Why Kings Confess Read online

  Gibson nodded. “You can tell her that her mistress is doing as well as can be expected.”

  “When will she be out of danger?”

  Gibson stared out over the rows of mossy tombstones in the swollen churchyard beside them. “I wish I knew,” he said, his face looking bleak and drawn. “I wish I knew.”

  • • •

  Lying some blocks to the east of Bond Street, Golden Square had never been particularly fashionable. Built in the waning days of the Stuarts, its varied rooflines were more reminiscent of eighteenth-century Parisian hôtels or the decorative gables of Amsterdam than of London town houses. Once, it had been home to foreign ambassadors and artists. But a dull, dingy look had long ago settled over the area, with many of the seventeenth-century brick and stucco houses broken up into lodgings.

  Sebastian spent some time talking to vendors and shopkeepers around the square, including a butler, an apothecary, and one stout, middle-aged woman with a gummy smile who sold eel pies from a stall. Madame Sauvage seemed to be a well-liked figure in the neighborhood, although no one knew much about her.

  “She’s a deep one,” said the eel seller, giving Sebastian a wink. “Friendly enough, but keeps herself to herself, for all that.”

  The Frenchwoman’s rooms lay on the attic floor of a four-story, gable-fronted house near the corner of Upper James Street. Sebastian’s knock was answered by a plain, heavyset woman with iron gray hair and a knobby nose who peered at him suspiciously, her gaze traveling over him with obvious disapproval.

  “Madame Sauvage is not here,” she said in a heavy accent typical of the Basque region of France, and made as if to close the door.

  Sebastian stopped it by resting his forearm against the panel, then softened the aggression of the move with a smile. “I know. My friend Paul Gibson is caring for her at his surgery.”

  The woman hesitated, her instinctive wariness at war with an obvious desire to obtain information about her mistress. Concern for her mistress won. “You know how she does?”

  “The surgeon is hopeful she will recover, although she’s not yet out of danger.”

  The woman’s lips parted and she exhaled sharply, as if she’d been holding her breath. “Why has she not been brought here, to me, so that I may care for her?”

  “I’ve no doubt you’re more than capable,” said Sebastian. “Unfortunately, she can’t yet be moved.”

  The woman folded her arms beneath her massive bosom. “Well, you tell that surgeon that as soon as she’s well enough, he’s to send her home to Karmele.”

  Sebastian said, “Have you been with the doctoresse long?”

  He saw a flicker of surprise, followed by a return of her earlier wariness. “How do you know she is a doctoresse?”

  “Madame Bisette told me. I’m trying to find out who might have wanted to harm her or Dr. Pelletan, the man who was with her last night.”

  “And why should you care, a fine English gentleman such as yourself?”

  “I care,” he said simply.

  She pursed her mouth and said nothing.

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

  “Five—perhaps six o’clock last night. She left to visit some patients.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  From one of the floors below came a child’s shout, followed by a trill of delighted laughter. Sebastian said, “Do you know if she had any enemies? Someone with whom she might have quarreled recently?”

  The woman was silent, her lips pressed tightly together, her nostrils flaring on a deeply indrawn breath.

  “There is someone, isn’t there? Who is it?”

  Karmele cast a quick, furtive glance around the dark corridor, then beckoned Sebastian inside and quickly shut the door behind him.

  “His name is Bullock.” She dropped her voice as if still wary that she might somehow be overheard. “He’s been watching her. Following her.”

  “Why?”

  “He blames her for his brother’s death; that’s why. Said he was going to make her pay, he did.”

  “She treated the man’s brother?”

  Karmele shook her head. “Not his brother, no. His brother’s wife.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She died.”

  Sebastian let his gaze roam the attic’s low, sloped ceiling and dingy, papered walls. The space was fitted out as a small sitting room, but judging from the rolled pallet in the corner and the cooking utensils near the hearth, it also served as the kitchen and Karmele’s bedroom. Through an open door on the far side he caught a glimpse of a second chamber, barely large enough to hold a narrow bed and a small chest. The few pieces of furniture in the two rooms looked old and worn; a thin, tattered carpet covered the floor, and the walls were bare of all decoration except for one small, cracked mirror.

