Hendon was right: apart from the romantic appeal of a lost cause, the Stuart claimant to the throne would no longer inspire enthusiasm in Scotland. Nor would Jacobitism have much appeal to the Tories of today. The Hanoverian succession had been a disaster for the old Tories. There was little resemblance between the Tories of the early eighteenth century and the new Toryism that had emerged from the fears inspired by the French Revolution. Far from sympathizing with the Catholics, the Tories had become fierce defenders of the Church of England, opposing religious toleration of both Catholics and non-conforming dissenters alike. It was now, ironically, the Whigs who championed the cause of tolerance.
But it would be hard to imagine the Whigs advocating a restoration of the Stuarts. For in this, the Whigs had not changed. While the Tories had turned their backs on reform and embraced the sanctity of property over the defense of individual liberty, the Whigs remained dedicated to limiting the power of the crown and had claimed the objectives and achievements of the Glorious Revolution as their own.
As they rode, the morning mist began to lift, blown away by a cold wind that kept the park deserted except for one or two solitary riders. Hendon posted along in silence for a few moments, his thoughts to himself. Then he said, “It’s the necklace, isn’t it? That’s what’s sent you off on this.”
Sebastian studied his father’s closed, hard profile. They had never been close, even in the golden years of Sebastian’s early childhood, when all the people he’d loved—his mother, his brothers, Richard and Cecil—had all lived. Then had come the black summer of Cecil and Sophie’s deaths, and at one point it had seemed to Sebastian that the Earl came very close to actually hating him—hating him for living, when all the others had died. With time, Sebastian had seen a reemergence of some signs of Hendon’s gruff affection. But things had never been the same, and now it was as if a wall of silence and mistrust had reared up between them anew. Sebastian had no idea how to surmount it.
“Partially,” he said simply.
Sebastian had never asked the Marquis of Anglessey how his wife came to be wearing the ancient talisman once given by a Welsh witch to her Stuart lover. It hadn’t seemed fitting somehow, when Sebastian’s main interest in the necklace had been personal. But he was beginning to realize the triskelion might have played a more important part in Guinevere’s death than he’d first realized.
“I’m dying, Egypt, dying. One word, sweet queen: Of Caesar seek your honor, with your safety.” Marc Antony looked at his Cleopatra expectantly.
Kat, her theatrical costume covered with a pinafore to protect it during rehearsal, stared off across the darkened pit to where a gentleman stood in the shadows, his hat pulled low on his brow.
The pit was empty in the afternoon light, the theater silent except for a distant hammering and the swish of the cleaning lady’s broom sweeping up the orange peels that littered the floor from last night’s performance. The gentleman should not be here.
Kat jerked and swung back to face her Marc Antony. “They do not go together,”’ she said, then mouthed,
After that, she was careful not to miss any more cues. But she remained aware of the gentleman in the shadows.
She thought she recognized him. He was the Duc de Royan, one of the noblemen who had come to London in the train of the dethroned Louis XVIII, or the Comte de Lille, as he called himself. Royan professed to be a fierce opponent of Napoleon’s regime. But then, Leon Pierrepont had also claimed to be an enemy of Napoleon, all the while serving as the French spymaster in London.
“Come, thou mortal wretch,” said Kat, applying a papier-mache asp to her breast. “With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate of life at once untie….” When she turned around, the Duc de Royan was gone.
As soon as rehearsal ended, she hurried down the corridor to her dressing room. Heart beating uncomfortably fast, she thrust open the door. A bouquet stood upon her dressing table, a lavish confection of white lilies and pink roses in a cloud of baby’s breath. A two-toned bouquet.
Kat snatched up the note she found balanced amidst the stems and tore open the seal. “His Highness the Comte de Lille presents his compliments and begs you to accept these paltry blossoms as a token of his admiration.”
No biblical quotation. No secret message. No appointment for a rendevous with danger.
Kat leaned her forehead against the wall, drew in a shaky breath, and let it out in a soft laugh of relief.
SEBASTIAN SPENT THE NEXT SEVERAL HOURS asking some discreet questions about Bevan Ellsworth’s boon companion, Fabian Fitzfrederick, illegitimate son to Prince Frederick, the Duke of York. But Fitzfrederick’s movements on that fatal Wednesday proved to be as innocuous as Bevan’s. After a day spent at Tattersall’s, Fitzfrederick had whiled away the evening at the same Pickering Place gaming hell frequented by his friend Ellsworth.
Thoughtful, Sebastian sent Tom off to canvass the shops of Giltspur Street in Smithfield, then turned his own steps toward the Marquis of Anglessey’s Mount Street town house.
He found the Marquis in the tile-floored conservatory built onto the back of the house. Pausing beneath a gently drooping tree fern, Sebastian looked at Guinevere’s husband and saw an old man, his once-sturdy frame now gaunt, his gray head bowed as he tended a yellow blooming jasmine. Then the Marquis looked up and the impression of age and infirmity was dispelled by the power of the intelligence and sheer force of personality shining in his eyes.
“I was wondering if you would come today,” said the Marquis, jerking off his gardening gloves and laying them aside.
Sebastian glanced around the humid room, crowded with ferns and orchids and tender, leafy tropicals. The warm air smelled of moist earth and green growing things and the sweet perfume of the cape gardenia blooming over by the door. He had something of a reputation as a connoisseur of exotic plants, the Marquis. They said that when he was young, he’d sailed on a naval expedition to the South Pacific, collecting botanic specimens.
“Paul Gibson tells me he gave you the results of your wife’s autopsy,” said Sebastian.
