by C. S. Harris
“Who are you afraid of?” asked Sebastian. “Sir Stanley? Or his wife?”
Forster huffed a scornful laugh. “Anybody ain’t afraid of them two is a fool. Oh, they’re grand and respectable, ain’t they? Livin’ in that big house and hobnobbin’ wit’ the King hisself. But I hear tell Sir Stanley, he started out as some clerk with little more’n a sixpence to scratch hisself with. How ye think he got all that money? Mmm? And how many bodies ye think he walked over to get it?”
“And Lady Winthrop?”
“She’s worse’n him, any day o’ the week. Sir Stanley, he’ll leave ye alone as long as yer not standin’ between him and somethin’ he wants. But Lady Winthrop, she’d destroy a man out o’ spite, just ’cause she’s mean.”
Some twenty minutes later, Sebastian’s knock at Trent House’s massive doors was answered by a stately, ruddy-faced butler of ample proportions who bowed and intoned with sepulchral detachment, “I fear Sir Stanley is not at present at home, my lord.”
“Actually, I’m here to see Lady Winthrop. And there’s no point in telling me she’s not at home either,” said Sebastian cheerfully when the butler opened his mouth to do just that, “because I spotted her in the gardens when I drove up. And I’m perfectly willing to do something vulgar like cut around the outside of the house and accost her directly, if you’re too timid to announce me.”
The butler’s nostrils quivered with righteous indignation. Then he bowed again and said, “This way, my lord.”
Lady Winthrop stood at the edge of the far terrace, the remnants of last night’s wind flapping the figured silks of her high-necked gown. She had been watching over the activities of the band of workmen tearing out the old wall of the terrace. But at Sebastian’s approach she turned, one hand coming up to straighten her plain, broad-brimmed hat as she shot the butler a tight-jawed glare that warned of dire future consequences.
“Don’t blame him,” said Sebastian, intercepting the look. “He denied you with commendable aplomb. But short of bowling me over, there really was no stopping me.”
She brought her icy gaze back to Sebastian’s face and said evenly to the red-faced butler, “Thank you, Huckabee; that will be all.”
The butler gave another of his flawless bows and withdrew.
“My husband is out with the men from the estate searching for the missing Tennyson children,” she said, her fingers still gripping the brim of her hat. “He’ll be sorry he missed you. And now you really must excuse me—”
“Why don’t you show me your gardens, Lady Winthrop?” said Sebastian when she would have turned away. “No need to allow the interesting details of our conversation to distract these men from their work.”
She froze, then forced a stiff laugh. “Of course. Since you are here.”
She waited until they were out of earshot before saying evenly, “I resent the implication that I have something to hide from my servants.”
“Don’t you? You told me yesterday that you never visited the excavations at the moat. Except you did, just last Saturday. In fact, you had what’s been described as a ‘right royal row’ with Miss Tennyson herself.”
Lady Winthrop’s lips tightened into a disdainful smile. “I fear you misunderstood me, Lord Devlin. I said I did not make it a practice of visiting the site; I did not say I had never done so.”
Sebastian studied her proud, faintly contemptuous face, the weak chin pulled back against her neck in a scowl. As the plain but extraordinarily well-dowered only daughter of a wealthy merchant, she had married not once, but twice. Her first, brief marriage to a successful banker ended when her husband broke his neck on the hunting field and left his considerable holdings to her; her second marriage a few years later to Sir Stanley united two vast fortunes. But this second union, like her first, had remained childless, an economic merger without affection or shared interests or any real meeting of the minds.
It must be difficult, Sebastian thought, to be a wealthy but plain, dull woman married to a handsome, virile, charismatic man. And he understood then just how much this woman must have hated Gabrielle Tennyson, who was everything she, Lady Winthrop, was not: not only young and beautiful, but also brilliant and well educated and courageous enough to defy so many of the conventions that normally held her sisters in check.
He said, “And your argument?”
