Her shrewd gray eyes narrowed with thoughts he could only guess at. `That's what you dream of? The war?'
He hesitated. `Mainly.'
That night, he had indeed been driven from his bed by the echoing whomph of cannonballs, by the squeals of injured horses and the despairing groans of dying men. Yet there were times when his dreams were troubled not by the haunting things he'd seen or the even more haunting things he'd done, but by a certain blue-eyed, dusky-haired actress named Kat Boleyn. It was an unintentional but nonetheless real betrayal of the woman he had taken to wife, and it troubled him. Yet the only certain way for a man to control his dreams was to avoid sleep.
The daylight in the room strengthened.
Hero said, `It's difficult for anyone to sleep in this heat'.
He reached up to smooth the tangled hair away from her damp forehead. `Why not come with me to Hampshire? It would do us both good to get away from the noise and dirt of London for a few weeks.' He'd been intending to pay a visit to his estate all summer, but the events of the past few months had made leaving London impossible. Now it was a responsibility that could be delayed no longer.
He watched her hesitate and knew exactly what she was thinking: that alone together in the country they would be thrown constantly into each other's company. It was, after all, the reason newlywed couples traditionally went away on a honeymoon so that they might get to know each other better. But there was little that could be termed traditional about their days-old marriage.
He expected her to say no. Then an odd, crooked smile touched her lips and she surprised him by saying, `Why not?'
He let his gaze rove over the smooth planes of her cheeks, the strong line of her jaw, the downward sweep of lashes that now hid her eyes from his sight. She was a mystery to him in so many ways. He knew the formidable strength of her intellect, the power of her sense of justice, the unexpected passion his touch could ignite within her. But he knew little of the life she had lived before their worlds became intertwined, of the girl she had once been or the forces and events that had fashioned her into the kind of woman who could without hesitation or compunction shoot a highwayman in the face.
He said, `We can leave for Hampshire today.'
She shook her head. `I'm to meet Gabrielle Tennyson up at Trent Place this morning. She's been consulting with Sir Stanley on the excavations of a site on his property called Camlet Moat, and she's promised to show me what they've discovered.'
Sebastian found himself smiling. Hero's driving passion would always be her clearheaded, logical commitment to reforming the numerous unjust and cruel laws that both handicapped and tarnished their society. But lately she'd also developed a keen interest in the need to preserve the rapidly vanishing legacies of England s past.
He said, `They've discovered something of interest?'
`When you consider that Camlet is a recent corruption of Camelot, anything they find is intriguing.'
He ran the backs of his fingers along her jawline and smiled when he saw her shiver in the heat. `If I remember my Morte d'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory identified Camelot with what is now Winchester.'
She wrapped her hand around his wrist, effectively ending the caress. `Gabrielle thinks Malory was wrong.'
From the street below came the scent of fresh bread and the tinkling bell of the baker's boy crying, `Hot buns.'
Sebastian said, `Tomorrow, then?'
By now, the golden light of morning flooded the room. Hero took a step back out of the circle of Sebastian's arms to hug the sheet tighter around her, as if already regretting her commitment.
`All right. Tomorrow.'
But it was barely an hour later when a constable from Bow Street arrived at the house on Brook Street with the information that Miss Gabrielle Tennyson had been found dead.
Murdered, at Camlet Moat.
Chapter 3
A small, middle-aged man with a balding pate and a serious demeanor stood at the base of the ancient earthen embankment. He had his hands clasped behind his back, his chin sunk into the folds of his modestly tied cravat. A weathered dinghy lay beside him where it had been hauled up onto the moat's bank. It was empty now, but a smear of blood still showed clearly along the edge of the gunwale.
Sir Henry Lovejoy, the newest of Bow Street's three stipendiary magistrates, found himself staring at that telltale streak of blood. He had been called to this murder scene some ten miles north of London by the local magistrate, who was only too eager to hand over his investigation to the Bow Street public office.
Lovejoy blew out a long, troubled sigh. On the streets of London, most murders were straightforward affairs: a drunken navvy choked the life out of his hapless wife; two mates fell out over a dice game or the sale of a horse; a footpad jumped some unwary passerby from the mouth of a fetid alley. But there was nothing ordinary about a murdered young gentlewoman found floating on an abandoned moat in the middle of nowhere.
Miss Gabrielle Tennyson had been just twenty-eight years old. The daughter of a famous scholar, she'd been well on her way to earning a reputation as an antiquary in her own right, a decidedly unusual accomplishment for one of her sex. She lived with her brother, himself a well-known and respected barrister, in a fine house in the Adelphi Buildings overlooking the Thames. Her murder would send an unprecedented ripple of fear through the city, with ladies terrified to leave their homes and angry husbands and fathers demanding that Bow Street do something.
The problem was, Lovejoy had absolutely nothing to go on. Nothing at all.
He raised his gaze to where a line of constables moved along the moat's edge, their big boots churning through the murky water with muddy, sucking plops that seemed to echo in the unnatural stillness. He had never considered himself a fanciful man, far from it, in fact. Yet there was no denying that something about this place raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Perhaps it was the eerie way the light filtered down through the leaves of the thick stands of beech and hornbeam trees to bathe the scene in an unnatural green glow. Or perhaps it was a father's inevitable reaction to the sight of a beautiful, dead young woman, a sight that brought back a time of nearly unbearable heartbreak in Lovejoy's own life.
But he closed his mind to that.
He'd heard of this place, Camlet Moat. They said that once it had been the site of a medieval castle whose origins stretched back to the days of the Romans and beyond. But whatever fortified structures once stood here had long since been dismantled, their stones and mighty timbers carted away. All that remained was a deserted, overgrown square isle a few hundred feet across and the stagnant moat that had once protected it.
Now, as Lovejoy watched, one of the constables broke away from the others to come sloshing up to him.
`We've covered the entire bank, sir,' said the man. `All the way around.'
`And?' asked Lovejoy.
`We've found nothing, sir.'
Lovejoy exhaled a long breath. `Then start on the island itself.'
`Yes, sir.'
A thunder of horses' hooves and the rattle of harness drew their attention to the narrow track that curled through the wood to the moat. A curricle and pair driven by an aristocratic young gentleman in a beaver hat and a caped driving coat drew up at the top of the embankment. The half-grown, scrappy-looking young groom in a striped waistcoat who clung to the rear perch immediately hopped down to race to the chestnuts' heads.
`It's Lord Devlin, sir,' said the constable, staring slack-jawed as the Earl of Hendon's notorious son paused to confer with his tiger, then dropped lightly to the ground.
Lovejoy said, `That will be all, Constable.'
The constable cast a last, curious glance toward the top of the slope, then ducked his head. 'Yes, sir.'
Lovejoy waited while the Viscount tossed his driving coat onto the curricle's high seat, then slid down the
