by C. S. Harris
“Yet some still do,” said Gibson with a wry smile.
“They do. If I could meet the lady, I might be able to judge the chances of that myself. Unfortunately, she’s in mourning, which means she’s gone into seclusion and the only visitors she’s receiving are relatives or close friends.”
“That does complicate things,” said Gibson, draining his tankard.
“Considerably.” Sebastian signaled the barmaid for two more tankards. “Although, frankly, I’m more inclined to suspect the veiled woman—whoever she was—is someone connected to Ross’s activities with the Foreign Office.”
“According to Dr. Astley Cooper, it was Sir Hyde Foley who called him in to examine Ross’s body.”
“Really? Now, that is interesting.”
Gibson waited while the barmaid set the brimming new tankards on the boards before them. Then he said, “What about this French priest—de La Rocque? Sounds like a queer character.”
“He is indeed. And whatever his dealings with Ross, I’ll be surprised if they involved old books.” Sebastian paused, listening to the tolling of the city’s church bells, counting out the hour. He took a quick swallow of his ale and pushed to his feet. “Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’m off to visit the Queen.”
Gibson raised his tankard in a mock toast. “Give her my regards.”
Returning to Brook Street, Sebastian donned the formal knee breeches and tails that were de rigueur for a gentleman attending an official function at the palace.
“I had occasion to ask around about your Mr. Ross,” said Calhoun, holding out a fresh cravat.
Sebastian glanced over at him. “And?”
“I discovered nothing of interest, my lord. From all reports, Mr. Ross was a congenial, warmhearted young man well liked by all with whom he came into contact.”
Sebastian wound the long, wide length of linen around his neck. “Except, apparently, by whoever killed him.”
“So it would seem, my lord.”
By the time Sebastian arrived at St. James’s Palace, the parade of carriages lining up to pass through the ancient brick gatehouse and into the paved courtyard had dwindled and the crowds of curious onlookers were drifting away. The Season was rapidly winding its way to an end. Almack’s had already closed; soon the Prince would remove to Brighton and the vast majority of the great noble families would depart for their country estates—if they hadn’t done so already.
Sebastian could hear the soft strains of a chamber orchestra playing one of Handel’s trio sonatas as he mounted the steps to the vast reception suite. Despite the heat of the summer, the rooms were still crowded, the leading members of society mingling with cabinet ministers, foreign ambassadors, and members of the royal family. The Queen herself, a stout, gray-haired matron splendid in blond satin trimmed in gold lace, presided over the evening from a richly carved and gilded armchair situated between the two main rooms. At her side sat her eldest son, the Prince Regent, and, standing beside him, the Prince’s plump, gray-haired mistress, the Marchioness of Hertford.
Everyone else in the room stood.
“Viscount Devlin,” intoned the powdered footman.
A tall woman in emerald silk who was conversing with a group that included the Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh, looked around at Sebastian’s entrance. Their gazes met across the crowded room, and Sebastian saw his betrothed’s eyes widen with surprise before narrowing speculatively.
“Well, this is unexpected,” said Miss Hero Jarvis, separating herself from her circle and walking up to him. “Whatever are you doing here?”
If she felt any awkwardness at their meeting, she didn’t show it. But then, in Sebastian’s experience, her coolness and selfpossession came close to rivaling her father’s. Sebastian was only just beginning to realize that in her case, at least, all was not exactly as it seemed.
“I received an invitation,” he said, accepting a glass of wine proffered on a tray by a circling waiter.
“London’s hostesses are always sending you invitations. You only accept them when you have some ulterior motive.”
Sebastian gave a soft laugh. From where he stood, he was able to watch the new Russian Ambassador, Count Christoph Heinrich von Lieven, bowing low over the Queen’s hand. “Perhaps I’ve developed an interest in Russia.”
She followed his gaze. “So it’s true, is it? You are investigating the death of Alexander Ross.”
“Word does get around, doesn’t it?”
“When the topic of conversation is murder? What do you expect?” She stood beside him, her gaze, like his, drifting over the assembled company. “I must say, I am relieved to hear someone is looking into it. I personally found his sudden death beyond suspicious.”
Sebastian glanced at her in surprise. “You knew him?”
“He was engaged to marry one of my cousins.”
“Ah. The wellborn but impoverished gentlewoman sold off to the highest bidder by her gamester father. She’s a relative of yours, is she?”
“She was. My mother’s cousin Charlotte. Dreadful woman. I always thought old Peter Cox got far more than he bargained for with that match. Her son, Jasper, is just like her. But I rather like her daughter, Sabrina.”
“And how is Miss Cox taking Ross’s death?”
“She is dreadfully cut up about it, as one would expect. Why do you ask? Surely you aren’t seriously considering Sabrina as a suspect?”
“At this point, I’m not ruling out anyone.” He nodded across the room to where an animated young woman with dark hair and a long, graceful neck was charming the Prince Regent. “What can you tell me about the new Russian Ambassador?”
Miss Jarvis followed his gaze. “Well, I see you’ve already identified his beautiful and captivating wife.”
“She is rather difficult to miss.”
