Why Kill the Innocent Read online

  Vescovi was breathing hard, his chest jerking with his agitation. “I simply wished to make certain she understood the situation.”

  “And what is the situation?”

  “I pass letters between the Princesses and help keep Her Highness informed about her daughter. That is all. All!”

  “You explained this to Jane Ambrose?”

  “I did, yes. So you see, I had no reason to kill her.” Vescovi stared back at him owlishly. “None.”

  “Then you should have no difficulty in telling me where you were Thursday afternoon and evening.”

  Vescovi focused his attention on neatening the bright red scarf he wore wrapped around his neck.

  “Signor?” prompted Sebastian.

  The Italian carefully aligned the ends of his scarf. “I was in my room at the Percy Arms in Red Lion Square. I—I was unwell that day.”

  “I can check on that, you know.”

  “Sicuro,” said the harpist with solemn dignity.

  But Sebastian noticed his hands were now shaking so badly that he gave up trying to arrange his scarf.

  * * *

  As they drove away from Connaught House, Sebastian said to his tiger, “Valentino Vescovi claims he was in his room at the Percy Arms on Red Lion Square all afternoon and evening last Thursday. After you take care of the horses, why don’t you go around there and see if you can find someone to verify that?”

  Tom sat up noticeably straighter, his eyes shining with pride. “Aye, m’lord.”

  * * *

  “So van der Pals was the ‘figlio di puttana’ who told Jane some ‘unflattering truths’ about Valentino Vescovi,” said Hero as she and Devlin joined the crowds walking across Blackfriars Bridge to stare down at the frozen Thames.

  “Apparently.” Devlin paused, his gaze on the snow-covered river below. Most of the spectators were content to watch from the safety of the bridge. But a few of the braver—or more foolhardy—were venturing out onto the ice itself, laughing and calling to others to join them.

  “What a hideous hotbed of spying and backstabbing that household is. Poor Princess Charlotte. Imagine growing up alone in such an environment.”

  “Poor Charlotte, indeed.”

  Hero glanced over at him. “Do you believe Caroline’s tale? That Prinny tricked his daughter into agreeing to this vile betrothal?”

  “It sounds like him, doesn’t it?”

  “It does, rather.” She was silent for a moment. “Just when you think you can’t despise Prinny any more, you learn one more disgusting detail about his treatment of his wife and daughter.”

  “When a prince pays people to stand up in court and swear to a vile collection of lies about his own wife, I suspect there is little he wouldn’t do.”

  Out on the ice, a bagpipe player began to play a jig, and a laugh went up along the bridge as a man near him began to dance. Hero said, “How deeply involved in this tangled mess do you think Jane Ambrose was?”

  Devlin shook his head. “I’m not sure. But her visit to Caroline last week is more than a bit suggestive. First Caroline, then Lord Wallace.”

  Hero watched an acrobat turning handstands in the middle of the river. “I wonder what else my friend Miss Kinsworth didn’t tell me.”

  “If she’s protecting Charlotte, it could be a great deal.”

  Chapter 23

  Princess Charlotte’s noble governess, the Dowager Duchess of Leeds, typically attended her charge between the hours of two and five. The exception was on Sundays, when Her Grace put in an appearance between noon and three—which was how she came to be crossing the entrance hall when Hero arrived at Warwick House that afternoon.

  “Ah, dear Lady Devlin,” said the Duchess, intercepting her with a tight smile. “What a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, Princess Charlotte is at present indisposed, so that neither she nor Miss Kinsworth will be able to come down. But do say you’ll join Arabella and me for tea?”

  “That would be lovely, thank you,” said Hero with an equally false smile as she allowed herself to be shepherded into the dilapidated drawing room that lay just off the entrance.

  “Have you met my daughter? Lady Arabella Osborne.”

  “Lady Devlin.” The slender young girl rising from the room’s threadbare silk settee was so lovely it was hard not to stare. Just sixteen years old, she had flawless alabaster skin, a perfect nose, and a trembling pink rosebud of a mouth that seemed to smile shyly. But when Hero met her eyes, she found them a shrewd, icy gray, as hard and unfeeling as granite.

  “I do hope there’s nothing seriously wrong with Charlotte,” said Hero, taking a lumpy high-backed chair by the fire.

  Lady Arabella gave a pretty little frown. “What?”

  “Her sudden illness.”

  “Oh, no, not too serious,” said the Duchess, settling beside her daughter and reaching to pour the tea.

  Born plain Miss Catherine Anguish, she had begun life as the daughter of a barrister from the middling gentry. She owed the coup of her splendid marriage to her beauty, which in her youth was said to have rivaled her daughter’s. Now in her forties, she was still an attractive woman, although tiresome, with a tendency to tell long-winded, boring tales about her own health. She’d also allowed her elevation to the rank of duchess to go to her head, acquiring a well-deserved reputation as an insufferable snob who treated anyone she considered her inferior with ostentatious condescension. And she considered anyone not from a ducal or royal family her inferior.

