by C. S. Harris
Sebastian choked on his wine, while Lady Seaton cleared her throat and said rather loudly, “I understand you have a new baby, Lady Devlin.”
“Yes; Simon,” said Hero, valiantly trying to turn her own choking laugh into a cough. “He’s six months old.”
“And you have him with you?”
“We do—along with his nurse, my abigail, Devlin’s valet, the coachman, a footman, and Devlin’s tiger. Needless to say, we do not travel lightly.”
“Ah, yes,” said Lady Seaton. “I remember those days.” She turned her brilliant smile on her exalted guests. “Monsieur and Madame Bonaparte have a new wee one, as well. Born just this past January.”
“Louis Lucien,” said Bonaparte proudly. “Lady Seaton was gracious enough to allow us to baptize him in the private chapel she’s built here at Northcott Abbey.”
He then went on to tell a laughing tale about his youngest child’s tendency to crawl backward. And it occurred to Sebastian as he watched the Emperor’s brother glow with pride over his son’s antics that here was a side of Lucien Bonaparte—the loving paterfamilias—that he hadn’t expected to find. But then he reminded himself that this was a man who’d turned down a kingdom and risked his imperial brother’s wrath in order to keep his family together.
“How many children do you have?” asked Sebastian.
It was Alexandrine who answered. “Eight, all together. Lucien’s Charlotte and Lili are eighteen and fifteen; my Anna is fourteen, while our Charles is ten. The rest descend from there like organ pipes.” She sketched a profile of steps with one hand.
“I’ve met Charles,” said Hero. “He’s a very clever lad.”
Alexandrine smiled and shared a meaningful look with her husband. “We like to think so. Although I fear his sisters sometimes find him a bit tiresome.”
“The Bonapartes’ older girls have gone to the Lake District with my own daughters, Georgina and Louisa,” said Lady Seaton.
“Yes, and you would not believe what we had to go through to get permission from the commissioner for them to travel so far,” said Lucien. “Children!”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his wine as he studied the Corsican’s swarthy, now disgruntled face. Lucien Bonaparte had been living in exile for nearly three years, his wife and children as much prisoners of war as he himself. Oh, their lives were comfortable enough—by all accounts Thorngrove was a grand estate. But their travel was still restricted, their correspondence read, their every move watched by spies from both Paris and London. As long as the war continued, their lives would remain in limbo. And then what would become of eighteen-year-old Charlotte Bonaparte, of age now to be wed? Or her younger sisters coming up behind her? What did such a future hold for little Charles, with his grand ambitions of scientific study and travel?
Only an unlikely peace or the decisive defeat of Napoléon would bring freedom for Lucien and his growing, ambitious family. Yet Napoléon’s defeat would also mean the end of the closely knit Bonaparte clan’s phenomenal wealth and power. So for which did Lucien and his no-nonsense wife secretly pray? Sebastian wondered. For Napoléon to keep fighting? Or for the Emperor to go down in a final defeat? If given the opportunity, would they actively seek to prop up Napoléon’s fading fortunes?
Or would they work to bring their exile to an end, in any way possible?
It was over dinner that Hero, tired of waiting for Lady Seaton to spontaneously offer to show her guests the famous Long Gallery, gently brought the conversation around to the subject of art.
“I hear you have an impressive collection of paintings, Senator,” she said, turning to Napoléon’s brother.
Lucien’s face shone with pride. According to reports, he had landed in England with a staggering number of servants and a baggage train that included not only scores of huge canvases but also life-sized Roman statues unearthed from his estate near Frascati. “I like to flatter myself that is so, yes. But you and Lord Devlin must come to Thorngrove yourself someday and give me your opinion.” He nodded graciously toward their hostess. “Northcott Abbey also possesses an impressive picture gallery. Have you seen it?”
Lady Seaton fluttered one dainty hand through the air in a show of embarrassed disparagement. “Oh, believe me, it is nothing compared to Senator Bonaparte’s collection.”
