by C. S. Harris
It didn’t take her long to spot the Italian harpist Valentino Vescovi. A lanky, craggy-faced man dressed in black with a red scarf tied around his neck, he was in a class by himself, gliding effortlessly across the ice as he executed an intricate pattern of graceful figures reminiscent of a courtly dance.
She stood for a time watching him. But after throwing one or two glances in her direction, he finally skated straight toward her, stopping with a flourish just offshore by leaning back on his heels with the acorn-tipped fronts of his skates pointing into the air.
He was a man somewhere in his thirties or forties, with dark hair and an expressive, mobile face. He’d come to London perhaps a dozen years before via Amsterdam—which was presumably where he’d learned ice-gliding. “Bene!” he said, his breath coming fast from the recent exercise. “I’d like to think you’re focused on me because you admire my skating. But that’s not it, is it? You are here because of Jane Ambrose, yes?”
Hero choked on her cider. “How did you know?”
His dark eyes gleamed with what might have been amusement. “You were at Warwick House this morning, Lady Devlin. And the walls there have ears.”
“Evidently.”
He said, “What I don’t understand is why you wish to speak with me.”
“I’m told you had an argument with Jane Ambrose last Monday. A very public argument. Here, by the canal.”
“Ah.” He climbed carefully off the ice to perch on a nearby bench and set to work unstrapping the skates from his boots. “I did, yes. It was so public, in fact, that I see no point in attempting to deny it.”
“Your honesty is refreshing.”
He glanced up, the first skate loose in his hand, and bobbed a self-deprecating little bow. “Grazie.”
“Care to tell me the subject of your disagreement?”
He bent over his task again. “A certain personage told Mrs. Ambrose something about me. Something . . . unflattering. And no, I have no intention of spreading the information any further by telling you what it was.”
“Was it true?”
“As it happens, yes, it was true. But I managed to convince her it wasn’t as serious as it sounded.”
“And which ‘personage’ told this ‘unflattering’ truth about you?”
He lifted one shoulder in a very Italian shrug as he tugged at the leather straps holding the second skate to his boot. “I do not recall.”
“I don’t believe you.”
At that he laughed out loud. “No? Well, believe this: If I were ever to decide to kill someone, it would be the figlio di puttana who was spreading such tales of me.” He looked up, his face now utterly serious. “Not Jane Ambrose.”
An older man and a little girl sailed past on the ice, the man skating, the grinning child simply holding on to the tails of his coat and gliding along in his wake. Hero said, “What do you know about the friendship between Jane and the Dutch courtier Peter van der Pals?”
The harpist’s expressive face twitched into a frown as he pursed his lips. “I don’t think I’d go so far as to call it a ‘friendship.’”
“What would you call it?”
He gave another shrug that could have meant anything and nothing. “Van der Pals played the gallant, and I suppose she enjoyed having a handsome, well-connected young man seem to find her interesting and attractive.”
“That’s all?”
He threaded the straps of his skates together and fastened the buckles. “That’s all. And then he began to make her uncomfortable.”
“How?”
Vescovi pushed to his feet. “Presumably because he began expecting favors she was unwilling to grant him.”
Hero studied the harpist’s bony, wide-featured face. “Were they lovers?”
“Goodness gracious, no.”
“So certain?”
“Yes.”
“Did she have a lover, do you think?”
He looped the skates over one shoulder. “It’s hardly the sort of thing we discussed.”
“No? Yet you know van der Pals wasn’t her lover and that he made her uncomfortable?”
“Oh, yes.”
Hero handed her cup to the booth’s boy and turned with Vescovi to walk up the packed icy footpath that ran along the canal. Hero said, “I was told Jane became jealous when van der Pals transferred his attentions to another woman.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s not true?”
“Hardly.”
“So was van der Pals flattering Jane in an attempt to convince her to spy on Princess Charlotte for him?”
Vescovi’s brows twitched together, but he kept staring straight ahead and remained silent.
“That is it, isn’t it?” said Hero.
The Italian let out his breath in a long, pained sigh. “Princess Charlotte might be young and tucked away in her own crumbling, cramped establishment separate from the rest of the royal family’s various palaces and castles. But her household is still part of the royal court.” He grimaced. “And show me a court that isn’t alive with intrigue and spying.”
“Is that why you warned Jane to be careful?”
“That was part of it, yes.”
“Only a part?” Hero studied the Italian’s bony, troubled profile. “Who do you think killed her?”
“I wish I knew, believe me.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Why?” He drew up and swung to face her, his dark eyes intense and shadowed. “Because I teach Princess Charlotte to play a musical instrument, just as Jane Ambrose taught the Princess to play an instrument, and now Jane is dead.” His face went oddly bleak, as if he were maintaining his composure with effort. “You think I’m not afraid?”
“You think she might have been killed by someone you both knew? Someone who might also be a threat to you?”
“I see it as a possibility, yes. You do not?”
“So exactly whom do you have in mind?”
“No one in particular.”
