by C. S. Harris
It was raining harder now, big wet drops that splattered the dust around them. Sebastian jerked out of the way, the rock grazing his shoulder as he kicked out. He landed a glancing blow on Jude’s thigh but lost his balance and went down again just as Jude pulled a knife from an unseen sheath at the small of his back. Sebastian fumbled for the double-barreled flintlock he’d tucked into his pocket and felt the hammer catch on the edge of his pocket.
Bloody hell. He jerked the pistol free just as Jude reared up, kicking the gun out of Sebastian’s hand and slashing at him with the knife.
Sebastian lunged sideways but felt Jude’s blade rip through the cloth of his coat to slice a line of fire through the flesh beneath. He turned the lunge into a roll, reaching down to yank his own knife from his boot as he came up again in a crouch.
Then he leapt back just in time as Jude slashed again, this time toward his face.
The rain came down in a torrent, drumming on the old weathered stones of the priory around them and flattening the grass in the cloisters. Sebastian was dimly aware of Hero circling around them. She’d retrieved his double-barreled flintlock from where it had fallen and now held it in a strong, two-handed grip. But the two men were too close together for her to risk a shot.
Then Jude plunged his knife toward Sebastian’s chest.
“No!” she shouted.
For one critical moment, she caught Jude’s attention and his focus wavered. Sebastian slammed his left fist into Jude’s wrist, knocking the blade aside as he stepped in to drive his own knife hard, like a sword, deep into the innkeeper’s heart.
Their rain-washed faces now just inches apart, Sebastian’s gaze met that of the man he’d just killed. He saw the shock in Jude’s dark brown eyes, saw his knowledge of imminent death fade to bewilderment and something else. Something that looked very much like confusion and hurt.
“Jamie?” Jude whispered, his eyes rolling back in his head as he collapsed.
Sebastian caught his weight as he fell, eased the innkeeper’s body down into the rubble-strewn grass. Then he straightened, his breath coming hard and fast enough to jerk his chest.
Hero came to stand beside him, his flintlock pistol still held loosely in one hand. “Is he dead?” she asked, her gaze on the blood-smeared face of the man at their feet.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Sebastian didn’t say anything because there really was nothing to say. And she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close while the rain poured around them and his breathing eased.
Chapter 60
Thursday, 12 August
The inquest into the death of Jude Lowe was held less than twenty-four hours later, immediately after those that had already been scheduled. The verdict was justifiable homicide.
Afterward, Sebastian and Archie Rawlins walked out to the crossroads, where the blacksmith and two of his sons were working with pickaxes and shovels to dig up what was left of Hannah Grant. No one had given them official permission, but Sebastian suspected no one was going to stop them either, just as he had no doubt the vicar would allow Hannah to be reburied in the churchyard. There was much that was disgusting about Benedict Underwood, but there was some good there too.
Sebastian watched in silence as Miles Grant, his face wet with silent tears, tenderly placed his daughter’s skull in a wide-topped basket. Then Sebastian’s gaze shifted to the Ship, deserted now in the late-afternoon sunlight. He’d learned only that morning that Lowe was a widower, that his wife had died of fever less than a year ago. And he found himself thinking of Lowe’s three boys, and what would happen to them now.
Archie said, “I’m still having a hard time getting used to the idea that Jude Lowe has been killing people around here for fifteen years and more.”
“From the sound of things, he stopped for quite a few years in there.”
“I wonder why.”
“Perhaps there was no one he wanted dead.”
Archie pushed out a strangled huff of air. “I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “There’ve been so many deaths these last ten days. It’s not going to be easy for the people of the village to absorb it all. They’ve lost too many, over the years.”
“At least it’s finally over.”
Archie nodded. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you’ve done. I never would have figured this out if you hadn’t been here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. If it’d been up to me, I’d have hanged the vicar. The vicar!”
“Jude Lowe was a very clever man.”
“He certainly fooled me. I hope to God I never have to face anything like this again.”
“You’ll do all right. Just keep an open mind and remember that simply because an explanation seems to fit doesn’t mean it’s true.”
They turned back toward the village, the towering old gibbet casting its long shadow across a section of the coach road left muddy by the previous day’s rains. After a moment, Archie said, “So how do you know when you finally have it right?”
“I’m not sure. You just do,” said Sebastian, and Archie threw back his head and laughed.
Later that evening, as the sun slipped toward the purple hills of Wales, Sebastian climbed the lane to the churchyard. He stood beside Emma Chandler’s graveside for a long time, while the rooks flew in to roost in the nearby yew, fluttering and cawing as they settled in for the night.
He felt an intense, painful bond with this woman he had come to know only after her death. They had both come to Ayleswick-on-Teme in the hopes of discovering the identity of the man who had sired them. Both had failed. But only Emma had lost her life in the quest.
So adrift was he in his own thoughts that it was a moment before Sebastian heard a woman’s faint footfalls and the swish of fine cloth, and realized he was no longer alone.
“Am I interrupting you?” asked Lady Seaton, walking up to him. She wore a simple muslin dress with a light blue spencer and a wide-brimmed straw hat that framed her golden curls in a way that made her look deceptively young and vulnerable.
