by C. S. Harris
“Your servants seem to have disappeared,” said Sebastian, leaning against the doorjamb.
At the sound of Sebastian’s voice, the Chevalier started violently. He swung around, his pale face drawn and tense. “My mother dismissed them all this afternoon.”
“Going away, are you?”
Varden turned back to the desk. “I am, yes.”
“The Earl of Portland is dead.”
“Good,” said Varden, shoving the papers into a satchel that lay open upon the desk.
Sebastian pushed away from the door and walked into the room. “He didn’t kill her.”
“I know.”
Sebastian went to stand before the empty fireplace, his gaze on the flickering candle flames reflected in the mirror above the mantel. “Tell me about the Savoy letter.”
“How much do you know?”
“About the plan to oust the Regent? Not much. What concerns me now is what happened to Guinevere Anglessey. How did she end up with the letter?”
He thought for a moment that the Chevalier didn’t mean to answer. Then the man turned away from the desk, his hands coming up to press flat against his face, his chest rising as he sucked in a deep breath. “The Saturday before she died, we met at an inn near Richmond.”
“I see.”
Varden let his hands fall, scrubbing them across his face. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t like that. Once she’d conceived the child, we met only as friends. She said anything else would be disloyal to Anglessey. We spent that Saturday wandering through the park, then ordered tea in a private parlor at the local inn. I’d been out late the night before, and what with all the fresh air and the exercise, I fell asleep in the chair. I’d taken off my coat and tossed it aside.” His lips quirked up into a soft smile that faded almost instantly. “Guin was always so tidy. She picked up the coat, meaning to straighten it. The letter simply fell out of the pocket.”
“She read it?”
“Yes. It wasn’t like her, to do something like that. I think she must have been suspicious of some of the things she knew I’d been doing lately. When she saw the Savoy seal—well, she simply couldn’t resist.”
“She confronted you?”
Varden nodded. “When I awoke.”
He went to stand beside the library’s long table, one hand fiddling with the tumble of books scattered across the gleaming wood. “She was horrified at the thought of what we were planning to do. I still don’t understand it. She never had anything but disdain for the house of Hanover. There was even a family legend that some great-great-grandmother of hers had once been mistress to James the Second. But all she could talk about was the miseries of war we’d be visiting on the people—and the danger to me, of course. I tried to make her see that getting rid of the Prince Regent was the only thing that could save England—keep it from going down the same path of violent revolution as the French.”
“She didn’t believe it?”
“No.” He let out his breath in a long sigh, as if he’d been holding it for a lifetime. “I’ll never forget the way she looked at me. As if I were a stranger. Someone she’d never seen before.”
“Why did she take the letter?” Sebastian asked softly.
“I honestly don’t think she meant to. She’d thrown it away from her when we were arguing, as if it were some vile thing she couldn’t bear to touch. The only thing I can figure is it must have fallen into the folds of her cloak. She didn’t put the cloak on when she left—just snatched it up and ran out. I didn’t realize the letter was missing until after she had gone.”
“Surely you didn’t think she would betray you?”
“No. But when I tried to contact her, she refused to see me. I had to practically accost her in the street one morning when she was on her way to ride in the park. She swore she’d destroyed the letter as soon as she discovered she still had it.” He paused, his throat working as he swallowed. “And then she told me she never wanted to see me again.”
Sebastian studied the young man’s taut profile. “But when you told your mother the letter had been destroyed, she didn’t believe you?”
His face contorted with pain. “No.”
“And so your mother wrote Guinevere a note in your hand, asking her to bring the letter to Smithfield. Only, Guinevere didn’t bring the letter. She couldn’t, because she’d already destroyed it. But your mother killed her, anyway.”
“Yes,” said Varden in a torn whisper. “She said she couldn’t allow Guinevere to live. Not with what she knew.”
“When did you put it all together?”
“This afternoon. When I saw the note and you told me about the necklace. I came home and confronted her. She didn’t even try to deny it. She said she’d done it for me.” He dragged in a ragged breath that shuddered his chest. “God help me. She did it for me.”
“Your father was related to the House of Savoy?”
Varden swung his head to look at Sebastian through narrowed eyes. “Yes, although not to the Stuarts. How did you know?”
“Something you said to me once, about impoverished royal relatives. What did they promise you in return for your support? A rich wife?”
A faint touch of color stained the ridges of his high cheekbones. “Yes.”
“No wonder Guinevere never wanted to see you again.”
“Well, what the devil was I supposed to do?” demanded Varden, pushing away from the window. “Spend the rest of my life in poverty, waiting for Anglessey to die? The man could live another twenty or thirty years.”
“Or he could be dead before the end of the summer.”
Varden’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “She never told me that. The first I knew of it was from you.” He let out a low, harsh laugh. “Do you know what she said to me the last time I saw her? She said she was glad her father had refused to let her marry me. She said…she said she’d loved me all her life, but now she realized that the boy she’d loved had grown up to be less of a man than the husband she’d married.”
The silence of the house seemed to stretch around them, thick and ominous.
“Your mother,” said Sebastian, “where is she?”
“Upstairs.”
