When Falcons Fall

by C. S. Harris

  Pierce stared straight ahead. Neither his face nor his voice gave anything away. “She wasn’t working with us, I can tell you that. But could she have been sent by Paris? I honestly don’t know.”

  “Yet surely Napoléon has someone here watching his brother.”

  “Undoubtedly. I even have a few suspicions as to whom. But am I certain? No.”

  “And Emma Chance? Did you suspect her?”

  A slow smile curled the other man’s lips. “I suspect everyone.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “What’s there to tell? She was a pretty little thing. Claimed she was here to sketch, although she was asking a lot of questions.”

  “About the Bonapartes?”

  Pierce gave a low laugh. “I wouldn’t know. She didn’t ask me anything.”

  “Yet she drew your portrait.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Pierce drew up abruptly and turned to face him. “Why are you doing this? Why interfere? The villagers were content to believe she killed herself. So why stir them up?”

  Sebastian felt a breeze kick up, swirling the damp mist against his cheeks. “Because she didn’t kill herself.”

  “So? What the hell is she to you?”

  “Nothing. And everything.” Sebastian studied the other man’s big-boned face, the hard light in his eyes. Sebastian knew the kind of men Jarvis employed. He had no doubt that Hannibal Pierce was more than capable of holding down a young woman for five minutes and watching her die a slow, agonizing death. “Did you kill her?”

  Pierce stared back at him, his nostrils flaring with the violence of his breathing.

  In the tense silence, the shifting of the branches of the ancient yews in the churchyard sounded unnaturally loud. Sebastian could hear a trickle of unseen moisture and the rustle of some night creature—

  And the metallic snick of a flintlock’s hammer being carefully thumbed back.

  Chapter 14

  “Get down!” shouted Sebastian, throwing himself flat as a roar of burning powder and whistling hot lead exploded from near the lych-gate.

  The bullet hit Pierce high in the chest, spun him half around. He stumbled, then slowly crumpled.

  “Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian.

  He could hear the shooter crashing through the churchyard, running away down the hill through the fog-shrouded tombs and crooked headstones. A shout sounded from one of the nearby cottages, then another. Sebastian pushed cautiously to his feet and went to crouch down beside the gasping man. As Sebastian lifted Pierce’s head, a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

  Sebastian knew only too well what that meant.

  “Who would want to kill you?” he asked, yanking off his cravat to press the wadded cloth against the man’s ripped and bloody waistcoat.

  Hannibal Pierce sucked in a shaky breath that blew bubbles in the wet sheen of his chest. His face was full of bewilderment, his thoughts and focus turning inward.

  “Who shot you?” shouted Sebastian. He cradled the gravely wounded man in his arms, watched the warm blood seep through the cloth to run down his fingers. And he found himself wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t moved. Because given the angle of the shot and the way the two men had been standing, the bullet could easily have been intended for Sebastian himself.

  “You didn’t see anything?”

  Archie Rawlins kept his voice hushed, although it was doubtful their words could wake the pallid, dying man in the bed beside them.

  They were in Pierce’s room at the Blue Boar. Dr. Higginbottom had arrived, bandaged the man’s chest, pronounced there was no hope for him, and left. A single candle burned on the nightstand; the rest of the chamber lay in shadow.

  “Nothing except the glow of burning powder in the fog,” said Sebastian.

  “It’s bloody thick out there.” The young Squire blew out a heavy breath and brought up one hand to rub the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “I don’t understand why this is happening. We’ve never had anything of this nature in Ayleswick. I mean, every once in a while some drunk will beat his poor wife to death, or somebody will get killed in a brawl. But never anything so . . .”

  “Clandestine and premeditated?” suggested Sebastian.

  “Yes, that’s it.” Rawlins nodded toward the dying man. “I never could figure out what he was doing here.”

  “He was keeping an eye on Lucien Bonaparte. For London.”

  Rawlins looked at Sebastian, his jaw slack. “Good God! How’d you know that?”

