When Maidens Mourn Read online

  She stood for a long moment in the center of the room, her hands clenched before her. She had called Gabrielle friend for six years. But although they had been close in many ways, Hero realized now just how compartmentalized their friendship had been. They had talked of history and art, of philosophy and poetry. Hero knew the pain Gabrielle had suffered at the early loss of her mother and her lingering grief over the brothers who died so young; she knew her friend’s fondness for children. But she did not know Gabrielle’s reason for turning away from marriage and any possibility of bearing children of her own.

  It occurred to Hero that she had simply assumed her friend’s reasons mirrored her own. But she knew that assumption was without basis. Gabrielle had challenged the typical role of women in their society by her own enthusiasm for scholarship and her determination to openly pursue her interests. Yet she had never been one to crusade for the kind of changes Hero championed. When Hero spoke of a future when women would be allowed to attend Oxford or to sit in Parliament, Gabrielle would only smile and faintly shake her head, as if convinced these things would never be—and perhaps never should be.

  She had certainly never spoken of her friendship with some mysterious French lieutenant. But then, Hero had never mentioned to Gabrielle her own strange, conflicted attraction to a certain dark-haired, amber-eyed viscount. And Hero found herself wondering now what Gabrielle had thought of her friend’s sudden, seemingly inexplicable wedding. They’d never had the opportunity to discuss it.

  There were so many things the two friends had needed to discuss—had intended to discuss that morning Hero was to drive up to Camlet Moat. Now Hero was left with only questions and an inescapable measure of guilt.

  “What happened to you?” she said softly as she let her gaze drift around her friend’s room to linger on the high tester bed and primrose coverlet, the mirrored dressing table and scattering of silver boxes and crystal vials. The chamber was, essentially, as Gabrielle had left it when she went off on Sunday, not knowing she would never return. Yet Hero could feel no lingering presence here, no whispered essence of the woman whose laughter and dreams and fears this place had once witnessed. There was only a profound, yawning stillness that brought a pricking to Hero’s eyelids and swelled her throat.

  Leaving the house, she directed her coachman to the Park Lane home of a certain member of Parliament from the Wolds of Lincolnshire. Only then, as her carriage rocked through the streets of London, did Hero lean back against the soft velvet squabs, and for the first time since she’d learned of Gabrielle’s death, she allowed the tears to fall.

  A few carefully worded inquiries at the War Office, the Alien Office, and the Admiralty provided Sebastian with the information that there were literally thousands of paroled French and allied officers in Britain. Most captured enemy officers were scattered across the land in one of fifty so-called parole towns. But some were billeted in London itself.

  Prisoners of war from the ranks were typically thrown into what were known as “the hulls.” Rotting, demasted ships deemed too unseaworthy to set sail, the hulls were essentially floating prisons. By day, the men were organized into chained gangs and marched off to labor on the docks and in the surrounding area’s workshops. At night they were locked fast in the airless, vermin-ridden, pestilence-infested darkness belowdecks. Their death rate was atrocious.

  But the officers were traditionally treated differently. Being gentlemen, they were credited with possessing that most gentlemanly of characteristics: honor. Thus, a French officer could be allowed his freedom with only a few restrictions as long as he gave his word of honor as a gentleman—his parole—that he would not escape.

  “That’s the theory, at least,” grumbled the plump, graying functionary with whom Sebastian spoke at the Admiralty. “Problem is, too many of these damned Frog officers are not gentlemen. They raise them up from the ranks, you see—which is why we’ve had over two hundred of the bastards run off just this year alone.” He leaned forward as if to underscore his point. “No honor.”

  “Two hundred?”

  “Two hundred and thirty-seven, to be precise. Nearly seven hundred in the past three years. These Frenchies may be officers, but too many of them are still scum. Vermin, swept up out of the gutters of Paris and lifted far above their proper station. That’s what happens, you see, when civilization is turned upside down and those who were born to serve start thinking themselves as good as their betters.” The very thought of this topsy-turvy world aroused such ire in the functionary’s ample breast that he was practically spitting.

