by C. S. Harris
He jerked awake, his eyes opening on the tucked blue silk of the tester above. He sat on the side of the bed, the breath coming hard in his chest, like a man standing against a gale so strong he had to fight to draw air. The room was filled with dancing shadows, the wind eddying the dying fire and shifting the heavy drapes at the window.
He rose to his feet and went to throw more coal on the fire. The icy air bit his naked flesh, but he ignored it, standing with one hand resting on the mantel, his gaze on the leaping flames. He heard a soft whisper of movement from the bed, and Hero came to drape a blanket around his shoulders.
He had returned home that evening to find her kneeling on the bed with her arms folded on the mattress and her forehead resting on her hands. She might not trust Alexandrie Sauvage to manipulate the child in her womb, but she was desperate enough to spend twenty minutes every two hours in an ungainly posture that thus far had done nothing to encourage his recalcitrant offspring to assume a position best calculated to preserve her and her mother’s life.
She said, “You can’t solve every murder, unravel every mystery, right every wrong.”
“No.”
She gave a soft huff of disbelief. “You say that, but you don’t really believe it.”
He gave a crooked smile. “No.”
She snuggled into the chair beside the fire, a quilt held close around her. “Do you seriously think it possible that Marie-Thérèse could be behind all this?”
“When you’re brought up to believe that you’re descended from a saint and that your family has been anointed by God to fill a position of limitless power and authority, it does tend to have a somewhat warping influence on your thought processes—even without the damage inflicted by three years of hell locked in a tower and guarded by men who hate you.”
Hero was silent for a moment, her eyes clouded by a troubling memory.
“What?” he asked, watching her.
“I was just thinking about a dinner party I attended a few years ago. Marie-Thérèse was there, and she told a story about her brother, about a time when Marie Antoinette allowed the children to milk the cows at the Petit Trianon, and how the little Dauphin squealed with delight when he was accidentally squirted in the face with the warm, fresh milk. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her looking relaxed and vaguely happy. I think she remembers the days before the Revolution when her mother and father and brother were all alive as a golden age in her life, a sacred time of joy and love and serenity. If she genuinely thought Damion Pelletan was the Lost Dauphin, I can’t believe she would have had him killed. The others? Perhaps. But not a man she believed to be her beloved little brother.”
“You could be right. It’s possible she knows nothing about it. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t done to benefit her.”
“By whom?”
“I’d put my money on Lady Giselle.”
She blinked. “Can you prove it?”
“Prove it? No. To be honest, I’m not even entirely convinced I’m right.” He gave a wry smile. “It isn’t as if I haven’t been wrong before.”
She watched the flames lick at the new load of coal. “How do you explain the explosion at Golden Square? I mean, why would Lady Giselle try to kill Alexi Sauvage? Simply because she was there when Damion Pelletan was killed?”
“It’s possible. Although I’m not convinced the Bourbons had anything to do with what happened in Golden Square. That was probably Sampson Bullock’s handiwork.”
“Then how do you know he didn’t kill Damion Pelletan too?”
“I don’t. I’d probably think he did kill Pelletan, if it weren’t for the removal of Pelletan’s heart. That, and the way everything seems to keep circling back to the Bourbons.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re to blame.”
“No. But they are involved. Somehow.”
She pushed up from the chair with the slow, stately grace that had come to characterize her movements of late. The dark fall of her hair glowed in the firelight, a soft smile curling her lips as she bracketed his cheeks with her hands and kissed his mouth. He rested his hands on her hips, breathed in the familiar heady scent that was all her own. He kissed her again, then leaned his forehead against hers as he felt his heart swell with a flood of love and joy, all tangled up with a fear more terrible than any he had ever known.
Even after they had gone back to bed and she had fallen asleep beside him, he found the night’s shadows haunted by dreamlike images of empty arms and silent cradles.
Friday, 29 January
Early the next morning, Sebastian was coming down for breakfast when Morey opened the door to Lady Peter Radcliff.
She carried an overstuffed satchel and had brought with her the child known to the world as her brother. He stood on the top step with his two wooden boats clutched to his chest. There was a pale, pinched look about his face, and he kept shivering as if he were so cold he might never warm up.
Lady Peter wore a cherry red velvet pelisse with a high white fur collar and a silken bonnet whose stiffened velvet brim hid her face. But when she turned her head, Sebastian saw the thin line of blood that trickled from her split lip and the purple bruises that mottled and swelled her once pretty face.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice a cracked whisper. “I know I shouldn’t have come here. But I didn’t know where else to go.” And then, as if she had been holding herself upright by a sheer act of will, her eyes rolled back in her head.
Sebastian caught her just before she hit the tiled marble floor.
• • •
“I don’t think she’s sustained any serious internal damage,” Gibson said, keeping his voice low. “Although it wasn’t for lack of trying on someone’s part. Who did this to her?”
“That would be her husband, the younger son of the Third Duke of Linford, and brother to the current Fourth Duke.”