  “Lady Devlin recognized him.”

  Archie Rawlins went to stand at the window, his gaze on the swirling fog. “I don’t like where things are going,” he said after a moment. “I find it difficult to believe this shooting isn’t somehow connected to the murder of Emma Chance.”

  “Probably,” said Sebastian. “Although it could conceivably be completely unrelated. Pierce told me Napoléon has someone here watching his brother.”

  Rawlins pivoted to stare at him. “Who?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “He didn’t know. He said he had some suspicions as to whom, but he couldn’t be certain and he didn’t name anyone.”

  “You’re suggesting he was shot by a French agent? Here? In Ayleswick!”

  “Perhaps.” Sebastian watched the dying man labor to take a rattling breath. “It’s also possible Pierce was hit by mistake. We were facing each other, and I moved when I heard the shooter pull back his hammer. A good marksman with a rifled, long-barreled pistol can reliably hit a target at fifty yards. But most men’s accuracy goes all to hell beyond ten yards—and that’s without the mist.”

  “How do you know the shooter was using a pistol?”

  “I spent six years in the army.”

  “Ah.” Rawlins frowned. “How far away would you say he was?”

  “Twenty, maybe thirty feet.”

  “And you heard him cock his pistol? That’s damned impressive.”

  “I have good hearing.”

  “I’ll say.” Archie swung away from the window, his features tightening as his gaze fell, again, on the man in the bed. “You think Higginbottom’s right? That he’s dying?”

  “Yes.”

  He swallowed hard. “I was planning to ride into Ludlow in the morning. See if anyone at the Feathers can tell me more about Emma Chance.”

  “Let’s hope you have some success.”

  “But . . . what about him? Whom do we notify if—when—he dies?”

  The two men watched, together, waiting for Hannibal Pierce to draw another breath.

  He didn’t. And as the minutes passed and stretched out, it was as if they could see the life seeping out of him, his body shrinking until it became no more than an empty husk.

  “I’ll take care of it,” said Sebastian, and reached out to draw the sheet over the dead man’s face.

  Later, Sebastian stripped off his clothes stained with the dead man’s blood and sat on the side of the bed in the darkness beside his sleeping wife. The growing wind swirled the fog outside the window and rattled the branches of the ancient chestnut out on the green. He could smell the fecund odor of the fields surrounding the village, hear a lamb bleating in the night. He rested his hands on his thighs, opened and closed his fists. And still the tension hummed inside him, a stoked furnace of anger and alertness and rising urgency.

  He felt the mattress shift as Hero rolled toward him to rest her hand flat against the small of his back. She had spoken to him earlier, while Higginbottom was tending his patient and grumbling that it was all a waste of his time since the man was certain to die anyway.

  “Is Pierce dead?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She was silent a moment. “You think that bullet was actually meant for you?”

  “I wish I knew. If Pierce was indeed the tar
get, it might help make sense of what’s happening in this village. Otherwise . . . it could be damnably misleading.”

  “Or not.”

  “Or not.”

  She shifted to slip her arms around his waist and press her face against his side.

  She was one of the most rational and levelheaded people he had ever known; calm and fiercely brave and utterly unflappable. Yet love makes us all vulnerable, and he felt the faint tremor that shivered through her as she let her breath ease out in a sigh.

  “You will be more careful,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He saw her smile at him in the darkness, felt her hand slide across his back to his hip. He stretched out beside her, her body long and supple as she pressed against him. He buried his face in the dark, sleep-warmed tumble of her hair; breathed in the familiar scent of her, of lavender and musk and the lingering milky sweetness left by his infant son. And he felt the day’s concerns begin to ease out of him.

  He traced his lips along her cheek, captured her mouth, heard her breath catch as his hand closed over her breast. She wrapped her love and her body around him, and he lost himself in the wonder that was this woman and the all-consuming intensity of their union.

  They had first come together just fifteen months before, in a desperate affirmation of life in the face of looming death. But death had not come. Instead, from those raw, tentative, unexpected beginnings had come Simon and a love so powerful and uplifting that it still filled him with a shaky wonder.