  “Yet some of the best French officers have come up through the ranks,” said Sebastian. “Joachim Murat, for example. And Michel Ney—”

  “Pshaw.” The functionary waved away these examples of ungentlemanly success with the dismissive flap of one pudgy hand. “It is obvious you know nothing of the Army, sir. Nothing!”

  Sebastian laughed and started to turn away.

  “You could try checking with Mr. Abel McPherson—he’s the agent appointed by the Transport Board of the Admiralty to administer the paroled prisoners in the area.”

  “And where would I find him?” asked Sebastian, pausing to look back at the clerk.

  “I believe he’s in Norfolk at the moment. I’ve no doubt he left someone as his deputy, but I can’t rightly tell you who.”

  “And who might have that information?”

  “Sorry. Can’t help you. But McPherson should be back in a fortnight.”

  Hero was received at the Mayflower house of the honorable Charles d’Eyncourt by the MP’s married sister, a dour woman in her mid-thirties named Mary Bourne.

  Mrs. Bourne had never met Hero and was all aflutter with the honor of a visit from Lord Jarvis’s daughter. She received Hero in a stately drawing room hung with blond satin and crammed with an assortment of gilded crocodile-legged tables and colorful Chinese vases that would have delighted the Prince Regent himself. After begging “dear Lady Devlin” to please, pray be seated, she sent her servants flying for tea and cakes served on a silver tray so heavy the poor butler staggered beneath its weight. She then proceeded, seemingly without stopping for breath, to prattle endlessly about everything from her Bible study at the Savoy Chapel to her dear Mr. Bourne’s concerns for her remaining in the metropolis with such a ruthless murderer on the loose, and followed that up with an endless description of a recent family wedding at which fandangos and the new waltz had been danced, and the carriages decked out in good white satin. “At a shilling a yard, no less!” she whispered, leaning forward confidingly. “No expense was spared, believe me, my dear Lady Devlin.”

  Smiling benignly, Hero sipped her tea and encouraged her hostess to prattle on. Mary Bourne bragged (in the most humble way possible, of course) about the morning and evening prayers that all servants in her own household at Dalby near Somersby were required to attend daily. She hinted (broadly) that she was the pseudonymous author of a popular denunciation of the modern interest in Druidism, and from there allowed herself to be led ever so subtly, ever so unsuspectingly, to the subject Hero had come to learn more about: the precise nature of the relationship between Charles d’Eyncourt and his brother, George Tennyson, the father of the two missing little boys.

  Charles, Lord Jarvis lounged at his ease in a comfortable chair beside the empty hearth in his chambers in Carlton House. Moving deliberately, he withdrew an enameled gold snuffbox from his pocket and flicked it open with practiced grace. He lifted a delicate pinch between one thumb and forefinger and inhaled, his hard gaze never leaving the sweating pink and white face of the stout man who stood opposite him. “Well?” demanded Jarvis.

  “This c-complicates things,” stammered Bevin Childe. “You must see that. It’s not going to be easy to—”

  “How you accomplish your task is not my problem. You already know the consequences if you fail.”

  The antiquary’s soft mouth sagged open, his eyes widening. Then he swallowed hard and gave a jerky, panicky bow. �
�Yes, my lord,” he said, and then jumped when Jarvis’s clerk tapped discreetly on the door behind him.

  “What is it?” demanded Jarvis.

  “Colonel Urquhart to see you, my lord.”

  “Show him in,” said Jarvis. He closed his snuffbox with a snap, his gaze returning to the now-pale antiquary. “Why are you still here? Get out of my sight.”

  Hat in hand, the antiquary backed out of the room as if exiting from a royal presence. He was still backing when Colonel Jasper Urquhart swept through the door and sketched an elegant bow.

  “You wished to see me, my lord?”

  The Colonel was a tall man, as were all the former military men in Jarvis’s employ, tall and broad-shouldered, with fair hair and pale gray eyes and a ruddy complexion. A former rifleman, he had served Jarvis for two years now. Until today, he hadn’t disappointed.

