by C. S. Harris
“To be honest, I’m worried about him. His doctor has been warning him about his heart for months and giving him all kinds of potions that don’t seem to do any good. I’m afraid Ashworth’s death is going to kill him. It must be unbearable, burying your own child—however horrid that child may be. And Lindley has already buried three.”
“I didn’t know he’d had other children.”
She nodded. “A younger son who died at fifteen, and two little girls he lost as infants.” Her face relaxed with a hint of a smile. “He worries about the twins constantly. He’s always climbing up to the nursery just to check on them. If anything is going to get him through the pain of losing his son, I suspect it’ll be the boys. I couldn’t take them away from him simply so that I could go hide in the country.”
“He could go with you. It might do him some good as well.”
She let out a soft sigh. “I can try. But I suspect he takes his responsibilities in Parliament far too seriously to leave while they’re still sitting.”
Sebastian watched a young nursemaid shepherd her charges across the street toward the park. What he had to ask his niece wasn’t just delicate; it was potentially insulting, and he wasn’t quite sure how to go about bringing it up.
He came at it sideways. “I didn’t realize Ashworth had an estate in Kent.”
“He does, yes. It’s small but pleasantly situated near Brighton. A maiden aunt left it to him.” She paused. “Why?”
“I’m told he was interested in redoing the facade.”
Sebastian saw the flare of raw panic in her vivid blue St. Cyr eyes before she half lowered her lashes and turned her face to stare out over the misty park. “I believe he was, yes.”
“Do you recall the name of the architect he was interested in engaging?”
Her breathing was rapid enough now to flutter the black ribbons of her bonnet where they lay against her throat. “You don’t seriously imagine that Ashworth would discuss such things with me, do you, Uncle? That’s not what women are for—at least, not in his mind.”
“I did warn you not to lie,” Sebastian said softly, “Not when you’re talking about murder.”
“Are we talking about murder? I thought we were discussing architecture.”
“Firth. The architect’s name is Russell Firth. And don’t try to pretend you don’t know him, because you’ve been seen together.”
She took a step back, her nostrils flaring, her eyes wide. “All right. Yes, I know him. He’s brilliant. But he had nothing to do with Ashworth’s death. To suggest otherwise is ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“Ashworth was killed while tied naked to his bed with red silk cords, and his clothes were strewn all over the room. You know the kinds of games he liked to play. You should be looking for the woman he was ‘playing’ with that night rather than casting nasty aspersions on a fine architect.”
“Actually, I’m doing both.”
She started to turn away, but he laid a hand on her arm, stopping her. “One more question, Stephanie. Do you know anything about a young woman who is supposed to have committed suicide after Ashworth raped her?”
“I’m told there was some incident involving a card reader at Lady Egremont’s soiree a few weeks ago. I wasn’t there, but there’s not a tattletale in London who could resist making certain I’d heard of it.”
“You don’t know anything more about it?”
“No. Anthony and I didn’t discuss his latest rapes.” She glanced toward Lindley House and said calmly, “I really must go, Uncle.”
He took his hand from her arm but touched her cheek ever so gently before letting it fall. “I wish you’d trust me, Steph.”
“Trust is a dangerous luxury I learned to do without at the age of seven,” she said, then walked away, a tall, seemingly self-possessed woman whom he now knew to be far more fragile than he’d ever realized.
Chapter 15
It didn’t take Sebastian long to track Marie-Claire Blanchette to rooms in a Stuart-era building on the south side of Golden Square. The fortune-teller was obviously better known than he’d realized.
At one time, Golden Square had been the height of fashion and home to bishops, noblemen, and diplomats. Now it was one of the “fading” districts fated to fall on the wrong side of the Regent’s New Street.
Madame Blanchette answered the door herself, a small, straight-backed woman with thick, iron gray hair, relatively unlined olive skin, and the kind of pronounced bone structure that meant she was still striking, even in her fifties. She wore a lavender brocade gown made in a style popular perhaps twenty-five years before, with pearl-drop earrings and a pearl-studded cross that looked like something that might have been brought back from Byzantium by a member of the Fourth Crusade. She stared at him a moment, her dark eyes unblinking and thoughtful, as if she were assessing him to see how he measured up to her image of him. Then she said, “I expected you sooner,” and stood aside for him to enter.