  He kissed her forehead, her ear, her cheek; watched her face as he moved above her in the darkness. Once, he had faced danger with a recklessness born of a careless attitude toward living. But those days were in the past. And as he held her close, felt her heart pounding against his, heard the keening of her breath, he knew a deep and all-consuming thankfulness that he was here, now, alive and in this woman’s arms.

  Chapter 15

  Wednesday, 4 August

  The next morning, Hero worked at coaxing Simon to eat some porridge while Sebastian sat at the table beside her and wrote a note to inform Lord Jarvis of Hannibal Pierce’s death. He and Archie had combed through the dead man’s effects, but they’d found nothing to shed any light on the two recent murders.

  He was affixing a seal to the letter when Martin McBroom appeared at the parlor doorway. “Begging your ladyship’s pardon for disturbing you so early,” said the innkeeper with a jerky bow, “but I’m thinking your lordship will be wanting to see this.” He held out a folded sheet of what looked like writing parchment, of the sort a lady might use for her correspondence.

  “Where did this come from?” asked Sebastian, taking it.

  “Mary Beth—the chambermaid—came across it while she was cleaning Mrs. Chance’s room this morning. She said it’d fallen down behind the washstand.”

  Unfolding the sheet, Sebastian found himself staring at a list of numbered names written in what he recognized as Emma Chance’s neat, flowing hand.

  1. Squire Rawlins

  2. Lord Seaton

  3. Major Weston

  4. The man at the Ship

  5. Reverend Benedict Underwood

  6. Reuben Dickie

  7. Samuel Atwater

  Two of the names—Squire Rawlins and Samuel Atwater—had a line through them, as if she had crossed them out.

  Sebastian looked up to find Mr. McBroom watching him intently, his full, ruddy face glowing with curiosity. “Thank you,” said Sebastian, refolding the paper.

  McBroom’s face fell with disappointment. “You’ll be showing it to the young Squire?”

  “I will, yes. Thank you.”

  “What is it?” asked Hero after the landlord had reluctantly taken himself off.

  Sebastian handed her the paper.

  She studied the list a moment, then looked up. “Men. They’re all men.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right.” He watched Simon thrust his fist into the porridge and give a toothless grin as it squished through his fingers. “Could this be a list of men whose portraits she drew?”

  “No; it’s not long enough. And the names aren’t in the right order. Here.” Setting the list aside, she carefully wiped Simon’s face and hands and passed him to Sebastian.

  “You’ve porridge behind your ear,” Sebastian told his son while Hero went to retrieve Emma’s sketchbook from the chest near the window.

  “I made a list myself of the people in her portraits.” Hero laid her own list on the table beside the paper found by the chambermaid.

  Sebastian steadied his son on his lap and leaned forward to compare them.

  1. Martin McBroom X

  2. Archie Rawlins

  3. Reverend Underwood

  4. Reuben Dickie

  5. Lucien Bonaparte X

  6. Charles Bonaparte X

  7. Samuel Atwater

  8. Jude Lowe

  9. Major Eugene Weston

  10. Jenny Dalyrimple

  11. Mary Beth the chambermaid X

  12. Hannibal Pierce X

  Sebastian said, “It looks as if she drew everyone on her list except Lord Seaton. Plus a few others who aren’t on her list.” He frowned. “I think I’ve heard of this Weston. But I can’t place him at the moment.”

  Hero flipped open the sketchbook and held up a drawing of a middle-aged, mustachioed man posed before a modest brick house. He stood tall and erect, his posture hinting at a preening type of male vanity combined with a desperate attempt to draw attention away from his expanding waistline. “This is Major Weston. Recognize him?”

  “No. But now I know where I heard the name. According to Reuben Dickie, Weston lives in what used to be the Dower House of Maplethorpe Hall.” He caught Simon’s hand as the baby reached for his quill. “Who is Jude Lowe?”