  “Yesterday,” said Jarvis, pushing to his feet, “I asked you to assign one of your best men to a certain task.”

  “Yes, my lord. I can explain.”

  Jarvis sniffed and tucked his snuffbox back into his pocket. “Please don’t. I trust the individual in question is no longer in my employ?”

  “Correct, my lord.”

  “You relieve me. See that his replacement does not similarly disappoint.”

  The Colonel’s thin nostrils quivered. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Good. That will be all.”

  Sebastian spent three frustrating hours prowling the rooming houses, taverns, and coffeehouses known to be frequented by officers on their parole. But the questions he asked were of necessity vague and the answers he received less than helpful. Without knowing the French lieutenant’s name, how the devil was he to find one paroled French officer amongst so many?

  He was standing beside the Serpentine and watching a drilling of the troops from the Hyde Park barracks when he noticed a young, painfully thin man limping toward him. A scruffy brown and black mutt with a white nose and chest padded contentedly at his heels, one ear up, the other folded half over as if in a state of perpetual astonishment. The man’s coat was threadbare and his breeches mended, but his linen was white and clean, his worn-out boots polished to a careful luster, the set of his shoulders and upright carriage marking him unmistakably as a military man. His pallid complexion contrasted starkly with his brown hair and spoke of months of illness and convalescence.

  He paused uncertainly some feet away, the dog drawing up beside him, pink tongue hanging out as it panted happily. “Monsieur le vicomte?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Sebastian turned slowly to face him. “And you, I take it, must be Miss Tennyson’s mysterious unnamed French lieutenant?”

  The man brought his heels together and swept an elegant bow. This particular French officer was, obviously, not one of those who had been raised through the ranks from the gutters of Paris. “I have a name,” he said in very good English. “Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux, of the Twenty-second Chasseurs à Cheval.”

  Chapter 18

  “We met last May in the Reading Room of the British Museum,” said Arceneaux as he and Sebastian walked along the placid waters of the Serpentine. The dog frisked happily ahead, nose to the ground, tail wagging. “She was having difficulty with the archaic Italian of a novella she was attempting to translate, and I offered to help.”

  “So you’re a scholar.”

  “I was trained to be, yes. But France has little use for scholars these days. Only soldiers.” He gazed out across the park’s open fields, to where His Majesty’s finest were drilling in the fierce sunshine. “One of the consolations of being a prisoner of war has been the opportunity to continue my studies.”

  “This novella you mentioned; what was it?”

  “A now obscure elaboration of a part of the Arthurian legend called La donna di Scalotta.”

  “The Lady of Shalott,” said Sebastian thoughtfully.

  The Frenchman brought his gaze back to Sebastian’s face. “You know it?” he said in surprise.

  “I have heard of it, but that’s about it.”

  “It’s a tragic tale, of a beautiful maiden who dies for the love of a handsome knight.”

  “Sir Lancelot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Convenient, isn’t it, the way Camelot, Lancelot, and Shalott all happen to rhyme?”

  Arceneaux laughed out loud. “Very convenient.”

  Sebastian said, “Were you in love with her?”

  The laughter died on the Frenchman’s lips as he lifted his shoulders in a shrug that could have meant anything, and looked away. It occurred to Sebastian, watching him, that the Lieutenant appeared young because he was—probably no more than twenty-four or -five, which would make him several years younger than Gabrielle.

  “Well? Were you?”

  They walked along in silence, the sun warm on their backs, the golden light of the afternoon drenching the green of the grass and trees around them. Just when Sebastian had decided the Frenchman wasn’t going to answer, he said softly, “Of course I was. At least a little. Who wouldn’t be? She was a very beautiful woman, brilliant and courageous and overflowing with a zest for life. While I—” His voice broke and he had to swallow hard before he could continue. “I have been very lonely, here in England.”

  “Was she in love with you?”

  “Oh, no. There was nothing like that between us. We were friends—fellow scholars. Nothing more.”

