Why Kings Confess Read online

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  Sebastian found the chapel in Little George Street hung with black crepe and lit with branches of flaring beeswax candles. A row of high, plain windows showed black against the night sky, and a lingering memory of old incense mingled with the scents of hot wax and cold, dank stone.

  The small Catholic church had been established late in the previous century by nonjuring priests fleeing the French Revolution. Its interior was plain to the point of being primitive, with only the Stations of the Cross and a scattering of wall-mounted tombs relieving the starkness. A prominently placed high-backed chair served as the “throne” of the uncrowned King of France whenever he chose to honor the congregation with his presence. If Damion Pelletan had indeed come to London as part of a delegation sent by Napoléon— as Hero’s conversation with her mother that afternoon certainly suggested—then the choice of this chapel as the site of his funeral struck Sebastian as mildly ironic. But then, it would never do to forget that Napoléon had managed to have himself crowned emperor by Pope Pius VII.

  Closing the door quietly behind him, Sebastian paused to glance down the short, central aisle to where a dark oaken casket draped in blue velvet stood open before the altar. He did not approach the coffin, but slipped sideways to stand against the rear wall, deep in the shadows thrown by the rickety wooden west gallery overhead.

  A heavy, oppressive silence filled the church, punctuated by an occasional cough. There were only three mourners, scattered widely across the short rows of pews separated by a central aisle. He recognized Harmond Vaundreuil in the second row. The colonel, André Foucher, had taken a seat three rows back and far off to one side. As Sebastian watched, Foucher slipped his watch from his pocket and frowned down at the time. The third man, thin and bony faced, with a red nose and straight black hair, occupied the last row. Sebastian didn’t recognize him, but he had his head bent over a book, his shoulders hunched against the cold. This, surely, was the clerk, Camille Bondurant.

  The minutes ticked past. Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and ignored the damp chill that seeped up through the soles of his boots as he watched the surviving members of the French delegation: three men who knew one another and lived together, attending the funeral of one of their own, yet all ignoring one another. Mitt Peebles obviously knew what he was talking about when he said they didn’t like one another much.

  The sound of the door opening drew Sebastian’s attention to the entrance.

  A slim, chestnut-haired, flamboyantly dressed man entered and paused just inside the door to remove his hat and dip his fingers in the holy water to make an absentminded sign of the cross. Sebastian stared at him. It was Ambrose LaChapelle.

  What the devil is he doing here? thought Sebastian.

  Intrigued, Sebastian watched the courtier slide into the pew opposite the clerk, slip to his knees, make the sign of the cross again, and bow his head in prayer. It occurred to Sebastian, watching him, that LaChapelle was the only man in the church praying.

  The church bells of the city had long ago struck seven. Colonel Foucher frowned and once again checked his watch. Sebastian could hear whispers and a flutter of movement from the sacristy, suggesting that the priest was finally preparing to begin his solemn procession. Then the street door opened again with a noisy jerk and another man entered the chapel.

  Of average height and build, he was some thirty-five years of age, with bored gray eyes and thick, honey-colored hair worn fashionably disarranged. His exquisitely cut coat came from one of London’s best tailors, but his buckskin breeches were more suited to a ride in the park than to a funeral, and rather than a cravat, he wore a neckcloth knotted rakishly at his throat. He neither removed his high-crowned beaver hat nor bowed his head, but strode swiftly down the center aisle to draw up abruptly at the head of the open coffin.

  Sebastian watched him with interest. The newcomer’s name was Lord Peter Radcliff; he was the younger son of the late Duke of Linford and brother to the current Duke. To Sebastian’s knowledge, he had no interest in either government or commerce, but devoted himself to a hedonistic lifestyle that revolved largely around the opera, the turf, and the kind of ruinous gaming hells popularized by the Prince Regent and his set.

  So why was he here?

  He stood beside the coffin for perhaps half a minute, his shoulders stiff, the fingers of his hands alternately opening and closing into fists at his sides as he stared at the dead man’s pallid face. Then he turned and left the church, just as the door from the sacristy opened.