“No one? If you’re afraid, why not be more honest with me?”
“I have told you nothing that isn’t true.”
“Perhaps. Yet I suspect there is much that you could tell me but have not.”
He stared off across the white, undulating expanses of the park, its bushes and hollows now reduced to anonymous snow-covered mounds and dips. “The truth is frequently more dangerous than a lie.”
“Then tell me who you are afraid of,” Hero said quietly.
“Ah.” His lips twitched into a self-deprecating, unexpected smile. “But that would be the most dangerous of all.”
Chapter 12
The ancient cobbled lane that separated young Princess Charlotte’s dilapidated residence from the gardens of her father’s grand palace was known as Stone Cutters’ Alley. On leaving Carlton House, Sebastian had to pass through the classical colonnade that guarded the palace’s forecourt from the street, turn right, and walk past four tall houses before turning right again into the narrow lane. At one time the Prince of Wales had sought to seize the lane in order to expand his palace. But Stone Cutters’ Alley provided the only public approach to St. James’s Park from Pall Mall, and so great was the popular outcry that he was forced to give up the scheme.
When he reached the surprisingly dilapidated brick wall that sheltered Warwick House’s Renaissance courtyard from the lane, Sebastian paused, his eyes narrowed against the snow. The fresh white blanket gave the scene a simple, peaceful air. But he knew that was deceptive. The young Princess was separated physically and in almost every other way from her father, the Regent, yet her position as second in line to the throne made access to her both rare and coveted. And corridors of power were always dangerous.
He tipped back his head, his gaze scanning the brick house’s upper floors, and saw a curtain mo
ve at one window. It shifted for only an instant and then hung still. But he knew someone had been watching him.
The sound of the house’s front door opening and closing carried clearly in the snowy hush. Sebastian heard the crunch of footsteps crossing the snow-filled yard toward him. The solid wooden gate’s heavy iron latch twisted with a creak and the gate jerked inward to reveal an older man in an exquisitely tailored cassock and old-fashioned periwig.
He looked to be in his late sixties, with swooping heavy brows that drew together in a fierce frown. “What precisely do you think you are doing?” demanded the prelate, his long, prominent nose twitching. “I don’t know who you are or why you are here, young man, but you’d best move on before I—”
“The name is Devlin,” said Sebastian, calmly handing the man his card.
The prelate broke off, his thin-lipped little mouth going slack as he took the card. “Ah. My lord.” Mouth tightening, he gave a curt, begrudging bow. “I beg your pardon. I did not recognize you.” He sniffed. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Bishop of Salisbury, Preceptor to Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte.”
“Bishop,” said Sebastian with a polite bow. He had heard of the Right Reverend Doctor John Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury. With a reputation as a humorless, vain, self-important clergyman, Salisbury had coordinated the Princess’s education for nearly ten years. He had an affected manner of speaking and a strange way of pronouncing the word “bishop,” so that it came out sounding like “bish-UP.” Sebastian had heard that Charlotte, who heartily detested the humorless man and possessed a gift for mimicry, had long ago nicknamed him “the Great Up.”
The Great Up sniffed again. “I noticed someone loitering in the lane and thought it best to move them along.”
“Oh?”
“Can’t be too careful, what?” said the Bishop. “Not when one considers what happened to Mrs. Ambrose.”
“So you don’t believe she simply slipped on the ice?” said Sebastian.
“Oh, no, no, of course I believe it.” The Great Up gave an incredulous scoff that told Sebastian the Bishop knew only too well why Sebastian was here. “To suggest otherwise would be ridiculous.”
“Would it?”
“But of course!”
“Did you see her yesterday?”
“I did, yes. We encountered each other in the entrance hall just as she was leaving.”
“What time was this?”
“Must have been shortly after noon, I suppose.”
“You spoke to her?”
“Briefly. We exchanged a few pleasantries, nothing more.”
“Do you know where she planned to go after leaving Warwick House?”
“Sorry, no; I couldn’t say.” The Bishop gave an exaggerated sigh. “Shocking to think that only a few hours later she was dead. A timely reminder to us all to be prepared to meet our Maker at any moment.”
Sebastian was beginning to understand why the young Princess found the prelate so annoying. “Do you know if she had any enemies?”
“Enemies?” The Great Up drew back his head in an exaggerated gesture of disbelief nicely combined with obvious disapproval. “Of course not.”
“No?”
“She was a pianist!”
“Pianists don’t have enemies?”
The Bishop’s full cheeks darkened. “Jane Ambrose slipped in the snow, hit her head, and died. To suggest anything more nefarious is at work here is not only frivolous, but it is also irresponsible and—given the woman’s relationship to the Princess—dangerous nearly to the point of sedition.”
“Sedition? Seriously?”
The Great Up glared at Sebastian in righteous silence.
Sebastian touched his hat. “Thank you, Bishop. You’ve been . . . most helpful.”
The prelate responded with a stiff bow, took a step back, and closed the old heavy gate with a reverberating crash.