“There are those who say Countess Lieven is the Czar’s real representative, that her husband is just a placeholder. But I think that’s rather harsh. He’s a shrewd man, ruthless on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. They make a good team.”
“You’ve met them?”
“We had the senior members of the Russian delegation to dinner two nights ago.”
Sebastian took another sip of his wine. “So which of the military-looking gentlemen accompanying the Count is Colonel Dimitri Ivanovich Chernishav?”
“There,” said Miss Jarvis, nodding to a uniformed officer with a ceremonial sword buckled across a blue coat dripping with gold—gold sash, gold braid, gold plumes. “The blond gentleman with the mustache.”
Sebastian studied the Colonel’s broad, big-boned face. “You had him to dinner, as well?”
“Several times.”
“Good,” said Sebastian, setting aside his wine. “Then you can introduce us.”
The Russian Colonel was studying a massive, full-length portrait of George II when they walked up to him.
“Devlin, is it? I have met your father, the Earl,” said the Colonel, when Miss Jarvis had made the introductions. “He tells us he is a friend of Russia. Yet when it comes to Napoléon, all he is prepared to offer us is words of encouragement. No men.”
“Our troops are rather busy these days,” said Sebastian, “what with fighting the French in the peninsula and defending our interests in India and the New World.”
The Colonel laughed. “You can’t seriously consider the Americans a threat?”
“To Canada, yes.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Miss Jarvis, adroitly withdrawing.
The Russian watched her walk away. “A formidable woman, that one.”
“Definitely,” agreed Sebastian. He studied the Russian’s cheerful, full-cheeked face, with its soft blue eyes and swooping cavalry mustache. He looked to be in his late twenties, his high rank obviously less an indication of experience on the battlefield than of wealth and birth. Britain and Russia were much alike in this sense, if not in others.
Sebastian said, “I understand you were acquainted with a friend
of mine at the Foreign Office. Mr. Alexander Ross.”
Chernishav’s smile faded. “You knew Alexander?” He gave the name its Russian pronunciation, Aleksandr. “A shock, wasn’t it? We were to meet at Cribb’s Parlour the very evening he died.”
“But you did not?”
The Russian shook his head. “No. He never showed up. I finally went round to his rooms and knocked at his door, but he didn’t answer.”
“What time was this?”
“Midnight? Perhaps a little earlier, perhaps a little later. I thought it strange at the time but wrote it off as a matter of miscommunication. Then I heard he’d been found dead in his bed, and it struck me as all the more peculiar. And now ... Now you are asking me questions, and I have been in London long enough to know what that means.”
He stared at Sebastian expectantly, but Sebastian only said, “You were friends?”
“For some years now, yes. We met in St. Petersburg when Alexander was with your embassy there. It’s not easy, being a stranger in a strange land. This time, I am the one who’s far from home. We would meet occasionally for a drink. Talk of Russia.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
The Russian looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose it must have been that Wednesday night, at Vauxhall. I formed part of the Ambassador’s party, while Alexander was there with his fiancée and her brother. Lovely young woman—and fabulously wealthy, I understand.” He gave a rueful smile. “I was quite jealous of my old friend’s good fortune, you know. And then, just a few days later—” He kissed his bunched fingers and then flung them open in an ironic gesture. “Alexander is dead. Fate is a strange thing, is it not? Fickle and cruel.”
“Know of anyone Ross had quarreled with recently? Anyone who might have wanted him dead?”
The Colonel’s gaze shifted to the painting beside them. “It’s a thought that naturally occurs to one, is it not?”
“And?”
He kept his gaze on the painting. “Alexander was a diplomat by profession. It can be a dangerous game, diplomacy. A dance of shadows in the darkness.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, I know some of what Alexander was involved in. But not all.”
“Yet you know something.”
Chernishav hesitated, then said, “That night, at Vauxhall, I chanced to come upon Alexander in a heated conversation with Ambassador Ramadani.”
“Ramadani?”
The Russian cast a significant glance toward the dark-eyed, dark-bearded man wearing long crimson robes, goldembroidered slippers, and an elaborately wrapped turban, who was now engaged in conversation with the Marchioness of Hertford. “Mr. Antonaki Ramadani. The Ambassador from Constantinople.”
Sebastian recognized the man. He’d frequently seen him—in different clothes—exercising a magnificent Turkoman in Hyde Park early in the morning. “Ross was involved with the Ottomans?”
“That, I do not know. But he was most certainly involved with Mr. Ramadani in some way.”
“Any idea what the subject of their argument might have been?”
The Colonel shook his head. “Sorry. I only caught the last few words of their discussion. But what I heard was interesting, to say the least. I distinctly heard Ramadani say, ‘Don’t threaten me, you little English shit, or you will be the one to be sorry.’ ”
Chapter 17
“Threaten him about what?” asked Sebastian.
Chernishav shrugged. “I never discovered. They saw me then. Ramadani strode away, while Ross laughed and tried to pass the incident off as nothing. But I knew he was concerned.”
Sebastian was silent for a moment.
Chernishav’s light blue eyes glinted with quiet amusement. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Russia and Turkey are well known to be age-old enemies.”
