by C. S. Harris
Using the skills he’d honed over five years in the army doing things no gentleman should ever do, Sebastian let himself in the main door from the hall. He found himself in a small parlor, opulently furnished if untidily kept, with riding boots left lying discarded across the Aubusson rug and a scattering of invitations and unpaid bills spilling off an ornate inlaid desk.
On the far side of the room, the door to the bedroom stood half-ajar. Sebastian went to push it open.
He found himself on the threshold of a room even more untidy than the last. An empty bottle of brandy stood on a side table near the door along with a scattering of dirty glasses; a tangle of dirty cravats and socks, waistcoats, and shirts lay strewn across the floor.
Sebastian wouldn’t have been surprised to find a naked Cyprian sprawled beneath the hangings of the silk-draped bed. But Ellsworth slept alone, flat on his back with the tangled sheets and covers shoved down around his hips. A heavy odor of brandy and sweat and stale air permeated the room.
Pulling up a delicate, lyre-backed chair to the side of the bed, Sebastian straddled the seat backward and drew a small French flintlock pistol from his coat pocket. A half-empty glass of brandy set on the bedside table at his elbow. Reaching over, he dipped the fingertips of his free hand into the liquid and calmly flicked a scattering of cold drops onto Bevan Ellsworth’s gently snoring face.
Ellsworth wrinkled his nose and shifted position, rolling half onto his side, his eyes still tightly closed.
Sebastian flicked again.
The man’s eyes blinked open, closed, then flew open wide as he bolted up, his weight on one outflung hand. “What the hell?”
Sebastian rested the arm with the pistol along the curving back of the chair. “You should stick with Howard and Gibbs,” he said pleasantly, as if giving financial advice to a friend. “Their interest rates might be ruinous, but unlike some of their more ruthless brethren on King Street, they don’t pollute the Thames with the bodies of those customers who make the mistake of falling behind on their interest payments.”
Ellsworth cleared his throat, the back of one hand rubbing across his mouth as he sat up straighter, his gaze on the little flintlock. “How do you know about that?”
“Of course,” continued Sebastian conversationally, as if the man hadn’t even spoken, “the problem with Howard and Gibbs is that they typically require some sort of surety. Particularly when there’s a chance the individual involved might not be the heir to a comfortable estate, after all.”
Ellsworth’s gaze slipped away to the open door behind Sebastian, then back again. “What are you doing here? And why the hell are you dressed like some bloody Bow Street Runner?”
Sebastian simply smiled. “You said your debts weren’t pressing. You lied to me. That was not wise.”
His jaw tightening, Ellsworth extended one arm in a wide arc that took in the small room, the bed’s dirty hangings. “Look at this place. Look at how I’m forced to live. Spending my days at the Inns of Court. Bloody hell. I’m a heartbeat away from being the next Marquis of Anglessey, and the paltry allowance my uncle grants me isn’t even enough to pay my tailors’ bills.”
“Especially after settling day at Tattersall’s.”
Ellsworth moistened his lower lip with his tongue. In the harsh light of morning, his skin looked sallow and slack with dissipation, his eyes bloodshot. “I didn’t kill her,” he said, his voice unexpectedly calm and even.
“But you threatened to.”
Ellsworth threw back the sheets and stood up. He was naked to the waist, a pair of drawstring underdrawers slung low on his hips, his feet bare. “Who wouldn’t want to kill her, in my position?” he demanded. “She was going to take away what is mine.” He leaned forward, his curled knuckles thumping against his bare chest. “Mine. And hand it all to some ill-begotten bastard.”
“You can’t know that.”
A tight smile curled the man’s lips. “Can’t I? Some things are hard to keep a secret. And servants do talk.” He swung away to go splash water from the pitcher into the bowl on the washstand.
“So who’s the father?”
Ellsworth shrugged, not bothering to turn around. “How should I know? I saw half a dozen or more young bucks at the funeral yesterday. For all I know, Guinevere herself couldn’t have told you the father’s name.”
