by C. S. Harris
Gibson shook his head. “Who would want to kill a thirty-three-year-old pianist?”
Sebastian grunted. “More people than you might expect. At the moment my list of suspects includes her husband, an Italian harpist, a Dutch courtier, and Nathan Rothschild.”
“Rothschild? You can’t be serious?”
“I wish I weren’t. I was inclined to doubt it myself until a certain royal cousin warned me quite explicitly that looking too closely into the German financier’s affairs would be hazardous to my health.”
Gibson drained his ale and set the tankard aside with a dull clunk. “Bloody hell. You think Jarvis himself could be involved in this?”
Sebastian met his friend’s worried gaze. “I’m afraid so.”
“Does her ladyship know?”
“Not yet.”
Gibson shook his head and said again, “Bloody hell.”
Chapter 13
That evening, the snow continued to fall in big fat flakes that hurtled down out of a hard sky.
As was their habit of late, Hero and Sebastian gathered in the drawing room before dinner with Simon, fresh from his bath and ready for bed. “What’s this?” asked Sebastian, turning the page of a wooden book painted with barnyard animals as he sat beside his son on a low ottoman.
“Mm-ga-ga-gee,” said Simon, pointing to a shaggy billy goat.
“Sounded like ‘goat’ to me,” said Hero with a smile. “Your son is brilliant.”
“Of course he’s brilliant. He has a very brilliant mother. And what’s that?” Sebastian asked as the boy turned the next thick wooden page himself.
Simon smashed a fat finger down on the fluffy black lamb. “Mm-ga-ga-gee.”
“Alas, they’re all mm-ga-ga-gees,” said Sebastian, just as a knock sounded at the distant front door. He looked over at Hero. “Expecting someone?”
A stranger’s voice could be heard below, mingling with that of their majordomo, Morey. “No,” she said.
Tiring of his book, Simon scooted off the ottoman and tottered over to the long-haired black cat curled up in one of the cane chairs near the bowed front window. “Mm-ga-ga-gee.”
The big cat looked at the boy through slitted green eyes and lashed his magnificent long, thick tail—a movement that was not generally a sign of either affection or pleasure.
“Careful there, young man,” said Sebastian, rising to his feet as Morey appeared in the doorway.
“A gentleman to see you, my lord,” said the majordomo. “A Mr. Liam Maxwell. He says it’s about Mrs. Ambrose.”
Sebastian exchanged a quick glance with Hero. “Show him up.”
Hero moved to retrieve the fallen book and thrust it in a drawer. “Do you know who he is?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I’ve no idea.”
The man who entered looked to be in his late twenties. Of medium height and slim build, he was respectably rather than fashionably dressed, with fierce dark eyes and windswept dark hair that glistened with wet from the snow. It was obvious he was laboring under barely suppressed emotions, his features pinched with what looked like profound grief. “Lord and Lady Devlin,” he said with a perfunctory bow. “My apologies for interrupting you at this hour.”
“That’s quite all right,” said Sebastian. “Please come in and sit down, Mr. Maxwell. How may I help you?”
Their guest made no move to take a seat but continued to stand just inside the door, his hat in his hands, his posture stiff enough to be almost hostile. “I’m here because of Jane—Jane Ambrose.”
Sebastian walked over to the small table where a decanter of brandy and glasses were warming by the fire. “You knew her?”
Maxwell hesitated just a shade too long before saying, “I’ve known her for years. Her brother and I once published a newspaper together.”
Sebastian looked up, the brandy decanter in one hand. “I’d no notion James Somerset was involved in journalism.”
Maxwell shook his head. “Not her twin, James. I meant her younger brother, Christian. He and I were in school together at Westminster.”
“Christian Somerset is Jane’s brother?” said Hero, as if the name meant something to her. Sebastian himself had no idea who Christian Somerset was, but Hero was staring at Liam Maxwell as if she now understood something that had escaped her before.
