Why Kings Confess

Chapter 56

By the time Sebastian reached the French chapel on Little George Street, a fine cold rain had begun to fall from out of a heavy black sky.

He paused in the shadows cast by the jutting angle of the nearby stables. The night smelled of wet pavement and fresh horse droppings and hot oil from a distant streetlamp flickering in the wind. A faint light spilled from the church facade’s three high windows and from the carriage lanterns of the lone barouche drawn up before the chapel portal; a coachman wearing the livery of the Comte d’Artois dozed on the carriage’s high seat. But otherwise, the narrow street lay dark and deserted beneath the coming storm.

Settling his hat low against the rain, Sebastian gently tried the front doors of the chapel. They were locked. He glanced again at the sleeping coachman, then slipped around the side of the chapel to the narrow passage that led to the sacristy door. The rain was falling harder now, sharp, needlelike drops with the sting of sleet. He’d almost reached the short flight of steps when he heard the stealthy footsteps of someone entering the passage behind him.

Sebastian whipped around.

A young man dressed in an unbuttoned greatcoat and a top hat drew up abruptly with a faint, nervous laugh. He looked to be perhaps twenty-five years of age, his features unremarkable except for a pair of large dark eyes as thickly lashed as a girl’s.

“The Chevalier d’Armitz, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“You were being very quiet,” said Sebastian. “You weren’t by chance trying to sneak up on me, were you?”

“Now, why would I want to do that?” The Frenchman held his left arm straight down at his side, his hand half-hidden by the folds of his coat. In the deep shadows of the passage, he must have been confident that no man could possibly see the dagger clenched in his fist. “Just thought you ought to know that the church is closed.”

“I see candlelight.”

The Chevalier advanced one step, then another. “It’s a private ceremony.”

“Oh? And what sort of ceremony might that be?”

“A funeral.”

“Yet there is no hearse.”

“The body has already been buried elsewhere.” The rain drummed around them. The Chevalier kept coming, the knife held out of sight, his features composed in an affable expression as if they were engaged in a pleasant conversation. “It’s the practice amongst certain emigre families to preserve a loved one’s heart separate from the body. The urns are kept in a vault here, in the chapel, for the day when they may be returned to France.”

“In this case, to the Val-de-Grace?”

“As it happens, yes.” He drew up perhaps four feet from Sebastian, his smile slowly fading into something intense. “You are a difficult man to kill, Monsieur le Vicomte.”

“Yet you keep trying.”

“The odds are better this time, I think.”

“Oh? Because you have a knife in your hand and I don’t?”

A faint cloud of surprise followed by uncertainty drifted across the Chevalier’s face, then cleared. “I’ve heard you have the eyes and ears of a cat. I never credited it, myself.”

“Your mistake.”

He shook his head. “I think it’s an image you cultivate.”

“I’ve heard you have a fondness for stabbing men in the back. Literally. Yet my back is not turned.”

“I’m adaptable,” said the Chevalier. Still smiling, he lunged forward, the knife flashing up toward Sebastian’s heart.

Sebastian pivoted to grab the Chevalier’s outthrust arm with one hand while grasping his fist with the other. Gritting his teeth, Sebastian twisted the fist hard, the knife handle giving him leverage. He saw the flash of shock in d’Armitz’s face as the Frenchman realized just how badly he had miscalculated.

The knife slid from the Chevalier’s helplessly limp hand into Sebastian’s own. Yanking up the Frenchman’s arm, Sebastian drove the blade straight into his heart.

“But. .,” sputtered the Chevalier, eyes widening as he smacked into a reality he could not finesse, an opponent he could not cheat, a fate he could not elude. Then fury replaced astonishment, an indignant rage made all the more acute by the realization that his luck had finally run out.

“Not quite as adaptable as you thought,” said Sebastian, wrenching the blade free.

The rain poured around them, wetting the Frenchman’s upturned face and mingling with the blood soaking his white waistcoat. The light of comprehension was already fading from his eyes. Yet the rage remained, like a fiery hot coal doomed to extinction in an unforgiving darkness.

• • •

The door to the sacristy opened soundlessly to Sebastian’s touch. The space beyond was small and untidy, the air thick with the smell of dampness and stale incense and a musty odor often associated with old men’s clothes. A narrow band of flickering candlelight spilled into the dark room through the door to the chapel itself, which stood slightly ajar.

