by C. S. Harris
Whatever link existed between the two women must lay there, Sebastian decided, somewhere in the green, misty mountains of northern Wales.
Chapter 33
They were referred to as morning calls, that endless round of formal visits that took place daily amongst the members of Society in residence in London. But the truth was that no gentleman or lady with any pretensions to breeding would dream of appearing on the doorstep of any but his or her most intimate of friends before three o’clock.
And so Sebastian spent the next several hours in Jackson’s saloon, working the soreness out of his muscles. It wasn’t until half past three that he arrived at the home of Guinevere’s sister, Morgana, Lady Quinlan. After the thinly veiled hostility of their encounter at the balloon ascension, he half expected to be told she was not at home. Instead, he was shown upstairs to the drawing room, where he found Lady Quinlan in conversation with another caller, a young woman introduced to him as Lady Portland, wife to the Home Secretary and half sister to Guinevere’s childhood love, the Chevalier de Varden.
She had much the look of her mother, Isolde, being incredibly small and fine-boned. Only her hair was different, an ashen blond rather than a fiery auburn. She was also very young, no more than twenty at the most. As a child of Lady Audley’s second marriage, she was younger than Varden, younger even than Guinevere.
“Lord Devlin,” said Claire Portland, offering her hand and looking up at him with that intense interest used to flirtatious effect by so many of her sex. “I’ve been hearing a great deal to your credit.”
The hand in his was a dainty, frail thing, and he found himself thinking that Claire Portland, like her mother, was far too tiny to have been the owner of the green satin gown that had been used as Guinevere’s death shroud.
“Portland tells me you’ve agreed to help discover the truth about what happened to poor Guinevere,” Claire was saying. “How gallant of you.”
Sebastian adjusted the tails of his coat and sat on a nearby sofa. “I don’t recall,” he said to Lady Portland. “Were you present at the Prince’s musical evening last Wednesday?”
She gave a little shudder. “Thank goodness, no. I had the headache and decided to stay in my room.”
“But you were in Brighton.”
“Oh yes.” She leaned forward as if confiding a secret. “Personally, I find the place rather tedious. But now that Prinny has been named Regent, I fear we shall all be doomed to follow him down there every summer.”
Leaning back again, she fixed him with an intense gaze and said, “Is it true what Portland says, that the people on the streets actually believe the Prince killed poor Guin?”
Sebastian glanced at Morgana, who sat quietly beside the empty hearth. “It’s been my experience that most people tend to believe what they are led to believe,” he said.
Lady Quinlan’s features remained inscrutable, while Claire Portland tipped her head sideways, her expression quizzical, as if she were not quite sure how to take that. Looking into her clear, cornflower blue eyes, Sebastian found himself wondering just how much Lord Portland confided in his pretty young wife. She projected an image of innocence and gaiety, of disingenuous superficiality and the mindless helplessness most men found appealing. But Sebastian knew it was an impression deliberately created by many of her sisters, a consciously deceptive facade that often hid a sharp and calculating mind. Claire Portland was, after all, Lady Audley’s daughter. And Lady Audley was neither mindless nor helpless.
Lord Portland’s pretty young wife stayed chatting a few minutes more, then very correctly rose as required by custom to take her leave. Yet as she made her adieus with sweet effusiveness, Sebastian caught the furtive glance she shared with their hostess. It was a look that spoke of an intention to follow up Sebastian’s visit with a private conference, and hinted at the existence of an old, close friendship. A friendship he wouldn’t have expected between the plain, intensely serious Morgana and this flirtatious woman who was at least as young, if not younger than, the murdered sister with whom Morgana claimed to have had so little in common.
“Why are you doing this?” Morgana asked, fixing Sebastian with a thoughtful stare as soon as the footman had shown her other guest out. “It’s not for love of the Prince Regent, whatever Claire might think.”
Sebastian raised his eyebrows in a simulation of surprise. “Does Lady Portland indeed think that?”
