Why Kings Confess

by C. S. Harris

  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” he said, removing his hat. “But I wonder if I might ask you a few more questions about the night Dr. Damion Pelletan was killed?”

  He realized she was younger than he’d first taken her to be, probably closer to thirty than forty. She had her dark blond hair pulled back into a neat bun, and the wild look of unimaginable anguish he remembered had been replaced by a quiet kind of hopeless despair that was in its own way even more heartbreaking to witness.

  She nodded and stepped back to allow him to enter. “Monsieur.”

  The room was as cold and forlorn as it had been the first time Sebastian had seen it. And he knew without being told that she had spent the money he’d given her not on fuel or food for herself, but on securing a proper burial for her dead child.

  As if aware of the drift of his thoughts, she squared her shoulders with a ghost of pride and said, “What was it you wished to know?”

  “I realize this might be a difficult question to answer since you’d never met Damion Pelletan before that night, but . . . did he seem at all agitated in any way? Angry? Or perhaps even afraid for some reason?”

  Her eyes narrowed. Instead of answering, she said, “How is Alexi Sauvage?” The question was not the non sequitur it might have seemed.

  “She is much improved. Unfortunately, the blow to her head has affected her memory. She recalls little from that night. Which is why I was hoping you might be able to help us piece together what happened, and why.”

  The Frenchwoman continued to stare at him for a moment longer. But the answer seemed to satisfy her. She went to stand at a small cracked window overlooking the dark, narrow courtyard below. “I found him a most gentle, generous man, and he could not have been kinder to me. But . . .”

  “But?” prompted Sebastian.

  “Since your last visit, I’ve been trying to recall everything that was said that night. He and the doctoresse were arguing—and I don’t mean about Cécile.”

  “Do you remember what about?”

  “The conversation was held in undertones, but I heard enough to understand that the disagreement was over a woman. Not a patient, but someone from Dr. Pelletan’s personal life.”

  “A woman?”

  She nodded. “I had the impression the woman was someone from his past who is now wed to another. I could be wrong—it was all said in whispers, and I was so very distracted—but I had the impression he wanted this woman to leave her husband.”

  “And Alexandrie Sauvage thought that would be a mistake?”

  “She did, yes.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “If she did, I did not hear it. When your child is ill . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  Claire Bisette was a woman whose life had been crowded with unimaginable hardships and sorrows. For the sake of her child, she had kept going, struggling every day to find food, to survive. But now, with Cécile dead, it was as if something had died within her too. And Sebastian knew it was her will to live.

  He said, “When was the last time you ate?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It does not matter.”

  “It does.” He removed one of his cards from his pocket and held it out to her. “My wife is due to be confined shortly and is in need of a nursemaid for our first child. She would prefer to engage someone older and better educated than those typically sent by the employment agencies. I realize that such a position is far below the station to which you were once accustomed, but it is a beginning.”

  Rather than take the card, she shook her head, one hand running self-consciously down the side of her ragged, old-fashioned gown. “I could not possibly present myself to your wife looking like this.”

  “A lack of proper clothing is easily remedied, unlike deficiencies in education, experience, and character.”

  When she refused to take the card, he laid it on the wooden mantel of the cold hearth. “I’ll tell Lady Devlin to expect you,” he said, and then left before she could hand it back to him.

  • • •

  Sebastian tried to remember what Alexandrie Sauvage had told him about Lady Peter Radcliff. But when he thought about it, he realized he couldn’t recall having discussed the beautiful, sad-eyed Frenchwoman with Damion Pelletan’s sister at all. When she’d been fighting for her life in the aftereffects of concussion and possible pneumonia, he could understand the omission. But he found it difficult to believe that a woman truly interested in finding her brother’s killer would fail to disclose his dangerous interest in another man’s wife.

  Lady Peter’s reasons for failing to reveal the true extent of her involvement with the young French doctor were considerably easier to understand.

  • • •

  Lord Peter Radcliff’s beautiful French-born wife was watching her little brother race two gaily colored wooden sailboats across the narrow strip of ornamental water in Green Park when Sebastian walked up to her. A blustery wind scuttled a tumble of gray clouds overhead, sending shifting patterns of light and shadow across the ruffled surface of the water and billowing the cloth sails of the crudely fashioned boats. “Noël,” Lady Peter called, laughing. “I think the blue one is going to win.” Then she froze, the merriment dying from her eyes as she turned her head to see Sebastian.

  She wore a fur-trimmed pelisse of dark hunter green wool made high at the throat and long in the sleeves. And it occurred to Sebastian that even on balmy days she invariably stayed away from styles that revealed too much of her skin.

  But nothing could disguise the livid bruise that rode high on her left cheekbone.

  Chapter 35

  Lady Peter stood very still, only her shoulders jerking with the agitation of her breathing as she watched Sebastian walk up to her. And he found himself wondering why she feared him so much.

  She said, “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

  “Only some information about Damion Pelletan.” He shifted his gaze to the mock naval race before them. “Who made the boats? Lord Peter?”