“No, not at all,” he said.
She tipped back her head to look up at him, the warm evening breeze fluttering the blue satin ribbon of her hat across her cheek. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Of course.”
“I believe I told you I once met Lady Emily.”
“Yes.”
She drew a deep breath and nodded, as if confirming the truth of her earlier statement or perhaps simply encouraging herself to go on. “What I didn’t tell you was that we met on the last night of the Irvings’ house party. They held a grand ball—a masquerade—and although I wasn’t well, Seaton insisted I attend. He felt the need to trot out his wife on occasion, you see, to reassure the local gentry that despite the irregular nature of his activities he still retained my love and devotion.”
Sebastian said nothing, and after a moment, she went on. “Leopold was an extraordinarily attractive man with a most deceptively charming manner. He had a way of paying attention to a woman, of smiling at her, that could make her feel the most beautiful, most fascinating and desirable woman in the world.”
“And he turned his charms on Lady Emily?”
“He did, yes. I watched them. You might think it was because I was jealous, but it wasn’t. Not by then. I knew what he was like, and I worried about her.”
Sebastian remembered the words the sixteen-year-old girl had written to her governess. He is so handsome that my head would surely be turned were it not for Liv’s warnings. . . .
“I could tell she was flattered—how could she help but be? She was so young and innocent. But she was wise enough not to forget that he was a married man. And while she seemed happy enough to have the opportunity to practice the arts of flirtation with a master
, I could see that she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the tenor of his attentions. In the end, she excused herself and went outside for some air. She was trying to get away from him, of course. But I’m afraid he took it the wrong way.”
“He followed her?”
She nodded. “I should have gone after them immediately. Instead, I waited, hoping she’d come back. And then Lady Irving buttonholed me as I was headed toward the terrace. She was so persistent, I’d only just managed to extricate myself when I saw Leopold slipping back in through the glass doors. He was vaguely disheveled, and when Lady Emily didn’t come back at all, I went looking for her, fearing the worst.”
“And you were right.”
“Yes. I found her in the shrubbery, hysterical. I knew he’d forced himself on some of the village girls, but . . . I never imagined he’d so forget himself as to do the same to a young gentlewoman. I helped her to her room; made her promise to let me come to her aid in the event she should find herself in trouble as a result of that night’s work.” Lady Seaton’s gaze dropped to the grave beside them. “Obviously, it was a promise she didn’t keep. But, my God, how I wish she had. You can have no notion of my joy the day his lordship’s lifeless body was carried home.” She looked up at him. “But you knew that, didn’t you? Did you imagine I’d killed him?”
“Yes.”
A strange smile played about her lips. “I used to lie awake at night and entertain myself concocting various ways in which I might murder him and get away with it. But I never would have found the courage to do it. Fortunately, someone else did it for me.”
“Did you know, even then?”
“That someone had killed him? Oh, yes. But I didn’t know who.” She drew a deep, shaky breath. “I haven’t told Crispin the truth—that Emma Chandler was his half sister, I mean.”
“Will you?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it might make it easier for him, to know they could never have married, even if she had lived. But then I think, the woman he loved is already lost to him; what good would it serve for him to have to live with the horror of knowing he’d desired his own sister? Perhaps it would be best after all to leave him with the memory of his lost love intact.”
“How well does Lord Seaton remember his father?”
“Hardly at all. He was very young when his father died. And Leopold never had any interest in what he used to call ‘snotty-nosed nursery brats.’”
“Does he know what his father was like?”
“You mean, does he know Leopold had a nasty habit of slaking his lust on the village girls, willing or not? I don’t believe so, no. But I must admit, I hadn’t thought of what it would do to Crispin, to learn such an ugly truth about his father.”
“He may eventually hear some of it anyway, from someone in the village.”
“Yes.” She searched his face, and he wondered if she saw there the traces of his own long-ago, secret anguish that their conversation had dredged up. “So what are you saying? That I should tell him?”
“You’re the one who must bear the burden of keeping this a secret for the rest of your life.”
“I would do it for Crispin, gladly. If only I could be certain it was right.”
“There’s no denying secrets can be dangerous. Yet some secrets . . . I believe some secrets are best left unknown. It would be different, had she lived.”
“Yes. Yes, it would.” She gave him a faint, tremulous smile. “Thank you, my lord.”
He watched her walk away, her head held high, her back rigorously straight, her features carefully schooled into an expression that betrayed not a hint of the turmoil in her heart.
Or the admirable strength of her will.
Friday, 13 August
The next morning, Sebastian had two obligations to fulfill before he left the village.
First he climbed the lane to the vicarage, where Benedict Underwood was supervising two workmen repairing a gap in the orchard wall. Taking the vicar aside, he warned Underwood that if he ever laid a hand on his cousin Rachel Timms again, Sebastian would not only make certain he lost the living of Ayleswick, but see to it that he was never given another parish.
The Reverend’s practiced benevolent smile remained firmly in place.