An expression he couldn’t quite decipher flitted across his hostess’s features. She leaned back in her chair, one hand smoothing her gown across her lap. “You came, obviously, to ask me something. What is it?”
It was no easy thing, asking a lady for the name of her sister’s lover. Sebastian tried an oblique approach. “Was your sister happy, do you think, in her marriage?”
A knowing gleam shone in her eyes. “You’re being discreet, aren’t you? What you really mean to ask is, Did Guinevere have a lover and do I know his name? The answer to the first question is, Possibly. To the second question I’m afraid I must answer, No. I don’t know his name. It’s not the sort of thing she would confide in me. As I told you, Guinevere and I were not close.”
“Yet you knew of her childhood attachment to Varden.”
“That was hardly a secret. Presumably even Guinevere would be prudent if she were cuckolding a husband.”
“Whom might she have confided in? Did she have a close friend?”
“Not that I know of. She was always something of a loner, Guinevere.”
To his annoyance, he heard the distant rap of the front knocker, heralding the arrival of yet another round of guests come to offer their condolences to Lady Quinlan on the death of her sister. Sebastian said, “Your sister had a necklace, a necklace with a silver triskelion superimposed on a bluestone disk. Do you know anything about it? It’s an ancient piece, from well before the seventeenth century.”
Lady Quinlan shook her head, her expression blank. Either she knew nothing of the necklace, or she was even better at hiding her thoughts and feelings than he would expect. “No. As a child she had a pearl necklace and one or two small pins that once belonged to her mother, but nothing else I ever knew of. You say it was silver? It seems a strange thing for Anglessey to have given her. Unless, of course, it was a family piece.” A faint smile touched her lips. “Although if that were the case, you wouldn’t be asking me about it, now, would you?”
The new visitors were on the stairs. Sebastian could hear the ponderous tread of a matron, along with the lighter step of a younger woman, probably her daughter. “You wouldn’t happen to know what took your sister to Smithfield last week, would you?” Sebastian asked, rising to take his leave.
“Smithfield?” She rose with him. “Of all the unfashionable places. Good heavens, no.”
Standing beside her, Sebastian was reminded again of the unusual height that Morgana Quinlan, like her sister, Guinevere, had inherited from their father. If anything, Morgana was even taller—and certainly more robust—than her sister had been.
The green satin evening gown could no more have come from this woman’s wardrobe than from that of Claire Portland.
THAT GREEN SATIN GOWN was beginning to bother him.
Returning to his house on Brook Street, Sebastian decided to take the gown to Kat and hear what she might be able to tell him about it. “Have Tom bring the curricle around,” said Sebastian, handing his hat and walking stick to Morey, his majordomo.
“I’m sorry, my lord,” said Morey. “But young Tom has not yet returned.”
Sebastian frowned. The sun was already low in the sky, and he’d warned the tiger not to linger in Smithfield after dusk. Sebastian turned toward the stairs. “Then have Giles bring the curricle round.”
Morey gave a stately bow and withdrew.
Some half an hour later, clad in evening dress and with the groom Giles sitting up behind him, Sebastian stuffed the brown paper package containing the green satin evening gown beneath his curricle’s seat and turned the chestnuts’
heads toward Covent Garden. Already, the setting sun was painting long streaks of orange and vivid pink across a fading sky. The traffic in the streets was heavy, the ponderous wagons of the carters and coal sellers mingling with the elegant landaus and barouches of the ton as the fashionably idle set out for the opera and theater and endless round of dinner parties, card parties, and soirees with which they filled their evenings. There were single horsemen, too: fashionable bucks in leather breeches and white-topped high boots, their blood mounts stepping high and proud; country gentlemen in old-fashioned frock coats, their horses sturdy and serviceable…and one brown-coated gentleman on a nondescript gray who was still trailing a steady distance behind as the more fashionable districts faded away and Sebastian swung the curricle into St. Martin’s.
Ignoring the turning that would have taken him to King Street and Covent Garden beyond, Sebastian simply continued on south toward the river. The horse was different, of course: a gray in place of the more noticeable bay. But there was something instantly recognizable about the set of the man’s shoulders, his easy seat in the saddle. It was the shadow from South Downs.