“True,” Chernishav acknowledged. “But since the recent Treaty of Bucharest, we are no longer at war.” He shrugged. “Believe me or not, as you will. But if Alexander did not die peacefully in his sleep as we have been led to believe, you could do worse than to take a look at some of the more questionable activities of the Sultan’s representative.”
Placing one hand on the hilt of his ceremonial sword, the Russian gave a short bow and moved away.
Sebastian was watching the Colonel thread a path across the crowded room when Miss Jarvis walked up to him.
“Learn anything?” she asked.
He turned to look into her shrewd gray eyes. As Lord Jarvis’s daughter, she probably knew more than almost anyone else in London about the delicate diplomatic maneuverings swirling around Ross’s death. Yet the fact that she was Jarvis’s daughter meant that Sebastian couldn’t trust her. And it occurred to him that the implications of that lack of trust did not bode well for their future together.
“What?” she said, her gaze hard on his face.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Are you planning to tell me what makes you suspect that Alexander Ross did not, in fact, die peacefully in his sleep?”
Sebastian cast a meaningful glance about the glittering assembly. “This might not be the most appropriate setting for such a discussion.”
“I will be spending tomorrow morning at the site of the old Grayfriar’s Priory in Newgate. We can speak more freely there,” she said, and withdrew.
He watched her walk away, torn between amusement and annoyance and the unsettling realization that his coming marriage would alter his life in more ways than he could begin to envision.
From the distance came the peal of the city’s church bells, ringing out the half hour. Soon, it would be time to pay another, more surreptitious visit to Alexander Ross’s rooms on St. James’s Street. But first he had an important stop to make.
He ordered his carriage and set off for Covent Garden.
Auburn haired and beautiful, Kat Boleyn sat at her dressing table, the flickering candlelight casting a golden glow across her bare shoulders, her slender arms raised as she eased the pins from her dark hair. She looked up when he slipped into the room. Their eyes met in the mirror, and for one telling moment her breath caught.
She was the toast of the London stage, an actress famed for both her talent and her beauty. She was also the natural daughter of Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, and the love of Sebastian’s life.
“Devlin,” she whispered. She did not move.
He stood for a moment, his shoulders pressed against the closed door behind him. He had loved this woman for nearly a third of his life. Once, he’d sworn to make her his wife and to hell with the consequences. Then fate and a long, sordid tangle of lies had intervened. Now she was married to a man named Russell Yates, a dashing privateer whose secret sexual inclinations remained one of the few taboos still rigidly enforced by their otherwise lax society. While Sebastian ...
Sebastian was about to marry the daughter of his worst enemy.
He said, “I’m sorry for coming here, but I had to see you.”
She studied his face in the mirror. The effects of too many sleepless nights and too many brandies would be obvious to anyone who knew him as well as Kat. She said, “I’d heard you were wounded. Are you all right?”
He touched his arm, injured the week before in a fight to catch the killer of the Bishop of London. “It’s stiff, but that is all.” He drew a deep breath. “There’s something I must tell you. I’ve asked Miss Hero Jarvis to be my wife.”
“Jarvis?” She went white, the only sound the clatter of one of her hairpins hitting the surface of the dressing table. Once, Lord Jarvis had threatened her with torture and death. She had found a refuge of sorts through her marriage to Yates, but they both knew she would never really be safe from someone like Jarvis.
She let out a strange sound that might have been a shaky laugh. “I suppose there must be a reason for this. But I can’t at the moment imagine what it is.”
“There is a reason.” It was all he could say. He
supposed the reason would be obvious enough in a few months’ time, but it was not something he ever intended to confirm. He owed Miss Jarvis that.
“Does Hendon know?”
“Of the marriage? No.”
“I think you should be the one to tell him.”
When he didn’t answer, she drew in a quick breath, and then another. Yet her voice was still a harsh whisper when she said, “You know I wish you happy, Sebastian.” She hesitated, as if searching for something pleasant to say. “She ... she does not seem overly much like her father.”
“No. I don’t believe she is.” Overly much, he thought, although he didn’t say it. He watched Kat remove the last pins from her hair to send it cascading about her shoulders. The urge to reach out and touch her, to run his fingers through that heavy auburn fall, to draw her into his arms, was so intense that he shuddered with it.
She said, “I hear you are investigating the death of Alexander Ross.”
He was startled enough to smile. “Is there anyone in London who does not know of it at this point?”
“Probably not.”
He studied the familiar contours of her face, the wide, sensual mouth and childlike nose, the intense blue eyes she had inherited from her father. He knew that once she had worked for the French, passing along secrets she hoped would aid her mother’s people, the Irish. It had been more than a year now since she’d severed her connections to Napoléon’s agents. But that had been before—when they’d still been lovers, the truth of the connection between them blissfully unknown. It was possible, he supposed, that her relationship with the French had been resumed. He knew that her husband, Yates, still maintained his contacts with the smugglers who plied the perilous waters between England and the Continent.
He said, “Have you heard anything about Ross’s death?”
She shook her head. “No. But I can make some inquiries, if you’d like.”
“It might be helpful to know more about his activities.”