“But I would love to see it,” said Hero.
“If you like, of course. Although I should warn you that it consists mainly of family portraits, and very few by artists of any note.”
“Perhaps we could explore it after dinner,” suggested Alexandrine Bonaparte. “While the gentlemen linger over their port?”
For one intense instant, Hero’s gaze met Sebastian’s. It wasn’t exactly what they’d had in mind, but it was better than nothing. “That would be lovely,” she said with a wide smile.
Chapter 23
By the time they climbed the broad central staircase to Northcott Abbey’s famous Long Gallery, the sinking sun was turning the hilltops a rich gold and casting long, cool shadows across the valley.
“I’ve always loved the way the light streams in the windows up here on a summer’s evening,” said Lady Seaton as they reached the brightly lit space.
“It’s lovely,” said Hero, and meant it.
Running the full length of the second floor, such galleries were a typical feature of late sixteenth – and early seventeenth-century estates. But Northcott’s version was particularly stunning: a vast, high-vaulted space with a fancifully plastered ceiling and wide, soaring windows on three sides of the long, narrow room. One glance was enough to tell Hero that her ladyship had been unduly modest; the Seatons’ collection of paintings was both large and impressive.
“This is the oldest portrait,” said their hostess, leading the way to an oil-on-oak portrait of an aged, fifteenth-century gentleman painted as if bathed in intense light against a dramatically dark sea. “Sir Walter Seaton, Baronet. My husband liked to call him a privateer. But if you ask me, he was a pirate.”
“He does rather look like a pirate,” agreed Alexandrine Bonaparte.
Hero studied the long-dead baronet’s sun-darkened, white-bearded face and rich velvet robes. “But a very successful one.”
“Oh, he was very good at what he did,” said Lady Seaton.
She kept up a running commentary as they moved slowly past the rows of dead Seatons, ladies in crespines and high-waisted velvets with detached sleeves gradually giving way to their descendants in snoods and narrow gowns with V-shaped waists. Hero was careful to affect an expression of intense interest and murmur appropriate compliments. But the truth was, she wanted nothing more than to rush through these earlier portraits. The woman she was looking for would have been painted much later, in the late seventeenth or maybe even the early eighteenth century. It was only with effort that she kept her gaze from straying down the gallery.
“It’s hard to believe women actually used to shave their foreheads and eyebrows, isn’t it?” said Lady Seaton, pausing before a trio of eyebrowless sixteenth-century ladies with complexions so white they could have come only from makeup disastrously mixed with lead. “How did they ever think it looked attractive?”
“And those towering headdresses,” said Alexandrine Bonaparte, studying one portly matron’s elaborate, sail-like confection. “It makes my neck ache just looking at them.”
“Yes, but I must admit I do like a man in doublet and hose,” said Hero, shifting to an early seventeenth-century portrait of a dashing Lord Seaton in a plumed hat.
The other women both laughed and continued on.
After what seemed like forever, hose began to give way to breeches, and ruffs disappeared in favor of broad linen and lace collars. And Hero felt herself tensing as she searched each heavy, gilded frame for the unknown woman with a silver and bluestone necklace.
And then she saw her.
Long necked and regal,
she’d been painted at a time when it was fashionable to have one’s portrait done in a style known as “romantic negligence” or “undress.” Thus, instead of the stiff court dress typical of the age, she wore a loosely draped, white satin gown over a deep blue underdress with voluminous pleated sleeves and a wide neckline scooped low to reveal the upper swells of her pale breasts. Traditionally, such portraits showed their subjects with short strands of pearls nestled at the base of their throats. But this woman wore a thick chain of curiously wrought silver from which hung a gleaming triskelion superimposed on a smoothly polished bluestone disk.
Hero had no need to compare the painted necklace to the one she’d tucked into her reticule. They were identical.
“Who is this?” asked Hero, pausing before the painting when their hostess would have moved on.