  As if aware of Sebastian’s scrutiny, the woman said, “C’est domage—” She caught herself, then carefully switched to English. “It is a pity, what she is reduced to. She was born to better than this.”

  “I understand she came to London last year?” said Sebastian in French.

  The woman blinked in surprise but answered readily enough in the same language. “October 1811, it was. She came with her husband, the English captain.”

  “She was married to an English officer?”

  “She was, yes. Captain Miles Sauvage. Met him in Spain, she did.”

  “And where is Captain Sauvage now?”

  “He died, not more than six weeks after we came here.”

  “You were with her in Spain?”

  “I was, yes.” Her tone was once again guarded, her jaw set hard.

  Rather than press her on the point, Sebastian shifted to a different tack. “Tell me more about this man you say has been threatening her.”

  “Bullock?” Her heavy brows drew together in a thoughtful frown. “He’s a tradesman—has a shop somewhere hereabouts. Big bear of a man, he is, with curly black hair and a nasty scar running across his cheek, like this—” She brought up her left hand to slash diagonally from the outer edge of her eye to the corner of her mouth.

  “And apart from Bullock, can you think of anyone else who might have wished her harm?”

  “No, no one. Why would anyone want to hurt her?”

  “And did you know Dr. Damion Pelletan?”

  She hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “Non.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “How would I know him?” she demanded, staring belligerently back at Sebastian.

  “Do you know if Madame Sauvage had any contact with the exiled Bourbons?”

  A slow tide of angry red crept up the woman’s neck. “Those puces? What would the doctoresse want with them? She hates them.”

  “Really?” It was an unusual attitude for a French émigré.

  “Well,” said the woman hastily, as if regretting her harsh words, “I suppose the Comte de Provence is not so bad, when all is said and done. But Artois?” Her face contorted with the violence of her loathing. “And that Marie-Thérèse! She is not right in the head, that one. She lives still in the eighteenth century, and she wishes to drag France back to the past with her. You know what the doctoresse calls her?”

  Sebastian shook his head.

  “Madame Rancune. That’s what the doctoresse calls her. Madame Rancune.”

  Rancune. It was a French word meaning grudge or rancor, and it carried with it more than a hint of vindictiveness and spite. He’d heard Marie-Thérèse called it before.

  Madam Resentment.

  Chapter 10

  By the time Sebastian left Golden Square, the weak winter sun was disappearing fast behind a thick bank of clouds that bunched low over the city, stealing the light from the afternoon and sending the temperature plummeting.

  He walked up Swallow Street, trying to make sense of a murder investigation that seemed to be going in three different directions at once. The next logical step would be to speak to Marie-Thérè
se, the Duchesse d’Angoulême, herself. But the daughter of the last crowned King of France was currently living at Hartwell House, in Buckinghamshire, nearly forty miles to the northwest of London. Under normal circumstances, he would have driven out there without a second thought. But a journey of that length presented logistical problems for a man whose wife was heavily pregnant with their first child.

  After careful calculations, he decided that if he left London at dawn, driving his own curricle but with hired teams changed at twelve- to fourteen-mile intervals, he could make it there and back by early afternoon.

  He altered his direction and turned toward the livery stables in Boyle Street.

  “Six teams?” said the livery stable’s owner, a gnarled little Irishman named O’Malley who’d made quite a name for himself as a jockey some decades before. “To go less than eighty miles? Ye don’t think that might be a wee bit excessive, my lord?”

  “I plan to make it there and back in six hours,” said Sebastian.

  O’Malley grinned. “Well, if anyone can do it, you can, my lord.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I reckon I’ve just the team fer your first stage—real sweet goers they are, all four as creamy white and well matched as two twins’ breasts. And, if ye’ve a mind to it, I could send one of me lads on ahead tonight to make sure ye get the best cattle at every change, there and back.”