Sebastian rose to his feet as a sudden thought occurred to him. “Where is she buried?”
“At St. Anne’s. Why?”
Sebastian shook his head, his lips curving into a hard smile. “What I don’t understand is why you went through all the risk of transporting the Marchioness’s body from London down to the Pavilion.”
“Jesus.” Ellsworth swung around, his face flushing with anger and what may have been a trace of fear. “You still think I did it. You still think I killed her.”
“I made some discreet inquiries around the Inns of Court. You arrived late that day, and left early.”
Sebastian expected the man to deny it. Instead, his eyes narrowed and he leaned forward to say provocatively, “You think I killed her? All right. Then let’s see you prove it.”
THE NARROW STAIRCASE leading down to the street door was dark in the rainy-day gloom. Halfway down the second flight, Sebastian passed a fleshy young dandy laboring up the steep steps, the man with flaxen hair and a florid complexion he remembered having seen with Ellsworth at Brooks’s.
Studying the man’s protuberant eyes, his molded, almost feminine lips, and weak chin, Sebastian thought the man’s sense of familiarity might come from his unfortunate resemblance to the portly, ruddy-faced princes of the House of Hanover. Then as the man reached the first floor and turned, his profile was silhouetted against the gray light above in a way that made Sebastian realize he did know this man, after all. He was Fabian Fitzfrederick, natural son of Frederick, Duke of York, second son of George III and next in line behind Princess Charlotte to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Wales.
The friendship might mean nothing, of course. Legitimate heirs to the throne were dangerously scarce, but over the years George III’s seven sons had sired scores of illegitimate children. If Guinevere Anglessey’s body had been found anyplace other than in the private apartments of His Highness the Prince Regent, Bevan Ellsworth’s friendship with an illegitimate member of the royal family would have been insignificant. It still might be insignificant, although Sebastian decided it wouldn’t hurt to look into Fabian Fitzfrederick’s activities on Wednesday last.
But first Sebastian intended to pay a visit to St. Anne’s churchyard.
Chapter 23
The bells in the church tower were ringing, calling the last stragglers to late-morning service when Sebastian jumped down from a hackney in front of St. Anne’s churchyard. The rain still came down hard, in big drops that dripped from the sodden leaves of the gnarled old oak trees overhead, flattened the rank grass between the graves, and darkened the granite headstones to near black.
The churchyard was not large, a collection of tombs and monuments hemmed in by tightly packed buildings that had risen up around the old stone church. Standing at the gate, Sebastian could see only two recent burials, their freshly turned mounds of dark brown earth heaped with funeral lilies and mums beaten and bruised now by the rain.
Winding between rusting iron railings and moss-covered statues, he worked his way toward the only other person in the cemetery, a man who stood beside one of the new graves, his head bowed, his collar turned up against the driving rain. At the sound of Sebastian’s footfalls on the flagged path, the man turned and Sebastian recognized Alain, the Chevalier de Varden.
The Chevalier’s head was bare, his once fine shirt stained, his face pale and shadowed by some three or four days’ growth of dark beard. “Well, if it isn’t Lord Devlin,” he said, blinking away the rain that ran down his cheeks and plastered his dark hair to his forehead. “Have you come to pay your respects to the dead? I wonder. Or simply to add me to your list of suspects?”
> Sebastian paused a few steps away. Around them the rain poured, beating on the leaves of the oaks and chestnuts overhead and shooting in noisy torrents from the slanted roofs of the surrounding tombs. “You’ve been talking to your sister, Claire.”
“That’s right.” The Chevalier’s speech was flawlessly precise, his movements fluid and graceful. Only the icy glitter in his blue eyes betrayed the fact that he was profoundly, dangerously drunk. “She thinks Bevan Ellsworth did it.”
“And you?”
Varden threw back his head to let out a harsh, ringing laugh that ended in teeth-clenching scorn. “Only Prinny could be found with a woman he’d murdered still clasped in his arms and yet manage to set everyone around him to scrambling in an effort to find someone else to blame.”