Sebastian stood still for a moment, the snow falling gently around him. He was about to turn away when he became aware of an elegant young woman in a fur-trimmed pelisse and a jaunty Swedish hat emerging from the public footpath that wound up from St. James’s Park. She was an extraordinarily tall woman, nearly as tall as he, with strong, handsome features and the aquiline nose of her father, Lord Jarvis.
“Good heavens,” said Hero, blinking against the falling snow as she came up to him. “What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
“I’ve been watching an Italian harpist ice-skate.”
“And that’s an explanation?”
She linked her mittened hand through his proffered arm and smiled. “It is.”
* * *
They turned their steps toward Brook Street while she told him what she had learned from her friend Miss Kinsworth and her subsequent conversations with the Dutch courtier and the harpist Valentino Vescovi.
“So, which of the two men do you think is telling the truth?” Sebastian asked, his gaze on her profile. “Van der Pals? Or Vescovi?”
She shook her head. “I’m not convinced either of them is. Although if I had to put money on one or the other, I’d pick the Italian harpist over the decorative Dutch courtier any day.”
“Because what he told you agrees better with what you heard from your friend Miss Kinsworth?”
“Partially. But I suspect it also has something to do with my profound aversion to handsome young men who believe themselves so charming that no female can resist them.”
“Ah.”
Hero looked troubled. “Could van der Pals have killed Jane simply because she’d exposed his attempts to convince her to spy on Princess Charlotte? He did say she’d be sorry if she betrayed him.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. Except, how did he know Jane told someone? Unless of course your Miss Kinsworth wasn’t actually as silent as she claims.”
Hero gazed off across the snow-filled intersection of Piccadilly and Bond Street, her features troubled.
“What?” he asked.
“I just wish I were more convinced that Ella Kinsworth was being completely honest with me. Don’t misunderstand me—I believe her to be a good, honorable woman. But when you serve as lady companion to a princess, you can’t always be as truthful as you’d like.”
The snow was coming down harder now, filling their world with a whirl of white. “I can’t believe the Regent is seriously considering marrying his daughter to Slender Billy,” said Sebastian, squinting up at the heavy sky.
She glanced over at him. “Orange was with Wellington in the Peninsula when you were there, was he not?”
“He was.”
“So you knew him?”
“I did.”
“And van der Pals as well?”
Sebastian nodded. “The two were inseparable.”
“Meaning?”
His gaze met hers. “Meaning a great deal. But I’m afraid it’s not something one can discuss in the middle of Bond Street—even if most of the shops are shuttered because of the snow.”
“Oh, dear. And does it have anything to do with why you were at Carlton House seeing my father?”
“Ah. You figured that out, did you?”
He told her then about his meeting with Jane’s bereaved husband and the pianist’s puzzling dismissal by Nathan Rothschild.
He did not tell her that Jarvis had essentially threatened to have him killed.
“For a simple musician,” said Hero as they turned up a snow-filled, strangely silent Brook Street toward home, “Jane Ambrose lived an unexpectedly dangerous life.”
“When you deal with people like the Rothschilds and the royal family,” said Sebastian, “life is never simple.”
* * *
It was late in the afternoon by the time Sebastian met with his friend Paul Gibson at the surgeon�
�s favorite tavern near the Tower.
“Sorry I wasn’t there to help with the inquest last night,” said Gibson, the pupils of his Irish green eyes noticeably small despite the dimness of the ancient Tudor tavern. “With both Alexi and me working, we might have found something before the palace came to seize the body.”
“I doubt there was much more to find,” said Sebastian, taking a deep drink of his ale.
“So, have you discovered how that poor woman came to be lying in the middle of a snow-filled lane?”
“No.” Sebastian leaned back in his seat, aware of a growing sense of frustration, of having spent the entire day grasping at the insignificant outer edges of Jane Ambrose’s life without ever coming close to capturing the essence of the woman she was or understanding why she was dead. “As far as we know, the last person to see Jane Ambrose alive was one of Princess Charlotte’s women, who chanced to look out a window of Warwick House around midday and see Jane crossing the courtyard toward the gate. But after that . . .” Sebastian paused. For some reason he could not explain, that moment haunted him. He kept imagining the slender, sad young woman, dressed in mourning for her dead children, walking across a neglected courtyard as the snow began to fall and going—where? Where the hell had she gone? And why?
“Nothing?” said Gibson.
“Not a bloody thing. I don’t know where she was killed, when she was killed, or basically anything that happened to her from the time she left Warwick House until Hero and Madame Sauvage stumbled over her body in Shepherds’ Lane. I can’t even figure out what the hell she was doing in Clerkenwell.” Sebastian took another deep drink. “Clerkenwell, of all places.”
“Alexi says she was wearing her pelisse when she died.”
Sebastian nodded. “Which means she was probably outside when she was killed. Although since she wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, it’s also possible she was simply preparing to go out—or had only recently come inside. As to why or how she burnt her fingers . . . I’ve not the slightest idea.”
