The Cheese, in a small cul-de-sac known as Wine Office Court, off Fleet Street, was a venerable old eating establishment popular with antiquaries and barristers from the nearby Temple. A low-voiced conversation with a stout waiter sent Sebastian up a narrow set of stairs to a smoky room with a low, planked ceiling, where he found Childe eating a Rotherham steak in solitary splendor at a table near the bank of heavy-timbered windows.
The antiquary had a slice of beef halfway to his open mouth when he looked up, saw Sebastian coming toward him, and dropped his fork with a clatter.
`Good evening,' said Sebastian, slipping into the opposite high-backed settee. `I was surprised when your man told me I might find you here. It's my understanding you typically spend Fridays at Gough Hall.'
The antiquary closed his mouth. `My schedule this week has been upset.'
`How distressing for you.'
`It is, yes. You've no notion.' Very slowly, the antiquary retrieved his fork, took a bite of steak, and swallowed, hard. `I...' He choked, cleared his throat, and tried again. `I had hoped I'd explained everything to your wife's satisfaction yesterday at the museum.'
Sebastian kept his face quietly composed, although in truth he didn't know what the bloody hell the man was talking about.
`You're quite certain you left nothing out?'
`No, no; nothing.'
Sebastian signaled the waiter for a tankard of bitter. `Tell me again how Miss Tennyson discovered the cross was a forgery.'
Childe threw a quick, nervous glance around, then leaned forward, his voice dropping. `It was the merest chance, actually. She had made arrangements to drive out to Gough Hall on Friday to see the cross. I'd been expecting her early in the day, but as time wore on and she never arrived, I'd quite given up looking for her. Then the craftsman who'd manufactured the cross showed up.' Childe's plump face flushed with indignation.
`The scoundrel had the unmitigated gall to come offering to make other artifacts. I was in the stables telling him precisely what I thought of his suggestion when I turned and saw her standing there. She... I'm afraid she heard quite enough to grasp the truth of the situation.'
`How did she know Jarvis was involved?'
Childe's tongue flicked out nervously to wet his lips.
`I told her. She was threatening to expose the entire scheme, you see. So I warned her that she had no idea who or what she was dealing with.'
`The knowledge didn't intimidate her?'
`Unfortunately, no. If anything, it only enraged her all the more.'
Sebastian let his gaze drift over the stout man's sweat-sheened face. `Who do you think killed her?'
Childe tittered.
`You find the question amusing?'
Childe cut another bite of his steak. `Under the circumstances? Yes.'
`It's a sincere question.'
He paused in his cutting to hunch forward and lower his voice.
`In truth?'
`Yes.'
The antiquary threw another of his quick looks around. `Jarvis. I think Lord Jarvis killed her or rather, had her killed.'
`That's interesting. Because you see, he rather thinks you might have done it.'
Childe's eyes bulged. `You can't be serious. I could never have killed her. I loved her! I've loved her from the moment I first saw her. Good God, I was willing to marry her despite knowing only too well about the family's fits.
Sebastian stared at him. `About the what?'
Childe pressed his napkin to his lips. `It's not something they like to talk about, I know. And while it's true I've never seen any indication that either Hildeyard or Gabrielle suffered from the affliction, there's no doubt it's rife in the rest of the family. Their great-grandfather had it, you know. And I understand the little boys' father - that Reverend up in Lincolnshire - suffers from it dreadfully.'
Sebastian stared at the man across the table from him. `What the devil are you talking about? What kind of fits?'
Childe blinked at him owlishly. `Why, the falling sickness, of course. It's why Miss Tennyson always insisted she would never marry. Even though she showed no sign of it herself, she feared that she could somehow pass it on to any children she might have. She called it the family curse. It quite enraged d'Eyncourt, I can tell you.'
`D'Eyncourt? Why?'
`Because while he ll deny it until he's blue in the face, the truth is that he suffers from it himself although nothing to the extent of his brother. When we were up at Cambridge, he half killed some sizar who said he had it.' Childe paused, then said it again, as if the implications had only just occurred to him. `He half killed him.'
Chapter 48
Sebastian found Hero at the library table, one of Gabrielle Tennyson's notebooks spread open before her.
The pose appeared relaxed. But he could practically see the tension thrumming in every line of her being. She looked up when he paused in the doorway, a faint flush touching her cheeks. He was aware of a new sense of constraint between them, a wariness that hadn't been there before. But he couldn't think of anything to say to ease the tension between them.
She said it for him. `We haven't handled this situation well, have we? Or perhaps I should say, I have not.'
He came to pull out the chair opposite her and sit down. The raw anger he'd felt, before, along the Thames, had leached out of him, leaving him unexpectedly drained and weighed down by a heaviness he recognized now as sadness.
He let his gaze drift over the tightly held lines of her face.
`I'd go with we.'
She said stiffly, `I might regret the situation, but I can't regret my decision.'
`I suppose that makes sense. I can admire you for your loyalty to your father, even if I don't exactly agree with it.'
He was surprised to see a faint quiver pass over her features. But she still had herself under rigid control. Only once had he seen her self-control break, in the subterranean chambers of Somerset House when they faced death together and created the child she now carried within her.
He said, `I spoke to Jarvis. He said to ask you how you came to know of his involvement with Gabrielle. Did she tell you?'
`Not exactly. I was visiting my mother Friday evening when I heard angry voices below. I couldn't catch what they were saying...' A hint of a smile lightened her features.
`We aren't all blessed with your hearing. But I thought I recognized Gabrielle's voice. So I went downstairs. I'd just reached the entrance hall when she came out of my father's library. I heard her say, I told Childe if he attempts to go ahead with this, I'll expose him and you too. Then she turned and saw me. She just stared at me from across the hall, and then ran out of the house.' Hero was silent for a moment, her face tight with grief. `I never saw her again.'
`Did you ask your father what it was about?'
`I did. He said Gabrielle was an overly emotional and obviously imbalanced woman. That she'd had some sort of argument that day with Childe but that it was nothing that need concern me.'
`He doesn't know you well, does he?'
She met his gaze; the smile was back in her eyes. `Not as well as he likes to think.' She closed the notebook she'd been reading and pushed it aside. He realized now that it was Gabrielle's translation of The Lady of Shalott.
