with careful precision.
`God damn it. Cut line, Lieutenant. Whose honor do you imagine I've insulted? Yours? To suggest that a gentleman had seduced a woman he was unable or unwilling to marry was indeed a grave insult. Because this isn't about you, Lieutenant...'
`If you think I care about that...'
`And it isn't about Gabrielle Tennyson's honor, either,' Sebastian continued, ignoring the interruption. `It's about finding the man or woman who killed her, and who probably killed those two little boys with her. So tell me, what do you know of Miss Tennyson's interactions with Sir Stanley?'
`For the love of God, what are you suggesting now?' Arceneaux jerked back hard against Sebastian's hold.
Sebastian let him go. `Take a damper, would you? I'm asking because when an attractive young woman and an older but still virile man are thrown often into each other's company, people talk.'
`Who?' Arceneaux's fists clenched again.
`Who is suggesting there was anything between them?'
`Lady Winthrop, for one. The woman was obviously more than a little jealous of the time Miss Tennyson spent with her husband.'
The Frenchman spat in disdain. `Lady Winthrop is a fool.'
`Is she?'
`She lost her husband long ago, only not to Gabrielle. She lost him to his grief over his dead children, and to his passion for the past, and to the whispered wisdom of the Druids.'
`So Miss Tennyson knew about Sir Stanley's interest in the Druids, did she?'
`She did. I told you, they were friends - good friends. But nothing more.'
Sebastian studied the French officer's fine-boned, scholarly face. `And you had no concerns about the woman you loved spending so much time in another man's company?'
`I did not. Does that surprise you? Was it not your William Shakespeare who wrote of the marriage of true minds?'
`If this be error and upon me proved,' quoted Sebastian, `I never writ...'
`Nor no man ever loved.' Arceneaux straightened his cravat and smoothed the front of his worn coat with painful dignity. `I loved Gabrielle, and I knew she loved me. I never doubted her. Not for a moment.'
`And you know of no other man in her life?'
`No!'
`Do you know anything about her previous suitors?'
Arceneaux frowned as he watched Chien prance contentedly toward them, ears cocked. `I know there was one man, a suitor who pressed her repeatedly to marry him. Nothing she said seemed to dissuade the man. It was very odd.'
`Who was this?'
`She didn't tell me his name, although I gathered he was a friend of the family.'
`So her brother would likely know him?'
`I should think so, yes. The man was quite open in his pursuit of her. She told me he'd been dangling after her for years, even used to send her sweets and collections of love poems when she was still in the schoolroom.'
`That sounds rather distasteful.'
`She found it so, yes.'
Chien ran one happy, panting circle around them, then dashed off again after a sparrow chirping on the branch of a nearby rambling rose.
Sebastian said, `Did Miss Tennyson ever tell you why she was so determined never to wed?'
Arceneaux watched the sparrow take flight, chattering in annoyance. Chien paused with his tail up, ears on the prick. `It is not so unusual, is it, amongst women who have decided to devote themselves to scholarship?'
Chien came trotting back to stick his cold wet nose under Sebastian's hand. Sebastian let his hand drift down the dog's back. There had been a time when Hero, too, had sworn never to wed. She had only agreed to become his wife because she'd discovered she carried his child and even then he'd had the devil's own time convincing her. He thought he could understand Miss Tennyson sticking resolutely to her choice.
Yet the sense that the Frenchman was lying remained with him.
Chapter 30
Jarvis stood at the edge of the terrace, a glass of champagne balanced in one hand as he let his gaze drift over the sweating men in tails and snowy cravats who chatted in desultory tones with gaily laughing ladies wearing filmy muslins and wide-brimmed hats. The sun was devilishly hot, the champagne warm. Normally Jarvis avoided such affairs. But this particular al fresco party was being hosted by Lady Elcott, the Prince's latest flirt, and Jarvis was here in attendance on the Prince.
A faint apprehensive fluttering amongst the crowd drew Jarvis's attention to a tall, familiar figure working her way across the terrace toward him. She wore a striking gown of cream silk trimmed in black and a black velvet hat with a cockade with black and cream feathers. She was not in any sense the most beautiful woman present, but she still managed to draw every eye.
`And here I thought you'd given up the frivolous amusements of society in order to join your husband in his sordid passion for murder investigations,' said Jarvis as Hero paused beside him.
`I told you my involvement in this has nothing to do with Devlin. Gabrielle Tennyson was my friend, and whoever killed her will have to answer to me.' She let her gaze, like his, slide over the ladies and gentlemen scattered across the lawn below. `Apart from which, I see no reason to view the two pursuits as mutually exclusive.'
`Society and murder, you mean? You have a point. If truth were told, I suspect you'd probably find that Lady Elcott numbers more murderers amongst her guests than you'd be likely to find down at the corner pub although I doubt any of these worthies will ever find themselves in the dock for their crimes.'
She brought her gaze back to his face. `You do realize I now know about the Glastonbury Cross.'
`Do you?' He took a slow sip of his champagne.
`And what, precisely, do you know of it?'
His response was obviously not what she had hoped for. Her eyes narrowed, but she covered her disappointment by taking a sip of her lemonade.
He smiled. `You learned this game from me, remember? And I'm still better at it than you. Shall I tell you precisely what you know? You know that amongst the late Richard Gough's collections, Bevin Childe found a box of ancient bones and a graven artifact he identified as the Glastonbury Cross. You also know that Miss Tennyson, when she heard of Childe's discovery, dismissed the cross as a modern forgery and in a rather alarming fit of unbridled choler threw the item in question into the lake.'
Hero returned his smile with one of her own. `Actually, I've figured out a bit more than that. I've been looking into those broadsheets you were telling me about the ones expressing a longing for the once and future king to return and lead the English to victory by ridding us of the unsatisfactory usurpers currently on the throne.' She glanced over to where the Prince Regent, red-faced and sweating, his coat of Bath superfine straining across his back, had his face and shoulders hunched over a mounded plate of buttered crab. `I can see how the expression of such sentiments might be causing distress in certain circles, even if, as you intimated, the broadsheets were originally the work of French agents. These things can sometimes take on a life of their own. And while we like to think our own age too sophisticated to give heed to such legends, the truth is that far too many people out there are still both ignorant and woefully credulous and all too ready to believe in a miraculous savior.'
`How true.'
A warm wind gusted up, shifting the spreading branches of an elm overhead and casting dancing patterns of light and shadow across the strong features of her face. She said, `Some six hundred years ago, Henry the Second was also troubled by restless subjects who yearned for Arthur to return from the dead and save them. Fortunately
