Why Kings Confess (17 page)

L
ady Peter stood very still, only her shoulders jerking with the agitation of her breathing as she watched Sebastian walk up to her. And he found himself wondering why she feared him so much.

She said, “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

“Only some information about Damion Pelletan.” He shifted his gaze to the mock naval race before them. “Who made the boats? Lord Peter?”

She shook her head. “Noël. He has ambitions to go to sea.”

“It can be a lucrative career,” said Sebastian.

“It can also be a deadly one—even when England is not at war, as it is now.”

“England will always be at war with someone, somewhere.”

“True.” He was aware of her gaze lifting from the boats to his face. “But you didn’t come here to discuss my brother’s future career options, did you, Lord Devlin?”

He watched the two boats skim across the choppy surface of the water. “You told me you grew up next door to Damion Pelletan, in Paris.”

“Y-yes,” she said warily, obviously unsure where he was going with this.

“How well did you know his sister, Alexi?”

“Alexi?” She let out her breath in a soft sigh, as if relieved by the seemingly innocuous direction of the conversation. “Not well. She was six years older than I, and very serious. She always dreamt of becoming a physician. She had little use for dolls or needlework or silly little girls like me.”

“She went to the University of Bologna to study?”

Lady Peter nodded. “She was just sixteen. Dr. Philippe had an uncle there, and she went to stay with him.”

“What do you know of her first husband—Beauclerc, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. He was a physician as well. I never knew him; I believe they met in Bologna. When he joined the Grand Army, Alexi went with him.”

“He was killed?”

“Yes.” She watched Noël run along the water’s edge, shouting encouragement to first one boat, then the other. “Why are you asking me these questions about Alexi?”

“I’m wondering why she would take such care to preserve your secret.”

Lady Peter turned her head to look at him, her breath leaving her body in an odd, forced laugh. “Secret? What secret?”

“Damion Pelletan didn’t come to London to see his sister, did he? He came to see you. Did he come here intending to try to convince you to leave England and go back to France with him? Or was that a decision he reached only after he saw you?”

The new bruise stood out starkly against the ashen pallor of her face. “No! I’ve no idea what you are talking about!”

“You said Damion Pelletan came to dinner one evening and paid you a few formal calls.”

“Yes.”

“Then how did he come to know Noël?” Children traditionally made no appearance at formal meals or visits.

She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“You told me that on the morning of his death, last Thursday, you saw Pelletan in the park arguing with Kilmartin. You said Noël called out to Damion and would have run to him if you hadn’t stopped him. That suggests that Noël not only knew Damion Pelletan, but that he considered him a friend. How did your little brother come to know him so well?”

Rather than answer, she looked out over the wind-wrinkled water, her throat working painfully as she swallowed.

“Did Lord Peter find out about Damion?” Sebastian asked quietly. “Is that why he hit you?”

“My husband does not beat me,” she said with awful dignity.

“Where did you get the bruise on your face, Lady Peter?”

One gloved hand crept up to touch her cheek, then fluttered self-consciously away. “I . . . I tripped. It was the silliest thing. I tripped and smacked my face against the side of a bureau.”

Sebastian watched Noël run around to the far bank to try to catch his boats. “Does Lord Peter know that you and Damion Pelletan were once considerably more than childhood friends?”

She shook her head.

“So he didn’t realize that Pelletan was still in love with you?”

“No! He didn’t know anything, I swear it.” She started to touch her bruise again. Then, as if becoming aware of what she was about to do, she curled her hand into a fist and dropped it to her side.

In England, a husband was legally empowered to beat his wife. He was expected to restrain himself to “gentle chastisement,” but the forces of the law usually looked the other way unless he so far forgot himself as to kill the poor, hapless woman. Even then, he could frequently plead manslaughter and get away with a simple burning on the hand.

The law was not always so tolerant of a jealous husband who killed a real or imagined rival for his wife’s affections.

Lady Peter said, “There—there is something I did not tell you.”

“Oh?”

She bit her lower lip, her gaze sliding away from him, as if frantically calculating how much to tell him—and how much to keep hidden. “You’re right; I did see Damion more frequently than I admitted before—perhaps more than I ought to have. He reminded me so much of happier days, of springtime along the Seine, when my parents were still alive and I was young and carefree.”

“And?”

“Damion would sometimes meet Noël and me here, in the park. I last spoke to him late Wednesday afternoon—the day before he died. I knew as soon as I saw him just how upset he was.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“At first he tried to shrug it off, saying the constant quarreling amongst the various members of the delegation was becoming tiring. But he finally admitted he’d discovered something that troubled him—something about Vaundreuil.”