  “I would appreciate that,” said Sebastian, his gaze scanning the slice of street visible through the stable’s open doorway.

  He’d been aware of a vague, niggling sensation of unease ever since he left Golden Square. Now, as he studied the steady stream of wagons, carriages, and carts that filled the street, whips cracking, iron-rimmed wheels rattling over paving stones, he identified the source of that unease: He was being watched. He could not have said by whom, but he had no doubt that he was the object of someone’s intense scrutiny.

  “Them clouds might look nasty,” said O’Malley, misunderstanding his concern, “but me bones say we won’t be gettin’ no snow fer a day or so yet.”

  “I hope your bones are right.”

  “Ach, ain’t ne’er failed me yet, they haven’t. Broke both me legs an’ an arm back in ’eighty-seven, I did. The surgeon was all fer hackin’ off the lot of ’em, but I told him I’d rather be dead. He swore I would be soon enough, but I proved him wrong. Been over twenty-five years now, and I ain’t been surprised by the weather since.”

  Sebastian cast a last glance at the darkening, wind-scoured street, then turned away. “Let’s have a look at those sweet goers of yours, shall we?”

  The creamy white team proved to be every bit as impressive as O’Malley had said they would be. Sebastian settled with the stable owner, then walked out into the noisy bustle of Boyle Street. He could see an organ grinder standing at the corner; nearby, a blind beggar, aged and stooped, shook his cup plaintively at the press of tradesmen and apprentices hurrying past. A girl with a tray full of frost-nipped watercress, her face pinched with cold, called, “Ha’penny a bunch!” He studied each in turn, but he couldn’t recall having seen any of them in Golden Square.

  Every fiber of his being alert and tense, he turned toward home. But the unpleasant sense of being watched slowly evaporated, like the lingering memories of an unpleasant dream.

  • • •

  Sebastian returned to Brook Street to find Hero seated in one of the cane chairs at the drawing room’s front bow window, a lighted candle on the table beside her, her head tipped to one side as she studied a sheet crowded with names and qualifications. The big, long-haired black cat who had adopted them some months before slept curled up on the hearth.

  He paused in the doorway for a moment, just for the pleasure of looking at her. She was an unusually tall woman with large, clear gray eyes, an aquiline nose, and the kind of strong facial structure that was generally described as “handsome” rather than pretty. He had disliked her intensely the first time he met her. Now he wondered how he could ever live without her.

  She looked up, caught him watching her, and smiled.

  “What’s this?” he asked, going to peer over her shoulder.

  “A list of nursery maids suggested by the agency.” She frowned and set the page aside. “I don’t like the idea of entrusting my child to some young, ignorant country girl who’s barely more than a child herself.”

  He went to warm his hands at the fire. The cat glanced up at him through slitted eyes, then settled back to sleep. “So tell them you want someone older. And educated.”

  “I intend to.”

  He turned to face her. “I’m planning to drive out to Buckinghamshire in the morning. If I change teams twice on the way out and three times on the return journey, I should be back in London by midafternoon at the latest. But if you feel uncomfortable about me going out of town, I won’t.”

  She looked at him in confusion. “Why would I—” Enlightenment dawned, and she gave a startled trill of laughter. “Good heavens, Devlin, I hope you don’t mean because of the babe?”

  “I don’t want you to be—”

  “Left alone? I have a house full of servants and the best accoucheur in London ready to rush to my side at a moment’s notice. I will not be alone. Apart from which, this babe is not coming anytime soon.”

  “So certain?”

  “I have it on the authority of Richard Croft himself. And if you insist on hovering about me until it does come, you’re liable to drive me mad.”

  He gave a rueful smile. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to do that.”

  She pushed to her feet, the swelling weight of the child making the movement awkward, and went to draw the drapes against the coming night. “Where in Buckinghamshire?”