She drew her brows together in a pantomime of confusion. “Did we argue? Frankly, I don’t recall it. Have you been speaking to some of the workmen? You know how these yokels exaggerate.”
“Doing it a bit too brown, there, Lady Winthrop.”
Angry color mottled her cheeks. “I take it that must be one of those vulgar cant expressions gentlemen are so fond of affecting these days. Personally I find the tendency to model one’s speech on that of the lower orders beyond reprehensible.”
Sebastian let out his breath in a huff of laughter. “So why did you visit Camlet Moat last Saturday?”
“Years before the light of our Lord was shown upon this land, England was given over to a terrible superstition dominated by a caste of evil men bound in an unholy pact with the forces of darkness.”
“By which I take it you mean the Druids.”
She inclined her head. “I do. Unfortunately, there are those in our age who in their folly have romanticized the benighted days of the past. Rather than seek salvation through our Lord and wisdom in his word, they choose to dabble in the rituals and tarnished traditions of the ignorant.”
Sebastian stared off down the hill, to where a doe could be seen grazing beside a stretch of ornamental water. “I’ve heard that the locals consider the island to be a sacred site.”
“They do. Which is why I chose to visit Camlet Moat last Saturday. My concern was that the recent focus of attention on the area might inspire the ignorant to hold some bizarre ritual on the island.”
“Because Lammas began Saturday night at sunset?”
Again, the regal inclination of the head. “Precisely.”
“So why approach Miss Tennyson? Why not Sir Stanley?”
“I fear I have not made myself clear. I went to the site in search of my husband. But when I found him absent, I thought to mention my concerns to Miss Tennyson.” The thin lips pinched into a tight downward curve. “Her response was predictably rude and arrogant.”
Those were two words Sebastian had yet to hear applied to Miss Tennyson. But he had been told she didn’t suffer fools lightly, and he suspected she might well have perceived Lady Winthrop as a very vain and foolish woman. He said, “She didn’t think you had anything to worry about?”
“On the contrary. She said she believed the island was a profoundly spiritual place of ancient significance.”
“Is that when you quarreled?”
She fixed him with an icy stare full of all the moral outrage of a woman long practiced in the art of self-deception, who had already comfortably convinced herself that the confrontation with Gabrielle had never occurred. “We did not quarrel,” she said evenly.
There were any number of things he could have said. But none of them would have penetrated that shield of righteous indignation, so he simply bowed and took his leave.
He did not believe for a moment that she had overcome her distaste for her husband’s excavations in order to drive out to the moat and have a conversation that could just as easily have been held over the breakfast table. Instead, she had deliberately chosen a time when she knew Sir Stanley to be elsewhere.
Jealousy could be a powerful motive for murder. He could imagine Lady Winthrop killing Gabrielle in a rage of jealousy and religious zeal. But he could not imagine her then murdering two children and disposing of their bodies somewhere in the wilds of the chase.
Yet as he drove away, he was aware of her standing at the edge of her garden watching him.
And he wondered why.
Sebastian was standing in the middle of his library and studying the new boxes of books and papers that had appeared since that morning when he he
ard the peal of the front bell. A moment later, Morey paused in the library’s entrance to clear his throat.
“Yes?” prompted Sebastian when the majordomo seemed temporarily at a loss for words.
“A personage to see you, my lord.”
“A personage?”
“Yes, my lord. I have taken the liberty of putting him in the drawing room.”
Sebastian studied the majordomo’s painfully wooden face. Morey normally left “personages” cooling their heels in the hall.
“I’ll be right up,” he said.
The man who stood before the empty fireplace was dressed all in black: black breeches, black coat, black waistcoat, black cravat. Only his shirt was white. He stood with his dark head tilted back as he stared up at the portrait of the Countess of Hendon that hung over the mantel. With the grace of a dancer or fencer, he pivoted slowly when Sebastian entered the room to pause just inside the doorway.
“So we meet,” said Sebastian, and carefully closed the door behind him.