  “Truth be told,” said the Duchess, handing Hero a cup, “the child has the constitution of an ox. I, on the other hand, have been most dreadfully plagued all winter by a severe inflammation of the lungs. Why, just yesterday the Regent sent his own dear Dr. Heberden to check on me. ‘Your Grace,’ he said to me, ‘your sufferings would crush the spirit of nearly anyone, yet you bear it all with the fortitude and determination of a saint. A saint!’”

  “How . . . admirable,” said Hero, resigning herself to an excruciatingly detailed recital of Her Grace’s shortness of breath, the pinched nerve in her back, the phantom pains her numerous physicians feared might mean gallbladder problems. Finally, after some ten minutes of this, Hero managed to stem the recitation of ills long enough to turn to young Lady Arabella and say, “I understand you’re learning Italian.”

  “I am, yes,” said the girl, carefully settling her teacup into its saucer.

  The Duchess beamed. “She is quite the linguist, you know. She was already fluent in French, and she recently learned German, as well.”

  “German? An unusual choice,” said Hero.

  “Mmm. The Princess and Miss Kinsworth are both fluent in it, you see, and had taken to conversing in the language so that no one else could understand what they were saying. Unfortunately, as soon as Arabella mastered German, they switched to Italian.”

  “Cheeky of them,” said Hero.

  Lady Arabella threw her talkative mother a warning frown that appeared utterly lost on the Duchess. “You’ve no idea,” she continued. “Charlotte is quite the little hoyden. Just last week she locked poor Arabella in the water closet for a quarter of an hour and refused to let her out.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Why? Well . . . you know,” she said vaguely. “The girl does that sort of thing all the time, I’m afraid. She shakes hands with men as if she were a man herself, strides about with all the boisterous energy of a general reviewing his troops, and laughs nearly as loudly as her mother. One would think no one had ever taught her how to behave en princess. But believe me, Lady Devlin, I have tried.”

  “I’ve no doubt you have,” murmured Hero. Between the hours of two and five—or twelve and three on Sundays.

  “Have I ever! She’s horse mad, of course. Gallops all over the place when she’s out at Windsor. No one can stop her—not even her grandmother the Queen. The way she sets her
horse at any jump she sees, it’s a wonder she hasn’t broken her neck.”

  “She must be an excellent horsewoman.”

  The Duchess sniffed. “I suppose she is. I wouldn’t know; I myself do not ride.”

  Hero took a slow sip of her tea. “I wonder, did you happen to see Jane Ambrose the last time she was here?”

  “Oh, no. I don’t come during the week until two o’clock, you know.”

  “Do you have any idea why she died?”

  “She slipped on the ice and hit her head, of course.”

  “Except that she didn’t. Not really.”

  The Duchess met Hero’s gaze for one telling moment, then looked away. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Hero raised one eyebrow. “You aren’t concerned that her death might have something to do with Princess Charlotte?”

  The Duchess froze with her cup raised halfway to her lips. It was left to her precocious daughter to give a trill of artificial laughter and say, “Mercy, no. Whatever gave you such a notion?”

  “Mainly Peter van der Pals’s recent attempts to convince Jane to spy on Charlotte for the House of Orange.”

  Mother and daughter exchanged glances again. Then the Duchess crimped her lips into a tight, supercilious smile. “Dear Lady Devlin, I’ve no idea who told you such a thing, but I fear they were ‘having you on,’ as the young gentlemen like to say.” She set aside her teacup with an awkward clatter. “Now, do tell me you and Lord Devlin are planning to attend my alfresco breakfast this Thursday. I’m calling it ‘A Winter Wonderland in Kensington Gardens,’ and it promises to be something quite out of the ordinary. The Queen herself has promised to put in an appearance, you know.”

  “We hope to be there, yes,” said Hero, who had intended to decline the invitation due to her state of mourning for her mother. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “Lovely,” said Her Grace.

  Hero set aside her own cup and rose to her feet. “The weather should make it . . . interesting.”

  The Duchess gave another of her brittle smiles. “I think we can all contrive to keep warm. The snow will make it unique, don’t you agree? Like our own exclusive Frost Fair.”

  “Quite,” agreed Hero, thinking Lady Leeds’s inflammation of the lungs obviously wasn’t severe enough to keep her from braving the elements in her quest to give a party that would be the talk of the ton.

  “I did see something recently that made me wonder about Mrs. Ambrose,” said young Lady Arabella, walking with Hero to the door.

  “Oh?” said Hero. “What was that?”

  “I was here earlier than Mama one day and happened to glance out the window just as Mrs. Ambrose was letting herself out the gate. There was a carriage waiting for her in the lane. I thought it odd enough that I paused to watch, which is how I happened to see a gentleman step forward just as she was closing the gate behind her. They spoke for a moment. Then he helped her into the carriage and climbed in after her.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two weeks ago last Thursday.”

  “Do you remember anything about the carriage?” asked Hero.

  “It was a nobleman’s barouche. I know because I saw the crest on the door—a gold chevron against an azure background, with a rampant lion below and two castles above.” The girl gave a slow, knowing smile that came perilously close to being a smirk. “Perhaps you’re familiar with it?”

  “Yes,” said Hero, who had grown up with the Jarvis coat of arms. “I believe I am.”

  Chapter 24

  “‘Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.’”

