by C. S. Harris
“Not exactly.”
The man’s handsome smile slipped ever so slightly, then broadened. “What do you have in mind? Pistols at dawn? Or a knife wielded in darkness from a fetid alley?”
Sebastian shook his head. “Three years ago, an innocent Portuguese nun was raped and tortured to death because of you, while thirty-two children and the simple, pious women who cared for them were put to the sword or burned alive. No English court will ever convict you for what you did to the convent of Santa Iria. But if you murdered Stanley Preston, I’m going to personally watch you hang for it.”
Then he turned and strode from the room, before the urge to kill the man with his bare hands overwhelmed him.
Chapter 16
H ero arrived home from her early expedition to Covent Garden to find Devlin seated at his desk, fitting a new flint into his small, double-barreled pistol.
“The strangest thing happened at the market this morning,” she said, yanking off her yellow kid gloves as she walked into the library. “There was this man—” She broke off as Devlin looked up and she saw his face.
The room was filled with shadows, for the day had grown overcast and he had no need to kindle a candle to light his work. Yet even in the gloom, she could sense the taut, hard set of his features, see the lethal gleam in the strange yellow luminosity of his eyes. “What is it?” she said.
“Sinclair Oliphant is in London.”
She was suddenly, acutely aware of the ticking of the mantel clock, of the lean strength of his fingers as he worked on the gun. He had told her some of the events of that blood-soaked Portuguese spring. She knew of Oliphant’s betrayal and the hideous carnage that flowed from it. But she’d always suspected that Devlin hadn’t told her everything. That he was holding back some crucial component of the events of that day. And that what he hugged quietly to himself was the part that most lacerated his soul and drove him on a path to destruction.
She set aside her gloves. “You’ve seen him?”
He nodded. “Anne Preston came to me this morning. I think her main purpose was to try to convince me of Captain Wyeth’s innocence, but she also told me her father was afraid of Oliphant. It seems Preston objected to Oliphant’s actions as governor of Jamaica, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he used his influence with his cousin the Home Secretary to have Oliphant recalled.”
“You’re suggesting Oliphant might have hacked off Preston’s head and set it up on Bloody Bridge in revenge?”
“Personally? Probably not. Sinclair Oliphant has always preferred to let other people do his dirty work.”
She watched him square the flint to the frizzen and begin to tighten down. He was a man comfortable with violence, willing to use it when necessary and perhaps sometimes even welcoming it. But she did not believe he would take it upon himself to simply execute Oliphant, as he might once have done.
Then she wondered if he sensed the drift of her thoughts, because he said, “I’m not going to kill him out of hand and hang for it, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he has already tried to have me killed.”
She stared at him. “You think he was behind last night’s shooter? But . . . you didn’t even know about his involvement with Preston until this morning.”
Devlin closed the frizzen and brought the flint gently down on it. “If Oliphant sent that shooter, it was because of Santa Iria, not because of Preston. As soon as Oliphant made the decision to return to London, he knew he was going to need to deal with me. And the people Oliphant deals with generally end up dead.”
“Then perhaps you should kill him,” she said. “As long as you can be certain you won’t hang for it, of course.”
His eyes crinkled with amusement, for he thought she spoke in jest. Except that she hadn’t. She loved him with a fierceness that could steal her breath and freeze her heart with the fear of losing him. But while she admired Devlin’s moral code, she did not completely share it. In many ways, she was still very much her father’s daughter.
He slipped the pistol into his pocket and rose to his feet. “If Oliphant was behind Stanley Preston’s murder, I’m going to see him hang for it.”
“And if he didn’t have Preston murdered?”
Devlin smiled again, this time with lethal purposefulness. “Then I’ll kill him when he comes to kill me.”
Chapter 17
H alf an hour later, Sebastian was walking out of the house toward his waiting curricle when a stylish barouche drawn by a team of blood bays and emblazoned with the Jarvis crest rounded the corner and drew up close to the kerb.
The carriage’s near window came down with a snap. “Ride with me around the block,” said Jarvis as one of his liveried footmen rushed to open the carriage door.
Sebastian paused at the base of the house steps. “Why?”
“Do you seriously expect me to discuss it in the street?”
Sebastian exchanged looks with Tom, who was standing nearby at the chestnuts’ heads. Then he leapt up into Jarvis’s carriage and took the forward bench.
“What you are about to hear is told in the strictest confidence,” said Jarvis as his team moved forward with a jerk.
Sebastian studied his father-in-law’s full, complaisant face. “Sent one of your minions out to Windsor Castle, did you?”
The other man’s eyes glittered with an animosity he made no attempt to disguise. “As it happens, I went myself.”
“And?”
“Charles’s I’s burial vault has been violated. The inscribed section of the lead band that once encircled the coffin has been removed, as has the King’s head.”
“The head?” Sebastian stared at him, his attention well and truly caught. “Was anything else taken from the crypt?”
“That has not yet been determined, although I have instructed the Dean and his virger to make a thorough investigation.”
“Did you open Charles’s coffin when you first inspected the vault for the Prince Regent?”
