Good.”

She saw the flare of surprise in his eyes, felt his fingers tug impatiently at the laces that held her gown. He said, “It’s not dark yet.”

She gave him a wide, saucy smile. “I know.”

Later—much later—Sebastian lay beside her in a shaft of moonlight spilling through the open window. She raised herself on one bent arm, her fingertips skimming down over his naked chest and belly. He drew in his breath with a quiet hiss, and she smiled.

“Is the offer of a honeymoon still open?” she asked.

He crooked his elbow about her neck. “I think we deserve one, don’t you?”

She shifted so that her forearms rested on his chest, her hair falling forward to curtain her face, her eyes suddenly serious. “We can do better than this, Sebastian.”

He drew her closer, one hand drifting to the small of her back. “In the end I’d say we worked quite well together.” He brought up his free hand to catch her hair away from her face. “But I think we can do better, yes.”

And he raised his head to meet her kiss.

Author’s Note

This story was inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s haunting poem “The Lady of Shalott,” first published in 1833, then revised and republished in 1842. Tennyson himself was inspired by a thirteenth-century Italian novella, La donna di Scalotta.

Gabrielle and Hildeyard Tennyson are fictional characters of my own invention, but the family of Alfred Tennyson was indeed plagued by epilepsy, alcoholism, and insanity. The poet’s own father, a brilliant but troubled reverend from Somersby, Lincolnshire, was severely afflicted with epilepsy, and two of Alfred’s brothers spent most of their lives in mental institutions. Alfred feared the family affliction his entire life, although to my knowledge I am the only one to suggest that this is the “curse” referenced in his poem. Alfred did indeed have an older brother named George, although he was born in 1806 and died in infancy.

Alfred’s uncle, Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt, is much as depicted here; however, while he attended Cambridge and sent his sons to Eton, there is no actual record of him having attended Eton. Six years younger than Alfred’s father, he was nevertheless named the heir of the “Old Man of the Wolds” when his elder brother began exhibiting signs of severe epilepsy at puberty. The animosity between the two households was intense, with the wealthy Charles ironically coming to look down upon his older brother’s family as “poor relations.” Although he always denied it, Charles, too, suffered from a milder form of epilepsy. He did serve many years as a member of Parliament, although not until after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and he did indeed change his name to d’Eyncourt, although his repeated attempts to do so were frustrated until 1835. I have moved the date of that name change up to avoid the confusion of too many Tennysons in the story. Later in life, d’Eyncourt bitterly resented his nephew’s literary fame and was especially incensed when Alfred was made a lord (d’Eyncourt did finally achieve that honor himself, but much later in life). Charles’s sister, Mary Bourne, is also a real figure, a dour, unhappy woman who found singular solace in the conviction that she would go to heaven while the rest of her family—particularly the Somersby Tennyson branch—suffered the everlasting torments of hell. I am indebted to Robert Bernard Martin for his groundbreaking study of the Tennyson family in Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart.

Epilepsy, once also known as “the falling sickness,” was little understood in the nineteenth century and considered something shameful, to be kept hidden.

In 1812, archaeology was still in its infancy, although some of the first excavations at Stonehenge were undertaken as early as the seventeenth century. Further work was carried out there in 1798 and 1810 by William Cunnington and Richard Colt Hoare.

The legend that Arthur is not actually dead but will someday return to save England in her hour of need is real, hence his sobriquet “the once and future king.” For obvious reasons, this legend was the bane of unpopular British monarchs, who were repeatedly driven to try to convince their subjects that Arthur really was dead. The lack of a grave site complicated this effort, which may have led to the “discovery” of Arthur’s burial site at Glastonbury Abbey in the twelfth century.

Camlet Moat, once called Camelot, is a real place whose history is much as described here. It is now part of Trent Park, a country park open to the public, although the original eighteenth-century estate was named Trent Place. Over the years Trent Place went through many owners, several of whom instituted extensive remodeling projects. The amateur excavations on the island described here were actually carried out by two later owners, the Bevans during the 1880s and Sir Philip Sassoon in the early twentieth century. Curiously, the findings of those excavations are not reflected on the local council’s information board currently in place at the site.

The island has long been reputed to have an association with the grail maidens of old, and yes, Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville’s ties to the site also are real, as are his strange relationship with the Templars and the tales of his treasure. The story that he drowned in the well on the island and still haunts it, protecting his treasure, is indeed a local legend, although he actually died from an arrow in the head. Even the tales tying the highwayman Dick Turpin to the site are real; he frequently hid out at Camlet Moat during the course of his brief, ill-fated career. The numerous legends associated with the island can be found in various nineteenth-century works on the environs of London, including Jerrold’s Highways and Byways in Middlesex, Thorne’s Handbook to the Environs of London, and Lysons’s The Environs of London. For a modern, more fanciful interpretation of the site, see Street’s London’s Camelot and the Secrets of the Holy Grail.

The antiquarian Richard Gough was a real figure who did indeed live at Gough Hall near Camlet Moat. He left his library to Oxford, but not his collections, which were sold.

In the 1990s, a local man named Derek Mahoney claimed to have found the leaden cross from Arthur’s Glastonbury grave amongst mud dredged from an ornamental lake near Gough Hall. The local council claimed the find; Mahoney went to jail rather than surrender it, and then committed suicide. The cross, seen only briefly by the British Museum, again disappeared. It is assumed but has never proven to be a modern forgery.

The system of billeting paroled French and allied officers around England is as described, albeit slightly more complicated. Although the concept of a gentleman’s “word of honor” might seem strange to many today, paroled officers—as gentlemen—were given a startling amount of freedom. Many began businesses, married British women, and had children. The British government even allocated them a half-guinea-a-week allowance. Their restrictions were few: a curfew, a circumscribed location within which movement was allowed, an injunction to obey the laws of the land and to communicate with France only through the agent appointed by the Admiralty. From 1809 to 1812, nearly 700 paroled officers tried to escape, of whom some 242 were recaptured. The calico printer’s cart described here (basically a closed cart of a type typically used by tradesmen who printed designs on cloth) was one of the ruses used in an escape attempt in the summer of 1812.

Although the waltz was not allowed at Almack’s in London in 1812, it was danced elsewhere in England well before that date. The family wedding Mary Bourne prattles about to Hero in chapter 17 actually took place in 1806; her letters about the event mention the waltz.

Although we tend to think of neo-Druidism as a modern phenomenon, it was actually quite popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as part of the Romantic movement, which identified the Druids as national heroes. An Ancient Order of Druids was formed as early as 1781. Among the writers associated with the movement were William Stukely (who incorrectly believed Stonehenge was built by the Druids) and Iolo Morganwg (born Edward Williams), a Welsh nationalist with a deep admiration for the French Revolution. A form of spiritualism that stressed harmony with nature and respect for all beings, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Druidism also drew on the teachings of the Enlightenment. Lacking any written texts, a rigid dogma, or a central authority, neo-Druidism was basically a philosophy of living that located the divinity within all living creatures.

The foundation stone for what was then known as the Strand Bridge was laid in October of 1811, at the site of the old Savoy Palace. By the time the bridge opened nearly six years later, it had been renamed the Waterloo Bridge.

Although women were not a common sight in the British Museum’s Reading Room, they were allowed to become registered readers. According to the museum’s records, three were listed as registered readers for the years 1770 to 1810, and five were listed in 1820 alone. The museum closed in August and September, but for the sake of my story I have allowed it to remain open a few extra days.