“Saw it in the cards, did you?” said Sebastian, his gaze drifting around a room that seemed oddly dislocated in time and space. Several of the chests and one of the chairs were dark and medieval-looking, a table inlaid with mother-of-pearl reminded him of something from Damascus, while the paintings on the wall were strange scenes of tempest-driven seas, wind-tossed moons, and one bizarre image of a man hanging upside down. Everywhere he looked, there were groupings of crystals and candles and bells and other strange objects he couldn’t begin to identify.
Her eyes narrowed with what looked like amusement. “You don’t believe in the cards, monsieur le vicomte?”
So absorbed was he in his inspection of the room that it took him a moment to realize she was responding to his own question. He hadn’t introduced himself, but then, there appeared to be no need. He said, “I neither believe nor disbelieve.”
“A man with an open mind. You’ve no idea how rare that truly is.” Limping badly, she led the way to a small settee covered by a worn, early eighteenth-century tapestry, asked him to sit, then took the chair opposite—an ancient thing of dark wood whose high back was carved with mythical creatures and naked men writhing in either ecstasy or pain. “But to answer your question, no, I did not need the cards. There are times when simple reasoning ability suffices to tell us all we need to know.”
Her English was very good, fluent and easy but pleasantly inflected with what sounded like a genuine French accent.
“Yes, I really am French,” she said, as if he had spoken the thought aloud. “I have been in your country since 1805. Which makes it . . .” She paused, as if doing the sums. “Nine years now.”
“Impressive. Why do you use cards if you can simply read minds?”
“People find the cards more believable. And they do help to focus one’s thoughts.” Again that gleam of amusement in the depths of her dark brown eyes. “But you said that facetiously, yes?”
“Perhaps.”
She leaned back in the chair, her hands resting lightly on wooden arms carved into the shape of lions’ paws, her gaze on his face. “You’re here to learn about Giselle?”
“Giselle is the woman you accused Ashworth of raping?”
“Giselle was my daughter.”
She rose awkwardly and disappeared with her halting step into an adjoining chamber. She returned a moment later with a small framed portrait of a young woman. “She was sixteen when this was painted three years ago,” said Madame Blanchette, turning the painting to face him. She did not hand it to him.
The girl was lovely, with luxurious dark hair, deep-set brown eyes, a small chin, and a seductive mouth. Looking at her, Sebastian felt a surge of sadness mixed with rage—rage at men like Ashworth, whose wealth and privilege enabled them to careen through the world, taking what they wanted, utterly heedless of the lives they were destroying in the process. Rage at the society that allowed such things
to happen. Rage at the senselessness of it all.
“The anger this stirs within you?” said Giselle’s mother. “Multiply that by infinity, and you’ll have some concept of how I feel.”
“How did it happen?”
She set the portrait with loving care atop a nearby bureau. “Giselle worked as a shopkeeper’s assistant at a jeweler’s on Bond Street. Ashworth saw her there and decided he wanted her.”
Sebastian drew a heavy breath. He was remembering what Ashworth’s butler had told him. His lordship’s tastes varied on a whim, from ladies of quality to bits of muslin to whatever pretty shopkeeper’s assistant happened to catch his fancy.
“At first he tried to seduce her. He could be a most charming man, you know. Giselle was no fool; she knew what he wanted. But because he was a wealthy nobleman, she needed to be careful. She couldn’t go too far in discouraging him without risking her job. And good positions are so difficult to find these days.”
“Which jewelry store was this?”
“Vincent’s,” she replied without hesitation. “I asked him later why he didn’t protect my daughter. I expected him to say he hadn’t known about Ashworth. But you know what Mr. Vincent said to me? He said, ‘You can’t seriously expect me to have risked alienating a potential customer.’”