“I did not.” The carriage swung onto Bond Street, and Jarvis reached up to grasp the strap that dangled beside him. “It is the Prince’s wish that he be present at the coffin’s opening, with the contents to be inspected not only by himself, but by a number of other important individuals.”
“So if you never actually opened the coffin, before, how can you be certain the head was ever there? King Charles might have been buried without it.”
“The depression where the head once rested within the folds of the cerecloth is quite obvious. Apart from which, all the accounts we have of the events that occurred immediately after the execution state quite clearly that Charles’s head was sewn back onto the body before the dead King’s remains were put on display.”
“Was he put on display?”
“Of course he was. It would have been vitally important to the usurpers that the populace be convinced their King was indeed dead.”
Sebastian stared thoughtfully out the window at a costermonger with a gaily painted donkey cart, the boy beside him shouting, “Turnips, penny a bunch!”
“The princess Augusta is not expected to live out the day,” Jarvis was saying. “Her funeral will doubtless take place sometime next week, and the Regent is determined to hold the formal opening of Charles’s tomb immediately thereafter.”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to his father-in-law’s face. “I take it no one has told His Highness that someone already beat him to it? No wonder you didn’t want to discuss this in the street.”
Jarvis tightened his grip on the strap. “It’s conceivable the theft has political implications. Was Stanley Preston an admirer of the Stuarts?”
“The Stuarts certainly interested him. But I don’t know if you could say he admired them.”
“You’re certain?”
“No. At this point, I’m not certain of anything.”
“And you’ve learned nothing that might suggest who was behind the violation of the royal vault?”
Sebastian found himself faintly smiling. “No.”
Jarvis studied him through hard, narrowed eyes. “You find my question amusing?”
“Amusing? Not exactly. Two days ago, a man was murdered in a particularly brutal fashion by someone who is still out there, walking our streets. Yet your only concern in all this is how it might lead to the recovery of some moldering old head?”
“This is not simply some random ‘moldering old head’ we’re talking about,” snapped Jarvis in a rare show of irritation. “And as for whatever fears have been aroused amongst the populace by the grisly manner of this murder, they will be easy enough to assuage with a swift public hanging.”
“Whether the hanged man is actually guilty of the murder or not?”
“Fortunately, we don’t all share your maudlin obsession with guilt and innocence.”
Sebastian met his father-in-law’s hard, ruthless gaze and wondered why it had never occurred to him just how much Jarvis and Oliphant had in common.
The carriage swung back onto Brook Street, and Jarvis signaled his coachman to pull up. “I want that head.”
“If I should happen to come across it, I’ll see it’s returned to you.” Sebastian opened the door without waiting for the footman. Then he paused on the step to look back and say, “What do you know of Sinclair, Lord Oliphant?”
“The man who was until recently governor of Jamaica?” Jarvis frowned. “Very little. Why?”
“Colonial governors are appointed by the Crown, are they not?”
“Officially. But they’re handled by the Home Office.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Sebastian, stepping down.
Jarvis leaned forward, his hand coming up to stay the footman who had moved to close the door. “I don’t like Hero’s involvement in this affair; it’s too dangerous.”
“Hero lives her own life as she sees fit—as well you know.”
Something flared in the powerful man’s eyes. “If anything should happen to either my daughter or my grandson because of this ridiculous obsession of yours, you won’t live long enough to mourn them.”
Then he settled back, turned his face away, and signaled his coachman to drive on.
Sebastian drove his curricle to the Home Office, where he learned from a helpful clerk that Lord Sidmouth was in Downing Street and would surely be closeted with the Prime Minister for the rest of the day on a matter of supreme urgency that the clerk refused to particularize.
“Think ’e’s avoiding ye?” asked Tom when Sebastian took the reins again, then paused to stare thoughtfully toward the river.
“Perhaps. But perhaps not.”
The discovery that an undetermined number of royal relics—including the head of King Charles I—were missing from the chapel at Windsor Castle had added a bizarre new twist to the murder of Stanley Preston. It seemed probable that whoever stole the relics did so with the intent of selling them to Preston, either directly or—more likely—through some unknown middleman. Could that explain Preston’s presence at the bridge on such a cold, wet night? Was he there to take possession of the stolen relics?
The problem with that theory was that such items were typically delivered to their wealthy purchasers’ doorsteps, discreetly hidden inside straw-filled tea chests. Not handed over under cloak of darkness at the end of a deserted lane. Yet the presence of Charles I’s coffin strap at the murder scene suggested an undeniable link. Had the relics been dangled before Preston as clever bait to lure him to some out-of-the-way spot where he could be murdered? Why was the engraved strap left at the scene? Deliberately? Or by accident?
And where was the King’s purloined head?
Still pondering these questions and more, Sebastian turned his horses toward Knightsbridge and a ramshackle hostelry called the Shepherd’s Rest.
Chapter 18
C aptain Hugh Wyeth was playing solitaire at a table in the crowded taproom, a half-empty tankard of ale at his elbow, a deck of cards held in his left hand, his right arm resting in a sling. He looked up when Sebastian approached his table, his gaze assessing, guarded.
