by C. S. Harris
Sebastian expected to find her still abed, or perhaps sipping chocolate in her dressing room, for the Duchess was famous for never leaving her room before one. But to his surprise, she was not only up and dressed, but in her breakfast parlor partaking of toast and tea and perusing a copy of the Morning Post.
“Good heavens,” she said, sitting forward with a jerk that set her tea to slopping dangerously. “Sebastian.”
“You’re up early, Aunt,” he said, stooping to plant a kiss on her cheek. “It’s barely past noon.”
“Blame Claiborne’s eldest, Georgina. Takes after me, poor girl. But as I always say, just because a woman is not beautiful is no excuse for not being fashionable. Unfortunately, that silly nitwit Claiborne married can’t dress herself properly, let alone a chit just out of the schoolroom. So there’s nothing for it but for me to take the child to the cloth warehouses myself.”
“Ah.”
She reached for her quizzing glass and regarded him through it. “Why are you here, you fatiguing child?”
He laughed. “Two things, actually. First of all, I’d like to hear what you know about Sir Gareth Ross.”
“Sir Gareth?” She looked intrigued. “Whatever has he done?”
“Nothing that I know of.” Sebastian drew out the chair beside her and sat. “Tell me about him.”
ʺWell ... there’s not much to tell, actually. He must be in his early forties by now, I suppose. Your typical country gentleman. Married some chit from Norfolk—a Miss Alice Hart, if I remember correctly—but she died in childbirth barely a year later, and her child with her. He never remarried.”
“I take it he’s something of an invalid?”
“That’s right. Broke his back in a carriage accident a few years ago. He isn’t exactly bedridden, but he doesn’t get around much and, well”—she dropped her voice to a stage whisper and leaned forward—“let’s just say, I’ve heard he won’t be siring any sons.”
“So his heir presumptive was his younger brother, Mr. Alexander Ross. And now?”
“A cousin of some sort. There were something like four or five daughters in the family, but only the two sons.”
Sebastian turned sideways so he could stretch out his legs and cross his boots at the ankles. “What do you know about Alexander Ross?”
“Charming young man. Terrible tragedy, his dying like that.” She opened her eyes wider. “Good heavens, is that why you’re interested in the Rosses? Dear me.”
It was beginning to occur to Sebastian that he had only to express an interest in someone who’d recently died for anyone hearing him to assume that individual had been murdered. He said, “That’s all you can tell me about the younger Ross? That he was a ‘charming young man’?”
Henrietta frowned. “Well, he’d recently become engaged to an heiress. Miss Sabrina Cox.”
“Cox?”
“Mmm. Not one of the Coxes of Staffordshire, mind you. Her father was Peter Cox—the one who was Lord Mayor, and then Member of Parliament for London until his death.”
“So he was a Cit?”
“A very rich Cit. The girl’s mother was gently born, however. A sister of Lady Dorsey. But her father ran with the Hellfire crowd and plunged so deep that he was forced to sell his youngest daughter to the highest bidder.”
“How high a bid are we talking about here?”
“Towed the old reprobate out of the River Tick—or so they say. In his day, Peter Cox was said to rival Golden Ball. Divided his wealth between his son and daughter.”
Sebastian frowned. “Her brother is Jasper Cox?”
“Yes. You know him?”
“I’ve met him,” said Sebastian noncommittally.
Henrietta huffed a sharp laugh. “And couldn’t stand the man, obviously. Few can. But he’s dreadfully well off. Manages his sister’s portion until she weds, as well. Together they’re major shareholders in the Rosehaven Trading Company, amongst other ventures. It was quite a brilliant match for Ross, even if the wealth does come from trade.”
“Thank you, Aunt,” said Sebastian, pushing to his feet. “You’ve been most helpful.”
She frowned up at him. “You said you were here for two reasons; Ross is the first. What is the second?”
He leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “I’m getting married next week.” He turned toward the door.
“You’re what?” Her teacup hit its saucer with a clatter. “Sebastian, you come right back here and sit down. You can’t just fling something like that at me and then walk away! Sebastian, it’s not—Oh, Sebastian; you’re not marrying Kat Boleyn?”
He paused with one hand on the doorframe to look back at his aunt, his jaw set hard. “She’s already married, remember?”
He tried hard not to resent the ill-disguised relief he saw flood across his aunt’s face. “Then who—” She broke off, her eyes widening. “Good heavens. It’s Miss Jarvis, isn’t it?”
It was his turn to stare. “How the devil did you know that?”
She raised her teacup to her lips and gave him an arch look over the brim. “Well, you have been seen together rather a lot lately.”
They’d been seen together because they’d been discussing murder, but he wasn’t about to tell his aunt that. He said, “I’d like you to be there for the ceremony, if you’re willing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I shall be delighted.” She hesitated. “You’ve told Hendon?”
“No.”
ʺSebastian ... however difficult it may be for you to believe, you must realize that Hendon’s love for you is real. You have always been his son in every way that counts. That has not changed, and it never will.”
Sebastian swallowed the inevitable retort and turned away. “I’ll let you know when the time and place have been finalized.”
