When Maidens Mourn (36 page)

A gust of wind swelled the canopy of the trees overhead, loosing a cascade of raindrops that pattered on the aged tombstones and rank grass around them.

“That’s good to know,” he said, his gaze locked with hers. He took a step back and tipped his head. “Do tell your husband I said hello.”

And he walked away, leaving her staring after him and wondering how he had known who she was when she herself had never seen him before that day.

Sebastian was stripping off his bloody, coal-stained shirt in his dressing room when he heard the distant pounding of the front knocker. Reaching for the pitcher, he splashed hot water into the washbasin.

An angry shout drifted up from the entry hall below, followed by a scuffle and the thump of quick feet on the stairs.

“Sir!” came Morey’s outraged cry. “If you will simply wait in the drawing room, I will ascertain if his lordship—
Sir!”

Sebastian paused, his head turning just as Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt, the honorable member from Lincolnshire, came barreling through the dressing room door.

“You bloody interfering bastard,” d’Eyncourt shouted, drawing up abruptly in the center of the room. His face was red from his run up the stairs, his hands curled into fists at his sides, his cravat askew. “This is all your fault. You’ve ruined me! Do you hear me? You have positively
ruined
my hopes of having any significant future in government.”

Sebastian nodded to the majordomo hovering in the open doorway. “It’s all right, Morey; I can handle this.”

The majordomo bowed and withdrew.

Sebastian reached for a towel. “Tell me how, precisely, am I supposed to have injured you?” he said to d’Eyncourt.

Gabrielle’s cousin stared at him, his nostrils flaring, his chest lifting with his agitated breathing. “It’s all over town!”

Sebastian dried his face and ran the towel down over his wet chest. “What is all over town?”

“About Gabrielle and her French lover. This is your fault—you and your damnable insistence on pushing your nose into other people’s private affairs. I’ve been afraid this would come out.”

Sebastian paused for a moment, his head coming up. “You knew about Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux?”

Suddenly tight-lipped and silent, d’Eyncourt stared back at him.

Sebastian tossed the towel aside. “How? How did you know?”

D’Eyncourt adjusted the set of his lapels. “I saw them together. Indeed, it was my intention to alert Hildeyard to what was happening as soon as he returned to town. Not that anyone ever had much success in curbing Gabrielle’s wild starts, but still. What else was one to do?”

“When did you see them together? Where?”

“I fail to comprehend how this is any of your—”

Sebastian advanced on him, the pompous, arrogant, self-satisfied mushroom backing away until his shoulders and rump smacked against the cupboard behind him. “I’m going to ask you one last time: when and where?”

D’Eyncourt swallowed convulsively, his eyes going wide. “I first came upon them quite by chance in the park, last—last week sometime. They were so nauseatingly absorbed in each other that they didn’t even see me. I thus had the opportunity to observe them without being perceived myself. It was quite obvious what direction the wind was in with them.”

Sebastian frowned. “You said that was the first time you saw them. When else?”

D’Eyncourt’s tongue slipped out to moisten his lower lip. “Thursday. He was there, you know—when she had that confrontation with the tavern owner I was telling you about, at the York Steps. The two men nearly came to blows.”

“Arceneaux was with her when Gabrielle quarreled with Knox?”

“If Knox is the rogue’s name, then, yes.”

“And when you told me about the incident, you left Arceneaux’s presence out—why?”

“I should think my reasons would be self-evident. My first cousin—my
female
cousin—involved in a sordid affair with one of Napoléon’s officers— Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my political career?”

Sebastian was aware of a bead of water from his wet hair running down one cheek. “A man is dead because of you, and you stand there and bleat about your bloody political career?”

D’Eyncourt put up a hand to straighten his cravat, his chin lifting and turning to one side as if to ease a kink in his neck. “What man are you suggesting is dead because of me?”

“Arceneaux!”

D’Eyncourt looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know how you think you can hang his death on me, but who cares if he is dead? The man killed Gabrielle and my nephews. Or hadn’t you heard?”

Sebastian swiped the back of his arm across his wet cheek. “What the devil are you talking about?”

A condescending smirk spread over d’Eyncourt’s self-satisfied face. “Seems that the night before he died, Arceneaux confided to one of his fellow French officers that he killed Gabrielle and the boys.” D’Eyncourt’s tight smile widened. “What’s the matter? Did Bow Street forget to tell you?”

S
ir Henry Lovejoy paused beneath the protective arches of the long arcade overlooking the market square of Covent Garden. The rain had started up again, sweeping in great windblown sheets over the shuttered stalls and lean-tos in the square. He was not a man prone to profanity, but at the moment the urge to give vent to his anger against Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt was undeniably powerful.

He swallowed hard and said to the man who stood beside him, “I would like to apologize, my lord. I had not intended for you to learn of this development in such a manner.”

“Never mind that,” said Devlin. “How did this come about?”

“A gentleman approached us this morning with word that Arceneaux’s death had inspired one of his fellow French officers to come forward with the information.”

“What’s this officer’s name?”

“Alain Lefevre—an infantry captain, I believe, taken at Badajos. He says Arceneaux confessed whilst in his cups to having stabbed Miss Tennyson in the midst of a lover’s quarrel.”

“And the two boys, Alfred and George?”