They were standing just outside the door to the darkened chamber where Lady Peter lay beneath a pile of warm quilts. Her eyes were closed, although Sebastian didn’t think she was sleeping. Hero had carried off the boy, Noël, to the morning room, where she was plying him with milk and cookies and trying to coax the disgruntled black cat into being sociable.
Gibson said, “I tried to get her to take some laudanum, but she refused. Perhaps you can convince her to change her mind.”
After Gibson left, Sebastian went to sit beside her. He watched her throat work as she swallowed and opened eyes that were swimming with unshed tears. Then she blinked, and one tear escaped to slip sideways into her hair.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
She shook her head, although whether it was to refute his statement or to deny her need for safety, he couldn’t have said. “Peter . . .” She swallowed. “He never beat me like this before. Not this bad. In the past, he was always careful to hurt me where it wouldn’t show. But this time . . . I thought he was going to kill me.”
“What set him off? Do you have any idea?”
“He was out drinking most of the night and came home in a rage. He’s badly dipped, you see, and his brother is refusing to pay his debts. The last time the Duke rescued him from dun territory, he swore he’d never do it again. I knew he meant it, but Peter refused to believe it. Now he’s getting desperate. He ran through everything I brought to the marriage years ago, and he wants to get his hands on what my father left for Noël. I told him I wouldn’t help him do it—that I’d rather die. That’s when he started hitting me.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “He called me . . . such names. Said he had put up with my bastard all these years, that the least I could do was help him now, when he needed it.”
“He knows Noël is your son?”
She nodded, the tears sliding freely down her cheeks. “I never deceived him.”
“Did you tell him Damion Pelletan was the boy’s father?”
“No. But I think he might have guessed.” Her fingers picked at the lace trimming of the s
heets. “When Damion first begged me to go away with him, I told him I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but I’d made a vow and I believed I owed it to Peter to honor it. But then . . .”
Her voice faded away. Sebastian waited, and after a moment she swallowed and started up again. “Last Wednesday, Noël left one of his boats lying in the entry hall. Peter tripped over it, and he turned around and backhanded Noël so hard he made his nose bleed. I couldn’t believe it. Peter had never hit him before. But that’s how it started with me; one day he lost his temper and slapped me across the face. He swore he’d never do it again. But he did. So I knew . . . I knew it would be the same all over again with Noël. That’s when I realized I had to leave—with or without Damion.”
“So you told Damion you’d go with him when he left for France?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible Lord Peter discovered what you were planning?”
“I don’t know.” Her face crumpled with the force of her sobs, splitting open the cut on her lip so that it began to bleed again. “He may have. Oh, God. Has this all been my fault? Did Damion die because of me?”
Sebastian knew most people in their society would blame her, whether Damion died because of her or not. She had borne a child out of wedlock, then conspired to leave her noble husband for her former lover.
But he could not find it within him to either judge or condemn her for the tangle her life had become. She had been young and vulnerable when she gave in to her passion and the enchantment of love, and unwisely created a child. Torn from the future that might have been hers, she was forced by her parents and the dictates of their society’s stern, unforgiving sense of propriety to disown her own child and marry a man who agreed to give her a veneer of respectability in exchange for her father’s wealth. It was a contract she entered into in good faith, determined to honor the vows she made to a man whose easy geniality and practiced charm hid an angry, self-indulgent, and ultimately abusive petulance.
He said, “Lord Peter claims he was home with you the night Damion was killed. Was he?”
She shook her head from side to side against the pillow. “No. He was supposed to meet Brummell and Alvanley at White’s for dinner that night, but he never showed up. He said he spent the night drinking in some low tavern in Westminster and ended up getting into a brawl there. When he came home early the next morning, his clothes were covered in blood.”
“Was he hurt?”
“No. I think his knuckles may have been skinned, but that was all.”
“Where is he now?”
“I left him sleeping.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath. “I’ve made such a mess of things. What am I to do?”
Reaching out, Sebastian laid his hand over hers where it rested on the counterpane. “Right now, all you need to do is rest and get better.”
“Noël—”
“Is petting our cranky black cat in the drawing room. He’ll be fine.”
“I should see him—”
“I’ll have him come in after you’ve had some sleep.”
Her hand trembled beneath his, then lay still. And it occurred to him as he watched her eyes close and her breathing deepen with sleep that whoever had killed Damion Pelletan hadn’t only robbed a caring young physician of his life.
They’d also deprived a little boy of his father and a lonely young woman of the chance to reach again for the gentle love and happiness that had been snatched from her so long ago.
Chapter 52
Before he rang the bell of Lord Peter Radcliff’s town house in Half Moon Street, Sebastian loosened his cravat, tousled his hair, and splashed his face with some of the contents of the brandy bottle he held. Then he leaned one elbow against the doorframe, affected a slightly befuddled smile, and waited.
Radcliff’s butler was a small, slim man with a mouthful of large, crooked teeth and a long, sharp nose. He gazed at Sebastian with watery gray eyes and sniffed.
“Ah, there you are,” said Sebastian, staggering slightly as he straightened. “I’m here for Radcliff.”
The butler sniffed again. “I’m afraid Lord Peter is not presently at home to visitors.”
