When Falcons Fall (20 page)

Sunday, 8 August

P
leasant Park, the ancestral home of the powerful Turnstall family, lay to the southwest of Tenbury, in the rolling, verdant country of Herefordshire.

Nursing his chestnuts in easy stages, Sebastian arrived there in the afternoon. The sky was still overcast, with thickening gray clouds that robbed the day of light and warmth and cheer. Stately and pretentious, the house rose at the end of a sweeping, oak-lined carriageway. Its walls were built of massive, carefully hewn sandstone blocks, the roofline bristling with tall chimneys that thrust up pale against the dark foliage of the wooded hillside behind it. The gardens were as stiff and formal as the house, with close-cropped lawns, trim yew hedges, and old-fashioned box-edged parterres.

“Gor,” breathed Tom as Sebastian reined in before the house’s grand, Palladian-influenced portico. “’Er family owns
this
?”

“This, and another half dozen estates, besides,” said Sebastian, hopping down to the gravel sweep.

To arrive unexpected at such a grand country estate was considered bad form, so Sebastian wasn’t surprised when he was shown to a small waiting room by a stately butler and left to cool his heels for a number of minutes. He’d about decided the current Earl must not be receiving when the butler returned with a bow to say, “This way, if you please, my lord?”

He led Sebastian to a cavernous salon with figured pink silk–covered walls, richly colored marble pilasters, ormolu-mounted marquetry bureaus, and clusters of stately, throne-like chairs and settees gathered around each of the room’s three marble-decked fireplaces.

Albert Felton Turnstall, Third Earl of Heyworth, stood beside the room’s central hearth, one arm laid along the mantelpiece in what was meant to be a relaxed pose but instead came off as studied. He was of average height but slight of frame, with reddish blond hair and swooping curly side-whiskers. Sebastian knew him slightly, for the Turnstalls spent some months of every year in London. He was somewhere in his early to mid-thirties, which meant that Emma Chandler was most likely the natural daughter of this man’s father, the Second Earl.

The Earl’s mother, the Dowager Countess of Heyworth, sat nearby on a tapestry-covered chair, her stout body rigid with anger, her color high, and her head thrown back. Sebastian had the distinct impression that mother and son had argued over whether to receive him and that both knew the reason for his visit.

“Lord Devlin,” said Heyworth with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “What an unexpected pleasure.” The emphasis on the word “unexpected” was subtle, but there.

The formalities were punctiliously observed, polite utterances mouthed, and Sebastian invited to sit. Yet all the while, the room vibrated with an undeniable tension.

Sebastian smiled at his host and said bluntly, “I gather you know why I’m here.”

Heyworth expelled his breath in a startled, nervous laugh. “Why, no. Are you by chance in the neighborhood?”

“Not far. At Ayleswick, in Shropshire. I assume you’ve heard of the recent murders there?”

Heyworth and the Dowager Countess exchanged guarded glances. Sebastian thought for a moment the Earl meant to deny all knowledge of the subject. But then he obviously realized the folly of trying to claim ignorance of something that had set the entire West Midlands to talking.

“Yes. Shocking, to be sure. I understand you’ve involved yourself in the investigations?”

“I have, yes. And I’m afraid we’ve recently discovered that the dead woman’s name was not Chance as previously believed, but Chandler.” He hesitated. “Emma Chandler.”

The Dowager Countess remained rigidly silent. But Heyworth, who had resumed his stance beside the fireplace, lifted one eyebrow in a show of polite interest. “Oh?”

“The name means nothing to you?”

“No. Should it?”

Sebastian glanced, again, at the Dowager Countess. She was perhaps sixty years of age, deep of bosom and round of face, with dark blond hair fading rapidly to gray. Once, she might have been pretty. But sixty years of haughtiness, conceit, contempt, and petulant self-indulgence had etched themselves into her face in ways that were not attractive. Sebastian had the impression that if it had been up to the Dowager, she would have denied him, that it was Heyworth who had insisted they brazen out the interview.

Sebastian said, “I should think it would, given that your family paid her fees at a Tenbury academy for something like fourteen years.”

Heyworth gave another of his breathy, unconvincing laughs. “I’m sorry, but whoever told you such a thing was mistaken.”

“Indeed?” Sebastian looked from the Third Earl to his silent, angry mother. “Well then, my apologies for disturbing you.”

“Not at all,” said Heyworth. “Shall I ring for a footman to show you out? I do hope you have more success elsewhere.”

“Perhaps I shall.” Sebastian rose to his feet. “Emma will be buried in the churchyard at Ayleswick, should you wish at any point in the future to pay your respects to your sister.”

“She was not my sister,”
hissed Heyworth.

Sebastian smiled and started to turn toward the door. Then he paused, his attention arrested by the large painting that hung on the far wall.