  A bent, wizened priest dressed in a white alb and vested in a black stole embroidered with gold crosses tottered into the nave, accompanied by two altar boys and a waft of incense. With muted coughs and throat clearings, the assembled mourners rose to their feet.

  Moving quietly, Sebastian slipped out the main entrance. But by the time he reached the footpath, Radcliff’s barouche was already bowling away up George Street, its lanterns swinging wildly with the sway of the well-sprung carriage.

  Sebastian was still staring thoughtfully after it when Harmond Vaundreuil walked out of the chapel behind him.

  Chapter 16

  Harmond Vaundreuil drew up in the shadow of the chapel’s modest portico. He was built small and rotund, with fat fingers and a short neck swathed in a voluminous white cravat. He had full cheeks and the kind of eyes that practically disappeared into his round pink face when he smiled, so that the effect was one of cordial good cheer. It was an effect that Sebastian knew, even without being told, was deceptive. One did not achieve Vaundreuil’s position without a ruthless opportunism and the kind of brutal self-interest that gave no quarter and took no prisoners.

  “I know who you are,” he said. “You’re that earl’s son—the one with a peculiar obsession with murder and justice. Devlin, isn’t it? I saw you standing at the back of the church.”

  Sebastian turned to face him. “Decided not to stay for the funeral mass?”

  The Frenchman gave a soft laugh. “I was trained for the priesthood, as a boy. Needless to say, the choice of a vocation was not mine. In my family, second sons joined the army and third sons became priests. If for no other reason, I shall forever be grateful to the Revolution for sparing me a life of hypocrisy and unutterable ennui. Believe me, Damion Pelletan would have known better than to expect me to sit through his funeral mass.”

  “You knew Pelletan well?”

  “He was my personal physician. I have a troublesome heart, you see.”

  “That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”

  “No?” Vaundreuil slowly descended the last step, an odd, tight smile crinkling the flesh beside his eyes as he drew up on the footpath. “Be wise, my lord, and leave well enough alone, hmm? Believe me, it is better for all concerned if Damion Pelletan is thought to have been killed by footpads.”

  “Better for you, for me, or for Damion Pelletan?”

  Vaundreuil’s smile widened. “For everyone.”

  “Someone tried to kill me today, on the road from Hartwell House. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  Vaundreuil laughed out loud with what sounded like genuine amusement. “They are a murderous lot, the Bourbons. And you have no idea what you are meddling in.”

  “Not exactly,” agreed Sebastian. “But I have a very fertile imagination—plus a healthy appreciation for what the loss of half a million men in six months can do to popular perception of an upstart leader’s legitimacy.”

  The Frenchman was no longer smiling.

  Sebastian said, “Given that a member of your delegation has been—”

  “Delegation? What nonsense is this?”

  “—has been murdered, one might expect you to cooperate with any attempt to find his killer. Yet you appear to have no interest. Why is that?”

  “But we are cooperating—with Bow Street. And Bow Street assures us that Pelletan was killed by footpads. Why try to make his death out to be something more than it was?”

  “Dam
ion Pelletan was not killed by footpads, and you know it.”

  “So certain, my lord?”

  “What kind of footpad steals a man’s heart and leaves his purse?”

  Vaundreuil’s face went utterly slack with what looked very much like horror. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” Sebastian studied the other man’s pale, suddenly haggard features. “Would you have me believe you didn’t know?”

  The Frenchman swiped a shaky hand across his mouth. “No. I was not told the details. I mean, I saw the body at that dreadful surgery near the Tower. I knew the chest was— But . . . the heart? Taken?” He swallowed hard. “You are certain?”

  “You find the knowledge unsettling. Why?”

  “Good God; who would not find it unsettling? I mean . . . to steal a man’s heart! It is barbaric. It is the work of madness. What a violent, dangerous place this London of yours is.”

  “True. Yet it’s considerably more salubrious than Paris in, say, 1793. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Vaundreuil’s jaw hardened. “Those dark days are twenty years in our past.”