His next stop was Lambeth Palace on the south bank of the river Thames, home to John Moore, the aged Archbishop of Canterbury.
“So,” said the Archbishop, pouring a shaky stream of tea into two delicate china cups. His movements were slow and deliberate, for he was an old man, pale and gray haired, his thin body racked by the final stages of consumption. “If you’ve already procured a special license from Doctors’ Commons, you don’t need me.”
Sebastian stood before the marble mantelpiece in the Archbishop’s chambers, his hands clasped behind his back. “Nevertheless, I would be honored to have Your Grace perform the ceremony. This is, if you feel you’re up to it.”
“It would be a pleasure.” Moore paused to carefully set the heavy teapot aside. “Odd that the Duchess of Claiborne made no mention of any approaching nuptials when I encountered her in Bond Street yesterday.” The Archbishop and the Duchess were old friends.
“She didn’t know then. She does now.”
“Ah. I see.” Archbishop Moore held out one of the cups. “Well, here’s to your health and happiness.” He raised his own cup in a wry toast. “I wish it were something more suitable, but doctor’s orders, you know. At any rate, cheers.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Sebastian took a polite sip of the tea.
The Archbishop’s eyes crinkled into a smile. “If I might be so bold as to ask the name of the lady?”
“Miss Hero Jarvis.”
The Archbishop choked on his tea and fell to coughing violently.
Sebastian started forward. “Are you all right, sir? Shall I call—”
“No, no.” Moore put out a hand, stopping him. “One would expect that by my age I’d know better than to try to drink and breathe at the same time.” He fortified himself with more tea. “Miss Hero Jarvis, you say? A fine young woman, to be sure.” He cleared his throat. “And when would you like the ceremony to take place?”
“Sometime this week, if possible.”
Moore nodded. “Thursday, shall we say? At eleven in the chapel here, at the palace. You may arrange the details with my secretary.” He stared down at the murky liquid in his cup, a strange smile curling the edges of his lips. “Well, well, well,” he said
as if to himself. “How very interesting.”
Chapter 10
Leaving the Archbishop’s palace in Lambeth, Sebastian made his way back to the Je Reviens coffee shop on St. James’s Street.
This time he found Madame Champagne seated at a small round table placed so that it caught the sun streaming in through the oriel window overlooking the fashionable thoroughfare. She was an attractive woman somewhere in her late forties or fifties, petite and slender, with pale blond hair just beginning to fade gracefully to white. Her features were fine boned and elegant, their delicacy thrown into sharp relief when she turned her head and he saw she wore a black silk patch over her right eye.
She watched him cross the room toward her, a wry smile curving her full, generous mouth. “Viscount Devlin, I assume?” She gave the title its French inflection, vicomte, her accent still pronounced despite the years of exile from her native land. “I was told you were inquiring after me.”
“May I?” he asked, drawing out the chair opposite her.
She spread her hands wide. “Please. I know why you are here.”
Sebastian sat. “You do?”
“Monsieur Poole and I had an interesting conversation.” She gave a barely perceptible nod to the burly, gray-bearded man behind the counter, who set to work preparing two coffees. “Alexander Ross was murdered; is this not so?”
“I never said that.”
“It was unnecessary.” She tilted her head to one side, her remaining eye narrowing as she assessed him. He noticed she tended to keep the right side of her face turned away. She said, “I trust you have a good reason for this assumption?”
“I have.”
She nodded. “Me, I suspected as much.”
“Why is that?”
She shrugged. “When a healthy young man who is involved with dangerous people dies suddenly ... Well, let us just say that if there’s one thing I have learned in this life, it is not to take anything at face value.”
Sebastian waited while the gray-bearded man placed the coffee on the table before them, then withdrew. “How long have you been in London?”
“Nearly ten years. I went first to Italy, then Majorca.” She leaned back in her chair, her fingers playing with her cup, an enigmatic smile touching her lips. “I was acquainted with your mother, you know. You are quite like her in many ways ... although not in all.”
Sebastian held himself very still. Some eighteen years before, on a hot, joyless summer day after the death of Sebastian’s two older brothers, the Countess of Hendon had staged her own death and disappeared to the Continent with her latest lover. He had mourned his mother for half his life before discovering that she was, in fact, alive.
It had been but the first of several unpleasant truths he had learned.
He’d tried in the months since that discovery to trace her fate. His agents had followed her to Venice and then to France, where they hit a wall built by war and an inexplicable, fearful silence.
Now he asked, his voice calm and casual and everything he was not, “You knew her in Venice?”
“Yes. She lived in a crumbling old palace on the Grand Canal with ...” Her voice trailed off.
“Her lover?” he supplied.
A sad, sympathetic smile touched her lips. “Yes. She used to give wonderful musical evenings—it’s how I came to know her. Her lover was a talented composer as well as a poet, you see. They were quite happy. But then, he died.”
Sebastian nodded. According to the last report he’d received, Lady Hendon had eventually taken up with one of Napoléon’s generals, but he had no way of knowing if that was still true.
