by C. S. Harris
Leaning his outstretched arms against the top of the wall, Sebastian hung his head and gasped for breath. On the rocks far below, the man lay sprawled on his back, his arms outflung, his eyes wide and unseeing.
“Bloody hell,” said Sebastian, and pushed away from the wall to swipe one muddy forearm across his sweat-drenched forehead.
“IF YOUR MAIN PURPOSE was to find out who he is,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, staring down at the body at their feet, “then why did you kill him?”
Sebastian grunted. “I didn’t kill him. He fell.”
“Yes, of course.” Moving gingerly across the wet rocks, Lovejoy hunkered down beside the man’s still form and peered at the upturned face, ashen now in the moonlight. “Do you know who he is?”
“No. Do you?”
The little magistrate shook his head. “Any idea why he was following you?”
“I was hoping you might be able to help me discover that.”
Lovejoy threw him a pained look and stood up. “Have you seen this morning’s papers?”
“No. Why?”
Even though he had not touched the body, the little magistrate drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands. “A park woman found a body in St. James’s Park. Just before dawn.”
A wind had kicked up and set a series of small waves to lapping against the rocks at their feet. The air was thick with the smell of the river and mud and ever-pervasive stench of sewage. Sebastian stared out at the dark hull of a wherry cutting through the dark water. In a city crowded with courtesans and prostitutes, the park women were the lowest of the low, pitiful creatures so disfigured by disease that they could only ply their trade in the dark, usually in one of the city’s parks.
“Is that so unusual?” said Sebastian.
“It is when the body in question has been butchered.” Lovejoy stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. In the pale moonlight, his face looked nearly as pallid as the corpse at their feet. “I mean that literally. Carved up like a side of beef.”
“Who was he? Do you know?”
Lovejoy nodded for the constables to remove the body and turned away. “That’s one of the more troublesome aspects. He was Sir Humphrey Carmichael’s eldest son. A young man of but twenty-five.”
Sir Humphrey Carmichael was one of the wealthiest men in the city. Born the son of a weaver, he now had a hand in everything from manufacturing and banking to mining and shipping. Until his son’s murderer was caught, the city’s constables and magistrates would be expected to concentrate on nothing else.
“Incidentally, one of the Bow Street men is talking about laying charges,” Lovejoy said, climbing the steps. “You broke his nose.”
“He ripped my coat.”
Lovejoy turned to run an eye over Sebastian’s exquisitely tailored coat of Bath superfine, now muddied and scuffed beyond repair. A faint smile played about one corner of the magistrate’s normally tense mouth. “I’ll tell him that.”
Chapter 36
“What happened to you this time?” asked Kat, her gaze meeting Sebastian’s in her dressing room mirror. The curtain had only just come down on the final act; around them, the theater rang with shouts and laughter and the tramp of feet hurrying up and down the passage.
Sebastian dropped the paper-wrapped parcel containing the green satin gown on her couch and dabbed the back of his hand at the blood trickling down his cheek from a graze. “I was coming to see what you could tell me about this evening gown when I decided to stop and have a little wresting match in the mud.”
She gave him a look that spoke of concern and exasperation and amusement, all carefully held in check. Removing Cleopatra’s gilded diadem from her forehead, she pushed back her chair and went to unwrap the gown. In the golden lamplight, the satin shimmered.
“It’s exquisite,” she said, turning to hold the gown up to the lamplight. “Dashing, but not outrageously so. It looks like something that would be made for a young nobleman’s wife. A lady several years past her first season, perhaps, but still young.”
She glanced over at him. “Surely the woman who delivered the note for the Prince couldn’t have been wearing an identical gown?”
Sebastian stripped off his muddy coat. Not even a valet of Sedlow’s genius would be able to repair these ravages. “I doubt it. Probably a gown of a similar cut and hue. A female might have noticed the difference, but not most men.” Sebastian surveyed the damage done to his waistcoat. It was as ruined as his coat. “Whoever she was, she obviously had a hand in the Marchioness’s death.”