  “Twenty years is not so long ago.”

  The wind gusted up, scuttling a loose playbill down the street and bringing them the voice of the priest with sudden, unexpected clarity. “Ambulabo coram Domino, in regione vivorum . . .”

  Sebastian said, “Who would want to put an end to the possibility of peace talks between Napoléon Bonaparte and the British government?”

  “I never said—”

  “Very well; in honor of your exquisite sensitivity to the finer points of language, I’ll rephrase the question: If preliminary peace talks were to be held between Paris and London, who would have an interest in seeing them brought to an untimely end?”

  “Truly, monsieur? The list is endless. In my experience, those for whom war is lucrative are rarely satiated. For them, war is opportunity, not hardship or sorrow. After all, it is rarely their sons who lie in unmarked graves on foreign soil.”

  Sebastian studied the fat, successful bureaucrat before him. Vaundreuil himself had obviously profited handsomely from the Revolution and the endless wars that followed it. But all Sebastian said was, “Do you have anyone in particular in mind?”

  The Frenchman gave a tight-lipped smile. “Surely you know those in England who profit from war better than I, yes?”

  “And the French?”

  Vaundreuil shook his head. “In France, even those who once grew rich off the empire know that the efforts of the last two decades are no longer sustainable. I suspect you’ll find that those French most fervently opposed to the idea of peace between England and Napoléon are to be found on this side of the Channel, not the other.”

  “You mean the royalists?”

  “The émigrés, the royalists, the Bourbons. There are tens of thousands of my former compatriots here. Most dream of someday returning to France. And of revenge.”

  “Do the Bourbons know of your presence here in London?”

  “Officially? No. But there are few involved in this conflict who do not have their own spies.”

  “Any chance the Comte de Provence could be behind Pelletan’s death?”

  “Provence?” Vaundreuil crinkled his nose in a way that turned down the corners of his mouth. “The soi-disant Louis XVIII is ill, childless, and old before his time. In my opinion, the one who bears watching is the younger brother, the Comte d’Artois. Artois, and his niece, the Duchesse d’Angoulême. It would be a mistake to dismiss Marie-Thérèse as half-mad. She is, after all, Marie Antoinette’s daughter. I have heard Napoléon himself say that Marie-Thérèse is the only real man in her family.”

  “He fears her?”

  “I would not go so far as to say he fears her. But he watches her, yes. He definitely watches her.” Vaundreuil touched his hand to his hat and inclined his head. “Monsieur.”

  He was turning away when Sebastian asked, “Are you by chance acquainted with Lord Peter Radcliff?”

  The Frenchman pivoted slowly to face him again. “I know the man well enough to have recognized him, if that’s what you mean.” An unexpected gleam of amusement lit Vaundreuil’s small, dark eyes. “I assume you noticed that he, likewise, did not stay for Pelletan’s funeral mass?”

  “Why would a son of the Duke of Linford attend the funeral of a French physician who arrived in London only three weeks ago?”

  “I believe Radcliff is married to a young Frenchwoman. Someone Pelletan knew in Paris many years ago.”

  Sebastian was familiar with the young Lady Peter, for her beauty was legendary. She had come to England nine years before, when her father—a highly respected general in the Grand Army—had a falling-out with Napoléon that forced the family to flee France. But she had not arrived in London penniless, for the general had managed to accumulate a small fortune that he kept safely abroad. And he had settled nearly half of his wealth on his beautiful daughter.

  An unpleasant gleam shone in Vaundreuil’s eyes. “Perhaps you seek too complicated a motive for this murder, monsieur. Perhaps what we are dealing with is a simple—if somewhat ghoulish—affaire de coeur. It would explain much, yes?”

  “Was Pelletan in love with Lady Peter?”

  “Once, perhaps; who knows? Damion Pelletan was my physician, not my friend or confidant.” Vaundreuil bowed again. “And now you really must excuse me, my lord.”

  Sebastian watched him stroll away toward Portman Square, the cold wind flapping the tails of his black coat, while from inside the church came a low, mournful chant.

