When Maidens Mourn

by C. S. Harris

  “I should tell you that a postmortem has been performed on Miss Tennyson’s remains.” Sebastian hesitated. “We know she was no maid.”

  “Why, you—”

  Sebastian flung up a forearm to block the punch Arceneaux threw at his jaw.

  “Bâtard!” spat Arceneaux when Sebastian grabbed his wrist and held it.

  Sebastian tightened his grip, his lips peeling away from his teeth as he leaned in close, enunciating his words with careful precision. “God damn it. Cut line, Lieutenant. Whose honor do you imagine I’ve insulted? Yours?” To suggest that a gentleman had seduced a woman he was unable or unwilling to marry was indeed a grave insult. “Because this isn’t about you, Lieutenant—”

  “If you think I care about that—”

  “And it isn’t about Gabrielle Tennyson’s honor, either,” Sebastian continued, ignoring the interruption. “It’s about finding the man—or woman—who killed her, and who probably killed those two little boys with her. So tell me, what do you know of Miss Tennyson’s interactions with Sir Stanley?”

  “For the love of God, what are you suggesting now?” Arceneaux jerked back hard against Sebastian’s hold.

  Sebastian let him go. “Take a damper, would you? I’m asking because when an attractive young woman and an older but still virile man are thrown often into each other’s company, people talk.”

  “Who?” Arceneaux’s fists clenched again. “Who is suggesting there was anything between them?”

  “Lady Winthrop, for one. The woman was obviously more than a little jealous of the time Miss Tennyson spent with her husband.”

  The Frenchman spat in distain. “Lady Winthrop is a fool.”

  “Is she?”

  “She lost her husband long ago, only not to Gabrielle. She lost him to his grief over his dead children, and to his passion for the past, and to the whispered wisdom of the Druids.”

  “So Miss Tennyson knew about Sir Stanley’s interest in the Druids, did she?”

  “She did. I told you, they were friends—good friends. But nothing more.”

  Sebastian studied the French officer’s fine-boned, scholarly face. “And you had no concerns about the woman you loved spending so much time in another man’s company?”

  “I did not. Does that surprise you? Was it not your William Shakespeare who wrote of the ‘marriage of true minds’?”

  “‘If this be error and upon me proved,’” quoted Sebastian, “‘I never writ…’”

  “‘Nor no man ever loved.’” Arceneaux straightened his cravat and smoothed the front of his worn coat with painful dignity. “I loved Gabrielle, and I knew she loved me. I never doubted her. Not for a moment.”

  “And you know of no other man in her life?”

  “No!”

  “Do you know anything about her previous suitors?”

  Arceneaux frowned as he watched Chien prance contentedly toward them, ears cocked. “I know there was one man—a suitor who pressed her repeatedly to marry him. Nothing she said seemed to dissuade the man. It was very odd.”

  “Who was this?”

  “She didn’t tell me his name, although I gathered he was a friend of the family.”

  “So her brother would likely know him?”

  “I should think so, yes. The man was quite open in his pursuit of her. She told me he’d been dangling after her for years—even used to send her sweets and collections of love poems when she was still in the schoolroom.”

  “That sounds rather…distasteful.”

  “She found it so, yes.”

  Chien ran one happy, panting circle around them, then dashed off again after a sparrow chirping on the branch of a nearby rambling rose.

  Sebastian said, “Did Miss Tennyson ever tell you why she was so determined never to wed?”

  Arceneaux watched the sparrow take flight, chattering in annoyance. Chien paused with his tail up, ears on the prick. “It is not so unusual, is it, amongst women who have decided to devote themselves to scholarship?”

  Chien came trotting back to stick his cold wet nose under Sebastian’s hand. Sebastian let his hand drift down the dog’s back. There had been a time when Hero, too, had sworn never to wed. She had only agreed to become his wife because she’d discovered she carried his child—and even then he’d had the devil’s own time convincing her. He thought he could understand Miss Tennyson sticking resolutely to her choice.

  Yet the sense that the Frenchman was lying remained with him.