“Not necessarily. I know dozens of actresses more than capable of giving a very credible performance as a lady. The killer could simply have hired someone.”
“Perhaps. But it seems a risky thing to have done.”
Kat turned the gown inside out to inspect the seams. “Look at these tiny stitches. There aren’t many mantua makers in Town capable of producing work of this quality.”
He came up beside her. “Do you think if we found the maker, she could tell us who ordered it?”
“Certainly she could. Whether she actually would or not depends on how she’s approached.”
Sebastian hooked an elbow behind her neck, drawing her close. “Are you suggesting my approach might be clumsy?”
Kat rubbed her open lips against his. “I’m suggesting she might find the question slightly more appropriate coming from a female.”
Grinning, he laced his fingers through her hair and rubbed the pads of his thumbs back and forth across her cheeks. “Then maybe—” He broke off as a knock sounded at her door.
“Flowers fer Miss Boleyn,” called a young voice.
“Oh, Lord. Not again,” said Kat.
Sebastian let his gaze drift around the buckets of roses and lilies and orchids that covered every conceivable surface of the dressing room, including the floor. “You appear to have a new admirer,” he said, as she went to jerk open the door.
Nichols, the young boy who ran errands for the theater, grinned and thrust a small sheaf of flowers into her arms. “’Ere’s another one. This bloke gave me a whole shilling. If this keeps up, I’m gonna be able to set up my own shop soon.”
“It wasn’t the same man?” asked Kat.
Sebastian lifted the flowers from her arms. “At least this one won’t take up half the room. It’s a strange bouquet, though, isn’t it? One yellow lily and nine white roses? What an odd conceit. So who is your admirer?”
Kat had gone suddenly, oddly pale. “The others were from the Comte de Lille.”
“This one’s not?”
She looked down at the card in her hand. “No.”
He frowned. “What is it? What’s wrong? Who are they from?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t say.”
He lifted the card from her hand. “‘And the king made silver and gold at Jerusalem as plenteous as stones, and cedar trees made he as the sycamore trees that are in the vale of abundance,’” he read aloud, then handed it back to her with a laugh. “What kind of gallant sends a woman a bouquet with a quote from the Bible?”
AFTER SEBASTIAN LEFT, Kat sat for some time staring at the strange bouquet. One yellow lily, nine white roses. The nineteenth. The day after tomorrow.
No, it couldn’t be. She told herself it was a simple coincidence, that the flowers must have been sent by an admirer. With a shaking hand, she lifted the note and read it again. And the king made silver and gold…. With each breath, the sweet scent of the lily and roses floated up to engulf her until she thought she might be sick. She crushed the note in her hand and dropped it to the floor.
She kept a Bible tucked away beneath a collection of old costumes and programs in her trunk. It took her some time to locate the reference. She’d been raised a Catholic and her knowledge of the Bible was not extensive, but she found it eventually.
Chronicles, chapter one, verse fifteen.
She closed the Bible, the black leather covers gripped tight between her hands. Her gaze fixed on the
crumpled note on the floor. In the soft light, the broken seal looked like drops of bright blood.
It had been so long, over four months now. Somehow she’d almost convinced herself this day wasn’t going to come. She’d even begun to delude herself into thinking that she might be able to put it all behind her. God help her, she’d actually begun to dream about building some kind of a future with the man she loved more than life itself.
But Ireland was still not free. The war between England and France still raged long and bloody. And on Wednesday the nineteenth of June, at one fifteen in the afternoon, Pierrepont’s successor and Napoléon’s new spymaster in London would be looking to meet Kat Boleyn in the Physic Gardens at Chelsea.
Chapter 37
Sebastian arrived back at his house on Brook Street that night to be met by his majordomo.
“Young Tom is in the library,” said the majordomo in the same carefully colorless voice all senior servants seemed to use when referring to the tiger. “He insisted upon waiting up for you.”
“Ah. Thank you, Morey. Good night.”