  Hero flipped back a page. “Here. According to the chambermaid, he owns a tavern in a nearby hamlet.”

  Sebastian studied the lean, handsome man. He looked younger than Weston, probably closer to thirty-four or thirty-six, with dark hair, deeply set eyes, and a cleft chin. There was something about him—some faint similarity of features, or perhaps it came simply from the way he held his head—that reminded Sebastian of Jamie Knox. Emma had drawn him standing beside a tavern’s swinging sign, its painting of a Spanish galleon flecked and worn but still clearly discernible.

  “‘The man at the Ship,’” said Sebastian. “And Atwater?”

  Hero turned to the portrait of an unassuming-looking middle-aged gentleman. “Here.”

  Sebastian grasped both of Simon’s hands, smiling as the boy pulled himself up to a stand, tiny fat legs wobbling as he balanced his feet on Sebastian’s thighs. “So why are there ‘Xs’ behind five of the names on your list?”

  “Those are the portraits that are unnamed: Martin McBroom, Lucien and Charles Bonaparte, the chambermaid, and Hannibal Pierce.”

  Sebastian looked over at her. “You’re saying the only person Emma sketched and named who isn’t on her list was Jenny Dalyrimple?”

  “That’s right. Jenny’s also the only named woman Emma drew.”

  “How old is the current Lord Seaton?” asked Sebastian, his gaze still on the lurching, grinning child in his lap. “Any idea? Is he even of age yet?”

  “Barely,” said Hero. “The chambermaid says he’s taken his sisters and the older Bonaparte girls to spend some time at an aunt’s house in the Lake District. So he isn’t here.”

  “Yet his name was on Emma Chance’s list,” said Sebastian. “I wonder why.” He touched noses with the boy. “What do you think, young Master St. Cyr? Hmmm?” He caught Simon under the arms and lifted the baby high over his head as the boy squealed with delight. “Actually, why were any of those names on her list?”

  He glanced over at Hero, but she simply shook her
head.

  It was one more question to which they had no answer.

  Chapter 16

  The innkeeper, Martin McBroom, seemed a logical source for information on the three relatively unknown men on Emma Chance’s list—Samuel Atwater, Major Weston, and Jude Lowe.

  Finding McBroom seated at a small, untidy desk in an alcove off the entry hall, Sebastian asked first about Samuel Atwater.

  “Ah. Saw his name on the list, I did,” said the innkeeper, shuffling papers around on his desktop.

  “So who is he?”

  “Could’ve told you before if you’d asked.” McBroom kept his focus on his papers in a way that told Sebastian just how deeply he had offended the innkeeper earlier by not indulging the man’s desire for a good gossip. “Happens he’s steward out at Northcott Abbey. Some sort of cousin to her ladyship. From Yorkshire,” he added in the faintly disparaging tone typically used by villagers when referring to “outsiders.”

  “How long has he been in Ayleswick?”

  The landlord picked up his quill and inspected the tip. “Twenty, maybe twenty-five years, I suppose.”

  “And Jude Lowe?”

  “Proprietor of the Ship, he is.”

  “And where might the Ship be?”

  McBroom set about mending his quill with a knife. “At the crossroads to the east of here. Just beyond the old gibbet.” He raised his bushy eyebrows and threw Sebastian a sideways look over the tops of his spectacles. “Fitting, ain’t it?”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  Rather than answer, McBroom returned his gaze to his quill. “You gonna be talking to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, well. Then you’ll see, won’t you?”

  “And Major Weston?” asked Sebastian, fighting the urge to grit his teeth. “What can you tell me about him?”

  According to the innkeeper, Eugene Weston, too, had arrived in the area some twenty to twenty-five years before, when his militia unit was billeted in the village. “Quite splendid to look at, he was in those days. Leastways, all the young women thought so—and more’n a few of the older ones who should’ve known better.” McBroom sniffed. “Him and his scarlet regimentals and great flowing mustache. Course, he had eyes only for Liv Irving.”