“You’re Devlin?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Wyeth set his deck of cards upside down amidst the ruins of his game. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Six years of war coupled with the pain of a severe injury and long recovery had etched lines in the captain’s once boyish face. But he was still, as Jane Austen had noted, devastatingly handsome in his regimentals, with black hair and blue eyes and lean, sun-darkened features. He gaze never left Sebastian’s. “I didn’t kill Stanley Preston.”
“I imagine it would be rather difficult to cut off a man’s head with your arm incapacitated,” said Sebastian, nodding to the sling.
“So it would—if I were right-handed. As it happens, I am not.”
“Ah.”
A group of laughing officers, some on crutches, others looking more hale, crowded into the taproom. Sebastian said, “Are you capable of walking?”
The captain rose to his feet. “Of course. It’s mainly my arm that’s still not working right. But I hope to be able to rejoin my regiment soon.”
“Where were you wounded?” Sebastian asked as they left the inn and cut across Knightsbridge toward the Life Guards barracks and the park beyond.
Wyeth stumbled as he stepped off the kerb, his lips tightening in a fleeting grimace as he regained his balance. “San Muñoz, last fall.”
“You’re certain you’re up to walking?” asked Sebastian, watching him.
“My leg gets stiff if I sit for too long, that’s all.”
They cut between the officers’ stables and the riding school, the tall brick buildings casting cold, dark shadows across the ground.
Sebastian said, “I take it Miss Preston warned you to expect me?”
“She did, yes. She’s terrified I’m going to be blamed for her father’s death.”
“Because Preston objected to your friendship?”
A gleam of self-deprecating amusement showed in the captain’s pain-shadowed face. “Oh, I don’t think he’d have had too much difficulty with our friendship. It was the prospect of something more serious that he found intolerable.” He watched a troop of new recruits leading their horses from the stables to the riding school, his smile fading as the clatter of shod hooves over cobbles echoed between the crowded buildings. “Look—I understand now just how presumptuous it was of me all those years ago to ask someone as young as Anne was then to share my life; to expect her to follow the drum and face all the hardships and dangers that come with being an Army wife. But at the time . . .” He hesitated, then shrugged. “We were both so young, and I was so very proud of my new colors—proud and utterly blind to how foolish it would have been for a woman with her prospects to throw herself away on a poor vicar’s son from the fens of East Anglia.”
The words were right: contrite, respectful of conventions, resigned. And yet . . .
And yet, Sebastian could sense the anger thrumming through the captain’s lean, battle-hardened frame. Anger at himself, for his lack of major advancement in the Army. Anger at the fates, for the impoverished birth that was none of his doing. Anger at society, for the barriers it had thrown up to keep him from marrying the woman he loved. He hid it well, but the anger was there, deep-seated and powerful.
Powerful enough to drive him to cut off a man’s head while in the grip of a murderous rage?
Perhaps.
“Your parents are still there?” asked Sebastian. “In East Anglia?”
“No. My mother died not long after I was sent overseas, and my father passed away six months ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ve an older sister living here, in
Knightsbridge. That’s why I came to London. She hasn’t the room to put me up in her house, but it’s good to at least have her nearby.” He cast Sebastian a sideways glance. “I didn’t come to London expecting to see Anne again, if that’s what you’re thinking. To be honest, I imagined she must have married someone else years ago.”
“But you did see her.”
“We encountered each other—quite by chance—in Bond Street one morning.” He swallowed hard, as if he found it necessary to choke back an upsurge of emotion before he could continue. “I thought I’d managed to forget her; truly, I did. But then I saw her, and it was as if all those years just . . . melted away.”
Sebastian stared off across the park to where a nursemaid was playing catch with her two young charges. He himself had loved passionately and unwisely as a very young man, and come home from war to discover his love for the beautiful, brilliant actress Kat Boleyn still as intense—and still as hopelessly, impossibly wrong in the eyes of society. It was a love that had come close to destroying him.
That might well have destroyed him, if it hadn’t been for Hero.
He said, “How did Preston find out you were in London again?”
“Some busybody spied Anne walking with me in the park last week and told him. He confronted Anne, and she confessed the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That our feelings have not changed.”
Sebastian watched one of the little boys catch the ball, then tumble over backward, his delighted laughter carrying on the breeze. Captain Wyeth’s frank confession gave the lie to what Anne Preston had told him just that morning. Was Wyeth more honest? Sebastian wondered. Or simply clever enough to realize that claims of mere friendship were unlikely to be believed?
He said, “I take it Preston was no more inclined to favor a match between you now than he was six years ago?”
Wyeth pulled a face. “Hardly. He had high hopes of Anne agreeing to marry some baronet who’s been courting her. Anne’s grandfather married a rich merchant’s daughter, you know, and then Stanley Preston himself improved the family’s social standing by marrying the daughter of an impoverished lord. It was his ambition to see Anne marry both a title and money. And he was not a man who liked to have his ambitions thwarted.”