  Jarvis ostentatiously bowed his head as the glorious Stuart-era poetry of the King James Bible echoed around the soaring interior of the sixteenth-century chapel. He’d never been a particularly devout man, but he had a healthy appreciation for the role religion played in maintaining order and the hierarchy of being. And so he was careful to be seen attending services every Sunday, for it was important that members of the ruling class set a good example for the ignorant masses below them.

  He often worshipped here, at the Chapel Royal in St. James’s Palace, both because its schedule was set to accommodate the late-rising habits of His Highness the Prince Regent and because he appreciated the exclusivity of its congregation. Attendance today was sparse, owing no doubt to the severity of the weather. But one of the few worshippers present was that abrasive Whig politician Phineas Wallace. And because Jarvis knew it would irritate the man, he found himself faintly smiling as the reading continued.

  “‘See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms,

  to root out, and to pull down,

  to destroy, and to throw down,

  to build, and to plant.’”

  Unlike Jarvis, Phineas Wallace was not known for his regular church attendance. But the fiery Whig orator had been trying without success to arrange a meeting with Jarvis for days. And so Jarvis was not surprised when the Baron fell into step beside him as they left the chapel at the end of services.

  “I take it you wished to speak to me?” Jarvis remarked pleasantly.

  “I know about your scheme,” said Wallace, his voice pitched low.

  Jarvis paused to extract his snuffbox from his pocket and flip it open. “I never imagined that you did not.”

  Wallace threw a quick glance around and leaned in closer. “It’s madness, all of it. Why tie Britain to the Dutch in a way that will obligate us to come to their defense? The people of this land are on their knees after more than two decades of war; they need peace and prosperity, not more war. The cost of defending the Netherlands would break us in every way imaginable. Break us!”

  Jarvis lifted a pinch of snuff to one nostril and smiled. “The Bourbons will not move against the House of Orange.”

  Wallace gave a harsh, breathy laugh. “You genuinely believe that the French will meekly accept the Bourbons back on the throne? After twenty-five years of liberté, égalité, and fraternité?”

  “After twenty-five years of liberté, égalité, and fraternité, there are scarcely enough Frenchmen left alive to sing ‘La Marseillaise,’ let alone object to anyone we should choose to place at their head.”

  “It won’t always be so.”

  Jarvis closed his snuffbox with a snap and stepped out onto the snowy flagway. “Then when that day comes we shall have our dear allies the Dutch as a bulwark against a resurgent republican France.”

  Wallace kept pace with him. “This isn’t actually about the Dutch or even the French, is it? It’s about Prinny’s bloody crusade to rid himself of his wife. He thinks that with Bonaparte defeated and Charlotte forced to live most of the year in the Netherlands, Caroline will leave England for the Continent, and then he’ll finally be able to push through a divorce.”

  “Do you blame him?”

  Wallace’s thin nose quivered with his disdain. “She is his lawfully wedded wife and has borne nothing but insult and abuse from him since she first landed on our shores.”

  “And you think that excuses her behavior, do you? What of the opprobrium he has borne as a result of her conduct?”

  “Oh, please. Everyone with any sense knows he paid that Douglas woman to stand up and swear she saw the Princess give birth to an illegitimate son.”

  Jarvis calmly slipped his snuffbox back into his pocket. “Are you so certain she did not?”

  “When three different physicians who treated her during that period, her dresser, and the chambermaid who changes her sheets all swear it never happened? When the friends who saw her every week laugh at the possibility? When the Prince is now paying Lady Douglas a tidy pension for life? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Jarvis gave a negligent shrug. “Yet many people do believe it. In the end, that’s all th
at counts.”

  “And the truth?”

  “The truth has nothing to do with it.”

  Wallace shook his head, his jaw set hard. “Charlotte knows of her father’s intentions. She will never allow herself to be forced to leave the country. She has been warned of the consequences to both her mother and her own position as heiress presumptive to the throne. And because she knows her father and the way he lies and feigns affection to get what he wants, she will insist that safeguards are written into the marriage contract before she signs it.”

  “She’ll sign. She’s already agreed to the betrothal; these clever little machinations of yours are all too late.”

  “It won’t be too late until the vows are said.”

  “Perhaps. But they will be said. Make no mistake about that.”

  “Not if I can help it,” said Wallace curtly. “Good day to you, sir.”

  Jarvis smiled faintly as Wallace strode angrily away up St. James’s Street.

  He was still smiling when his daughter, Hero, came to stand beside him.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” she said.

  “Oh?” They turned together to walk down Cleveland Row. “Do I take it from your scowl that you’ve learned something? Something you believe does not cast me in what you consider a flattering light?”

  “You sent one of your men in a carriage to pick up Jane Ambrose as she was leaving Warwick House exactly two weeks before she was killed. Why was that?”

  “And if I told you the woman was spying on Charlotte for me?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you. Not unless you were forcing her to do so against her will.” When Jarvis remained silent, she said, “So were you?”

  He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead.

  Hero’s nostrils flared on a quick intake of air. “I would think you have enough spies around the Princess—including a certain very beautiful duke’s daughter with a gift for languages and the lethal instincts of a barracuda.”