“About Vaundreuil’s health?”

“No. Damion told me once that Vaundreuil’s heart is nowhere near as bad as Vaundreuil believes it to be—that if he would only eat sensibly and drink in moderation, he would in all likelihood live to a ripe old age.” She watched Noël hunker down to retrieve his boats. “Whatever worried him involved the peace negotiations. He told me he was considering approaching Colonel Foucher with what he knew.”

“Do you think he did?

“I don’t know. He may have decided instead to confront Vaundreuil directly.”

Sebastian studied her flawless profile, the exquisite lines of her face marred by the ugly purple bruise. “Did Damion ever tell you someone was trying to bribe him?”

“Good heavens, no. Bribe him to do what?”

“Spy on the other members of the delegation, perhaps?”

“You mean work for the English? Damion would never have agreed to do such a thing. He was an honorable man—and fiercely loyal to France. He had no interest in money.”

“There are other ways of persuading a man to do things against his will.”

“By threats, you mean?” She shook her head. “Damion would never have allowed himself to be coerced into doing something dishonorable.”

“Even if the threats weren’t against Damion himself, but against someone he loved?”

Her gaze drifted back to her little brother, who had left his boats on the bank and was now following a waddling, complaining duck across winter-browned grass scattered with patches of melting snow. She swallowed hard, the silence filling with the rush of the wind and the slap of the water against the shore and the homely
quack-quack
of the duck.

Sebastian said, “Why did you decide to tell me about Vaundreuil now?”

She shook her head, as if unable or unwilling to put her motivation into words.

And he was not cruel enough to do it for her.

•   •   •

Harmond Vaundreuil was sitting at a table in the coffee room of the Gifford Arms when Sebastian walked in. An array of papers covered the surface before him; he had a quill in one hand, his head bent, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose. He cast Sebastian a quick glance, then returned to his work.

“The coffee room is not open to the public,” he said in his heavy Parisian accent.

Sebastian went to stand with his back to the roaring fire. “Good. Then we don’t need to be worried about an interruption.”

Vaundreuil grunted and dipped his pen in the small pot of ink at his elbow.

“How are the negotiations progressing?” Sebastian asked pleasantly as the Frenchman’s quill scratched across his paper.

“Why don’t you ask your father-in-law? Or your own father, for that matter.”

Sebastian was careful to keep all sign of surprise off his face. But the truth was, he had not known until now that Hendon was also involved in the preliminary peace discussions.

When he remained silent, Vaundreuil grunted again and said, “Still determinedly chasing the illusion that Damion Pelletan was killed by someone other than a band of London’s notorious footpads?”

“Something like that. Tell me: Was Pelletan an ardent supporter of the Emperor Napoléon?”

“Dr. Pelletan was a dedicated physician. To my knowledge, he wasn’t an ardent supporter of anyone.”

“But he favored peace?”

“He did.”

“And was he pleased with the direction the negotiations were taking?”

Vaundreuil lifted his head in a way that enabled him to look at Sebastian over the upper rims of his spectacles. “Damion Pelletan had no part in the negotiations.”

“But he knew how they were progressing, did he not?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.” The Frenchman went back to his writing.

Sebastian said, “Did you know Damion Pelletan has a sister here in London?”

“I did, yes. Now you really must excuse me; I am very busy. Would you kindly go away and allow me to finish my work?”

“In a moment. Are you not even curious to know what happened to him?”

“I am a diplomat, not a policeman. The wrong kind of curiosity is a luxury I cannot afford. If Damion Pelletan’s murderer must go free for the negotiations to continue, then so be it.”

“I can understand that. But what if Pelletan was killed by someone intent on disrupting your mission? Surely it has occurred to you that the murderer might well try again—by targeting someone else in your party?”

Vaundreuil dropped his pen, a splotch of ink flowing across the paper as his head came up. His gaze met Sebastian’s across the room, then jerked away as footsteps sounded on the paving outside the inn’s sashed windows.

Sebastian heard a man’s voice, followed by a woman’s gentle laughter. It took him a moment to realize who it was. Then he saw Colonel Foucher walking side by side with Madeline Quesnel, a market basket slung over her arm.

And there was no disguising the raw fear that gusted across her father’s face as he confronted a new and obviously terrifying possibility.