Sebastian shook his head. “You’re wrong. The Regent didn’t kill her. He couldn’t have. She was dead some six or eight hours before he found her in the Yellow Cabinet in the Pavilion.”
The wind gusted up, bringing with it the smell of damp earth and wet stone and death. Varden stood very still, only his chest jerking with each indrawn breath. “What are you saying?”
“Guinevere Anglessey was killed Wednesday afternoon—probably someplace here in London, given that she left her home in a hackney just after nuncheon.”
“A hackney? Going where?” he demanded with a sharpness Sebastian hadn’t expected.
“I don’t know.” Sebastian kept his gaze on the other man’s face. He saw grief there, and anger, and some of the guilt that can so often bedevil those left alive. But there was no sign of subterfuge, none of the consternation and fear one might expect from a murderer watching his elaborate stratagems of concealment beginning to unravel. “I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me.”
Varden raked his fingers through his dark, wet hair, his eyes squeezing shut as a spasm of pain contorted handsome features. “I hadn’t seen her since last week. Saturday.”
On the street behind them, a carriage went by driven fast, its iron-rimmed wheels flying, the sound of its horses’ hooves clattering dully in the wet air. The heaviness of the clouds had brought an unnatural darkness to the day, making it seem far later than it actually was.
“Lady Quinlan tells me you and her sister were good friends,” said Sebastian.
Varden dropped his hands to his sides, his eyes open and alert, his body tense. “I’d hazard a guess she phrased it somewhat differently.”
Sebastian nodded in acknowledgment. “There was no love lost between the two sisters, was there?”
“That’s one way of putting it. And if it surprises you, then you must have been an only child,” said Varden with a bitterness that spoke volumes about the Chevalier’s relationships with his own half brothers and sisters.
“I had two brothers,” said Sebastian. Both were long dead, but he saw no need to add that. No need, either, to admit he had a sister who less than five months ago had looked forward to cheerfully watching him hang. The bond between siblings could be close—he knew that; but he also knew something of the fierce jealousies and rivalries, resentments and animosities that could flourish within the tight bonds of a family. Especially when birth order could elevate one to a life of ease and power while consigning the rest to obscurity and relative poverty.
“Athelstone never had anything to do with any of his daughters,” Varden was saying. “I think he hated them. It was as if they were nothing more to him than unwanted reminders of the son he couldn’t seem to have.”
“One might expect that sort of childhood to make sisters close to each other.”
“Only if one were unacquainted with Morgana. Up until the day Athelstone died, Morgana was desperate to curry favor with the old bastard—and she usually did it by making Guin look bad.” An unexpected, tender smile touched the other man’s lips. “Mind you, Morgana didn’t need to work too hard. Guin did a good enough job of making herself look bad. She was…” He paused, searching for the right word. The smile faded. “Guin was very angry, growing up.”
“About what?”
Varden shrugged. “About her mother dying, I suppose. About her father. Who knows?”
He went to stand beside the muddy wound of her grave, his head bowed, his fists clenched at his sides. Around them, the rain poured, splashing into the puddles in the sunken hollows of old graves and drumming on the domed roof of a nearby tomb.
Suddenly, he looked up, his eyes narrowing against the driven rain. “He did it, you know. Prinny. I don’t care what you say. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
“What possible reason could the Prince Regent have for killing the Marchioness of Anglessey?”
“Madness needs no reason. And they are all mad. You know that, don’t you? Every last member of that God-rotted family. The King might be the only one actually raving, but the taint is there, in each and every one of them, whether it’s Clarence roaring around on imaginary quarterdecks or old one-eyed Cumberland betraying the overzealous nature of his affection for his sister Sophia.”
Sebastian held himself very still, his silent gaze on the other man.
Varden used the palm of his hand to wipe the rain from his face. “My sister, Claire, is right in one sense: Bevan Ellsworth must bear much of the blame for what happened to Guinevere. None of this would have occurred if it hadn’t been for all the nasty lies he’s been spreading about Guinevere ever since her marriage. That’s what made Prinny think her the kind of woman who would welcome his ridiculous advances.”