Sebastian paused in the shadows. From here, he could see most of the two rows of empty benches and the wooden west gallery built above the main entrance. The church appeared deserted except for the old priest, clothed in his white alb with the gold-embroidered black stole draped around his neck. He stood before one of the wall-mounted monuments, open now to reveal a shallow niche containing a row of urns. He had his hands raised, the low drone of his voice echoing through the stillness.

“Requiem?ternam dona ei, Domine.”

Sebastian heard a rustle of cloth, a light step, and Lady Giselle Edmondson moved into his line of vision. She wore a high-waisted gown of black cashmere scalloped and edged with crepe. A black lace veil draped her head, the delicate folds accentuating the fair luster of her hair without hiding her face. In her hands she held a clear rock crystal urn mounted with two silver handles and a silver lid and base. Within lay a red-brown heart he suspected had once belonged to Damion Pelletan.

“Et lux perpetua luceat ei. .”

She stood with her head bowed, her eyes closed, her beautiful features composed into a study of intense concentration and reverence as the words of the priest washed over her.

“Requiescat in pace. .”

Sebastian shifted so that his view took in the rest of the chapel. He half expected to find Marie-Therese here, as well. But the church was utterly empty except for the aged priest and Lady Giselle.

“Anima ejus, et anim? omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam. .” The priest’s chanting was reaching a crescendo. Sebastian pushed the door open wider and walked into the chapel.

“Dei requiescant in p-” The priest’s head turned, his voice trailing off into a high-pitched squeak as his eyes widened and his jaw sagged.

At first, Giselle must have assumed Sebastian’s footsteps belonged to her cousin, for she turned slowly, her head coming up as she opened her eyes. Her reaction was more controlled than the priest’s.

She stared at Sebastian for a moment, then said, “I take it that’s my cousin’s blood?”

It was only then that Sebastian became aware of the spurt of dark blood across the front of his coat and waistcoat, and the bloody knife he still clenched in one hand. “It is.”

“He’s dead?”

“He is, yes.”

He saw the flame of emotion in her eyes, fury mingled with careful calculation rather than grief.

“Monsieur!” protested the priest. “You would bring a bloody weapon of murder into the house of the Lord?”

“My apologies, Father.” Keeping his gaze on Lady Giselle, Sebastian carefully laid the knife at his feet, the metal hilt clinking against the stone paving.

She said, “I am aware of what you must think, but you are wrong. The Chevalier did not kill Damion Pelletan.”

“I know.” Sebastian continued walking toward her, his empty hands at his sides. “But you intended to kill him. That’s why you followed his hackney when he left the Gifford Arms that night, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps. Yet in the end, what we intended is immaterial. If all those who wished ill of their fellow beings were held accountable, England would soon be very thin of company.”

“So what did happen that night?”

She shrugged. “When the hackney set Pelletan and the woman down at the entrance to Cat’s Hole, I told my coachman to pull up and sent the Chevalier to follow them on foot.”

“To Hangman’s Court?”

“If that is the name of that foul cesspit, then the answer is yes.”

“And then what?”

“While Armitz waited, he became aware of another man loitering in the shadows-a large, rather crude ruffian with dark curly hair.”

“Sampson Bullock.”

“Yes.”

Sebastian studied her calm, flawlessly composed features. “How did you know his name?”

“Does it matter? The point is, Armitz watched Bullock follow Pelletan as he left Hangman’s Court. At one point, the woman must have heard something because she started to turn. Bullock struck her in the head with a cosh and stabbed Damion Pelletan in the back. Armitz waited until the man left, then came to me.”

“And you returned together to where Damion Pelletan and his sister lay?”

She tilted her head to one side. “How did you-”

“How did I know you were there, in the alley? I found the prints left by your shoes.”

“But you could not possibly have known the shoe prints were mine.”

“No,” he agreed, then said, “Why did you return with Armitz to Cat’s Hole?”

Her hands moved possessively over the crystal urn in her hands. “I needed the heart.”

Sebastian studied the proud lift of her chin, the gleam of self-confident righteousness in those deceptively soft blue eyes. “You cut out his heart yourself, didn’t you? That’s why you went back with Armitz. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. So you did.”

“Yes.”

He’d known it, and yet, hearing her calmly admit it made the fact seem somehow worse. He could not rid himself of the image of this delicate, ethereally beautiful woman surrounded by the refuse of a dark, foul alley as she savagely hacked Damion Pelletan’s heart from his still-warm flesh. He said, “You believed Pelletan the Lost Dauphin, the only surviving son of the martyred King of France; and yet you would have killed him, had someone else not done so first. Why?”