“That’s my late husband’s great-great-grandmother, Guinevere Stuart. She was said to be a natural daughter of James II.”
“And she married a Seaton?” said Hero.
“Actually, it was her granddaughter Isabella who married a Seaton.” Lady Seaton indicated the portrait that hung beside Guinevere Stuart’s, of an auburn-haired girl captured in the first blush of youth and beauty.
Hero kept her gaze on the portrait of Guinevere Stuart. “That’s an interesting necklace she’s wearing.”
“Isn’t it? They say it was a wedding gift from her father. According to the legend, it was once worn by an ancient Druid priestess and possessed special powers.”
“Special powers?” said Alexandrine Bonaparte. “Sounds fascinating. What sort of powers?”
“Supposedly, it brought long life to anyone who possessed it. Not only that, but it was said to choose its next owner by growing warm in the hand of the woman destined to possess it.”
Hero stared up at the woman in the painting. She looked to be somewhere in her early thirties, her thick dark hair cascading in loose curls around her shoulders. She had inherited her royal father’s oval face, full lips, and strong chin. There was wisdom in the gentle composure of her features, and strength. But her eyes were clouded as if with sadness and an unflinching awareness of painful disasters to come.
“And did she have a long life?” Hero asked.
“She did, yes; they say she lived to be over a hundred years old. Although I’m afraid her life wasn’t exactly happy.” Lady Seaton paused. “I suppose the necklace didn’t promise that.”
“Why?” asked Hero. “What happened to her?”
“Her father married her to a Scottish laird named Malcolm Gordon. She had eight children by him, seven sons and a daughter. But once King James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution, she went from being an asset as a wife to a potential liability. Not only that, but all of her sons rallied to the Jacobite cause after the death of Queen Anne and were either killed in the Risings or exiled. In order to save himself—and acquire new sons—Gordon divorced her.”
“She took refuge here, with her granddaughter?”
“Briefly. But I’m afraid the Lord Seaton of the day wasn’t particularly happy to be seen giving refuge to a Stuart.”
Not surprising, thought Hero, given that he was a Catholic desperately trying to remain invisible. She looked up into the long-dead woman’s lovely, sad face. “So what happened to her?”
“I believe in the end she went to her daughter in Wales.”
“And the necklace?” asked Alexandrine Bonaparte, obviously intrigued by its story. “Do you still have it? Does it glow warm in your hand?”
Lady Seaton gave a light laugh. “I wish I had it. But I’ve always assumed it must be in Wales—if it even still exists. It’s such a plain, old-fashioned thing, I can see some new bride who didn’t know its history simply tossing it out.” She moved on to a large portrait farther down the row. “And this is probably one of the best paintings in the collection. It’s a Van Dyck.”
Hero followed their hostess on down the gallery, her features schooled into an interested expression even as her thoughts remained on the sad-eyed, ill-fated woman in the portrait behind them.
She couldn’t have said precisely what she’d hoped this visit to the Long Gallery would accomplish. Yes, she had confirmed the existence of the portrait and the link between Lady Hendon’s necklace and the Seatons of Northcott Abbey. But it provided no real clue to the identity of the unknown man who’d presumably fathered both Devlin and Jamie Knox.
For the eyes of Guinevere Stuart were a pale blue, as were her granddaughter’s. And though Hero carefully scrutinized each of the many portraits hanging in the gallery, not one of that long line of Seaton ancestors hanging memorialized in oil had yellow eyes.
Later that night, in the hours before dawn, Hero awoke to the sound of a cow lowing in the distance and the whisper of the wind through the limbs of the ancient chestnut out on the village green. Somehow she knew even without moving that she was alone in her bed.
She opened her eyes to see Devlin silhouetted against the window’s pale glow, his body limned by the wind-tossed light of the moon.
“Did I wake you?” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“How did you know I was awake?”
She heard the amusement in his voice. “I saw your eyes open.”