  She shook her head. “Noël. He has ambitions to go to sea.”

  “It can be a lucrative career,” said Sebastian.

  “It can also be a deadly one—even when England is not at war, as it is now.”

  “England will always be at war with someone, somewhere.”

  “True.” He was aware of her gaze lifting from the boats to his face. “But you didn’t come here to discuss my brother’s future career options, did you, Lord Devlin?”

  He watched the two boats skim across the choppy surface of the water. “You told me you grew up next door to Damion Pelletan, in Paris.”

  “Y-yes,” she said warily, obviously unsure where he was going with this.

  “How well did you know his sister, Alexi?”

  “Alexi?” She let out her breath in a soft sigh, as if relieved by the seemingly innocuous direction of the conversation. “Not well. She was six years older than I, and very serious. She always dreamt of becoming a physician. She had little use for dolls or needlework or silly little girls like me.”

  “She went to the University of Bologna to study?”

  Lady Peter nodded. “She was just sixteen. Dr. Philippe had an uncle there, and she went to stay with him.”

  “What do you know of her first husband—Beauclerc, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. He was a physician as well. I never knew him; I believe they met in Bologna. When he joined the Grand Army, Alexi went with him.”

  “He was killed?”

  “Yes.” She watched Noël run along the water’s edge, shouting encouragement to first one boat, then the other. “Why are you asking me these questions about Alexi?”

  “I’m wondering why she would take such care to preserve your secret.”

  Lady Peter turned her head to look at him, her breath leaving her body in an odd, forced laugh. “Secret? What secret?”

  “Damion Pelletan didn’t come to London to see his sister, did he? He came to see you. Did he come
here intending to try to convince you to leave England and go back to France with him? Or was that a decision he reached only after he saw you?”

  The new bruise stood out starkly against the ashen pallor of her face. “No! I’ve no idea what you are talking about!”

  “You said Damion Pelletan came to dinner one evening and paid you a few formal calls.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how did he come to know Noël?” Children traditionally made no appearance at formal meals or visits.

  She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  “You told me that on the morning of his death, last Thursday, you saw Pelletan in the park arguing with Kilmartin. You said Noël called out to Damion and would have run to him if you hadn’t stopped him. That suggests that Noël not only knew Damion Pelletan, but that he considered him a friend. How did your little brother come to know him so well?”

  Rather than answer, she looked out over the wind-wrinkled water, her throat working painfully as she swallowed.

  “Did Lord Peter find out about Damion?” Sebastian asked quietly. “Is that why he hit you?”

  “My husband does not beat me,” she said with awful dignity.

  “Where did you get the bruise on your face, Lady Peter?”

  One gloved hand crept up to touch her cheek, then fluttered self-consciously away. “I . . . I tripped. It was the silliest thing. I tripped and smacked my face against the side of a bureau.”

  Sebastian watched Noël run around to the far bank to try to catch his boats. “Does Lord Peter know that you and Damion Pelletan were once considerably more than childhood friends?”

  She shook her head.

  “So he didn’t realize that Pelletan was still in love with you?”

  “No! He didn’t know anything, I swear it.” She started to touch her bruise again. Then, as if becoming aware of what she was about to do, she curled her hand into a fist and dropped it to her side.

  In England, a husband was legally empowered to beat his wife. He was expected to restrain himself to “gentle chastisement,” but the forces of the law usually looked the other way unless he so far forgot himself as to kill the poor, hapless woman. Even then, he could frequently plead manslaughter and get away with a simple burning on the hand.

  The law was not always so tolerant of a jealous husband who killed a real or imagined rival for his wife’s affections.

  Lady Peter said, “There—there is something I did not tell you.”

  “Oh?”

  She bit her lower lip, her gaze sliding away from him, as if frantically calculating how much to tell him—and how much to keep hidden. “You’re right; I did see Damion more frequently than I admitted before—perhaps more than I ought to have. He reminded me so much of happier days, of springtime along the Seine, when my parents were still alive and I was young and carefree.”

  “And?”

  “Damion would sometimes meet Noël and me here, in the park. I last spoke to him late Wednesday afternoon—the day before he died. I knew as soon as I saw him just how upset he was.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “At first he tried to shrug it off, saying the constant quarreling amongst the various members of the delegation was becoming tiring. But he finally admitted he’d discovered something that troubled him—something about Vaundreuil.”

  “About Vaundreuil’s health?”

  “No. Damion told me once that Vaundreuil’s heart is nowhere near as bad as Vaundreuil believes it to be—that if he would only eat sensibly and drink in moderation, he would in all likelihood live to a ripe old age.” She watched Noël hunker down to retrieve his boats. “Whatever worried him involved the peace negotiations. He told me he was considering approaching Colonel Foucher with what he knew.”

  “Do you think he did?

  “I don’t know. He may have decided instead to confront Vaundreuil directly.”

  Sebastian studied her flawless profile, the exquisite lines of her face marred by the ugly purple bruise. “Did Damion ever tell you someone was trying to bribe him?”

  “Good heavens, no. Bribe him to do what?”