Maxwell nodded. “I’m told your lordship is looking into the circumstances surrounding Jane’s death, which doesn’t make sense if she truly slipped on the ice the way the papers are saying.”
Sebastian poured a healthy measure of brandy into two glasses. “There will be no official inquiry into Jane Ambrose’s death because the palace will never allow any hint of scandal to touch the Princess. But Jane did not slip in the snow and hit her head. It’s not clear whether her death was murder or manslaughter, but she didn’t die in the lane where she was found. Someone moved her body there after she was already dead.”
“Dear God.”
Sebastian held out one of the brandies, and after a moment’s hesitation, Maxwell took it and drank deeply. “I want to help find whoever is responsible for this.”
“You have an idea who might have killed her?” asked Hero.
Maxwell glanced over at her, the features of his face tightening with what looked very much like animosity. “Not exactly.”
“But you have some suspicions?” said Sebastian.
“To be frank, I thought you might suspect me.”
“Oh? Should I?”
A muscle jumped along the man’s clenched jaw. “Jane and I were very close.”
“Were you lovers?”
The abrupt frankness of the question seemed to take Maxwell by surprise. Rather than answer, he cast another glance at Hero, only this one was more embarrassed than hostile.
The meaning of that look was not lost on her. Stooping to swing Simon up onto her hip, she said, “If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Maxwell, young Simon here and I will say good night.”
He gave a curt bow. “Of course, my lady.”
The boy began to fuss in protest as they moved toward the stairs, and Sebastian could hear her saying softly, “Let’s count the steps, shall we? One, two, three . . .”
“So, were you lovers?” Sebastian asked again.
Maxwell went to stand before the hearth. “No; we were not. But I can understand how someone might think we were. Jane was . . . very dear to me.”
“Was the feeling reciprocated?”
Maxwell turned his gaze to the flames. “We were old friends. Nothing more. Nothing.”
Sebastian studied the man’s half-averted face. In the distance he could hear the low murmur of Hero speaking to Simon’s nurse, Claire, followed by the whisper of her footsteps coming back down the stairs and slipping into the adjoining morning room. “Do you think Edward Ambrose suspected that his wife was being unfaithful to him?”
Maxwell’s head came up, his nostrils flaring. “But she wasn’t!”
“Yet he could have suspected it, couldn’t he? If, as you say, you were close enough that some might think it.”
Maxwell hesitated a moment, then nodded.
“Which means he had a reason to kill her.”
“Ambrose didn’t need me as an excuse to kill Jane. Their marriage had long ago turned into something more closely resembling an armed truce than a marriage. The deaths last year of Benjamin and Lawrence—Jane’s two children—ended what little good was left between them.”
“Did Ambrose ever hit her?”
Maxwell nodded again, his nostrils pinched. “He gave her a black eye at least once that I know of. And several times he left a mark on her face, just here—” He touched his fingertips to his left cheekbone at exactly the same place where someone had struck Jane moments before she died.
“She told you he hit her?”
“No. She always came
up with some tale to explain the marks—she’d even laugh at herself for being so clumsy. But she wasn’t clumsy. She wasn’t clumsy at all. I could never understand why she protected him the way she did.”
“Perhaps she was ashamed.”
Maxwell turned abruptly to face him, his hand tightening around his glass. “Why the devil should she have been ashamed? He’s the one who hit her!”
“Some women are ashamed when their husbands or lovers beat them. I’m not saying I think they should be, because they shouldn’t at all. But that doesn’t alter the fact that it’s a common response.” Sebastian took another slow sip of his brandy. “When was the last time you saw her?”
Maxwell dragged a hand down over his haggard face. “The day before yesterday. I have a printing shop off Fleet Street and she . . . came in.”
“Why?”
“No particular reason. She was in the area and stopped by to see me.”