A massive canvas, it was a life-sized portrait of an eighteenth-century family grouping set against a leafy background. Dressed in the splendid silks, velvets, lace, and opulent jewelry of a gentleman of the late 1780s or early 1790s, the Second Earl of Heyworth stood with one hand propped on his waist, his gaze off to one side as if he were surveying his estate with pride. He had his son’s sharp features but a much stronger chin, his long wig powdered and crimped in the style of the day, his half smile one of calm self-satisfaction and pride.

His Countess reposed beside him on a stone bench. The Dowager had indeed been quite lovely when young, her figure slender and well formed, her eyes a deep, almost violet blue, her hair fashionably powdered. Two children relaxed in the grass at her feet. The future Third Earl, Albert Felton Turnstall, looked to be perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age, his bored conceit captured by the artist with startling clarity. But it was the young girl beside him who drew and held Sebastian’s attention.

Some fifteen or sixteen years at the time she was painted, she was laughing down at a small kitten that clambered over her lap. Her smile was both vibrant and warm, and yet there was something about her posture that made her seem vaguely detached from both the artist painting her and the other members of her family. Her natural, unpowdered hair was the same rich, reddish blond as her brother’s, although she lacked his sharp nose and rather weak chin. In fact, she looked very much like a younger version of the woman sitting behind her.

The resemblance of both mother and daughter to the pallid young woman Sebastian had last seen being prepared for burial was unmistakable.

Sebastian felt a heavy weight of sadness as the implications of what he was seeing sank into him. He had assumed Emma Chandler must be the natural daughter of the Second Earl of Heyworth, carelessly begotten on some mistress or village girl. But he realized now that the actual truth was probably far more tragic, that Emma was in all likelihood the child of this laughing young girl whose exact name—and fate—were unknown to him.

He swung around to stare back at the stony-faced Dowager who still sat with her hands clenching the gilded arms of her chair. He’d thought her anger and cold indifference to Emma’s fate the product of a proud woman’s resentment of her husband’s bastard. But if his suppositions were correct, then Emma Chandler was this woman’s granddaughter.

He might have apologized for so callously breaking the news to her of her granddaughter’s death. Except that he had no doubt she’d already known.

And didn’t care.

Sebastian was waiting for Tom to bring the curricle round when Lord Heyworth’s butler came to stand beside him.

An aged, dignified man with thick white hair, a deeply lined, impassive face, and a fiercely upright carriage, the butler gazed out at the carriage sweep before the house and said, “You’ll be wishing to stop somewhere for the night, my lord?”

Sebastian studied the man’s stoic, unreadable profile. “Can you recommend something?”

The butler kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. “The Black Lion in Kirby is quite comfortable, my lord. The innkeeper’s wife once served as governess to Lord Heyworth and his sister, Lady Emily. A Miss Rice, she was then. Did you know Lady Emily, my lord? She died twenty-one years ago now, at the tender age of seventeen. Tragic, it was.”

Sebastian watched Tom bring the chestnuts to a stand before them with a cocky flourish. “Yes, it must have been. Thank you for the recommendation. My horses have already gone far enough for one day.”

The butler gave a stately bow and withdrew.

T
he Black Lion proved to be a neat, eighteenth-century brick inn with white casement windows and a steep slate roof. It stood in the center of the village of Kirby, a small cluster of houses centered around a soaring fifteenth-century jewel of a church.

The innkeeper was a large, jolly-looking man named Will Hanson. In his late fifties with an ample girth, three chins, and ruddy cheeks, he bustled forward to greet Sebastian with a wide smile, his voice booming, “Welcome! Welcome!” But when he heard Sebastian’s name, the smile faded into something pained. “Ah,” he said with a heavy sigh. “You’re here about the poor lass was killed up Ayleswick way.”

Sebastian paused in the act of swinging off his driving coat in the inn’s flagged hall and looked over at his host in surprise. “How did you know?”

“Stayed with us some three or four weeks back, she did.” The innkeeper motioned over a lanky, half-grown lad. “Here, Richard, take his lordship’s portmanteau up to the best bedchamber while I have Bridget fetch some hot water.” To Sebastian, he said, “And then I reckon your lordship will be wishing to speak with my wife?”

“Yes, please.”

“I arrived at Pleasant Park when Lady Emily was eight and her brother, Albert, had just been breeched,” said Sarah Hanson. She was a plump woman a few years younger than her husband, with silvery gray hair framing a plain, kind face. “I was very young at the time myself. My father was a vicar in Worcestershire, but he died when I was nineteen, and I had no brothers. Fortunately, my father had seen that I was given a good education, and his successor was kind enough to assist me in locating a position.”