Opening the door to the library, Sebastian expected to find Tom curled up asleep on one of the window seats. Instead, the boy was at the library table, his chin propped on one fist, a flaming branch of candles at his elbow, a slim volume open on the table before him.
He was so engrossed in his reading that at first he wasn’t aware of Sebastian’s arrival. Then the hinges on the door creaked and he looked up with a start.
“My lord!” He slithered from the chair, his face flushing hot crimson before fading to pale.
Sebastian smiled. “What are you reading?”
“I—I do beg your pardon, my lord.”
“It’s all right, Tom. What is it?”
The boy hung his head. “Jason and the Argonauts.”
“An interesting choice.” Sebastian walked over to pour himself a glass of brandy. “Where did you learn to read?”
“I went to school once, afore me da died.”
Sebastian looked around in surprise. It reminded him of how little he knew of the boy’s past, beyond the fact that his mother had been transported to Botany Bay, leaving her son to fend for himself on the streets of London.
“I expected you earlier this evening,” said Sebastian, splashing brandy in his glass.
“The place really started ’oppin’, come evening. I thought I might learn somethin’ if I stuck around.”
“And did you?”
Tom shook his head. “I checked the shops all up and down the lane, but no one owned up to ’aving seen her ladyship.”
Sebastian leaned against the library table and sipped his brandy in thoughtful silence. “The one-legged beggar, was he at his place near the Norfolk Arms?”
“Didn’t see ’im. But I spent some time ’anging around the inn. ’E’s a weery rum customer, the African what owns the place. Weery rum indeed. They say he was a slave once, on a cotton plantation someplace in America afore he killed his master and run off.”
“What’s his name? Did you hear?”
Tom nodded. “Carter. Caleb Carter. He come here fifteen years or more ago. Took up with the widow woman what used to own the Norfolk Arms. She had a daughter then, a pretty little redheaded girl named Georgiana. But the girl took sick and died some two years ago, and the mother, she died of grief not long after.”
“And left Carter the inn?”
“Aye. From what I gather, they’re in the trade, if you know what I mean.”
“Smuggling? That doesn’t surprise me,” said Sebastian, remembering the bottle of fine French brandy on the table in the common room. He pushed away from the table and straightened. “You’d best get some sleep. I’d like you to go there again tomorrow.”
“Aye, gov’nor,” said Tom, stifling a yawn.
“Here.” Sebastian held out the book. “Don’t you want to finish it?”
The boy’s glance dropped hesitantly from Sebastian’s face to his outstretched hand.
Sebastian smiled. “Go on, take it. You can bring it back when you’re done.”
Tom turned toward the door, the book clutched to his chest like a rare treasure.
“Oh and, Tom—”
The boy swung around.
“Be back before nightfall this time, you hear? I don’t want you taking any chances. These are dangerous people we’re dealing with.”
“Aye, gov’nor.”
Still faintly smiling, Sebastian stood in the doorway to watch the boy dash off across the hall. Then, the smile fading, Sebastian turned back into the library to pour himself another drink.
THE NEXT MORNING, the Dowager Duchess of Claiborne was lying on a chaise in her dressing room and drinking a cup of chocolate when Sebastian strolled into the room.
She let out a soft moan. “Sebastian? What can Humphrey be thinking? He has strict instructions to allow no one past the door before one o’clock.”
“So he said.” He stooped to plant a kiss on his aunt’s cheek. “I want to know what you can tell me about the Countess of Portland.”
His aunt sat up straighter. “Claire Portland? Good heavens, whatever for?”
Sebastian simply ignored the question. “What do you think of her?”
Aunt Henrietta gave a genteel sniff. “A pretty little thing, obviously. But all bubble and froth if you ask me.”
“She certainly gives that impression. But appearances can be deceiving.”
“Sometimes. But not in this case, I’m afraid.” His aunt fixed him with a fierce stare. “And now, not another word until you tell me your interest in the lady.”
“It appears that at one time, Lady Anglessey thought to marry Claire Portland’s brother, the Chevalier de Varden.”