She stared back at him. “He was not fit to rule. He was not raised as a prince, and his mind had been hopelessly corrupted by the influence of the Revolution. When the Bourbons are restored to the throne of France, it will not be through him.”

“Yet you would see his heart given a place of honor amongst the royal tombs in Val-de-Grace?”

“He is still a son of St. Louis.”

“Does Marie-Therese know? Does she know you would have killed the man she believed might be her brother?”

Rather than answer him, Lady Giselle turned to the priest. “Please continue the service, Father.” To Sebastian, she said, “You may leave us now.”

Sebastian expelled his breath in a low, humorless huff. “Not without Damion Pelletan’s heart. It’s up to his sister to decide what’s to be done with it.”

“No.” She shook her head. “His name was not Damion Pelletan, and the woman who accompanied him was not his sister.”

“You’re wrong,” said Sebastian, advancing on her.

He could probably never prove that the Chevalier d’Armitz had killed both Colonel Foucher and the molly, James Farragut, just as there was no way to prove that the Chevalier had acted under this woman’s orders. But he’d be damned if he’d let her enshrine Damion Pelletan’s heart in a monument dedicated to a dynasty that the man had hated.

“Give me the heart,” he said.

“Monsieur,” protested the priest, attempting to step between them.

“Father-,” Sebastian began, just as Lady Giselle gave the priest a violent shove that sent him staggering into Sebastian.

“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, reaching out to steady the old man as Giselle whirled and ran for the front of the chapel.

She had the heavy skirts of her gown fisted one hand, the urn clutched tight against her side. She’d almost reached the doors when she obviously remembered they were locked. She hesitated only an instant, then veered off, intent on circling back toward the sacristy. But Sebastian was already setting the bleating priest aside and moving to cut her off. For one intense moment, her furious gaze met his. Then she turned and dashed up the narrow wooden stairs of the west gallery.

He pelted after her, taking the steep steps two at a time. He erupted onto the creaky gallery to find her backed against the wooden balustrade, the urn raised like a weapon.

“Don’t come any closer to me,” she said with awful calm.

He drew up abruptly. “I won’t hurt you. Just give me the heart.”

She shook her head. “You asked how I happened to know the identity of the cabinetmaker, Bullock. Well, I’ll tell you. I made it my business to know. I realized he might prove a useful distraction, if it looked as if you were becoming more than a nuisance-as you have. Which is why, before he came to meet me here, my cousin stopped by Tichborne Street to make certain Bullock knows about the child. He’s very angry with you, you know. He’s sworn he’ll take his revenge against both you and Alexi Sauvage.”

“Damion Pelletan’s son is safe.” Sebastian took a step closer, then another. “Bullock will never get to him.”

She gave a high, ringing laugh that echoed around the small chapel. The rain drummed on the roof and the gusting wind drove the torrent against the windows in waves. “I’m not talking about Noel Durant, you fool. What interest have I in a prince’s bastard? I’m talking about your child. Your unborn child.”

Sebastian drew up abruptly, a cold prickling running across his scalp.

“Bullock is going to kill it,” she said with cold triumph. “The child and its mother both.”

Sebastian took another step toward her. “I don’t believe you.”

“Then that is the greatest revenge of all, is it not?” she said, and slammed the heavy urn against his head.

The sharp edge of a silver handle sliced into his scalp, sending hot blood coursing down the side of his face. He put up an arm to fend her off, but she swung the urn at him again, her features distorted with rage and hatred and blind determination.

He flung her off, the blood in his eyes now. She stumbled back, off-balance, careening hard against the gallery’s wooden balustrade. Sebastian heard the crack of breaking wood, saw the horror of comprehension flood her face.

The old railing gave way, the banister shattering. She scrabbled one-handed to catch herself. If she had let go of the urn, she might have saved herself. But she held on to it, falling backward into space with a cry of rage, her black skirts billowing around her.

“Mon Dieu!” screamed the priest as she slammed into the pavement with a bone-breaking smack.

The impact knocked the urn from her grasp, the rock crystal shattering against the pavement in a shower of clear, glittering fragments, the torn heart coming to rest just inches from her outflung hand. She stared up at the chapel ceiling with wide, sightless eyes. But Sebastian didn’t even pause to make certain she was dead.

He was already running for the door.