Sebastian turned toward the door, then paused to look back at the man who still stood beside the desk, one fist clenched around the handles of the satchel. “This conspiracy against the Prince…who else was involved besides Portland?”
“I don’t know. Portland was the contact between Savoy and the others. He kept their identities secret.”
Sebastian nodded. It might be a lie, but he doubted it. Men in positions of power were typically very, very careful about committing themselves to treason. “What will you do?”
Varden twitched one shoulder. “Go to the Continent.”
“To Savoy?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps I’ll go to France. Make my peace with Napoléon.” He cast Sebastian a penetrating look from beneath dark, heavy brows. “You don’t feel it incumbent upon you to attempt to stop me?”
“No. But others will doubtless feel differently.” Sebastian turned again toward the stairs. “I suggest you lose no time in reaching the coast.”
Chapter 64
A gentlewoman never lay upon her bed until it was time to retire for the night. For spells of faintness and periods of rest, a lady of quality had a small daybed in her dressing room.
And so Sebastian found Lady Audley there, on a Grecian-style couch upholstered in green velvet. She wore an evening dress of black silk richly embroidered and trimmed with Chantilly lace, and had loosened her hair so that it spread out on the pillow around her face like a bright flame. Her breathing was already slowed, her cheeks pale. Whining softly on the carpet beside her lay the collie bitch, Cloe.
“What did you take?” asked Sebastian, pausing just inside the doorway. “Cyanide?”
Her gaze flickered toward him. “No. Opiates. I will simply go to sleep and never awake.”
“It’s a far ki
nder death than the one you gave Guinevere.”
“With Guinevere, I needed something that would act quickly.”
He walked into the room. The collie stretched to her feet and padded up to him, sniffing. He crouched down to stroke her soft coat.
“How did you know it was me?” Isolde asked when he remained silent. “It was the necklace, wasn’t it?”
“The necklace and the note.” And the certainty that had Claire been the killer, Portland would never have disclaimed responsibility for Guinevere’s death.
“The note.” Isolde moved her head restlessly against the pillow. “That, I hadn’t anticipated. What woman doesn’t destroy a note from her lover?”
“Yet you sent someone to search her rooms for it after her death.”
“No. He was looking for the Savoy letter.”
“That she did destroy.”
With a whine, the collie returned to its mistress’s side. Isolde reached out to rest one hand on her neck. “Varden confronted me. After you spoke with him. The note I could have denied, but not the necklace.” She gave a soft laugh. “How ironic. It was supposed to bring its owner long life. Instead it has brought me death.”
Sebastian stretched to his feet. “But it wasn’t meant for you, was it? It had once belonged to one of Guinevere’s great-grandmothers. That woman you met in the south of France asked you to give it to Guinevere, didn’t she? But you kept it instead.”
Isolde’s voice sharpened. “That necklace has power. I could feel it when I held it in my hand. Power. I didn’t often wear it. It was enough for me simply to have it.” Her tongue darted out to moisten her dry lips. “Now it’s gone, and I am dead.”
“So is Guinevere.”
For a moment, the serene features of Isolde’s face contorted with a quiver of rage and hatred so fierce it took him by surprise. “She would have ruined everything. Everything I worked so hard to bring about.”
Sebastian shook his head. “She loved Varden. She would never have destroyed him.”
“Yet she did destroy him in the end.”
“No.” Sebastian turned toward the door. “You’ve done that. You’ve destroyed Varden and Claire both.”
“Claire knew nothing of this. Nothing.”
“And Portland?”
“Portland was a fool.”
He heard her suck in a gasping breath and turned to look back at her. She was almost gone now. “I’ve never understood why you interfered in all this,” she said hoarsely.
“The woman with the necklace,” said Sebastian.
Lady Audley’s lips parted, her delicately arched brows twitching together in the ghost of a frown. “I don’t understand.”
“She was my mother.”
DRESSED IN A SPLENDID SCARLET UNIFORM with a saber at his side, the Prince Regent was having a rollicking good time. He was a marvelous host; everyone said so. People were always praising him for his generosity and congeniality.
The ballroom was so crowded that no one could actually dance, but that didn’t matter. The orchestra played gamely on, while the guests amused themselves by taking in the wonders of his most recent architectural improvements to Carlton House. He’d heard gasps of awe provoked by the grandeur of the Throne Room, with its curtained bays and gilded columns, its rich red brocades and massively carved chairs. The Circular Dining Room, with its mirrored walls reflecting a two-hundred-foot table that stretched out into the Conservatory, was sure to be the talk of the town for weeks to come.
At half past two, supper would be announced, and then everyone would marvel at the real serpentine stream he’d had confected to run down the center of his table and meander around the massive silver tureens and serving dishes. Flowing between banks built up from moss and rocks, with real flowers and miniature bridges, the river featured live gold and silver fish and created an amazing spectacle. He just hoped the fish didn’t start dying.
Looking out across a garden filled with flambeaux and Chinese lanterns, George felt a thrill of pride. For those guests not fortunate enough to sit at the Prince’s table, there was an enormous supper tent festooned with gilded ropes and flowers. Then his gaze fell on the tall, dark-haired figure working his way through the crowds, and George’s smile slipped.