It was a simple offhand statement that told Sebastian a great deal about just how close Maxwell’s relationship with his old friend’s sister had been. “Did she ever mention Anna Rothschild to you?”
“I know she was upset when she recently lost her as a student. Why?”
“Do you know of any reason why her last encounter with Nathan Rothschild might have frightened her?”
“Frightened her? No. Why? What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing, at this point. Any idea what she was doing in Clerkenwell yesterday?”
“No. I can’t imagine.”
“She didn’t say how she planned to spend yesterday afternoon?”
Maxwell shook his head. “I don’t believe she had any lessons on Thursday afternoons—although she’d recently been to see Lord Wallace, so she may have scheduled something.”
“Phineas Wallace?” said Sebastian, sharper than he’d intended. Phineas Wallace, the second Baron Wallace, was a prominent Whig politician and one of the Princess of Wales’s closest advisers.
“Yes. Why?”
“Just wondering. When you saw Jane on Wednesday, how did she seem?”
The younger man looked as if the question confused him. “What do you mean?”
“Was she happy? Nervous? Afraid?”
He thought about it a moment. “Well, she was worried about the Princess. But then she’s been upset for weeks now on account of this bloody betrothal the Regent forced on Charlotte. The poor girl is in a panic, and Jane has been beside herself because of it.”
“What betrothal?” Sebastian said.
Maxwell’s eyebrows pinched together in a vaguely puzzled frown. “Don’t you know? To William, the Hereditary Prince of Orange. They’re keeping it quiet because Orange wants to make certain his position in the Netherlands is secure before the betrothal becomes known. But it’s all been arranged since before Christmas. As soon as he’s confident they have control of the situation there, it will be made public.”
“You know this for a fact?” Sebastian had a sudden, distinct memory of Jarvis saying, The last thing the Regent needs at the moment is to have Princess Charlotte’s name bandied about in conjunction with that of a woman unwise enough to get mixed up in something as tawdry as murder. He now understood what was so critical about “the moment.”
Maxwell threw down the rest of his drink. “I wouldn’t have said anything about it except I assumed given her ladyship’s relationship to Lord Jarvis that you already knew. Truth is, there’s some would think me more than a bit daft coming here, her ladyship being Jarvis’s daughter and all.”
The statement did much to explain the animosity Maxwell had shown toward Hero before. “I wouldn’t be looking into Jane Ambrose’s death if I were Jarvis’s tool,” said Sebastian. “If that’s what you mean.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would.”
“You said the betrothal has been arranged since before Christmas. So did something else happen at the court recently?” Sebastian asked. “Something that might have disturbed Jane when you saw her on Wednesday?”
Maxwell hesitated a moment, then said, “Not that I’m aware of, no. I think she was simply angry with the lot of them—with the Regent for caring more about his grand vision for rebuilding London than about his own daughter’s happiness, and with Lord Jarvis for having pushed the Orange marriage in the first place. It’s all his scheme, of course. They’re going to turn the Dutch Republic into a monarchy and vastly expand its territory with the idea of making it into a powerful bulwark against the French—with poor Princess Charlotte as the hapless plum on the top of the pudding.”
“Charlotte agreed to this?”
“She did, yes. That bloody father of hers, he told her that if she didn’t marry he’d keep her locked up with stodgy old governesses and subgovernesses until the day he died. She held out for a while, but she knew he could do it to her—hell, look at all those old maid aunts of hers. In the end, she met Orange just once at a dinner party and agreed that very night to marry him. Jane told me she regretted it almost instantly.” Maxwell set aside his empty glass with a soft clink. “But there’s no turning back for her now, poor girl.”
“Another brandy?” offered Sebastian.
“Thank you, but no. I must go. You needn’t ring for a footman. I can find my own way out.”
Sebastian walked with him to the top of the stairs. “When I asked Edward Ambrose about his wife’s family, he never mentioned a brother named Christian. In fact, he led me to think she had no family left alive. Why was that, do you suppose?”