“Mr. Vincent obviously didn’t know about Ashworth’s habit of not paying his bills,” said Sebastian. “And now his potential customer is dead.”
“That he is. But I did not kill him.” She tipped her head to one side, her gaze still hard on his face. “That is why you are here, is it not?”
“Tell me what Ashworth did to her,” said Sebastian.
A spasm of pain crossed the Frenchwoman’s face before being smoothed away out of sight. “Very well. As I said, first he sought to woo her with flattery and presents; he even promised to set her up in fine rooms as his mistress. She never wavered. So one evening last October, he caught her in the shop when she was alone, pushed her into the back room, and forced himself on her there. Took her bent over a counter like a dog.”
“Why do you think he was so obsessed with her?”
“Because he wanted her, but she kept telling him no. I don’t think it happened to him often. He was so very rich and handsome.”
“And charming.”
“Yes, most charming.”
Madame Blanchette settled in her strange chair again, her hands folded together in her lap. The pose looked relaxed and at peace, but it was not; her hands were clasped together so tightly, the knuckles were white. There was a crackle of energy about her that hadn’t been there before; a kind of hard, lethal purposefulness that was nearly palpable. And he found himself thinking, This woman could kill. In fact, he knew somehow with a deep certainty that she had killed in the past.
“I have killed men in my life,” she said, again fallowing his thoughts with eerie accuracy. “One I stabbed. Another I pushed to his death off a cliff. But that was years ago, in France, in self-defense. I won’t deny that I wanted Ashworth dead. But I did not kill him.”
Why not? Sebastian wanted to ask. Instead, he said, “Your daughter killed herself?”
Madame Blanchette nodded. “In December. I did everything I could to help her come to terms with what he had done to her. But she couldn’t shake the overwhelming sense of shame and degradation he’d made her feel. And then she realized she was with child by him. She felt as if she had been impregnated with the devil’s spawn—that the child she was carrying could someday grow up to be a monster, just like its father. So she threw herself in the Thames.”
The sudden silence in the room was like a hum in his ears, a hum both punctuated and oddly accentuated by the sound of his own beating heart and the slow, strained breathing of a grieving mother.
After a moment, Madame Blanchette said, “The coroner was kind. The inquest concluded she must have lost her way and fallen into the water in the heavy fog. Death by misadventure, they called it. But I knew the truth.”
“So she was given a Christian burial?”
“She was, yes. At St. James’s churchyard in Piccadilly.”
“I think I would have killed him,” said Sebastian.
The faintest suggestion of a smile hovered about the Frenchwoman’s dark, knowing eyes. “I’ve no doubt you would have. But death is easy—a moment of heartsick, frightened realization that all is about to be lost, and then nothing. I wanted him to suffer longer. Far longer.”
“Not all deaths are easy,” said Sebastian. In his six years of war, he had seen countless men die after screaming in agony for days. Countless men, and one innocent woman of God whose suffering still haunted him . . .
“True,” she said. “But mere physical pain wouldn’t have been enough. I wanted him to suffer social ostracism. Humiliation. Degradation. The loss of everything he held most dear. I had only just begun. Whoever killed him robbed me of my revenge.”
Sebastian felt a whisper of unease that was like a cold breath on the back of his neck. “So, who do you think killed him? Did you ask your cards?”
Rather than answer him, she said, “If I gave you a name, now, would you believe me?”
“No,” he admitted.
She smiled. “There is a man—a man named Sid. Lord Ashworth used to pay this man to do his dirty work. He is dangerous, but Ashworth in his hubris alienated him. Infuriated him.”
“Sid—what?”
“That I cannot tell you.”
Sebastian noticed she didn’t say she did not know. “You’re suggesting this ‘Sid’ killed him?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I suspect you will find him interesting for more than one reason.”
“Meaning?”
“When you find him, you will understand.” Madame Blanchette pushed to her feet and went to open the door for him. Their conversation was at an end.
“What if I don’t find him?” asked Sebastian, pausing at the door.
“You will. And afterward, we will talk more.”