  Sebastian studied the Frenchman’s lean profile. He had softly curling brown hair and a sprinkling of cinnamon-colored freckles high across his cheeks that gave him something of the look of a schoolboy. At the moment, the freckles were underlaid by a faint, betraying flush.

  “When did you last see her?” Sebastian asked.

  “Wednesday evening, I believe it was. She used to bring her young cousins here, to the park, to sail their boats on the Serpentine. I would meet them sometimes. The boys liked to play with Chien.”

  Sebastian glanced over at the brown and black mongrel, now loping methodically from tree to tree in a good-natured effort to mark all of Hyde Park as his own personal territory. “Chien? That’s his name?” “Chien” was simply the French word for “dog.”

  “I thought if I gave him a name, I might become too attached to him.”

  The dog came bounding back to the young lieutenant, tail wagging, brown eyes luminous with adoration, and the Lieutenant hunkered down to ruffle the fur around his neck. The dog licked his wrist and then trotted off again happily.

  “Looks as if that’s working out well,” observed Sebastian.

  Arceneaux laughed again and pushed to his feet. “He used to live in the wasteland near that new bridge they’re building. I go there sometimes to sit at the end overlooking the river and watch the tide roll in and out. He would come sit beside me. And then one day just before curfew, when I got up to leave, he came too. Unfortunately, he has a sad taste for the low life—particularly Gypsies. And a shocking tendency to steal hams. George used to say I should have called him ‘Rom,’ because he is a Gypsy at heart.”

  The Lieutenant watched the dog roll in the grass near the water’s edge and his features hardened into grim lines. After a moment, he said, “Do you think George and Alfred are dead too?”

  “They may be. Or they could simply have been frightened by what happened to their cousin and run away to hide.”

  “But the authorities are looking for them, yes? And Gabrielle’s brother has offered a reward. If that were true, why have they not been found?”

  Sebastian could think of several explanations that made perfect sense, although he wasn’t inclined to voice them. Small boys were a valuable commodity in England, frequently sold as climbing boys by the parish workhouses or even by their own impoverished parents. The chimney sweeps were in constant need of new boys, for the work was brutal and dangerous. Even boys who survived eventually outgrew the task. It wasn’t unknown for small children to be snatched from their front gardens and sold to sweeps. Very few of those children e
ver made it home again.

  But the chimney sweeps weren’t the only ones who preyed on young children; girls and boys both were exploited for sexual purposes the very thought of which made Sebastian’s stomach clench. He suspected the trade in children was a contributing factor to Tennyson’s decision to ignore the concerns of the magistrates and post a reward for the boys’ return. Then he noticed the way the Lieutenant’s jaw had tightened, and he knew the Frenchman’s thoughts were probably running in the same direction.

  Sebastian breathed in the warm, stagnant aroma of the canal, the sunbaked earth, the sweet scent of the lilies blooming near the shadows of the trees. He said, “Did Miss Tennyson seem troubled in any way the last time you saw her?”

  “Troubled? No.”

  “Would you by any chance know how she planned to spend this past Sunday afternoon?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  Sebastian glanced over at him. “She didn’t speak of it?”

  “Not that I recall, no.”

  “Yet you did sometimes see her on Sundays, did you not?”

  Arceneaux was silent for a moment, obviously considering his answer with care. He decided to go with honesty. “Sometimes, yes.”

  “Where would you go?”

  A muscle worked along the Frenchman’s jaw as he stared out over the undulating parkland and shrugged. “Here and there.”

  “You went up to Camlet Moat a week ago last Sunday, didn’t you?”

  Arceneaux kept his face half averted, but Sebastian saw his throat work as he swallowed.

  One of the conditions of a prisoner’s parole was the requirement that he not withdraw beyond certain narrowly prescribed boundaries. By traveling up to Camlet Moat, the Frenchman had violated his parole. Sebastian wondered why he had taken such a risk. But he also understood how frustration could sometimes lead a man to do foolish things.