“Well, what is it?” snapped Jarvis as he and Sebastian strolled toward King Street.
“The spies in the households of the various ambassadors posted to London,” said Sebastian. “Who controls them? You? Or the Foreign Office?”
“The Foreign Office. Why?”
“But you have access to their reports.”
“Naturally.”
“So you knew why the woman known as Yasmina Ramadani was sent to London as part of the Turkish Ambassador’s household.”
“We had our suspicions, yes.”
“Did you have her killed?”
Jarvis snorted. “I did not.”
“Yet you knew she had seduced someone at the Foreign Office. Who was it?”
Jarvis’s full lips curved into a smile. “Even if I knew, you don’t seriously think I’d tell you, do you?”
With effort, Sebastian suppressed the urge to plant his fist in the middle of his future father-in-law’s complacent face. “What about the Swede, Carl Lindquist? Did you have him killed?”
A man in a swirling evening cape walked toward them. Jarvis dropped his voice to a harsh whisper. “Don’t be absurd. The Swede’s death has complicated an already delicate state of affairs.”
“How many people besides Ross knew of the transfer of the gold?”
Jarvis kept his voice low. “It’s impossible to keep arrangements of this nature a closely held secret. By necessity it is known to individuals in the Treasury, the Cabinet ... even some members of Parliament.”
Sebastian waited until the gentleman in the evening cape had passed them, then said, “And Antoine de La Rocque? How did he figure into it?”
The King’s powerful, omniscient cousin drew a gold snuffbox from one pocket and flicked open the lid. “I know nothing about de La Rocque. To my knowledge he was merely an expriest with a rather curious passion for collecting old books.”
Sebastian smiled. “Of course.”
Jarvis lifted a delicate pinch of snuff to one nostril and inhaled. “You haven’t asked if I killed Alexander Ross.”
Sebastian met the older man’s hard gray gaze. “Would you tell me if you had?”
Jarvis closed his snuffbox with a snap. “I suppose that would depend on why I had him killed.”
Lost in thought, Sebastian was walking up St. James’s Street when one of Kat Boleyn’s young pages found him.
Breaking the seal of her note, Sebastian read through the brief missive. Then he turned his steps toward Covent Garden.
She wore a crimson velvet cloak with the hood pulled up over her auburn-shot dark hair. He walked toward her, his footsteps echoing in the stillness, his gaze drinking in the sight of her.
She held out her hand to him. “I didn’t think you were coming.”
He took her hand in his, held it a moment too long, then released it. “Your page had a difficult time finding me.” He searched her beautiful, beloved face. “What is it?”
“You’ve heard of the death of the woman known as Yasmina Ramadani?”
“Yes. Why?”
They turned to walk up the narrow lane. She said, “The friendship between France and the Sublime Porte goes back hundreds of years.”
“Thanks largely to their mutual dislike of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the grand tradition of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend.
“Something like that.”
Sebastian glanced sideways at her. “Are you telling me that the information Yasmina collected was being shared with the French?”
“Yes.”
“Via whom?”
She smiled and shook her head. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
He nodded. “Can you tell me who Yasmina targeted at the Foreign Office? Was it Alexander Ross? Or someone else?”
“I’m not certain, although it’s possible she may have had more than one lover.” Kat hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “It has occurred to you, I suppose, that it is in France’s best interest to prevent an alliance between Britain and Sweden?”
“Are you saying the French acted on the information Yasmina gleaned from Ross—or someone else—and killed Lindquist in an attempt to disrupt any alliance between Britain and Sweden?”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility. But do I know for certain? No.”
“And Ross? Why was he killed?”
“I haven’t been able to learn anything about Alexander Ross.”
Sebastian blew out a long, frustrated breath. “I suppose it’s possible his death isn’t related to any of this at all.”
“It’s related,” she said. “The manner of his death tells us that.”
They walked along in silence for a moment, their footsteps echoing hollowly in the narrow, empty street. Then she said, “Have you considered Jarvis?”
“When one is dealing with what looks like the work of a professional assassin, the possibility of Jarvis’s involvement does tend to suggest itself, yes. Although if Jarvis had Ross killed to prevent him from spilling state secrets to a Turkish spy, I don’t see why he wouldn’t simply admit it.”
“You
“Yes.”
She let out a peal of laughter, soft and melodic and so belovedly familiar it brought an ache to his chest. “Oh, Sebastian,” she said, “your future family gatherings ought to prove beyond interesting, to say the least.”
Then she must have read something he didn’t want her to see in his eyes, for her smile faded and she reached out to touch her fingertips, ever so briefly, to his arm. “I know why you’re doing this, Sebastian.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “How can you?”
“The British government isn’t the only one who pays servants to spy on their masters. Get your bride a new abigail.”
That night, Hero received an urgent note from her cousin Sabrina.
Intrigued, Hero wrote back,
Then she sat for a time, her cousin’s note in her hand, her mind busy with a series of conjectures that in the end seemed to go nowhere.
The morning dawned cool and overcast, with a soft white mist that swirled through the trees in the park.
Hero found Sabrina looking pale and heartbreakingly lovely in a walking dress of the deepest mourning topped by a black spencer. At first, Hero was content to simply allow the conversation to ramble as they walked. Her