  Chapter 30

  Jarvis stood at the edge of the terrace, a glass of champagne balanced in one hand as he let his gaze drift over the sweating men in tails and snowy cravats who chatted in desultory tones with gaily laughing ladies wearing filmy muslins and wide-brimmed hats. The sun was devilishly hot, the champagne warm. Normally Jarvis avoided such affairs. But this particular al fresco party was being hosted by Lady Elcott, the Prince’s latest flirt, and Jarvis was here in attendance on the Prince.

  A faint apprehensive fluttering amongst the crowd drew Jarvis’s attention to a tall, familiar figure working her way across the terrace toward him. She wore a striking gown of cream silk trimmed in black and a black velvet hat with a cockade with black and cream feathers. She was not in any sense the most beautiful woman present, but she still managed to draw every eye.

  “And here I thought you’d given up the frivolous amusements of society in order to join your husband in his sordid passion for murder investigations,” said Jarvis as Hero paused beside him.

  “I told you my involvement in this has nothing to do with Devlin. Gabrielle Tennyson was my friend, and whoever killed her will have to answer to me.” She let her gaze, like his, slide over the ladies and gentlemen scattered across the lawn below. “Apart from which, I see no reason to view the two pursuits as mutually exclusive.”

  “Society and murder, you mean? You have a point. If truth were told, I suspect you’d probably find that Lady Elcott numbers more murderers amongst her guests than you’d be likely to find down at the corner pub…although I doubt any of these worthies will ever find themselves in the dock for their crimes.”

  She brought her gaze back to his face. “You do realize I now know about the Glastonbury Cross.”

  “Do you?” He took a slow sip of his champagne. “And what, precisely, do you ‘know’ of it?”

  His response was obviously not what she had hoped for. Her eyes narrowed, but she covered her disappointment by taking a sip of her lemonade.

  He smiled. “You learned this game from me, remember? And I’m still better at it than you. Shall I tell you precisely what you know? You know that amongst the late Richard Gough’s collections, Bevin Childe found a box of ancient bones and a graven artifact he identified as the Glastonbury Cross. You also know that Miss Tennyson, when she heard of Childe’s discovery, dismissed the cross as a modern forgery and—in a rather alarming fit of unbridled choler—threw the item in question into the lake.”

  Hero returned his smile with one of her own. “Actually, I’ve figured out a bit more than that. I’ve been looking into those broadsheets you were telling me about—the ones expressing a longing for the ‘once and future king’ to return and lead the English to victory by ridding us of the unsatisfactory usurpers currently on the throne.” She glanced over to where the Prince Regent, red-faced and sweating, his coat of Bath superfine straining across his back, had his face and shoulders hunched over a mounded plate of buttered crab. “I can see how the expression of such sentiments might be causing distress in certain circles, even if, as you intimated, the broadsheets were originally the work of French agents. These things can sometimes take on a life of their own. And while we like to think our own age too sophisticated to give heed to such legends, the truth is that far too many people out there are still both ignorant and woefully credulous—and all too ready to believe in a miraculous savior.”

  “How true.”

  A warm wind gusted up, shifting the spreading branches of an elm overhead and casting
dancing patterns of light and shadow across the strong features of her face. She said, “Some six hundred years ago, Henry the Second was also troubled by restless subjects who yearned for Arthur to return from the dead and save them. Fortunately for him, the monks of Glastonbury Abbey stepped into the breach with their well-timed discovery of what they claimed were King Arthur and Guinevere’s bones.”

  “Most fortuitous, was it not?” said Jarvis with a smile.

  “Mmm. And how injudicious of good old King Henry the Eighth to lose such a valuable national treasure in his scramble to take over the wealth of the church, thus allowing all those nasty rumors to start up again.”

  “Shockingly careless of him,” agreed Jarvis, consigning his champagne glass to a passing waiter.

  “Yet history does sometimes have a way of repeating itself…or should I say, rather, that it can be made to repeat itself? Particularly if a certain courageous young woman who threatens to get in the way is removed.”

