“My wife hadn’t been well lately. Nothing serious, you understand.” A sad, wistful smile played around the old man’s lips. “It happens sometimes when a woman is in the family way. She was planning to come down to Brighton with me. She always enjoyed the weeks we spent here each summer. But in the end she decided she couldn’t face all those hours in a closed, swaying carriage. She stayed home.”
“Home?”
“That’s right.” The Marquis’s hand tightened around his secateurs as he pushed to his feet again. “The doctors thought the sea air would do me good, so she insisted I come without her. We were hoping she’d feel well enough to follow in a week or two. But until last night, I thought Guinevere was in London.”
At first it seemed just one more bizarre twist in a tangled, incomprehensible string of imperfectly understood events, that Anglessey should have believed his wife to be in London at the time of her death. But the more Sebastian thought about it, the more it made sense.
According to Paul Gibson, Lady Guinevere had been killed some six to eight hours before the Regent was discovered clutching her body in the Yellow Cabinet. At some point during that long afternoon, she had lain for hours, faceup, so that the blood had congealed and darkened her flesh to a vivid purple. Only then had a dagger been driven into her bare back and her body positioned enticingly on its side in preparation for the Regent’s amorous approach.
All of which meant she might actually have been killed in London, and her body brought down to Brighton.
“That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Hendon, when Sebastian explained his reasoning to his father that evening over a glass of brandy in their private parlor at the Anchor. “And just how do you suppose this mythical killer managed to slip the lady’s corpse into the Yellow Cabinet? He could hardly have strolled through the Pavilion bearing her lifeless body in his arms, now, could he? Or do you imagine he smuggled her inside rolled up in a carpet, like some blackguard straight out of a circulating library romance?”
Sebastian watched his father walk over to the table beside the empty hearth and pour himself another brandy. “What are you suggesting? That she traveled down to Brighton unbeknownst to her husband, simply to commit suicide by some mysterious means after arranging to have her dead body fall on a dagger in the Regent’s Yellow Cabinet? Oh yes, and then lay there unnoticed for another six hours or so while the servants built up the fire and cleaned the room around her?”
Hendon set the brandy decanter down with a thump. “Don’t be ridiculous. What I’m suggesting is that your Irish friend doesn’t know what in the bloody hell he’s talking about!”
He broke off, his head turning at the sound of a discreet tap at the door. “Excuse me, my lord,” said the Earl’s valet, every inch of his body rigid with disapproval as he executed a short bow. “Viscount Devlin’s tiger is here to see him. He
Sebastian brought up a fist and coughed to hide his smile. Tom was not a favorite with the Earl’s staff. “That’s right. Please show him in.”
Not content to be left cooling his heels in the hall, Tom had already appeared in the open doorway, his face pinched and drawn with disappointment.
“Well?” said Sebastian as the manservant bowed himself out. “What did you discover?”
“Nothin’, gov’nor,” said the boy, his voice heavy. “Not a blessed thing. Nobody could remember seein’ nothin’ out of the ordinary. Not till all them nobs started screaming their heads off and running outta there like fleas off a dead dog.”
Hendon let out his breath in a self-satisfied
“Any speculation?” Sebastian asked the boy.
“Oh, aye. Lots o’ that. The kitchen maids, they’re all atwitter at the thought the Regent done the lady hisself, while the stable lads, they reckon Cumberland’s behind it somehow. And they’re all talkin’ about this Hanover C —”
Tom broke off to cast a quick glance at Hendon.
“Go on,” prompted Sebastian.
Tom sniffed and lowered his voice. “It’s said in whispers, of course. But there’s some as will have it the whole family isn’t just barny. They’re sayin’ the Hanovers is cursed. And that England will be cursed, too, as long as the Hanovers—”
“That’s rot nonsense,” roared Hendon, surging up from his chair.
The boy stood his ground, his eyes narrowed and wary. “It’s what they’re saying.”
Sebastian rested one hand on the boy’s shoulder and gave him a light squeeze. “Thank you, Tom. That will be all for now.”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll ever understand why you brought that boy into your household,” said Hendon, after Tom had taken himself off.
“You think my gratitude should have been sufficiently served by a simple thank-you and the gift of perhaps a gold watch? Tom saved my life, remember? Mine and Kat’s.”
Hendon’s jaw tightened in that way it always did whenever Sebastian did something of which Hendon disapproved—or that disappointed him. Once, the Earl of Hendon had boasted of three strong sons to succeed him. But fate had left him with only Sebastian, the youngest and least satisfactory. “I think most would have considered a small pension more than adequate,” said Hendon.
“The boy is useful.”
“Good God. And in what way might a pickpocket be of use to a gentleman of quality?”
“To survive on the streets requires agility, a talent for keen observation, and quick wits. All abilities I can use.”