  “Spy on the other members of the delegation, perhaps?”

  “You mean work for the English? Damion would never have agreed to do such a thing. He was an honorable man—and fiercely loyal to France. He had no interest in money.”

  “There are other ways of persuading a man to do things against his will.”

  “By threats, you mean?” She shook her head. “Damion would never have allowed himself to be coerced into doing something dishonorable.”

  “Even if the threats weren’t against Damion himself, but against someone he loved?”

  Her gaze drifted back to her little brother, who had left his boats on the bank and was now following a waddling, complaining duck across winter-browned grass scattered with patches of melting snow. She swallowed hard, the silence filling with the rush of the wind and the slap of the water against the shore and the homely quack-quack of the duck.

  Sebastian said, “Why did you decide to tell me about Vaundreuil now?”

  She shook her head, as if unable or unwilling to put her motivation into words.

  And he was not cruel enough to do it for her.

  • • •

  Harmond Vaundreuil was sitting at a table in the coffee room of the Gifford Arms when Sebastian walked in. An array of papers covered the surface before him; he had a quill in one hand, his head bent, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose. He cast Sebastian a quick glance, then returned to his work.

  “The coffee room is not open to the public,” he said in his heavy Parisian accent.

  Sebastian went to stand with his back to the roaring fire. “Good. Then we don’t need to be worried about an interruption.”

  Vaundreuil grunted and dipped his pen in the small pot of ink at his elbow.

  “How are the negotiations progressing?” Sebastian asked pleasantly as the Frenchman’s quill scratched across his paper.

  “Why don’t you ask your father-in-law? Or your own father, for that matter.”

  Sebastian was careful to keep all sign of surprise off his face. But the truth was, he had not known until now that Hendon was also involved in the preliminary peace discussions.

  When he remained silent, Vaundreuil grunted again and said, “Still determinedly chasing the illusion that Damion Pelletan was killed by someone other than a band of London’s notorious footpads?”

  “Something like that. Tell me: Was Pelletan an ardent supporter of the Emperor Napoléon?”

  “Dr. Pelletan was a dedicated physician. To my knowledge, he wasn’t an ardent supporter of anyone.”

  “But he favored peace?”

  “He did.”

  “And was he pleased with the direction the negotiations were taking?”

  Vaundreuil lifted his head in a way that enabled him to look at Sebastian over the upper rims of his spectacles. “Damion Pelletan had no part in the negotiations.”

  “But he knew how they were progressing, did he not?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.” The Frenchman went back to his writing.

  Sebastian said, “Did you know Damion Pelletan has a sister here in London?”

  “I did, yes. Now you really must excuse me; I am very busy. Would you kindly go away and allow me to finish my work?”

  “In a moment. Are you not even curious to know what happened to him?”

  “I am a diplomat, not a policeman. The wrong kind of curiosity is a luxury I cannot afford. If Damion Pelletan’s murderer must go free for the negotiations to continue, then so be it.”

  “I can understand that. But what if Pelletan was killed by someone intent on disrupting your mission? Surely it has occurred to you that the murderer might well try again—by targeting someone else in your party?”

  Vaundreuil dropped his pen, a splotch of ink flowing across the paper as his head c
ame up. His gaze met Sebastian’s across the room, then jerked away as footsteps sounded on the paving outside the inn’s sashed windows.

  Sebastian heard a man’s voice, followed by a woman’s gentle laughter. It took him a moment to realize who it was. Then he saw Colonel Foucher walking side by side with Madeline Quesnel, a market basket slung over her arm.

  And there was no disguising the raw fear that gusted across her father’s face as he confronted a new and obviously terrifying possibility.

  • • •

  A smothering envelope of dense fog was descending on the city, yellow and heavy with the bitter stench of coal smoke.

  Leaving the Gifford Arms, Sebastian turned toward the hackney stand at the end of York Street. It was only midafternoon, but the streets were unnaturally deserted, the pavement slick with condensation and grime, every sound magnified or distorted by the suffocating shroud of foul, heavy moisture. He could hear the rattle of a harness in the distance, the shouts of boatmen out on the river . . .

  And the steady rhythm of a man’s footsteps that seemed to start up out of nowhere and gained on him, fast.

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  Sebastian walked on, his senses suddenly, intensely alert.

  The shadow’s footsteps kept pace with him.

  He passed a gnarled old workman in a blue smock, his gray bearded face beaded with moisture, his head bent as he hurried on without a second glance. A moment later came the thump of two bodies colliding and the workman’s angry, “Oy! Why don’t ye watch where yer goin’?” The shadow’s footsteps hesitated for an instant, then resumed and quickened.

  Sebastian stepped sideways, turning so that his back was to the brick wall of the town house beside him as he stopped and listened.

  Damn this fog.

  A man stepped out of the swirling mist: a gentleman, clad in a fashionable greatcoat and beaver hat with a heavy scarf that obscured the lower part of his face. He held his left hand straight down at his side, the folds of his greatcoat all but obscuring the dagger clutched in his fist.