Alert now, Sebastian swung left onto Chandos Street. Following at a judicious interval, the brown-coated horseman kept pace with him.
Ahead, the street formed a lopsided Y around the sharply pointed corner of an ancient brick building whose ground floor housed an apothecary, its rotting sign peeling paint, its small windows shuttered now with the coming of night. Most of the traffic here veered left, toward Bedford Street; Sebastian guided the chestnuts into the narrow opening to the right, then turned a second hard right into an even narrower lane that angled off toward the river.
A heavy odor of age and damp closed in around them. High, sagging walls rose up steeply on either side, cutting off the dim light of the dying day. Most of the shops here were shuttered as well, or simply boarded up, the narrow, nearly deserted footpaths edging a lane of old cobbles half lost in a thick, noisome mud.
“Here, take them,” said Sebastian, passing the reins to his groom. “Keep going, and wait for me at the theater.”
Giles scrambled slack-jawed onto the seat. “My lord?”
“You heard me.”
One hand braced against the high seat iron beside him, Sebastian vaulted lightly to the cobbles. He was aware of heads turning. Ignoring them, he sprinted back to the ironmonger’s that stood on the corner. Beside it, a pile of scrap metal and old timbers blocked the footpath and spilled out into the lane. Sebastian scrambled to the top, the boards creaking and shifting precariously beneath him.
From the street came the passing whirl of a lightly sprung phaeton, mingling with the ponderous rattle of a heavy wagon’s iron-rimmed wheels and the even clip-clop of a single approaching horse. Throwing a quick glance toward the bottom of the lane, Sebastian could see his curricle quite clearly, the solitary figure of the blue-coated groom silhouetted against the brick of the ancient Tudor buildings. But for most people the curricle would be a dark blur, the number of men it carried impossible to discern in the gathering darkness.
The clatter of hooves came closer. Sebastian returned his attention to the corner beside him. An old woman walked past, bent nearly double beneath a bundle of what looked like rags.
Sebastian settled himself into a crouch.
A rat, its nose twitching, its eyes shining in the darkness, crept out from beneath the rotting board at Sebastian’s feet just as the brown-coated rider turned the corner. The flickering flambeau thrust into a holder fixed high up on the wall of the building opposite revealed a man with a top hat pulled low on his forehead, his gaze narrowed as he studied the curricle at the bottom of the lane. Sebastian could see the man’s powerfully jutting nose and sweeping side-whiskers, the rest of his face clean shaven and utterly unfamiliar.
The rat squealed in alarm and scampered off, just as Sebastian leapt.
Chapter 34
Startled by the sound of the rat’s screech, the rider swung around. His eyes flared wide in alarm, his right arm jerking up instinctively to shield his face and upper body as Sebastian slammed into him.
The impact was enough to unseat the rider. But that blocking sweep of his arm and the shift in the man’s seat deflected Sebastian’s momentum enough that, rather than crashing down with the man on the horse’s far side, Sebastian was flung back. The edge of one of the boards raked his ribs painfully as he fell.
Squealing in terror, the gray reared up between them, its sharp hooves slashing the air. Sebastian scrambled to his feet, dodged the gray’s hooves as the horse reared again. But the brown-coated man was already up. Boots slipping in the mud, he bolted around the corner.
Sebastian tore after him, up a street lined with workshops and small traders closing now for the night. He sidestepped a tailor’s apprentice who turned, a green-painted shutter held in his widespread arms, his mouth forming a silent O as Sebastian ran past.
The entrance to an alley yawned ahead. The brown-coated man darted down it, Sebastian hard after him. They were in an old mews, the high, bulging walls propped up by rotting beams that thrust out to trip the unwary, the former yards filled now with a hodgepodge of illegal shacks and grim hovels. A group of ragged children playing with a hoop shouted as they dashed past. One little boy of no more then five or six, his face smeared with filth, ran after them, calling to them and laughing until he could keep up no longer and fell away.