•   •   •

A smothering envelope of dense fog was descending on the city, yellow and heavy with the bitter stench of coal smoke.

Leaving the Gifford Arms, Sebastian turned toward the hackney stand at the end of York Street. It was only midafternoon, but the streets were unnaturally deserted, the pavement slick with condensation and grime, every sound magnified or distorted by the suffocating shroud of foul, heavy moisture. He could hear the rattle of a harness in the distance, the shouts of boatmen out on the river . . .

And the steady rhythm of a man’s footsteps that seemed to start up out of nowhere and gained on him, fast.

S
ebastian walked on, his senses suddenly, intensely alert.

The shadow’s footsteps kept pace with him.

He passed a gnarled old workman in a blue smock, his gray bearded face beaded with moisture, his head bent as he hurried on without a second glance. A moment later came the thump of two bodies colliding and the workman’s angry, “Oy! Why don’t ye watch where yer goin’?” The shadow’s footsteps hesitated for an instant, then resumed and quickened.

Sebastian stepped sideways, turning so that his back was to the brick wall of the town house beside him as he stopped and listened.

Damn this fog.

A man stepped out of the swirling mist: a gentleman, clad in a fashionable greatcoat and beaver hat with a heavy scarf that obscured the lower part of his face. He held his left hand straight down at his side, the folds of his greatcoat all but obscuring the dagger clutched in his fist.

“Looking for me?” said Sebastian.

For one startled instant, the man’s gaze met Sebastian’s and his dark, heavily lashed eyes blinked as he realized just how radically the situation had suddenly altered. Not only had he lost the benefit of surprise, but it was considerably easier to knife a man in the back than to confront him face-to-face.

Sebastian took a step forward. “What’s the matter? Can’t get at my back?”

The would-be assailant turned and darted into the street.

Sebastian leapt after him.

A team of bay shires appeared out of the fog, heads bent as they leaned into their harnesses, the heavily loaded dray they pulled rattling over the uneven paving. The man drew up and spun around, his knife flashing just as Sebastian’s foot slid on the wet stones. Before he could jerk out of the way, the blade slashed along Sebastian’s forearm. Sebastian fought to regain his balance on the icy pavement, slipped, and went down hard.

The man whirled and ran.

“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, scrambling to his feet, his bleeding arm held crimped to his chest. A whip cracked, the air filling with harsh shouts and the jingle of harness as a wide-eyed pair of grays reared suddenly in the gloom. Sebastian ducked out of the way of the horses’ slashing hooves, then swerved to dodge a lumbering dowager’s carriage.

By the time he reached the opposite footpath, the greatcoated man in the heavy scarf had disappeared.

•   •   •

“Your questions are obviously making someone uncomfortable,” said Gibson, laying a neat row of stitches along the gash in Sebastian’s arm.

Sebastian grunted. “The question is: Who?” He was seated on the table in Gibson’s surgery, stripped to his waist, a glass of brandy cradled in his good, right hand.

Gibson tied off his thread. “Any chance Monsieur Harmond Vaundreuil could have had his own physician killed?”

“You mean because he discovered someone—probably Kilmartin—was trying to bribe Pelletan?” Sebastian took a slow swallow of his brandy. “It’s certainly possible. It wouldn’t matter whether or not Pelletan actually accepted Kilmartin’s bribe, if Vaundreuil somehow came to hear of it. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Vaundreuil is afraid of something. I just don’t know what.”

“The other members of his delegation, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.” He remembered the horror Vaundreuil had shown when told the killer had removed Pelletan’s heart. He still believed that horror was real. But it was always possible the Frenchman had simply been ignorant of his own henchman’s viciousness.

Sebastian watched Gibson smear a foul-smelling salve over the wound. “What I find difficult to understand is why Vaundreuil or one of his associates would want to plant a charge of gunpowder in Golden Square in an effort to kill Damion Pelletan’s sister. But then, that could be because Madame Sauvage is being considerably less honest with us than she could be. About a lot of things.”

He was aware of Gibson stiffening. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve discovered that Damion Pelletan was trying to convince Lord Peter Radcliff’s pretty young wife to run away with him. In fact, Pelletan and his sister were actually arguing about it just moments before he was murdered. Now, why do you suppose she neglected to tell us that?”

A woman’s voice sounded from the doorway behind him. “I’ve told you there is much I still don’t recall from that night.”

Sebastian turned to look at her. She wore the same old-fashioned gown from that morning, the smudges of black at her knees still visible from where she’d knelt beside the body of her dead servant woman. And it occurred to him that everything she owned had probably been lost in the explosion and fire.

