She went to stand before the window overlooking the square. “John told me about the duel—bragged about it, about how he was going to kill Sebastian.”
“So you . . . what? Thought to warn his lordship that your husband intended to shoot to kill? Surely his lordship was aware of that?”
She shook her head, her lips curling up unexpectedly into a wry smile. “John could never have bested Sebastian. I went to Sebastian to secure his promise that he would not kill my husband.”
She swung away from the window. “That surprises you, does it?” she said when Lovejoy only stared at her. “You think that if I were truly miserable with my husband I would have been glad to be rid of him in whatever way possible. You don’t understand what it’s like for a woman. As difficult as my life is, John is all I have. My father would never take me back. If anything happens to my husband, I’ll be left destitute. On the streets. I couldn’t face that.”
“Where did you meet with Lord Devlin?”
“In a quiet corner of the park. I don’t think anyone saw us. I swear, all we did was talk. But even if John could be brought to believe that, it wouldn’t matter. He’d—” Her voice cracked and she broke off.
Lovejoy watched her slim throat work as she swallowed. There were bruises there, he realized, nearly hidden by the lace edging of her dress. Four bruises in the shape of a man’s fingerprints. “What time was this?”
“From half past five until just before eight.”
It must have taken a considerable effort, Lovejoy thought, for Captain John Talbot’s beautiful young wife to convince Lord Devlin not to kill her abusive husband. But if she were telling the truth, it would have been virtually impossible for Devlin to have made it to the Lady Chapel of St. Matthew of the Fields in Westminster in time to kill Rachel York either before or after his meeting with Mrs. Talbot.
If she were telling the truth.
Lovejoy fixed her with a hard stare. “What made you decide to come forward with this now?”
A hint of color touched her pale cheeks. “I should have told you the truth before. But Sebastian had sent me a note, through my sister.” Opening her reticule, she drew forth a torn, creased piece of paper and handed it to Lovejoy. “He warned me to keep silent. I kept hoping you’d realize that it was all a mistake, your thinking Sebastian was somehow involved in that woman’s death, that I wouldn’t need to say anything. That John need never know. . . .”
Lovejoy stared down at the hastily written words on the scrap of paper. The ink was smudged, as if with tears. “There is no need for you to say anything.”
“What?” She shook her head, her eyes wide, not comprehending. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that there is no point for you to put yourself at risk by coming forward with this information. Thanks to the duel, your association with Lord Devlin is well known and the worst possible implications have been read into it. It will simply be assumed that you’ve made this story up, that you are lying to protect the man you love.”
“But it’s the truth.” Her narrowed eyes searched his face. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“As a man, here and now, I would probably say yes. But as a judge, weighing your testimony against the other evidence in court?” He shrugged. “I think not.”
“But that’s absurd.”
Lovejoy tucked the Viscount’s note into his pocket. “That’s the law.”
Chapter 51
Sebastian thrust the man aside and kicked out hard. The wood splintered beneath his boot heel and the door slammed open against the wall with a shattering crash.
The room beyond lay in semidarkness. The fire in the grate had been allowed to burn low, and someone had drawn the heavy brocade drapes across the windows. The only light came from a flickering brass oil lamp on the desk, the frosted glass shade casting a soft glow over what was left of Lord Frederick Fairchild.
He lay sprawled back at an unnatural angle in his desk chair, one hand dangling limply toward the carpet. Blood was everywhere—on the polished wooden desktop, on the tufted leather chair, the bookcases and paneled walls beyond. Sebastian thought, at first, that the man who had killed Rachel York and Mary Grant must somehow have made it here to this house before him. Then his gaze fell on the neat little ivory-handled pistol still gripped in Lord Frederick’s clenched hand, and he understood.
Swiping a trickle of mingling rainwater and sweat from his face, Sebastian crossed the room’s Oriental carpet to jerk open the drapes at the windows overlooking the rear garden. The pale light of a rainy winter’s afternoon suffused the room. Fairchild had held the pistol’s muzzle against his temple, shattering the right side of his head into a bloody, pulpy mess. Sebastian was just turning from the window when the man’s chest jerked, his mouth opening as he sucked in air and breathed. He’d blown away the better part of the side of his skull, so that Sebastian could see the shiver of the man’s brain beneath the white bone of his skull and the torn, bloody flesh of his scalp. But he wasn’t dead yet.
“
Lord Frederick took another labored breath. “Should have put the damned muzzle in my mouth,” he whispered.
Sebastian hunkered down beside him. “Do you know who I am?”
A flicker of recognition showed in the man’s eyes. “He had one of my letters. One of my letters to Wesley.”
“Who? Who has the letters?”
“Jarvis.” The man’s shattered head moved restlessly against the bloody leather of his chair. “Showed it to the Prince. Said it had been found amongst Leo Pierrepont’s papers . . . that I was working with Pierrepont to go behind the Prince’s back and make peace with France.” His next breath rattled in his throat. “Not true. Never betrayed my country. Never would . . .”
“But the Prince believed it?”
The man’s eyes squeezed shut as if in a spasm of pain, his voice fading. “Jarvis . . . Jarvis said if I didn’t go quietly, he’d see the letter was made public. Couldn’t let Elizabeth . . . My little girl . . . Ruin her.”
Sebastian leaned forward, one hand wrapping around the chair’s leather-padded arm. “The letter—
Fairchild’s eyes stared back at him, wide and sightless.
Sebastian sat back on his heels, his hand still gripping the chair’s arm. He became aware, suddenly, of the insistent shrill of a constable’s whistle and the butler’s voice shouting, “There. He’s in there. In the library.”
Sebastian was on his feet, tossing up one of the rear windows, when he heard the sound of running footsteps crossing the marbled hall. He threw one leg over the windowsill.
“You there! Stop! Stop, I say!”
Slipping through the window, Sebastian landed lightly in a bed of wet, freeze-browned foliage and darkly sodden earth, and broke into a run.
Charles, Lord Jarvis, startled his valet by returning to Berkeley Square shortly before four that afternoon. He wasn’t a physically vain man, Jarvis, but the events at Carlton House that evening would be particularly momentous. And in an age that placed inordinate importance upon appearance, a wise man attended to such things.
Donning knee breeches and silk stockings with a swallow-tailed coat, he resisted his valet’s efforts to lighten his florid complexion with a hint of powder, and made his way downstairs to his library. Jarvis might keep chambers in St. James’s Palace and Carlton House, but his most important papers were here, in Berkeley Square.
He had to admit that he’d been mildly worried at one point, that the sensational manner of that girl’s death might create difficulties. But in the end all had gone off essentially as planned. The looming danger of a Whig government had been averted; Perceval and the Tories would remain in power and the war against atheism,
