“I believe the track has broken,” said Miss Jarvis calmly as the carriage lurched sideways. The bench pitched wildly to the right, and she flung out a hand to maintain her precarious perch. “I heard Mr. Trevithick expressing some concern that the engine might be too heavy for the rails.”
A great gasp went up from the crowd of spectators as the steam engine and its carriage came to a shuddering, lopsided halt.
Sebastian said, “Are you all right?”
She used the back of her wrist to push her hat out of her eyes. “Quite all right, thank you. But I fear for the success of Mr. Trevithick’s New Steam Circus.”
“Keep a smile on your face,” said Sebastian, sliding off the seat. Boots firmly on the ground, he reached up to help her alight.
She came down beside him in an unruffled swirl of petticoats and artfully balanced parasol. “Oh, that was such fun,” she exclaimed loudly for the benefit of the excited, jabbering crowd.
He leaned forward to whisper, “One of the staves of your parasol has snapped.”
“Oh.” She quickly closed it. “Thank you.”
“My dear Miss Jarvis!” exclaimed the craggy-faced man, descending on them. “Please accept my heartfelt —”
“No, no, Mr. Trevithick, let me thank
“You can’t be serious,” whispered Sebastian as they pushed their way through the crowds rushing forward to gawk at the steaming, hissing engine.
“But I am.” She drew up just inside the palisade’s gate, her gaze scanning the crowd for her abigail. “Where is that woman of mine?”
Sebastian spied the harried, pale-faced maid threading her way toward them. He said, “I’ll let you know the details once I’ve spoken to the Archbishop.”
Miss Jarvis nodded, her gaze on the abigail.
He found himself studying the woman beside him. She had a streak of soot across her cheek; a lock of soft brown hair had escaped from beneath her hat. The combination made her look both less formidable and considerably more likeable.
“You won’t regret this,” he said suddenly.
She brought up a hand to shove the stray lock of hair back up under her hat with a brisk motion. “It was always my intention to never marry. To be forced to do so, now, seems somehow a defeat.”
He reached out to wipe the smudge of soot from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Yet you also told me that your one regret was that you would never have children.”
An uncharacteristic rush of color tinged her cheeks, and she tightened her grip on her parasol. “Yes, well ... We have already remedied that, have we not?”
Miss Jarvis turned toward her maid. “Nonsense, Marie. I am quite all right.” She nodded to Sebastian with what struck him as a regal inclination of her head. “My Lord Devlin.”
He tipped his hat. “Miss Jarvis.”
He stood at the gate, his gaze following her across the square. He was still watching her when Tom drew up the curricle beside him.
“What did you discover?” Sebastian asked, leaping up to take the reins.
Tom scrambled back to his perch. “Yer Sir ’Yde Foley takes’is nuncheon at a public house on the corner o’ Downing Street. The Cat and Bagpipe.”
Ancient and low ceilinged, its atmosphere permeated with the wood smoke and spilled ale of centuries, the Cat and Bagpipe had once echoed with the shouts and bawdy songs of medieval pilgrims to the nearby shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. Its current patrons were considerably more sedate, being drawn largely from the government offices occupying the warren of old houses fronting Downing Street and St. James’s Park.
Pushing his way through the early afternoon crowd of clerks and MPs, Sebastian found Sir Hyde Foley eating a plate of sliced boiled beef at an age-darkened oak table near the pub’s vast stone hearth. A slim man with pale skin and dark hair, he watched Sebastian’s progress across the hazy room with narrowed eyes.
“Let me tell you right off,” he said as Sebastian drew up beside his table, “that if you are here as your father’s emissary—”
“I am not.” Without waiting for an invitation, Sebastian drew out the opposite chair and sat. “I’m told Mr. Alexander Ross worked for you.”
Foley cut a slice of beef. “He did. Why do you ask?”
Sebastian studied the other man’s thin, sharp-boned face. “You don’t find the sudden death of a healthy young man at the Foreign Office cause for concern?”
Foley chewed slowly and swallowed. “Mr. Ross died of a defective heart.”
Sebastian caught the eye of the plump, middle-aged barmaid and held up two fingers. “Mr. Alexander Ross died from a stiletto thrust to the base of his skull.”
Foley hesitated with his fork raised halfway to his mouth. “How do you know this?”
“That, I am not at liberty to say.”
“Indeed. So I am simply to take your word for it?”
Sebastian waited while the barmaid set two foaming tankards on the battered tabletop between them. Then he said, “When exactly did you last see Mr. Ross?”
Foley frowned as if with thought. “He died ... when? Last Sunday?”
“Either early Sunday morning or sometime Saturday night.”
Foley shrugged. “Then I suppose I must have seem him that Saturday, at the Foreign Office. Why?”
Sebastian took a long, slow swallow of his ale. “What precisely were Mr. Ross’s duties with the Foreign Office?”
“He dealt with foreign nationals.”
Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that anything beyond that is none of your damned business.”
Sebastian smiled and took another sip of ale. “What was your opinion of him?”
“Ross?” Foley shrugged. “He was a good man. A very good man. We were sorry to lose him. Too many young men in his situation would have treated his position in the Foreign Office with negligent indifference. Not Ross.”
“‘In his situation?’ What does that mean, precisely?”
“Only that his brother, Sir Gareth Ross, is both childless and half-paralyzed from a carriage accident. As the heir presumptive, Alexander Ross would doubtless have inherited—had he lived.”
“Sir Gareth’s fortune is considerable?”
“Considerable? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But comfortable, definitely comfortable. The family is an old one, while the estate—Charlbury Priory—is both ancient and widely admired.”
“Ross was how old? Twenty-five? Thirty?”
“Six-and-twenty, I believe. He’d been with the Foreign Office since coming down from Cambridge.”
“Always in London?”
Foley carved another slice of beef. “With the exception of a two-year stint at our embassy in St. Petersburg, yes.”
“He was in Russia?”
“That’s right.”
“By which I can assume that some of the ‘foreign nationals’ he dealt with here in London were Russian?”
Foley raised his own tankard to his lips, his gaze meeting Sebastian’s over the rim. “You may assume