“Still abed, is he?” Smiling cheerfully, Sebastian pushed past the startled butler and crossed the entrance hall toward the stairs. “That’s quite all right. He won’t mind me waking him.”
“But— My lord! You can’t do that!”
Sebastian took the steps two at a time. “Not to worry. I can guarantee he’ll be delighted to see me.” Pausing halfway up the stairs, Sebastian swung around to hold the bottle aloft as if it were a rare prize. “What you see here is some of the best brandy never to pay a penny of tax into the coffers of good ole King George.” He pressed one finger to his pursed lips and winked. “But shhh; mum’s the word, eh?”
“My lord, please!”
“That will be all,” called Sebastian gaily, running up the rest of the stairs.
At the top of the second flight, he threw open the doors of two rooms before finding the right one. The chamber lay in darkness, the heavy drapes at the windows closed tight to exclude all light. The space was large and square, furnished with a high tester and delicate Adams chests, its pastel-hued walls accented with beribboned moldings picked out in cream. The air reeked of stale sweat and despair and the alcohol-tinged exhalations of the man who snored loudly from the depths of the bed.
Sebastian closed the door behind him and locked it, then crossed the room to do the same to the door leading to the dressing room.
The man in the bed did not stir.
Radcliff’s clothes lay scattered across the floor where he had obviously discarded them on his wobbly path to the bed. First the cravat, then a meticulously tailored coat dropped on the floor with its sleeves inside out. Sebastian saw a waistcoat, its crumpled, white silk front splattered with dried blood, and he felt a surge of rage that was like a hum in his ears.
It was Julia’s blood.
The bottle still gripped in one fist, he went to stand beside Lord Peter.
Sprawled on his back in a tangle of sheets, he had one bare leg dangling off the edge of the bed, his nightshirt rucked up around his hips. He lay with his face turned to one side, his golden hair plastered to his forehead with dried sweat, his lips pursed so that his breath whistled softly on its way out.
Sebastian stared down at him for a moment, then crossed to the window and yanked open the drapes.
The cold light of midmorning flooded the room. Lord Peter gave a strangled half snore, then resumed his previous cadence.
Setting aside the bottle, Sebastian fisted both hands in the frilled front of the man’s nightshirt. “Come on; up with you, then,” he said as he hauled the drunken man’s limp body out of the bed and swung him around to slam his back against the carved wooden post of the bed with enough force to rattle the frame.
“Wha—?” Radcliff wavered, his eyes fluttering open, his mouth foolishly agape as his legs crumpled and he slid down against the side of the bed.
Closing one hand around the brandy bottle’s neck, Sebastian smashed it against the carved bedpost, raining down brandy and broken glass on the drunken man’s head and shoulders.
Radcliff shook his head like a dog coming in out of a storm. “What the devil?”
Crouching low, Sebastian grabbed another fistful of Radcliff’s nightshirt with one hand and pressed the sharp edge of the broken bottle up under the man’s chin. “Give me one good excuse to slit your throat,” he said, enunciating each word with awful clarity, “and believe me, I will. I’ve just had a surgeon to tend your wife’s injuries. It’s no thanks to you she’s not dead.”
“Julia? Wha’d the bitch say? If she told you—”
Radcliff let out a yelp as Sebastian increased the pressure on the sharp edge held against his throat.
“Don’t. Don’t ever let me hear you use a word like that to describe your wife again. Do I make myself understood? I have no mercy for a man like you. There’s a special place in hell fo
r a man who uses his fists on his own wife, and I’ll be more than happy to send you there.”
Lord Peter stared up at him with bulging eyes. He might not be entirely sober, but he was now wide-awake. “You’re mad.”
“I may well be. I’m beginning to suspect that we all are, each in our own way.”
“You can’t come in here, threatening me, acting like I’m some—”
Sebastian shifted his weight in a way that made Lord Peter break off and draw a quick, shallow breath.
Sebastian said, “In case you haven’t noticed, I am already here. Where you made your mistake was in lying to me. You told me you spent last Thursday night at home with your wife. You didn’t. You got into a row with her. You were angry about her renewed acquaintance with an old childhood friend—”
“He wasn’t simply some ‘old friend’! He was her lover.”
“Nine years ago. Not now.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Yes. And I believe her.” Sebastian let his gaze drift over the other man’s face, slick with sweat and slack now with the aftereffects of too much alcohol and too little sleep. “Is that why you followed Pelletan to St. Katharine’s and stuck a knife in his back?”
“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t. I won’t deny I was angry; what man wouldn’t be? I even went to the inn where the bastard was staying. I was going to tell him that Julia is my wife and he’d better stay the hell away from her. But I didn’t even do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because when I got there, he was standing on the footpath outside the inn, talking to Lady Giselle.”
Sebastian stared at him. “Are you telling me you saw Damion Pelletan talking with Lady Giselle Edmondson?”
Radcliff looked puzzled by Sebastian’s vehemence. “That’s right. Why?”
“How do you know the woman you saw was Lady Giselle?”
“Because I recognized her. How do you think? She was wearing a hat with a veil, but she’d pushed back the veil and the light from the oil lamp beside the door was falling full on her face.”