Chapter 21
The man called Jamie Knox was built tall and lean, taller even than Sebastian, with wavy, almost black hair and the yellow eyes of a wolf or feral cat.
Sebastian had been told once that he had his father’s eyes—his real father’s eyes. But he’d always thought he looked like his mother. Now, as he stared at the face of the man who stood across the room from him, he wondered if it was his imagination that traced a resemblance in the tavern owner’s high-boned cheeks and gently curving mouth.
Then he remembered Morey’s strange reaction and knew it was not his imagination.
He crossed to where a decanter and glasses rested on a side table. “May I offer you a brandy?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The inflections were similar to that of the curly-headed man of the night before. The accent was not that of a gentleman.
“Where are you from?” asked Sebastian, splashing brandy into two glasses.
“Shropshire, by way of a rifle regiment.”
“You’re a rifleman?”
“I was.”
Sebastian held out one of the glasses. After the briefest of hesitations, the man took it.
“I fought beside riflemen in Italy and the Peninsula,” said Sebastian. “I’ve often thought it will be Napoléon’s insistence on arming his men with only muskets that will ultimately cause his downfall.”
“You may be right. Only, don’t go telling the French bugger himself, hmm?” Knox took a deep drink of his brandy, his intense yellow gaze never leaving Sebastian’s face. “You don’t look much like your da, the Earl, do you?”
“I’m told I resemble my mother.”
Jamie Knox jerked his chin toward the portrait over the mantel. “That her?”
“Yes.”
He took another sip. “I never knew my father. My mother said he was a cavalry captain. Your father ever in the cavalry?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
A faint gleam of amusement lit up the other man’s eyes. He drained his brandy with the offhand carelessness of a man well accustomed to hard drinking, then shook his head when Sebastian offered him another.
“You came around asking about my conversation with Gabrielle Tennyson last week.”
“So you don’t deny the confrontation occurred.”
“Why should I? She heard I’d uncovered one of those old picture pavements in my cellars, and she kept pestering me to let her take a look at it.”
“You mean, a Roman mosaic?”
“That’s it. Picture of a naked fat man holding a bunch of grapes in one hand and riding a dolphin.”
“You expect me to believe you threatened a woman over a mosaic?”
Knox’s lips curved into a smile, but the glitter in his eyes had become hard and dangerous. He looked to be a few years older than Sebastian, perhaps as much as thirty-three or -four. “I didn’t threaten to kill her. I just told her she’d be sorry if she didn’t back off. Last thing I need is some bloody bluestocking sniffing around the place. Not good for business.”
“Especially if she’s sniffing around your cellars.”
Knox laughed. “Something like that, yes.”
The rifleman let his gaze drift around Sebastian’s drawing room, the amusement slowly dying out of his expression. By Mayfair’s standards, the Brook Street house was not large; the furnishings were elegant but neither lavish nor opulent. Yet as Sebastian watched Knox’s assessing eyes take in the room’s satin hangings, the delicate cane chairs near the bow window overlooking the street, the gently faded carpet, the white Carrara marble of the mantelpiece, he had no doubt that the room must appear quite differently to a rifleman from the wilds of Shropshire than it did to Sebastian, who was raised in the sprawling splendor of Hendon House in Grosvenor Square and the halls and manors of the Earl’s various estates across Britain.
“Nice place you got here,” said Knox, his accent unusually pronounced.
“Thank you.”
“I hear you got married just last week.”
“I did, yes.”
“Married the daughter of Lord Jarvis himself.”
“Yes.”
The two men’s gazes met, and held.
“Congratulations,” said Knox. Setting aside his empty glass, he reached for the black hat he had rested on a nearby table and settled it on his head at a rakish angle. Then he gave a faintly mocking bow. “My lord.”
Sebastian stood at the bowed front windows of his drawing room and watched Jamie Knox descend the front steps and stroll off down the street. It was like watching a shadowy doppelganger of himself.
Or a brother.