Viscount Devlin was correctly, even exquisitely attired in evening dress, with knee breeches and silver-buckled shoes. But heads still turned his way and conversations lagged when he walked past.
“We need to talk,” said the Viscount, coming up to where George’s cousin, Jarvis, stood chatting with the Comte de Lille.
“Good God,” said Jarvis with a laugh. “Not now.”
Devlin’s smile never slipped, but his terrible yellow eyes narrowed in a way that sent a shiver up George’s spine and had him groping for his smelling salts.
“Now,” said Devlin.
“IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSIDERABLY MORE CONVENIENT,” said Jarvis, producing an enameled gold snuffbox from his pocket and flipping it open with one practiced finger, “if you could have discovered Lady Anglessey had been killed by a jealous lover. We can hardly tell people this tale, now, can we?”
Sebastian simply stared at him. They were in a small withdrawing room set apart from the main state apartments in Carlton House. But the voices and laughter of the Prince’s two thousand guests, the hurried footsteps of the servants, the clink of fine china and glassware were like a roar around them.
Jarvis lifted a pinch of snuff to one nostril. “We’ll have to place the blame on Varden.”
Sebastian gave a short laugh. “Why not? It worked with Pierrepont. Whatever would we do without the French?”
Jarvis sniffed. “You didn’t, by any chance, come upon the names of the other conspirators?”
“No. But there are others—you can be certain of that.”
“Yes.” Jarvis dusted his fingers. “I doubt they’ll make a move in the immediate future, however. Not after this. Particularly if we shift the regiments around and keep the Prince here in London.”
The Prince wouldn’t be happy with the change of plans, Sebastian knew. His Royal Highness was already fretting, anxious to return to Brighton. The people of Brighton didn’t tend to boo him when he drove down the street the way they did in London.
“And the necklace?” said Jarvis. “Did you ever discover how Lady Anglessey came to be wearing it?”
There was something in the big man’s smile that told Sebastian that Jarvis knew: he knew that Sebastian’s mother still lived, even if he didn’t quite understand how her necklace had come to be clasped around the throat of a murdered woman in Brighton.
Sebastian slipped the triskelion from his pocket. Just the sight of it stirred within him a well of anger and hurt that was suddenly more than he could bear. He held it for a moment, its smoothly polished stone cool against his palm. What had made his mother change her mind all those years ago in France? he wondered. Why had she decided to give it up to Guinevere after all?
“No,” said Sebastian, returning Jarvis’s lying smile with one of his own. “But perhaps you can see that it is returned to her.”
With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the necklace onto the table at the big man’s elbow. Then he turned and walked out of the room.
Chapter 65
The churchyard of St. Anne’s lay peaceful and quiet, a place of wind-tossed trees and dark shadows trembling over tombstones that loomed pale in the moonlight. But near where he knew Guinevere Anglessey to lie, Sebastian could see a glimmer of light.
Directing his coachman to pull up, Sebastian threaded his way through the trees. The light was too constant to belong to grave robbers. It was a common enough practice for families to hire a watchman to sit through the night beside the grave of a newly buried loved one. In the depths of a cold winter it was sometimes necessary to maintain the vigil for months. The heat of summer usually made a body unusable to the surgeons in a week.
Only, this was no hired guard. The Marquis of Anglessey himself had come to keep watch over the
body of his beautiful young wife. He sat beside her tomb in a campaign chair, a rug pulled over his lap despite the warmth of the night. A blunderbuss lay across his knees.
“Devlin here,” Sebastian called in a clear, ringing voice. “Don’t shoot.”
“Devlin?” The old man shifted in his chair, his face contorting as he squinted into the darkness. “What are you doing here?”
Sebastian stepped into the circle of light cast by a brass lantern and hunkered down beside the old man’s chair. “I’ve something to tell you,” he said. And there, beside Guinevere Anglessey’s grave with the night wind soft against his cheek, Sebastian told Guinevere’s husband how she had died, and why.
When Sebastian had finished, the Marquis sat in silence for some moments, his head bowed, his breath coming slow and heavy. Then he lifted his head to fix Sebastian with a fierce stare. “This woman—this Lady Audley. You’re certain she’s dead?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. The wind gusted up, shifting the leaves of the oak tree overhead and bringing them the scents of the place, of long grass and decay and death.
“Do you believe in God?” Anglessey asked suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.
Sebastian met the old man’s anguished gaze and answered honestly, “Not anymore, no.”
Anglessey sighed. “I wish I didn’t. If I didn’t, I would take this gun and blow Bevan’s brains out. It’s what I should have done before.”
“Perhaps if you can stay alive long enough you’ll be lucky and someone else will do it for you.”
Anglessey grunted. “The ones who deserve to die rarely do.”
He stared off across the graveyard to where the moonlight reflected off the high arched windows of the ancient stone church. “I was sitting here tonight, wondering what it would have been like if I had been born thirty years later—or if Guinevere had been born thirty years earlier. Do you think she would have loved me?”
“She loved you. I think in the end she came to realize you had given her the one thing no one else in her life ever had.”
