barristers and middling churchmen gentry rather than noble, comfortable rather than wealthy.
But with time had come respect and, eventually, true friendship. Their interests and ambitions had never exactly coincided: Gabrielle's passion had all been for the past, whereas Hero's main focus would always be the economic and social condition of her own age. Yet their shared willingness to challenge their society's narrow gender expectations and their determination never to marry had forged a unique and powerful bond between them.
Now Hero, much to her mingling bemusement and chagrin, had become Lady Devlin. While Gabrielle...
Gabrielle was dead.
The bells of the city's church towers were just striking three when Hero's coachman drew up outside the British Museum. She sat with one hand resting casually on the carriage strap, her gaze on the towering portal of the complex across the street as she listened to the great rolling clatter and dong of the bells swelling over the city.
Built of brick in the French style with rustic stone quoins and a slate mansard roof, the sprawling mansion had once served as the home of the Dukes of Montagu, its front courtyard flanked by long colonnaded wings and separated from Great Russell Street by a tall gateway surmounted by an octagonal lantern. She watched a man and a woman pause on the footpath before the entrance, confer for a moment, and go inside. Then two men deep in a heated discussion, neither of whom Hero recognized, exited the gateway and turned east.
One after another the bells of the city tapered off into stillness, until all were silent.
Hero frowned. She had come in search of an antiquary named Bevin Childe. Childe was known both for his formidable scholarship and for his fanatical adherence to a self-imposed schedule. Every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday between the hours of ten and three he could be found in the Reading Room of the museum. At precisely three o'clock, he left the museum and crossed the street to a public house known as the Pied Piper, where he ate a plate of sliced roast beef and buttered bread washed down by a pint of good, stout ale. This was followed by a short constitutional around nearby Bedford Square, after which he returned to the Reading Room from four until six. But today, Childe was deviating from his prescribed pattern.
The minutes ticked past. `Bother,' said Hero softly under her breath.
`My lady?' asked her footman, his hand on the open carriage door.
`Perhaps...' she began, then broke off as a stout man in his early thirties dressed in a slightly crumpled olive coat and a high-crowned beaver came barreling through the museum's gateway, his head down, a brass-headed walking stick tucked under one arm. He had the face of an overgrown cherub, his flesh as pink and white as a baby's, his small mouth pursed as if with annoyance at the realization that he was nearly ten minutes late for his luncheon.
`Mr. Childe,' called Hero, descending from the carriage, her furled parasol in hand. `What a fortunate encounter. There is something I wish to speak with you about. Do let's walk along for a ways.'
Childe's head jerked up, his step faltering, a succession of transparent emotions flitting across his cherubic features as his desire to maintain his schedule warred with the need to appear accommodating to a woman whose father was the most powerful man in the Kingdom.
`Actually,' he said, `I was just on my way to grab a bite...'
`It won't take but a moment.' Hero opened her parasol and inexorably turned his steps toward the nearby square.
He twisted around to gaze longingly back at the Pied Piper, the exaggerated point of his high collar pressing into his full cheek.
`But I generally prefer to take my constitutional after I eat...'
`I know. I do beg your pardon, but you have heard this morning's news about the death of Miss Tennyson and the disappearance of her young cousins?'
She watched as the pinkness drained from his face, leaving him pale. `How could I not? The news is all over town. Indeed, I can't seem to think of anything else. It was my intention to spend the day reviewing a collection of manor rolls from the twelfth century, but I've found it nearly impossible to focus my attention for more than a minute or two at a stretch.'
`How distressing for you,' said Hero dryly.
The scholar nodded. `Most distressing.'
The man might still be in his early thirties, not much older than Devlin, she realized with some surprise but he had the demeanor and mannerisms of someone in his forties or fifties. She said, `I remember Miss Tennyson telling me once that you disagreed with her identification of Camlet Moat as the possible site of Camelot.'
`I do. But then, you would be sorely pressed to find anyone of repute who does agree with her.'
`You're saying her research was faulty?'
`Her research? No, one could hardly argue with the references to the site she discovered in various historical documents and maps. There is no doubt the area was indeed known as Camelot for hundreds of years. Her interpretation of those findings, however, is another matter entirely.'
`Was that the basis of your quarrel with her last Friday? Her interpretation?'
He gave a weak, startled laugh. `Quarrel? I had no quarrel with Miss Tennyson. Who could have told you such a thing?'
`Do you really want me to answer that question?'
Her implication was not lost on him. She watched, fascinated, as Childe's mobile features suddenly froze. He cleared his throat. `And your... your source did not also tell you the reason for our little disagreement?'
`Not precisely; I was hoping you could explain it further.'
His face hardened in a way she had not expected. `So you are here as the emissary of your husband, not your father.'
`I am no one's emissary. I am here because Gabrielle Tennyson was my friend, and whoever killed her will have to answer to me for what they've done to her to her and to her cousins.'
If any woman other than Hero had made such a statement, Childe might have smiled. But all of London knew that less than a week before, three men had attempted to kidnap Hero; she had personally stabbed one, shot the next, and nearly decapitated the other.
`Well,' he said with sudden, forced heartiness.
`It was, as you say, a difference of opinion over the interpretation of the historical evidence. That is all.'
`Really?'
He stared back at her, as if daring her to challenge him. `Yes.'
They turned to walk along the far side of the square, where a Punch professor competed with a hurdy-gurdy player, and a barefoot, wan-faced girl in a ragged dress sold watercress for a halfpenny a bunch from a worn wooden tray suspended by a strap around her neck. A cheap handbill tacked to a nearby lamppost bore a bold headline that read in smudged ink, KING ARTHUR, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING!
Normally, the square would have been filled with children playing under the watchful eye of their nursemaids, their shouts and laughter carrying on the warm breeze. But today, the sunlit lawns and graveled walks lay silent and empty. Gabrielle's murder and the mysterious disappearance of the two boys had obviously spooked the city. Those mothers who could afford to do so were keeping their children safely indoors under nervous, watchful eyes.
`I was wondering,' said Hero, `where exactly were you yesterday?'
If Childe's cheeks had been pale before, they now flared red, his eyes wide with indignation, his pursed mouth held tight.
`If you mean to suggest that I could possibly have anything to do with that... that... !'
Hero returned his angry stare with a calculated look of bland astonishment. `I wasn't suggesting anything, Mr. Childe; I was merely hoping you might have some idea about Miss Tennyson's plans for Sunday.'
`Ah. Well, I'm afraid not. As it happens, I spend my Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at Gough Hall. The late Richard Gough left his books and papers to the Bodleian Library, you see, and I have volunteered to sort through and organize them. It's a prodigious undertaking.'
She had heard of Richard Gough, the famous scholar and writer who had been director of the Society of Antiquaries for two decades and who had made the Arthurian legends one of his particular areas of interest. `Gough Hall is near Camlet Moat, is it not?'
`It is.'
`I wonder, did you ever take advantage of the opportunity offered by that proximity to visit the excavations