Sebastian knew a quickening of interest. “The Prince Regent made advances on her? When was this?”
“It began at Carlton House sometime last spring. She and Anglessey were attending a state dinner, and the Regent pressed her to allow him to show her his conservatory.”
“Where he became overly familiar? Is that what you’re saying?”
Varden’s lip curled. “He put his hand down the front of her dress.”
Sebastian stared off across the rain-drenched churchyard. It wasn’t the first time the Regent had done such a thing, Sebastian knew. A spoiled prince, handsome when young and accustomed to a lifetime of flattery and sycophancy, the Regent frequently overestimated his appeal to women.
Yet he’d claimed, when asked, that he’d barely known the young Marchioness.
Sebastian brought his gaze back to the Chevalier’s pale, grief-stricken face. “What did she do?”
“She tried to pull away from him. He laughed. Said he enjoyed a spirited woman. So she took more drastic measures.”
“Such as?”
“She slapped his fat, self-satisfied face.”
“Was he in his cups?”
“No more than usual. You’d think that sort of reaction would have quenched his desires, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. He wouldn’t leave her alone. Kept soliciting her hand at balls, arranging to sit next to her at dinners. And then just last week he sent her a trinket. A small token of his affection, he called it. From Rundell and Bridge on Ludgate Hill.”
They were the Prince’s favorite goldsmiths and jewelers, Rundell and Bridge. It was grumbled in some quarters that he spent enough every year on jewelry to feed and clothe the entire British army. He was always buying trinkets, as he called them, to shower upon his favorites and lady friends: ivory snuffboxes and jeweled butterflies, amethyst and diamond bracelets…and rare, unusual necklaces.
Sebastian squinted up at the rain. Silhouetted against the dark gray sky, the leafy branches of the oaks and chestnuts overhead looked black. “What kind of trinket?”
“I didn’t see it. She sent it back to him—along with a note stating in no uncertain terms that his advances were unwelcome.”
“And Anglessey? Did he know any of this?”
A strange flush darkened the other man’s pale, gaunt cheeks. “It’s hardly the sort of thing a woman would tell her husband, now, is it?”
“Yet she told you,” said Sebastian, and watched the color drain slowly from the Chevalier’s face.
<
br /> CHARLES, LORD JARVIS, maintained a fervent respect for the institution of the Church of England.
The Church, like the monarchy, was a valuable bastion of defense against the dangerous alliance of atheistical philosophy with political radicalism. The Bible taught the poorer orders that their lowly path had been allotted to them by the hand of God, and the Church was there to make quite certain they understood that. And so Jarvis took pains to be seen at church every week.
That Sunday, his head bowed in due respect for his Maker, Jarvis attended services at the Chapel Royal in the company of his aged mother, his half-mad wife, Annabelle, and his tiresome daughter, Hero, whom he believed to be in serious need of remembering what the Bible and St. Paul had to say about a number of things, particularly the role of women in society.
During the second reading, when the clergyman loudly proclaimed, “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law,” Jarvis emphasized the point by quietly elbowing Hero in the side.
Her gaze fixed oh-so-properly on the pulpit, she leaned toward him to whisper maliciously, “Careful, Papa. You’re setting a bad example for the ignorant masses.”
She was always saying that sort of thing, as if the canker of social discontent spreading across the country were a subject for jest. Yet he knew she took what she referred to as “the dreadful situation of the nation’s poor” very seriously indeed. There were times when he almost suspected his daughter of harboring radical principles herself. But it was an idea too disconcerting to be entertained for long, and he quickly dismissed it.
After the service, they walked out of the palace into a gray day still dripping rain. A man stood across the street; a tall young man whose rough greatcoat and round hat did nothing to disguise his aristocratic bearing or the dangerous glitter in his strange yellow eyes.
Jarvis rested one hand on his daughter’s arm. “See your mother and grandmother home in the carriage,” he said, keeping his voice low.