Angelina Champagne reached out to touch her fingertips briefly, unexpectedly, to the back of his hand. “You need have no fear that I will speak of these things to others. The past is dead, and we who are left alive must go on, yes?”
She paused to take a slow sip of her coffee. There was a fragile, ethereal beauty to her features, a tautness that hinted at sadness and tragedy borne with a quiet stoicism and something else—something mysterious and well hidden. She said, “You know Ross was with the Foreign Office?”
“Are you saying you think his work at the Foreign Office had something to do with his death?”
“You doubt it? All of Europe has been at war for—what? More than two decades. Over the years, alliances have shifted and recombined, again and again. But it’s my belief that one day, historians will look back on this summer and see it as a pivotal moment in time.”
“You mean, because of Napoléon’s invasion of Russia?”
“Even without the successes of Wellington in Spain, it was most unwise. But as the situation currently stands?” She pursed her lips with contempt. “It goes beyond folly to madness. Tens of thousands will die. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. We have lost too many already—so many dead, so much of what once made France great, destroyed. And now this.”
He wondered how many relatives she still had in France, perhaps even serving in the legions that were marching on Moscow as they spoke. He said, “Napoléon claims the Czar left him no alternative.”
She let out her breath in an elegant sound of disgust. “There are always alternatives. The Swedes and Russians have ended their war with the Treaty of St. Petersburg, while the Treaty of Bucharest has ended the Russo-Turkish War. With their northern and southern flanks thus protected, the Russians will be able to throw all of their forces against the French.”
“Except they’re not facing just the French,” Sebastian reminded her. “Napoléon has succeeded in cementing a new alliance to bring the Prussians and Austrians with him against Russia.”
“Only because Prussia’s King Frederick William knew his choice was between a military alliance with Napoléon and the loss of his crown.”
“And Austria?”
“Austria has little to lose and much to gain from a war between France and Russia. Metternich knows this.”
She was an unusual woman, shrewd and well versed in current events and not the least hesitant to state her opinions. Sebastian studied the stark line of the tie for her eye patch, the sun-kissed skin of her cheek. In an age when most gentlewomen took excruciating pains to protect their delicate complexions from the sun, Madame Champagne obviously deliberately sought it out, and he found himself wondering why.
He said, “You take an interest in diplomatic affairs.”
“War tends to make us all students of diplomacy, does it not? There is a story that Napoléon once told the widow of the Marquis de Condorcet that he detested women who meddled in politics. Do you know her reply?”
Sebastian shook his head.
“She said, ‘You are right, of course, General. But in a country where one cuts off women’s heads, it is natural that they should wish to know the reason why.’”
Madame Condorcet had been a widow because the Revolution sent her husband, the famous philosophe the Marquis de Condorcet, to the guillotine. Sebastian’s gaze dropped to Madame Champagne’s left hand. She still wore a simple gold band on her finger, but the dusky lilac silk of her gown told its own story, for lilac was the color of sadness and mourning.
As if aware of the train of his thoughts, she said, “My husband was Baron Jean-Baptiste Champagne. He was killed in the September Massacres, in 1792.”
Sebastian had heard of Jean-Baptiste Champagne. Like the Comte de Virieu and Lally-Tollendal, Champagne had been an early supporter of the Revolutionary movement—before it turned violent and cruel and began devouring its own.
He said, “That’s when you fled France?”
“As soon as I was able, yes.”
Her voice quavered ever so faintly, and she turned her head, showing him only her flawless profile as she studied the flow of elegant carriages in the street, the endless parade of gentlemen on the strut. He found himself wondering about the life she’d once lived—and lost—in Paris, about the horrors she must have witnessed before she finally escaped it all and fled to Venice, and about all the lonely years she’d
lived since then, bereft, with her memories.
They sat in silence for a moment, watching as a plumpcheeked dandy with exaggerated shirt points and a painfully nipped-in waist approached the adjoining door that led to the apartments above and disappeared inside. A moment later, the shuffle of his footsteps on the stairs could be faintly heard above the murmurs in the coffee shop.
Sebastian said, “These ‘dangerous men’ you say Ross associated with ... Do you know who they were?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know they were dangerous?”
Again, that faintly amused curving of the lips. “In my experience, men who turn up the collars of their coats and pull their hats low enough to hide their faces are generally to be avoided.”
“Did such men visit Ross often?”
“Often enough.”
“And the night he died?”
“You mean, last Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think I would remember such a thing now, a week later?”
“Because on Sunday morning, when you heard Ross had died, you were suspicious. I think you gave some thought as to what you might have observed the night before.”
She raised her cup to her lips and took a sip. “You are very astute, are you not?”
Sebastian said, “Who visited Alexander Ross that night?”
She set her cup down with careful attention. “Well ... Let’s see. First there was a young woman. Or at least, I assume she was young, although it is difficult to be certain since she wore a cloak and had the hood pulled up.”
“A well-dressed young woman?”
“Her cloak was plain, but well cut. I couldn’t see more than that, since she also wore a veil. She was no woman of the streets, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Did Ross entertain women of the street?”
“Not in his rooms. I’ve no notion how he conducted himself elsewhere.”
“How long did this woman stay?”