She shook her head. “I’m not convinced either of them is. Although if I had to put money on one or the other, I’d pick the Italian harpist over the decorative Dutch courtier any day.”
“Because what he told you agrees better with what you heard from your friend Miss Kinsworth?”
“Partially. But I suspect it also has something to do with my profound aversion to handsome young men who believe themselves so charming that no female can resist them.”
“Ah.”
Hero looked troubled. “Could van der Pals have killed Jane simply because she’d exposed his attempts to convince her to spy on Princess Charlotte? He did say she’d be sorry if she betrayed him.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. Except, how did he know Jane told someone? Unless of course your Miss Kinsworth wasn’t actually as silent as she claims.”
Hero gazed off across the snow-filled intersection of Piccadilly and Bond Street, her features troubled.
“What?” he asked.
“I just wish I were more convinced that Ella Kinsworth was being completely honest with me. Don’t misunderstand me—I believe her to be a good, honorable woman. But when you serve as lady companion to a princess, you can’t always be as truthful as you’d like.”
The snow was coming down harder now, filling their world with a whirl of white. “I can’t believe the Regent is seriously considering marrying his daughter to Slender Billy,” said Sebastian, squinting up at the heavy sky.
She glanced over at him. “Orange was with Wellington in the Peninsula when you were there, was he not?”
“He was.”
“So you knew him?”
“I did.”
“And van der Pals as well?”
Sebastian nodded. “The two were inseparable.”
“Meaning?”
His gaze met hers. “Meaning a great deal. But I’m afraid it’s not something one can discuss in the middle of Bond Street—even if most of the shops are shuttered because of the snow.”
“Oh, dear. And does it have anything to do with why you were at Carlton House seeing my father?”
“Ah. You figured that out, did you?”
He told her then about his meeting with Jane’s bereaved husband and the pianist’s puzzling dismissal by Nathan Rothschild.
He did not tell her that Jarvis had essentially threatened to have him killed.
“For a simple musician,” said Hero as they turned up a snow-filled, strangely silent Brook Street toward home, “Jane Ambrose lived an unexpectedly dangerous life.”
“When you deal with people like the Rothschilds and the royal family,” said Sebastian, “life is never simple.”
It was late in the afternoon by the time Sebastian met with his friend Paul Gibson at the surgeon’s favorite tavern near the Tower.
“Sorry I wasn’t there to help with the inquest last night,” said Gibson, the pupils of his Irish green eyes noticeably small despite the dimness of the ancient Tudor tavern. “With both Alexi and me working, we might have found something before the palace came to seize the body.”
“I doubt there was much more to find,” said Sebastian, taking a deep drink of his ale.
“So, have you discovered how that poor woman came to be lying in the middle of a snow-filled lane?”
“No.” Sebastian leaned back in his seat, aware of a growing sense of frustration, of having spent the entire day grasping at the insignificant outer edges of Jane Ambrose’s life without ever coming close to capturing the essence of the woman she was or understanding why she was dead. “As far as we know, the last person to see Jane Ambrose alive was one of Princess Charlotte’s women, who chanced to look out a window of Warwick House around midday and see Jane crossing the courtyard toward the gate. But after that . . .” Sebastian paused. For some reason he could not explain, that moment haunted him. He kept imagining the slender, sad young woman, dressed in mourning for her dead children, walking across a neglected courtyard as the snow began to fall and going—where? Where the hell had she gone? And why?
“Nothing?” said Gibson.
“Not a bloody thing. I don’t know where she was killed, when she was killed, or basically anything that happened to her from the time she left Warwick House until Hero and Madame Sauvage stumbled over her body in Shepherds’ Lane. I can’t even figure out what the hell she was doing in Clerkenwell.” Sebastian took another deep drink. “Clerkenwell, of all places.”
“Alexi says she was wearing her pelisse when she died.”
Sebastian nodded. “Which means she was probably outside when she was killed. Although since she wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, it’s also possible she was simply preparing to go out—or had only recently come inside. As to why or how she burnt her fingers . . . I’ve not the slightest idea.”
Gibson shook his head. “Who would want to kill a thirty-three-year-old pianist?”
Sebastian grunted. “More people than you might expect. At the moment my list of suspects includes her husband, an Italian harpist, a Dutch courtier, and Nathan Rothschild.”
“Rothschild? You can’t be serious?”
“I wish I weren’t. I was inclined to doubt it myself until a certain royal cousin warned me quite explicitly that looking too closely into the German financier’s affairs would be hazardous to my health.”
Gibson drained his ale and set the tankard aside with a dull clunk. “Bloody hell. You think Jarvis himself could be involved in this?”
Sebastian met his friend’s worried gaze. “I’m afraid so.”
“Does her ladyship know?”
“Not yet.”
Gibson shook his head and said again, “Bloody hell.”
Chapter 13
That evening, the snow continued to fall in big fat flakes that hurtled down out of a hard sky.
As was their habit of late, Hero and Sebastian gathered in the drawing room before dinner with Simon, fresh from his bath and ready for bed. “What’s this?” asked Sebastian, turning the page of a wooden book painted with barnyard animals as he sat beside his son on a low ottoman.
“Mm-ga-ga-gee,” said Simon, pointing to a shaggy billy goat.
“Sounded like ‘goat’ to me,” said Hero with a smile. “Your son is brilliant.”
“Of course he’s brilliant. He has a very brilliant mother. And what’s that?” Sebastian asked as the boy turned the next thick wooden page himself.
Simon smashed a