  “Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem. Amen.”

  Chapter 17

  Lord Peter Radcliff was one of those men who wore the dignity of his exalted birth with an easy grace and a good-natured smile. Born into a life of rare wealth and privilege, he was a duke’s second son, which meant that all responsibility for maintaining the family’s vast estates and managing their considerable investments fell not to him but to his elder brother. To Lord Peter came a handsome allowance and the freedom to spend his days as he saw fit, lounging in the famous bow window at White’s, hunting in Melton Mowbray, and surrounding himself with a circle of bon vivants known for their exquisite manners, their flawless taste, and their willingness to bet on almost anything.

  Like his friends Beau Brummell and Lord Alvanley, he’d once enjoyed a brief career in a fashionable London regiment. But he soon sold out to devote himself to the less demanding activities of a man-about-town. His marriage eight years before to one of the most beautiful women in London had little altered his way of life. Which was why, rather than look for Lord Peter at his comfortable house in Half Moon Street, Sebastian spent the evening moving from one gentlemen’s haunt to the next, from White’s in St. James’s Street to Watier’s in Piccadilly, and then on to Limmer’s—all without success.

  He was sipping a fine French cognac in a fashionable coffeehouse near Conduit Street when Lord Peter entered the room and walked straight up to him.

  “Why the devil are you looking for me?” he demanded, the fingers of one hand tapping against his hard thigh.

  Sebastian leaned back in his seat. “I think you know.”

  Radcliff hesitated a moment, then ordered a brandy, pulled out the chair opposite, and sat. “I saw you at the French chapel.”

  Sebastian brought his cognac to his lips and regarded the Duke’s son over the glass’s rim. “You were friends with Damion Pelletan?”

  “Me? No.” Radcliff propped one exquisitely polished boot on the other knee. The posture was casual, relaxed. He had a reputation amongst his friends for easygoing charm and boundless generosity, although Sebastian knew there were those who had seen another side of him, a side that could be brusque and condescending and freezingly arrogant. “I went for the sake of my wife. He was a friend of hers when she was a child, in Paris.”

  “But you did know him?”

  “I met him once or twice.” He gave Sebastian a hooded, sideways glance. “To be frank, I don’t q
uite understand why you’ve involved yourself in this. The papers are saying he was killed by footpads in St. Katharine’s.”

  “He was killed in St. Katharine’s, yes. But footpads had nothing to do with it.”

  Radcliff was silent for a moment, his gaze dropping to the glass he twirled back and forth between his hands. He was still an attractive man, with a wide, winning smile. But in repose, one could see that the years of dissipation were beginning to leave their marks in telltale ways, coarsening the texture of his flesh and loosening the muscle tone of his still trim frame.

  Sebastian said, “What can you tell me about him? You say your wife knew him in Paris?”

  Radcliff seemed to rouse himself from his brown study. “She did, yes. They grew up next door to each other on the Île de la Cité. His father is still a prominent physician at the Hôtel-Dieu or some such place.”

  “Oh?”

  Radcliff frowned. “I seem to recall hearing about a dustup of some sort or another involving the father, but it was years ago. Something to do with the royal family during the Terror. I couldn’t tell you exactly what.”

  “What do you know of Damion Pelletan’s politics?”

  “Politics?” Radcliff shook his head. “I had the impression Pelletan had no interest in politics. His passion was medicine.”

  It struck Sebastian as more than a little strange that someone with no interest in politics would join a peace delegation, even if simply in the capacity of a physician. But all he said was, “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Radcliff took a slow, deliberate sip of his brandy, as if carefully considering his response. “I don’t recall, precisely. A week ago, perhaps? Maybe more.”

  “Not last Thursday night?” asked Sebastian, thinking of the unidentified man and woman who had visited Pelletan at the Gifford Arms the night of his death.

  Radcliff froze with his glass suspended just above the table. All traces of easygoing bonhomie had vanished, leaving him looking mulish and vaguely sulky. “No; not Thursday night. I spent Thursday night at home alone with my wife.”