He glanced at Gibson, who was preparing to wrap a bandage around the injured arm. A faint but clearly discernable flush of color rode high on the surgeon’s gaunt cheekbones. And Sebastian knew without being told that Gibson had offered the now homeless Frenchwoman a place to stay—and she had accepted.

He looked back at Madame Sauvage. “How long had you known?”

“That Damion wanted Julia to return with him to France? He only told me that night, as we were walking up Cat’s Hole to see Cécile.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“You mean that he had discovered Radcliff was beating her? Yes.”

“And it never occurred to you that a man violent enough to use his fists on his helpless young wife might also be violent enough to kill the man proposing to steal that wife away from him?”

“I told you, I only learned what Damion intended the night of the attack. I simply did not recall it.”

Sebastian let his gaze drift over the pale, fine-boned features of her face. Not only was she a habitual liar, but she wasn’t particularly good at it. How the hell Gibson couldn’t see that was beyond him. But all he said was, “Tell me about your father’s autopsy of the Dauphin in the Temple Prison.”

The sudden shift in topic seemed to confuse her. She stared at him, her eyes wide. “What?”

“Your father was one of the doctors who performed an autopsy on Marie-Thérèse’s ten-year-old brother, the Dauphin of France, after his death in prison. You were—how old? Twelve? Thirteen?”

“I was fourteen.”

“So you must recall something about it. I take it you were already interested in medicine at the time. Surely he discussed it with you.”

“He did.”

“Did he believe the dead boy he saw in the Temple was in fact the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette?”

She moved to stand before the room’s fireplace, her back to them, her gaze on the small blaze on the hearth. “My father saw the boy alive only once or twice, when he was called to the Temple just days before the child’s death. He never had any doubt that the boy who died in prison was that same child.”

“Yet that’s not to say the child he treated was actually the Dauphin.”

“No,” she said quietly. “I have seen the autopsy report—my father kept a copy himself. It has been years since I read it, but I remember noticing that he was very careful to state that the body was identified by the jailors as belonging to the Dauphin. He himself did not make the identification.”

“Did he believe the dead child actually was the Dauphin?”

“I honestly do not know. It’s not something he likes to talk about. I do know he was confused because the jailors insisted to him that the child’s final illness had come on suddenly. Yet the boy died of a long-standing case of tuberculosis.”

“Did he? Or was that simply the story that was put out? A fiction much less damning than to admit that he died of mistreatment or neglect.”

“No; my father told me the child whose body he autopsied most definitely died of tuberculosis.”

Sebastian looked at Gibson, who had his head bent, his attention seemingly all for the task of tying off the bandage. In the sudden hush, the buffeting of the wind against the heavy old windows and the creak of a cart’s axle in the lane outside sounded unnaturally loud.

Alexi Sauvage said, “What precisely are you suggesting? A moment ago, you would have had me believe that Lord Peter Radcliff killed my brother for coveting his wife. Now you’re saying Damion’s death is somehow linked to an autopsy my father performed nearly twenty years ago? Are you actually suggesting that the Dauphin somehow survived his imprisonment, and my father knew it? But . . . that’s absurd!”

“Is it?”

“It is, yes. My father must have believed the Dauphin died in the Temple. Otherwise, why would he—” She broke off, her chest jerking on a suddenly indrawn breath.

“What is it?” asked Sebastian, watching her. “Otherwise why would he
what
?”

Her tongue crept out to slide across her cracked lower lip. “At the conclusion of the autopsy, my father wrapped the boy’s heart in his handkerchief and smuggled it out of the prison hidden in the pocket of his coat. He soaked the heart in alcohol and has kept it preserved in a crystal vase in his office ever since.”

“Are you telling me your father was the physician who removed the Dauphin’s heart?
And he still has it?
”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell us this? Why?”

Her jaw tightened, her eyes flashing with scorn. “My father has performed hundreds of autopsies over the course of his career. It is preposterous to think that Damion’s murder here, in London, is somehow linked to a death that occurred in Paris decades ago. My brother was killed because he was part of a delegation seeking a peace that is anathema to powerful interests here in England, both political and economic. Powerful interests that include your own father-in-law!”

Sebastian returned her hard stare. “I might be able to accept that more easily if it weren’t for one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Why would Lord Jarvis—or anyone else involved in the peace negotiations, for that matter—want to steal your brother’s heart?”