  “Hartwell House.”

  She paused to look at him over one shoulder. “Good heavens; you think the Bourbons could somehow be involved in Damion Pelletan’s death?”

  “They might be.”

  He told her of his visit to the Gifford Arms Hotel, and the conversation Madame Bisette had overheard the night of Pelletan’s murder, and his own less-than-productive confrontation with Jarvis.

  “Do you know anything about a peace delegation from Paris?” he asked, watching her closely.

  “No. But I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Jarvis won’t tell you anything. Not now.”

  She gave him a smile that curled the edges of her lips and brought a secretive gleam to the shadowy depths of her intense gray eyes. “I don’t intend to ask Jarvis.”

  • • •

  That evening, as he was preparing to make an early start the following morning, Sebastian sent for his valet.

  Jules Calhoun was a slim, elegant gentleman’s gentleman in his early thirties, with straight flaxen hair and twinkling eyes. Affable and extraordinarily clever, he was a genius at repairing the ravages the pursuit of murderers could sometimes wreak on Sebastian’s wardrobe. But for all his skill with boot blacking and starch, Calhoun was no ordinary valet. Born in one of the worst flash houses in London, he was familiar with parts of the city—and segments of its population—that would cause most valets to shudder with horror.

  “Ever hear of a man named Bullock?” Sebastian asked. “I’m told he’s a big, scar-faced tradesman with a shop somewhere in the vicinity of Golden Square.”

  Calhoun shook his head. “I don’t believe so, my lord. I can look into him, if you wish.”

  Sebastian nodded. “But cautiously. I understand he has a nasty disposition.”

  Chapter 11

  Saturday, 23 January

  Sebastian left London before dawn, driving O’Malley’s team of fast creamy whites and with his own young groom, or tiger, Tom, clinging to the perch at the rear of the curricle. The boy had been with Sebastian for two years now, ever since he’d tried to pick Sebastian’s pocket in a low St. Giles tavern. Sebastian had been on the run at the time, charged with a murder he didn’t commit. The young street urchin had saved Sebastian’s life, although Tom always cont
ended they were more than even.

  They drove through misty flat meadows filled with frost-whitened grass, and sleepy villages with stone-walled, thatched-roof cottages and wind-ruffled millponds where ducks foraged amongst the freeze-nipped reeds that grew in the shallows. The sun rose in a muted pink haze above winter-bared stands of elm and birch, and still they pressed on, the team’s galloping hooves eating up the miles, their heaving sides dark with sweat by the time Tom blew up for the change.

  “We ain’t never gonna make ’Artwell ’Ouse in three hours,” said Tom, critically eyeing the new team as it was put to.

  Sebastian snapped shut his watch and smiled. “Yes, we will.”

  They made it in just under two hours and fifty minutes.

  An elegant small manor dating to the time of the Tudors, Hartwell House had been hired by the exiled Bourbons some four years before. Sebastian had heard that Sir George Lee, the owner, was not happy with the treatment his estate was receiving at the hands of the royals. As Sebastian drew up his curricle on the ragged gravel sweep before the manor’s small porch, he thought he could understand why.

  Crude new windows had been punched through the venerable old stone walls, while tattered laundry hung out to dry on the roof flapped in the cold wind. What was once a grand sweep of turf had been torn up here and there and planted with vegetables; the bleat of goats and the cluck-clucking of chickens filled the air.

  “Looks worse’n a bleedin’ back court in St. Giles,” said Tom, scrambling forward to take the reins.

  “Not exactly Versailles, is it?”

  Tom scrunched up his sharp-boned face in puzzlement. “Ver-what?”

  “Versailles. It’s the grand palace that was home to the kings of France until the revolutionaries dragged the royal family into Paris in 1789.”

  “Oh.” The tiger didn’t look impressed. But then, Tom had no use for foreigners in general and the French in particular.

  Sebastian dropped lightly to the ground. “Do keep your ears open around the stables, will you?”