Chapter 16
After returning home, Hero spent some time writing up the notes from her morning interview before sharing a pleasant nuncheon with Simon in the nursery. And then, planning her timing carefully, she ordered her carriage and set out for her father’s house in Berkeley Square.
As the carriage pulled away from Brook Street, she rested her head against the back of the tufted leather seat, her heart heavy with thoughts of the past. It had been more than six months now since her mother’s short illness and unexpected death. Six months. And yet somehow a part of Hero still couldn’t quite absorb the reality of her loss. Simon would do something clever or funny, and Hero would think, I must remember to tell Mama. For one fleeting instant, she would smile in anticipation of her mother’s pleasure. Then would come the crushing realization that she would never be able to share anything with her mother again; never again have the joy of watching her mother smile lovingly at her grandson; never again hear her mother’s gentle laughter or be able to seek out her quiet, simple wisdom.
Hero had lived with the crushing ache of this loss for months. But going to Jarvis House, knowing her mother would not be there, always gave that ache a painful twist.
She was aware of the coach drawing up in Berkeley Square, of the footman opening the door to let down the steps. And still she hesitated. Her father, she calculated, should be at Carlton House with the Prince Regent. But then she was here not to see Jarvis but her cousin Victoria Hart-Davis.
The two women were related through their mothers’ grandparents, which Hero supposed made them second cousins. But since Victoria had grown up in India, they’d never met until the previous September. Although only a few years older than Hero, Victoria had lived an adventurous life that carried her to Ireland, South America, and the Peninsula and had seen her bury two husbands. The first, Lieutenant Lester Boyne, died of fever in the Maratha Wars, whi
le the second, Captain John Hart-Davis, son and heir of Lord Hart-Davis, had been killed last summer at the Siege of San Sebastián. It was when she’d been newly widowed for the second time and on her way from Spain to stay with her dead husband’s family in Norfolk that Victoria had stopped in London to visit her cousins. She’d been at Hero’s side when Lady Jarvis died.
Hero’s aged, arthritic, foul-tempered grandmother, the Dowager Lady Jarvis, rarely left her rooms these days and was incapable of taking up the burdensome task of managing Lord Jarvis’s large household. And so, Cousin Victoria had kindly offered to stay and help. Six months later, she was still there.
The young widow was crossing the entry hall, her focus on a sealed missive in her hand, when a footman opened the door for Hero. Looking up, she saw Hero and immediately turned toward her, a delighted smile sweeping across her face.
“Oh, what a lovely surprise!” she cried, quickly enfolding Hero in a warm embrace. A beautiful, exquisitely tiny woman with angel-fair hair, soft blue eyes, and porcelain skin, Victoria was so small—and Hero so tall—that even standing on tiptoe she could barely reach to kiss Hero’s cheek.
She drew back, the smile in her eyes fading to gentle concern as she searched Hero’s face. “We heard about Ashworth. How is Stephanie?”
“She’s handling it as well as can be expected,” said Hero, choosing her words carefully.
Victoria cast a quick glance at the footman and drew Hero upstairs to the drawing room.
“The poor, poor girl,” said Victoria as they settled before the fire. “Married less than a year and left with not one but two tiny babes. Are they all right? The twins, I mean. I’m told they were born dreadfully premature.”
“Amazingly healthy, considering,” said Hero, and left it at that. The two boys had come earlier than expected, but not nearly as early as most believed.
“Well, thank goodness for that at least. She doesn’t need any more grief. This dreadful murder! Any idea yet who might have been responsible?” Her words tumbled out in a rush the way they always did, for Victoria Hart-Davis came across to the casual observer as a vivacious young woman who was good-natured and gay but not particularly deep or intelligent. The impression was misleading, for she was a woman who read the works of Plato and Cicero in their original Greek and Latin and was fluent in half a dozen modern languages as well. Her mind was quick and clever, her reasoning ability acute. Yet few would ever guess it by listening to her happy chatter. Hiding away her strength and intelligence, she showed the world a face that was not real. In essence she was an actress playing a part, and she was very good at it. It was one of the reasons Hero could never feel comfortable around her, even after all these months.