  Jarvis drew a figured gold snuffbox from his pocket and flipped it open with one finger.

  Hero watched him, her gaze on his face. “Gabrielle was not the type of woman to frighten easily. Yet before she died, she was afraid of someone. Someone powerful. I think she was afraid of you.”

  He raised a pinch of snuff to one nostril and sniffed. “She had a unique way of showing it, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hero leaned into him, the polite society smile still curving her lips, her voice low. “I think Gabrielle was right: That cross is a forgery. I think you somehow coerced Childe into claiming he had discovered the fake cross amongst Gough’s collections, in the hopes that news of its recovery would help dampen these dangerous murmurs calling for King Arthur’s return. After all, if it worked for the Plantagenets a few hundred years ago, why shouldn’t it work now?”

  “Why not, indeed?”

  “The one thing I haven’t figured out yet is how you convinced Childe to cooperate.”

  “Really, Hero; perhaps you should consider giving up this budding interest in murder investigations and turn your hand instead to writing lurid romances.” He saw something he couldn’t quite read flicker in her eyes, and closed his snuffbox with a snap. “I told you, I did not kill your troublesome friend.”

  When she remained silent, he gave a soft laugh. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Almost. But not entirely.” She tilted her head to one side. “If you considered it necessary, would you have killed her—even knowing she was my friend?”

  “Without hesitation.”

  “And would you tell me?”

  “Before, yes. Now…I’m not so certain.”

  “Because of Devlin, you mean?”

  “Yes.” He let his gaze drift once more across the assembly of hot aristocrats. “And are you regretting it? Your decision to be less than forthcoming with your new husband, I mean.”

  “No.”

  He brought his gaze back to her face. “So sure, Hero?” he asked, and saw her color deepen.

  She said, “I don’t believe you deliberately had Gabrielle killed. But can you be so certain you are not indirectly responsible?”

  Father’s and daughter’s gazes locked, and held.

  “Darling!”

  Hero turned as Lady Elcott fluttered up to them trailing a cloud of filmy lime organza and yards of cream satin ribbon. She rested the tips of her exquisitely manicured fingers on Hero’s arm and arched her overplucked brows. “You came! What a delight! Did you bring that wicked husband of yours with you?”

  “Not this time,” said Hero.

  “Excuse me,” said Jarvis with a bow, moving adroitly to the Prince’s side in time to prevent him from starting on a second plate of crab.

  When he looked back toward the edge of the terrace, Hero had managed to escape their hostess’s clutches and disappear.

  Sebastian found Paul Gibson leaning over the stone platform in the center of the outbuilding behind his surgery. He whistled softly as he worked, his arms plunged up to the elbows in the gory distended abdomen of a cadaver so bloated and discolored and ripe that it made Sebastian gag.

  “Good God,” he said, his eyes watering as the full force of the foul stench engulfed him. “Where the devil did they find that one?”

  “Pulled him out of Fleet Ditch, at West Street. Caught up under the bridge, he was, and from the look of things, he was there a good long while.”

  “And no one smelled him?”

  “There’s an abattoir at the corner. I suppose the odors just sort of…mingled.” The surgeon grinned and reached for a rag to wipe his hands and arms. “So what can I do for you, then? And please don’t tell me you’re sending me another corpse, because I’ve already got two more to deal with when I’m through with this one.”

  “No more corpses.” Retreating to the sun-blasted yard, Sebastian stood hunched over with his hands braced on his thighs as he sucked fresh air into his lungs. “Just a question, about Gabrielle Tennyson. You said she was no longer a maid. Any chance she could have been with child?”

  “No trace of it that I saw.”

  “Would you be able to tell for certain? I mean, even if she wasn’t very far along?”

  “Let’s put it this way: If she was far enough along to know it, I’d know it.”

  Sebastian straightened, then swallowed quickly as another whiff of the cadaver hit him. “Bloody hell. I don’t know how you stand it.”

  Gibson gave a soft chuckle. “After a while, you don’t notice the smell.” He thought about it a moment, then added, “Usually.”