Sebastian said, “And if you think Rachel Timms is too afraid of losing Hill Cottage to be honest with me, then you should know that I’ve promised her a cottage on my own estate down in Hampshire, should that come to pass.”
Underwood’s smile slid away.
Sebastian touched a hand to his hat. “Good day to you, Reverend.”
After that, he walked out to the little whitewashed cottage beside the stream.
He found Heddie Kincaid dozing on a bench in the warm sunshine. And there, hat in hand, he expressed his sorrow for the death of her son.
She lifted her blind face to him, showing him the ravages left by another unbearable loss. “I don’t blame you for it,” she said, her voice breaking. “Maybe if Jude’d had a better da, things would’ve turned out different. But . . .” She paused to draw a painful breath. “I was always afraid he’d end up being hanged. So in a sense I suppose you could say I’m grateful to you for sparing us that.”
She asked him then to sit beside her, and he spoke to her of Jamie Knox and of the child the ex-rifleman had had by the barmaid, Pippa, and how much the boy resembled his dead father.
As he talked, he was aware of Jenny watching him through the window of the cottage. It wasn’t until he rose to take his leave that she came to stand in the open doorway, her arms crossed at her chest. Her face was hard, her eyes red and swollen from her own grieving.
“I didn’t send him after you,” she said. “Jude, I mean. I wanted you to know that.”
Sebastian paused beside her. “But you did speak to him after I left.” It was more a statement than a question.
She stared across the stream to where Jude’s three orphaned sons were playing with a puppy. “I was hoping Jude’d tell me I was wrong about him. But he didn’t, and in the end all I did was warn him that you’d figured it out. For that, I am sorry.”
Sebastian nodded, although he wasn’t sure if she was sorry because she’d put his life and Hero’s in danger, or because Jude had ended up dead.
She said, “His father, Daniel Lowe, was without a doubt the meanest man I’ve ever known, and even worse when he had the drink in him, which was often. I’m not sure who he beat more, Jude or Jamie. But after Jamie left, Jude was the only one he had to use his fists on.”
“Daniel Lowe died in ’ninety-seven?”
Jenny nodded. “Fell off a haystack onto a pitchfork. I always figured Jude did for him, although Jude never admitted it. I think maybe he was the first person Jude killed.”
Sebastian wasn’t so certain of that. But all he said was, “I’m surprised he didn’t kill Eugene Weston long ago.”
“He wanted to. But he and the major were in the free-trade business together. Weston always liked to claim he didn’t take to smuggling until after old man Irving died, but it wasn’t true; he and Jude had teamed up long before that—a good six months before Alex was hanged. Jude had the brains and the guts to organize and oversee everything, but Weston was the one with the money. Jude needed him.”
“I guess Jude decided he didn’t need him anymore,” said Sebastian. Weston and the caretaker, Silas Madden, had been found in one of the bays of the carriage house, their deaths staged to look like a murder-suicide. Jude had set it up so well that if he hadn’t decided to go after Sebastian, he might well have succeeded in blaming the long string of both recent and past killings on the major.
Jenny shifted her gaze to where her grandmother now sat quietly mourning another dead child. Sebastian saw a quiver of emotion pass over her features. “I know you won’t believe it, but there was much that was good in Jude. He was so loving. L
oving and funny and kind.”
As long as you stayed on the right side of him, thought Sebastian. And he wondered if they’d ever know how many people the innkeeper had murdered over the years.
He turned to leave, but she stopped him by saying, “You asked about Jamie’s and my father.”
He paused to look back at her.
She said, “Before my mother died, she told Nana that she’d laid with three men: an English lord, a Welsh cavalryman, and a stable hand named Ian from out at Maplethorpe Hall. But Ian was killed when Jamie and me was only two years old.” She tipped her head to one side, regarding him appraisingly. “I’m thirty-six now. How old’re you?”
“I’ll be thirty-one this October.”
“So I guess that narrows it down a bit, doesn’t it?” she said, her gaze meeting his as a tentative smile curled her lips.
Author’s Note
Ayleswick, its historic homes, and its ruined priory are my own creations. I envision the village as lying near the River Teme between Bromfield and Downton Gorge.
Lucien Bonaparte (1775–1840), one of Napoléon’s troublesome younger brothers, did indeed spend years in England as a prisoner of war. A fervent revolutionary, he originally supported Robespierre during the Terror. But later, as president of the Council of Five Hundred, he was instrumental in assisting Napoléon’s coup d’état of 18 Brumaire. As a result, he always credited himself with his brother’s elevation to power.
Lucien’s wealth came from a stint as ambassador to Spain, during which he amassed huge bribes in diamonds that he sold and invested in England and the United States. His relations with his brother were always rocky and eventually deteriorated to the point of a split when Napoléon tried to pressure Lucien into divorcing his wife and contracting a dynastic marriage. Lucien’s flight from Italy is generally seen as an attempt to escape his brother’s wrath. The British, however, were convinced that Lucien’s “flight” to America in 1810 was a hoax, suspecting that his true intent was to fan the flames of what would eventually become the War of 1812.