“He says Arceneaux claimed at first to have been overcome with remorse for what he’d done, so that he set out to drive the boys back to London. Only, he panicked and decided to kill the boys too, in an attempt to cover up his guilt. The children’s bodies are hidden in a ditch or gully somewhere. We’ve set men out searching the routes between the moat and the city, but at this point it’s becoming doubtful the poor lads’ bodies will ever be found.”

Devlin kept his gaze focused on the square, where loose cabbage leaves fluttered in the wind. “I’d be interested to speak with this Lefevre.”

“Unfortunately, the man is already on his way back to France.”

Devlin swung his head to stare at him. “He what?”

“As a reward for his cooperation. I understand they thought it best to get him out of the country quickly, for his own protection.”

An eddy of wind blew a fine mist in their faces. Lovejoy removed his spectacles and wiped them with his handkerchief before carefully fitting them back on his face. “His information does fit the facts as we know them.”

“Only if one were unacquainted with Philippe Arceneaux.”

When Lovejoy remained silent, the Viscount said, “What was the basis of Arceneaux’s quarrel with Miss Tennyson supposed to have been?”

“Lefevre did not know. But there are some recent developments that may shed light on the subject. Earlier today, four paroled French officers were captured attempting to escape to France. One of the men retaken—a hussar captain named Pelletier—was reputedly one of Arceneaux’s intimates.”

Devlin frowned. “Is this Pelletier a big bear of a man with blond lovelocks and a long mustache?”

“That sounds like him, yes. Do you know him?”

“I’ve seen him. When did the escaping men leave London?”

“Sometime before dawn this morning, we believe. They were
found hidden in the back of a calico printer’s cart that had been fitted out with benches on the inside. The speculation is that there were originally to have been six men involved in the escape attempt, with Arceneaux being one of the missing men, and the other being the French officer you killed when he attacked you in Covent Garden the other night. There appears to have been some sort of falling out amongst the conspirators, which is doubtless why Arceneaux was killed—for fear that he meant to betray them.”

“Does this hussar captain, Pelletier, confirm that?”

“All of the fugitives taken up are refusing to speak to anyone about anything. One of the constables attempting to retake the men was shot and killed, which means they’ll all now hang for murder.” Lovejoy shook his head. “Shocking, is it not? For officers to go back on their sworn word…It displays such an utter want of all the feelings and instincts of a gentleman.”

Lovejoy expected Devlin, as a former military man himself, to be particularly harsh in his condemnation of any officer who so dishonored himself. The Viscount was silent for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he stared out at the rain. But when he finally spoke, his voice was oddly tight. “I suppose they were homesick and despaired of ever seeing France again. Sometimes it does seem as if this war will never end.”

“I suppose so, but—”

Devlin turned toward him suddenly, an arrested expression on his face. “Did you say a
calico printer’s
cart?”

Lovejoy blinked. “Yes. Although I fear we may never determine precisely which calico printer is involved—if indeed one is. You find that significant for some reason, my lord?”

“It just may be.”

Jamie Knox was supervising the loading of a dray in the rain-washed courtyard of Calvert’s Brewery in Upper Thames Street
when Sebastian came to stand under the arch. Propping one shoulder against the rough bricks, he crossed his arms at his chest and watched the tavern owner at work.

The air was heavy with the yeasty smell of fermenting hops, the tang of wet stone and brick, the odor of fish rising off the nearby rain-churned river. Knox threw him one swift glance but continued barking orders to the men lashing barrels to his wagon’s high bed. He conferred for a moment with his driver. Then he walked over to stand in front of Sebastian, rainwater running down his cheeks, his yellow eyes hooded.

“You’re obviously here for a reason; what is it, then?”

Sebastian stared into the lean, fine-boned face that was so much like his own. “I know why you killed Philippe Arceneaux.”

Knox let out a bark of laughter. “That’s rich. So tell me, then; what reason would I have for killing this young French—ah, lieutenant, was he not?”

“He was.” Sebastian stood back as a cart piled with sacks of hops and drawn by a bay shire horse turned in under the arch, steam rising from the animal’s wet hide, hooves clattering over the cobbles. “I noticed there’s a calico printer’s shop across the lane from your tavern.”

“So there is. But there must be several dozen or more calico printers scattered across London. So if you’re thinking there’s any connection between the calico printer’s cart I hear those four escaping French officers were taken up in and my tavern, then let me tell you right now, you’re fair and far out.”

“I might have believed you if I hadn’t discovered that Philippe Arceneaux was present at that little set-to you had with Miss Tennyson last Thursday at the York Steps. I’m thinking there’s a reason you left that detail out, and this is it.”

Knox stood with his hands on his slim hips, his cheeks slightly hollowed, a faint smile dancing around his mouth as if he were amused.

Sebastian said, “You see, I’m thinking there were originally supposed to be six Frenchmen in that cart, with Arceneaux being one of them. Only, somehow the woman he loved—that would be Miss Tennyson, by the way—found out he was planning to escape and begged him to stay. So he backed out.”

“An interesting theory, to be sure. Although I fail to see what the hell any of this has to do with me.”

Sebastian watched the team of heavy dapple grays hitched to Knox’s beer wagon lean into their collars. “I’m told that six hundred and ninety-two paroled French officers have escaped—or attempted to escape—from England in the past three years. That’s an extraordinary number of men. Is that how you pay for the French wine and brandy you smuggle in? With escaped prisoners of war?”