They were walking along a narrow, shady lane that wound around the village’s ancient churchyard, toward the fields beyond. The evening was as overcast and somber as the day, the air cool and damp and filled with birdsong from the rooks, jackdaws, and thrushes coming in to roost in the soaring tops of the chestnuts and beech overhead.

“I used to wonder what would have happened to Emily if I hadn’t come along,” said the former governess. “She was so very different from the other members of her family. She told me once that she felt like a changeling—although of course she was not. From what I’ve heard, I suspect she took after her grandfather, the First Earl, who was by all accounts a remarkable man. But he was dead by the time Lady Emily came along. She was a very unhappy child.”

“How long were you with the family?” Sebastian asked.

“Nearly ten years.”

“So until Lady Emily died?”

Sarah Hanson’s face pinched with an old but still raw grief. “She died in my arms.”

“In childbirth?”

“No. They killed her—her family, I mean. Oh, they could never be charged, of course. But they killed her, just as surely as if they’d run her through with a sword.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

She looked up at him, her gaze steady and solemn. “I can tell you what I know.”

It began innocently enough, late in the summer of 1791, when Lady Emily was just sixteen, young and beautiful and filled with a joyful zest for life.

A message arrived one afternoon at Pleasant Park from the Irvings of Maplethorpe Hall, inviting Lady Heyworth and her daughter to a country house party to be held the first week of September. Predictably, Lady Heyworth turned up her nose at the invite, saying with a sniff, “How impudent of them. Do they seriously think I would even consider accepting? The family positively reeks of the shop. Why, when I encountered Mrs. Irving at the assembly in Ludlow last spring, she told me her great-grandfather was a butcher!” Her ladyship gave a scornful titter. “Can you imagine?”

But Lady Emily was eager to attend her first real, grown-up house party. And so she assembled a carefully rehearsed list of arguments and approached her mother in her sitting room several mornings later.

“About the house party at Maplethorpe Hall . . . ,” she began.

Lady Heyworth was busy embroidering a fire screen and barely glanced at her daughter. “What about it?”

“I agree that Mrs. Irving isn’t quite the thing,” said Emily, clenching her hands behind her back. “But I do like her daughter, Liv. And you said yourself that I need more practice going into company before my Come Out in London next spring.”

Lady Heyworth kept her attention focused on her needlework. “Your Come Out is precisely why you must take care to avoid such entertainments. It would do you no credit for it to become known that you had lent your presence to a gathering of vulgar, pushing mushrooms.”

“But that’s just it, you see; the guest list is quite select—Liv wrote me all about it. Lady Dalton is taking Julia, and . . .” Here Emily paused to draw a deep breath in preparation for what she hoped would be her most persuasive argument. “Lord Stone will be there.”

Lady Heyworth’s hands stilled at their task as she looked over at her daughter. “Stone? You’re quite certain?”

Edward, Lord Stone, might be only a baron, but his estates were worth forty thousand pounds a year. Set against so grand a fortune, the fact that he was thirty-five years old, stout, and addicted to opera dancers and highflyers was inconsequential; Lady Heyworth had decided he would make a marvelous catch for her daughter and was already scheming of ways to bring Emily to his lordship’s notice. Emily had no intention of satisfying her mother’s ambitions in that direction, but she wasn’t above using the lure of Lord Stone’s presence to achieve her own ends.

“Well, why didn’t you say so before, you silly chit?” exclaimed her ladyship. “Of course you must go.” She pulled a face. “Although I won’t deny that the thought of having to endure that Irving woman for a good week is enough to bring on my spasms.” Then a happy thought occurred to her. “You say Lady Dalton will be there with Julia? I wonder if I could prevail upon her to take you into her charge.”

A letter of inquiry was duly dispatched to Lady Dalton, and a favorable response received. The fact that Lady Heyworth would be sending her sixteen-year-old daughter off to a country house party under the lax chaperonage of a woman known to be as lazy as she was fond of card games and discreet love affairs was not seen as an impediment.

“I had serious forebodings,” the former governess told Sebastian now as they paused beside an ancient, moss-covered stone wall to gaze out over the churchyard. “But between Lady Emily’s determination and her mother’s ambitions, no one would listen to me.”

“She went?”

“She did, yes. She had a marvelous time at first. How could she not? She was away from her mama’s censorious eye, and she was so pretty, and she was in the company of a good dozen men with whom to strike up a flirtation.”

“Who was there besides Stone?”

“Let’s see. . . . Lady Dalton brought her twenty-two-year-old son, George, as well as Julia. And Stone had several boon companions in his train—men of a similar ilk, I’m afraid. There were others as well, although I can’t recall them now. She wrote me a letter while she was there, talking about some of the people she’d met. I saved it. In fact, I showed it to Emma Chandler.”

“May I see it?”

Sarah Hanson pushed away from the churchyard wall and turned back toward the inn. “If you think it would be helpful, yes.”