For a moment Sebastian thought the man had misjudged and trapped himself in a cul-de-sac. Then a black mouth opened up before them and Sebastian saw a low archway where the upper stories of the houses on either side of what had once been a narrow lane had extended out to swallow the sky, leaving only a dark tunnel beneath.
Plunging into a shadowy darkness of recessed doorways and sharp corners where a man might lie in wait, Sebastian was forced to slow his pace, listening always for the slap of running feet, the sawing of labored breath up ahead. Then the traboule opened up and he found himself in a courtyard of what must once have been a fine coaching in, its ground floor now filled with dilapidated workshops overhung by rented rooms where ragged laundry hung limp and the still evening air trapped the scent of frying onions and burning dung.
Leaping a puddle left by the previous day’s rain, Sebastian ran on. Two women taking down the laundry paused to stare; an old man filling a clay pipe called out something lost in the din. Sebastian followed his quarry through the arch and down a narrow passageway between two brown brick buildings. Then the pale glow of lamplight shone up ahead and the passageway emptied out into a wide, busy thoroughfare that Sebastian realized must be the Strand.
The man ahead of him was breathing heavily now, stumbling as he dodged between a hackney and a ponderous old landau sporting a faded crest. Two men on the far footpath, their red waistcoats and blue coats marking them as men from the Bow Street Patrol, turned and shouted.
Brown Coat’s head snapped around, his open mouth sucking in air, his eyes going wide. Abandoning the busy, lamplit expanse of the Strand, he careered around the nearest corner, heading now toward the river.
The streets were newer here and straight, the chance of running into a trap diminished. Lungs aching, his breath coming hard and fast, Sebastian pushed himself on. They were halfway across the open square of Hungerford Market when Sebastian caught him.
Reaching out, Sebastian closed his hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him around. They lost their balance together, the man pulling back, Sebastian practically running over him as, legs tangling, they sprawled across the pavement.
Brown Coat’s back hit the ground hard, driving the wind out of him. “Who are you?” Sebastian demanded. The man heaved up against him once, then lay still, panting, his face ashen with pain.
“Damn you.” Sebastian closed his fist on the cloth of the man’s coat to draw him up, then slam him back down again. “Who set you after me?”
A heavy hand fell on Sebastian’s shoulder, jerking him up. “There, there now, me lads,” said
a gruff voice. “What’s all this, then?”
Chapter 35
His hold on Brown Coat broken, Sebastian found himself staring into the broad, whiskered face of one of the men from the Bow Street Patrol.
Sebastian shook his head to fling the sweat from his eyes. “Bloody hell.”
“Now then, let’s have none of that,” chided the second Bow Street man, grabbing Sebastian’s other arm.
Scuttling backward, Brown Coat scrambled to his feet and took off at a run.
“You stupid sons of bitches,” swore Sebastian, bringing his arm back to drive his elbow, hard, into the plump red waistcoat of the first man who’d grabbed him.
Air gusting out of a painfully pursed mouth, the Runner let go of Sebastian and hunched forward, his hands pressed to his gut.
“I say,” began the other Runner, just as Sebastian drove his fist into the man’s face and wrenched his left arm free.
By now, Brown Coat had made it to the end of the market. Sebastian pelted after him, the shriek of the Bow Street men’s whistles cutting through the night.
Up ahead, he could see the wide-open expanse of the Thames. The riverbank here had been built up into a stone-faced terrace fronted by a low wall. Dodging across the open space, Brown Coat leapt up onto the flat top of the wall, meaning perhaps to avoid the traffic clogging the street fronting the river by running along the wall to the top of the steps.
But the wall was old, the weathered stone damp and crumbling. His feet shot out from beneath him. For a moment the man wavered, his arms windmilling through the air as he sought to regain his balance. With a sharp cry, he toppled backward.
There was a dull thump. Then all was silent except for the insistent blowing of the Runners’ whistles and the lapping of the water at the river’s edge.