Maxwell paused with his hand on the banister. “Probably because he wishes Christian Somerset actually were dead.”
“Any particular reason?”
His lip curled. “Royal patronage is important for a playwright, isn’t it? I imagine it’s more than a tad embarrassing for Ambrose, having a former radical journalist as a brother-in-law—particularly one who spent the better part of two years in Newgate for calling the Prince of Wales a fat spendthrift who persecutes his wife and oppresses his people.”
“When was this?”
“That we were in prison? From the fifteenth of January 1808 to the twenty-second of December 1809.” Maxwell huffed a rough, humorless laugh. “They were kind enough to let us out a few days early for Christmas.”
Sebastian understood now why Hero had recognized the names of Christian Somerset and Liam Maxwell. Sebastian himself had been off fighting the Hanovers’ wars at the time and had been only vaguely aware of the trial.
Sebastian said, “I take it Jane didn’t share her husband’s attitude toward her brother?”
“Jane was no radical herself, if that’s what you’re asking—far from it, in fact. But she wasn’t ashamed of us. Ambrose was always trying to get her to stay away from everyone in her family, but she wouldn’t do it. When Ambrose gave her that black eye, it was over Christian.”
“Where does he live now?”
“Christian? In Paternoster Row, over his bookstore and printing shop. These days he publishes mainly travel guides and romances, along with the usual odd printing jobs.”
“So you’re no longer in the newspaper business?”
“I am. But not Christian. A spell in Newgate definitely has a way of dampening some men’s passion for espousing reform.”
“Not yours?”
“Some of us are wiser than others.” Maxwell gave a sad smile that had the effect of making him look both younger and considerably more relaxed. “Jane always did say I’m more pigheaded than most.”
“Were brother and sister close?”
“Always.” He turned his hat in his hands. “If there is anything—anything at all I can do to help—you will let me know?”
Sebastian studied the younger man’s dark, haunted eyes. “I will, yes.”
After Liam Maxwell had gone, Hero came from the shadows of the morning room to stand beside Sebastian at the
top of the stairs.
“How much of that did you hear?” he asked as the front door closed behind their interesting visitor.
“I missed the first part. So, were he and Jane lovers?”
“He says they were not.”
“Do you believe him?”
“When it comes to murder, I have a tendency to believe very little of what anyone tells me.” He went to stand for a moment beside the front window and watched as their visitor walked away, head down, through the driving snow. “So exactly how radical are Christian Somerset and his friend Mr. Maxwell?”
“Not as radical as some. Their newspaper advocated for reform rather than revolution.”
“For which they spent two years in prison,” said Sebastian as Liam Maxwell turned the corner and disappeared into the cold night.
“They did. I understand Christian Somerset has moderated his verbiage considerably since his release.”
“And Liam Maxwell?”
Her eyes narrowed with a faint smile. “Not so much.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the now empty, snow-blown street below. “Given her brother’s politics, I’m surprised the Regent allowed Jane Ambrose anywhere near the Princess.”
“I believe Jane was Charlotte’s teacher even before Christian Somerset’s arrest. And at one time Prinny was pretending to be a Whig, remember?”
Sebastian turned to retrieve his brandy and take a deep swallow. “That he was.” Because the Prince’s father, King George III, was a Tory, the Prince of Wales had once publicly associated with the Whigs. But as soon as he became Regent, he repudiated his old friends and allied the monarchy closer than ever with the most conservative and reactionary of the Tories—a cynical move that embittered the Whigs even more.
Hero said, “You think her brother’s politics could have played a part in what happened to Jane?”
“It doesn’t sound like it. But her brother’s old friend Mr. Maxwell? Perhaps.”
“He didn’t need to come here tonight and draw attention to himself.”
“No. But I would have become aware of his existence soon enough. He might have thought it wise for him to make the first move.” Sebastian came to stand beside her at the fire. “How much do you know about him?”