Sebastian was still standing at the window some moments later when a familiar yellow-bodied carriage drew up. He watched Hero descend the coach steps with her usual grace and then enter the house.
She came into the room pulling off a pair of soft yellow kid gloves that she tossed on one of the cane chairs. “Ah, good,” she said. “You’re finally up.”
“I do generally try to make it out of bed before nightfall,” he said.
He was rewarded with a soft huff of laughter.
Today she wore an elegant carriage gown of emerald satin trimmed with rows of pintucks down the skirt and a spray of delicate yellow roses embroidered on each sleeve. She yanked at the emerald ribbons that tied her velvet hat beneath her chin and tossed the hat onto the chair with her gloves. “I’ve just come from an interesting conversation with Mary Bourne.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Bourne. She’s sister to both Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt and the Reverend Tennyson, the father of the two missing boys.”
Sebastian frowned. He had a vague recollection of d’Eyncourt mentioning a sister staying with him. “Is she like her brother d’Eyncourt?”
“Oh, no; she’s far worse. She’s a saint, you know.”
Sebastian laughed out loud.
“No, it’s true; I mean that quite literally. She’s a Calvinist. You can have no notion of the misery it brings her, knowing that she alone can look forward to the joys awaiting her in heaven whilst the vast majority of her family is doomed to suffer the everlasting torments of hell.”
“She actually told you that?”
“She did. Personally, I suspect she derives enormous satisfaction from the comfortable conviction that she is one of the chosen elite while everyone around her is doomed to burn. But then, self-perception is not one of her strong suits.”
Sebastian leaned back against the windowsill, his arms crossed at his chest, his gaze on his wife’s face. Her eyes were sparkling and a faint flush rode high on her cheekbones. He found himself smiling. “So why did you go see her? Or were you looking for d’Eyncourt?”
“No. I knew d’Eyncourt would be at Westminster. I wanted to talk to Mary Bourne alone. You see, I’ve been puzzled by the arithmetic.” Hero sank into one of the chairs beside the empty hearth. “D’Eyncourt told you he is his father’s heir, right? Except, d’Eyncourt is only twent
y-eight, while little George Tennyson—the elder of the missing boys—is nine years old. That means that if d’Eyncourt’s brother were indeed a younger son, he would need to have sired his own son at the tender age of seventeen. Obviously possible, but unlikely, given that he is in holy orders.”
“So what did you discover?”
“That the boys’ father is actually thirty-four years old.”
Sebastian pushed away from the window. “You’re certain?”
“Are you suggesting the woman might have mistaken the ages of her own brothers? D’Eyncourt is the baby of the family. He’s younger than his brother by a full six years.”
The bells of the abbey were tolling seven when d’Eyncourt emerged from Westminster Hall and turned toward Parliament Street. The setting sun soaked the ancient buildings with a rich tea-colored light and cast long shadows across the paving.
Sebastian fell into step beside him.
The MP cast a quick look at Sebastian, then glanced away without slackening his pace. There was neither surprise nor puzzlement on his smoothly handsome features. “I’ve just received a note from my sister Mary, telling me she enjoyed a visit from Lady Devlin this afternoon. My sister is an earnest but guileless woman. As such she is frequently slow to see the subterfuge in others. It wasn’t until some time after Lady Devlin’s departure that my sister began to ponder the direction their conversation had taken.”
Sebastian showed his teeth in a smile. “Ah, yes; Lady Devlin is quite practiced in the arts of guile and subterfuge, is she not?”
D’Eyncourt pressed his lips together and kept walking.
Sebastian said, “And once Mrs. Bourne realized the indiscretions of her talkative tongue, she immediately sat down and dashed off a note to her baby brother warning him— What, exactly? That you were about to be caught out in a very telling lie?”
D’Eyncourt drew up at the edge of the Privy Gardens and turned to face him, a slim, elegant man with a smug air of self-assurance. “I never claimed to be my father’s firstborn. I simply told you that I am his heir. And that is the truth.”