Where Shadows Dance

Chapter 11

Sebastian studied the Frenchwoman’s fine-boned face, the single, half-hooded eye. “And how was this second gentleman dressed?”

“Much the same as the first. Evening cape and knee breeches.”

“Could they have been the same man?”

She frowned, as if considering this. Then she shook her head. “I do not believe so. They moved differently. Or at least, it must have seemed so to me at the time, for it never occurred to me that they might be the same man.”

Sebastian said, “Had you seen these men visit Mr. Ross before?”

“Them, or men like them.”

“But you’ve no idea who they might be?”

She started to say something, then hesitated.

“What?” he prompted.

She leaned forward. “Men may hide their faces but forget that their accents can tell their own story ... to those who know how to listen.”

“What kind of accents are we talking about?”

“Mainly Russian. But also Swedish and Turkish. And the occasional Frenchman, of course.” She kept her gaze on his face. “You’re wondering how I could know, yes?”

He gave a wry smile. “I doubt I would be able to identify a Swedish or a Russian accent. Or distinguish a Turk from, say, a Greek.”

“My father was an official at Versailles when I was a child. I grew up surrounded by accents from all over Europe—and beyond. It was a game my brother and I played, imitating them.”

Sebastian watched her nostrils flare on a quickly indrawn breath and he knew without being told that her brother, like her husband, was dead. He said, “You knew none of these men?”

“I recognized one of the Russians—a colonel attached to the embassy, by the name of Colonel Dimitri Chernishav. I understand he and Ross were friends from Ross’s time in Russia.”

The name meant nothing to Sebastian. “Anyone else?”

She made a face. “Well, there’s Antoine de La Rocque.”

“Who is he?”

“Once, he was a priest. He fled France in the first wave, more than twenty years ago now. He has something of a reputation as a collector of rare, old books. He has opened part of his collection to the public—to the paying public, of course, although he claims that is only to keep out the riffraff.”

“Where is this?”

“Great Russell Street, near the museum. Although he can frequently be found prowling the bookstalls in Westminster Hall.”

“Could de La Rocque have been one of the men you saw that night?”

“He visited Alexander Ross regularly. But was he one of the men I saw that night?” Again, that enigmatic smile. “Who knows?”

Sebastian was beginning to suspect she knew considerably more than she was willing to reveal. But all he said was, “The second man—the one you say went upstairs and came back down again so quickly—at what time was this?”

“Somewhere around half past midnight. It was shortly before I retired for the night. I keep rooms in another house I own near here,” she explained, “on Ryder Street. So it is always possible someone could have arrived to see Monsieur Ross after I left here. Or Monsieur Ross himself may have stepped out. I would not know.”

Sebastian pushed to his feet. “You’ve been most helpful, Madame; thank you.”

She gazed up at him thoughtfully. “Yet you wonder why, when I know your reason for asking these questions, I have given you the name of one of my countrymen—a fellow émigré. Hmm?”

He had, in fact, been wondering exactly that.

The skin beside her remaining eye crinkled with her smile. “For some time now, those of us in the émigré community have suspected that there is a traitor in our midst. One who claims to despise Napoléon and all the while secretly passing information back to Paris.”

Sebastian had heard such rumors. He said, “You think de La Rocque could be the traitor?”

She pressed her lips together and shrugged. “He claims he fled France to avoid being put to death as a nonjuring priest.” Tens of thousands of priests had fled Revolutionary France rather than take the antipapal oath of religion; those who stayed faced either death or deportation to a penal colony. “Yet he will also laugh and tell you he lost his faith in God at the age of ten. Both cannot be true.”

“That doesn’t make him a traitor,” Sebastian said.

“No. But it makes him a liar. Remember that when you speak to him.”

Hero Jarvis sat at the heavy oak table in the library of the Jarvis town house on Berkeley Square. She held a pen in one hand; piles of maps and books lay scattered about her. She had intended to devote the afternoon to a survey she was preparing on the few surviving traces of London’s lost monastic houses. But the ink had long ago dried on the nib as she stared unseeingly at the garden beyond the room’s tall windows.

She’d told Lord Devlin the truth when she said it had been her intention never to marry. She might work hard to change England’s draconian marriage laws and the unconscionable powers granted husbands over their wives, but she was realistic enough to know that real change was still generations away. And so she had poured the energy that other women her age devoted to their families into studies and articles and draft legislation. She’d told Devlin she intended to continue her efforts, and she did. But she was no fool, and she suspected her life was about to change in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine and didn’t want.

There was also the matter of who would take over from Hero the management of her father’s big house on Berkeley Square. Hero’s grandmother, the Dowager Lady Jarvis, had long ago retired to her rooms on the second floor and rarely ventured forth to do more than complain or criticize; Hero’s own mother, Annabelle, Lady Jarvis, was so feeble both physically and emotionally that the mere thought of trying to select a menu or deal with tradesmen was enough to send her tottering toward her couch, vinaigrette in hand.

Hero would need to find a companion for her mother, someone capable of both overseeing the household and sheltering her ladyship from the worst of her husband’s venom. Jarvis did not suffer fools lightly, and Lady Jarvis’s mental stability was always at best precarious. Hero was running a list of possible candidates through her head when the butler appeared bearing a sealed missive on a silver tray.

“A message from Lord Devlin, Miss Jarvis,” he said with a bow, his face impassive.

“Thank you, Grisham.” She set aside her pen but waited until the butler had withdrawn before breaking the seal and spreading open the single, folded sheet. The message was brief and to the point.

Brook Street, 24 July

I have made arrangements with Canterbury for the ceremony to be held at eleven o’clock Thursday morning, in the Lambeth Palace chapel. Pls advise if this is convenient.

The signature was a simple, scrawled Devlin.

She sat for a time, conscious of an uncharacteristic disquiet yawning deep within her. It was one thing, she’d discovered, to analyze the various unpleasant options available to one and choose what appeared to be the most reasonable course of action. But it was something else entirely to find oneself actually catapulting toward that fate.

Especially when that fate was marriage to a man like Devlin.

Resolutely refusing to allow herself to dwell on all such a marriage would involve, she dipped her pen in the ink and scrawled a simple, three-word answer.

It is convenient.

She sealed the note and entrusted its delivery to one of the footmen. Then she went in search of her mother.