“Dear God, you are unnerving sometimes.”
She rose to go to him and loop her arms around his shoulders. He tilted his head back against hers, and she saw he held the necklace in his hand, the silver triskelion gleaming in the soft glow from the window.
He said, “Thirty years ago, an old woman in the wilds of northern Wales gave this to my mother. She always told my sister and brothers and me that she didn’t want to take it, but the woman insisted. And truth be told, I think the legend fascinated my mother. She swore the stone grew warm as soon as the old woman placed the pendant in her hand.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I’m not certain my mother ever knew. She said the woman was very old, and I’ve always pictured her as some haggard, ancient crone. But was she really?” He shrugged and shook his head.
Hero reached to lift the necklace from his hand and felt the warmth of the stone against her palm. She had never told him of her own reaction to the stone, for it seemed too fanciful to credit. And yet . . .
“I suppose the old woman could have been a descendant of Guinevere Stuart,” she said. “Lady Seaton did tell us she took refuge in Wales.”
Devlin smiled. “Where’s a Debrett’s Peerage when you need one?”
She laughed softly, then sobered as a shadowy movement out on the village green caught her eye. “What was that?”
But of course Devlin could see quite clearly what—or, rather, who—it was. “Just Reuben Dickie,” he said.
The door of the corner cottage on the far side of the green opened, spilling golden light into the lane. A man walked from the cottage to the pump house; a large man with a bullet-like head and thickly muscled arms and thighs. They watched him converse with Reuben for a moment. Then the two turned and entered the cottage together.
“Reuben’s brother, Jeb, must be home,” said Devlin. “Last I heard he was hauling a load of timber to Wales.”
The cottage door closed against the night. Hero said, “It looks as if he takes good care of his brother.”
“Or at least he tries.”
Hero glanced at Devlin. “What does that mean?”
But Devlin simply shook his head.
She studied the tightly held features of his handsome, moonlit face. “I thought you didn’t suspect Reuben.”
“I don’t. He’s not smart enough to try to make a murder look like suicide, and however clever brother Jeb may be, I doubt he’s much of a Shakespearean scholar.”
“But you still don’t like him.”
He smiled. “Let’s just say I don’t think he’s as harmless as he’d like to appear.”
Hero stared up the hill to where the squat, bulky tower of the church showed dark against a starry sky. “It seems so peaceful here. Idyllic. But it’s not, is it?”
“It has a dark history. But then, what place does not?” He nodded to the now-deserted green below. “I was sitting here thinking about all the generations of men and women who’ve walked these same lanes, who plowed the same fields century after century and listened to the same church bells toll the hours of their lives, and then buried their dead in the same churchyard.”
“Is it significant, do you think, that neither Emma Chance nor Hannibal Pierce was from the village?”
“It could be.” He turned to face her. “I think I’d like to take a look at the ruins of the old priory tomorrow.”
“Because Emma Chance was there the day she died?”
“Partially. But also because it’s such an integral part of the history of this village. And I can’t shake the idea that knowing the past is the key to understanding what is happening here, now.”
Chapter 24
Thursday, 5 August
What was left of the ancient Benedictine priory of St. Hilary lay beside a sparkling, swift-flowing stream at the base of a gentle slope. Once home to dozens of choir monks and lay brothers and surrounded by closely cultivated fields and well-tended orchards, the ruined sandstone walls now rose from a swath of green meadow kept cropped close by a sizeable flock of sheep.
“It’s beautiful,” said Hero, pausing beside Sebastian at the edge of the meadow to gaze at the shattered cluster of monastic buildings. They had approached the site by way of the footpath that led from the coach road along the stream, coming upon it suddenly when they rounded a bend and broke through a thin copse of oak and ash. A melancholy silence hung over the site, broken only by the purling of the water and the bleating of a lamb and the sigh of a warm breeze through row after row of empty window openings. “What I wouldn’t give to have seen it before Good Ole King Henry got his greedy hands on it.”