“Hmmm. Yes, I can see that. Dashingly handsome man, the Chevalier. And nothing piques a girl’s fancy more than a tragic, romantic past.”
“Dear Aunt. One might almost suspect you of nourishing a tendre for the fellow yourself.”
She made a deep rumbling sound that shook her impressive bosom. “I’ve no patience with romantic, handsome young men, and well you know it.”
Sebastian smiled. “Lady Portland. Tell me about her.”
Aunt Henrietta settled herself more comfortably. “Not much to tell, I’m afraid. Her father, the late Lord Audley, left her well dowered. She had a successful season and married the Earl of Portland at the end of it.”
“What about Portland himself?”
Again, that genteel sniff. “I’ve heard him referred to as a handsome man, although personally I’ve no use for redheads. But there’s no denying the old Earl, his father, cut up quite warm. And Portland himself’s not one for wasting the ready at the gaming table. Claire did quite well for herself. I wouldn’t say Portland’s one to sit in his wife’s pocket, but then he hasn’t set up a mistress, either, that anyone knows of. He seems to spend most of his time at Whitehall.”
“And the lady Portland? Has she established herself as something of a political hostess?”
“I doubt she has either the inclination or the intelligence to carry it off.”
Sebastian came to take the chair opposite her. “She seems surprisingly close to Morgana Quinlan.”
“Well, that’s to be expected, isn’t it, given the close proximity of their fathers’ estates?”
“I would have said the two women were of starkly different temperaments.”
“Yes. But sometimes friendships are like marriages: the best couplings are between opposites.”
Sebastian was silent for a moment, his thoughts on his own parents’ marriage. That was one instance when a coupling of opposite temperaments had definitely not prospered. But all he said was “Lady Quinlan seems to nourish a particularly bitter animosity toward her sister. Do you know why?”
“Hmm. I suspect she had her nose put out of joint when her younger sister succeeded so much better than she in the Marriage Mart. Frankly, I was surprised Lady Morgana went off at all. The woman’s not only a shameless
bluestocking, but a dead bore to boot, which is far worse. I once made the mistake of attending one of her scientific evenings. Some gentleman lectured us interminably on Leyden jars and copper wires. Then he killed a frog and reanimated it with electric shocks. It was quite revolting.”
Sebastian leaned forward. “How did he kill the frog?”
Aunt Henrietta drained her chocolate cup and set it aside. “Poison, I believe.”
THE HOME SECRETARY, the Earl of Portland, was sitting in a coffeehouse just off the Mall, a steaming cup on the table before him, when Sebastian slid into the opposite seat.
“I don’t recall inviting you to sit,” said Portland, regarding Sebastian through narrowed eyes.
“You didn’t,” said Sebastian cheerfully.
The air filled with the steady beat of a drum and the tramp of feet as a troop of soldiers marched past. Fresh cannon fodder, thought Sebastian, on their way to Portsmouth and the war on the other side of the Channel. No one in the coffee shop even looked up.
Portland leaned back in his seat, a faint smile touching his lips. “My wife tells me she met you in Lady Quinlan’s drawing room yesterday.”
“You didn’t tell me you were brother-in-law to the dead lady’s lover.”
“You mean Varden?” Portland raised his cup to his lips and took a thoughtful sip. “I know there was an attachment of long standing between them, but I wouldn’t care to hazard on its present nature.”
“Tell me about him.”
Portland shrugged. “A likable enough lad, I suppose, if a bit too hotheaded and impulsive for my taste. But then he’s half-French, so I suppose that’s to be expected.”
“What can you tell me about his politics?”
Portland gave a sharp laugh and took another sip. “The pup is twenty-one years old. He’s interested in wine, women, and song. Not the composition of the Prince’s cabinet.”
“How about dynastic disputes? Might they interest him?”
Portland lowered his cup, his face suddenly drawn and serious. “What are you talking about?”
Sebastian let the question slide past him. “The lady who asked you to convey the note to the Prince, what can you tell me about her?”