  “I wasn’t talking about just the smell.”

  “Ah.” The Irishman’s gaze met Sebastian’s, the merriment now gone from his face. “The thing of it is, you see, by the time I get them, they’re just so much tissue and bone, and that’s what I focus on—that’s the mystery I need to unravel. I don’t need to dwell on the fear and pain they must have experienced during whatever happened that landed them on my table. I don’t need to pry into whatever betrayal and hurt, or anger and despair was in their lives. That’s what you do. And to tell you the truth, Devlin, I don’t know how you do it.”

  When Sebastian remained silent, Gibson rested a hand on his shoulder, then turned back toward the stone outbuilding and its bloated, decaying occupant.

  “Was he murdered?” Sebastian called after him. “The man on your table in there, I mean.”

  Gibson paused in the open doorway to look back at him. “Not this one. Tumbled into the water drunk and drowned, most likely. I doubt he even knew what hit him—which is probably not a bad way to go, if you’ve got to go.”

  “I suppose it does beat some of the alternatives.”

  Gibson grunted. “You think Gabrielle Tennyson and her young cousins were killed by a man who was afraid he’d planted a babe in her belly?”

  Sebastian started to remind him that no one knew for certain yet that either Alfred or George Tennyson was dead. Then he let it go. Surely it was only a matter of time before one of the search parties or some farmer out walking with his dog came upon the children’s small bodies half submerged in a ditch or hidden beneath the leaf mold in a hollow left by a downed tree?

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. At this point, anything’s possible.”

  “Poor girl,” said Gibson with a sigh. “Poor, poor girl.”

  The setting sun was painting purple and orange streaks low on the western horizon by the time Sebastian reached the Adelphi Buildings overlooking the Thames. He was mounting the steps to the Tennyson town house when he heard his name called.

  “Lord Devlin.”

  Turning, he saw Gabrielle’s brother striding across the street toward him. “Have you some news?” asked Hildeyard Tennyson, his strained features suffused with an agonized hope.

  “I’m sorry; no.”

  Tennyson’s lips parted with the pain of disappointment. He’d obviously been out again looking for the children; dust layered his coat and top boots, and his face was slick wit
h sweat and tinged red by too many hours spent beneath a hot sun.

  “You’re still searching the chase?” asked Sebastian as they turned to walk along the terrace overlooking the Thames.

  “The woodland and the surrounding farms and fields, yes. But so far, we’ve found nothing. Not a trace. It’s as if the children vanished into the mist.” The barrister blew out a long, ragged breath. “Simply…vanished.”

  Sebastian stared off over the river, where the sinking sun spilled a wash of gold across the water. Barges loaded with coal rode low and dark in the water; a wherryman rowing his fare across to Lambeth plied his oars. The splash of his wooden panels threw up arcs of droplets that glistened like diamonds in the dying light.

  Tennyson followed Sebastian’s gaze, the circles beneath his eyes dark as he watched the wherryman’s progress across the river. “I know everyone, from the magistrates and constables to the farmers and workmen I’ve hired, thinks the boys must be dead. I hear them speaking amongst themselves. They all think they’re looking for a shallow grave. But they don’t let on to me.”

  Sebastian kept his gaze on the water.

  After a moment, Tennyson said, “My cousin—the boys’ father—is on his way down from Lincolnshire. He’s not well, you know. I just hope to God the journey doesn’t kill him.” He hesitated, then added, “Or the inevitable grief.”

  Sebastian found it difficult to meet the other man’s strained, desperate eyes. “You told me the other day your sister had no interest in marriage.”

  “She didn’t, no,” said the barrister slowly, obviously struggling to follow Sebastian’s train of thought. “She quite fixed her mind against it at an early age. Our father blamed her attitude on the influence of the likes of the Misses Berry and Catherine Talbot. But the truth is, Gabrielle was far more interested in Roman ruins and the inscriptions on medieval tombstones than in bride clothes or layettes.”

  “Nevertheless, she must have attracted some suitors over the years.”

  “Some, yes. But without encouragement, few stayed around for long.”