“Perhaps she was ashamed.”
Maxwell turned abruptly to face him, his hand tightening around his glass. “Why the devil should she have been ashamed? He’s the one who hit her!”
“Some women are ashamed when their husbands or lovers beat them. I’m not saying I think they should be, because they shouldn’t at all. But that doesn’t alter the fact that it’s a common response.” Sebastian took another slow sip of his brandy. “When was the last time you saw her?”
Maxwell dragged a hand down over his haggard face. “The day before yesterday. I have a printing shop off Fleet Street and she . . . came in.”
“Why?”
“No particular reason. She was in the area and stopped by to see me.”
It was a simple offhand statement that told Sebastian a great deal about just how close Maxwell’s relationship with his old friend’s sister had been. “Did she ever mention Anna Rothschild to you?”
“I know she was upset when she recently lost her as a student. Why?”
“Do you know of any reason why her last encounter with Nathan Rothschild might have frightened her?”
“Frightened her? No. Why? What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing, at this point. Any idea what she was doing in Clerkenwell yesterday?”
“No. I can’t imagine.”
“She didn’t say how she planned to spend yesterday afternoon?”
Maxwell shook his head. “I don’t believe she had any lessons on Thursday afternoons—although she’d recently been to see Lord Wallace, so she may have scheduled something.”
“Phineas Wallace?” said Sebastian, sharper than he’d intended. Phineas Wallace, the second Baron Wallace, was a prominent Whig politician and one of the Princess of Wales’s closest advisers.
“Yes. Why?”
“Just wondering. When you saw Jane on Wednesday, how did she seem?”
The younger man looked as if the question confused him. “What do you mean?”
“Was she happy? Nervous? Afraid?”
He thought about it a moment. “Well, she was worried about the Princess. But then she’s been upset for weeks now on account of this bloody betrothal the Regent forced on Charlotte. The poor girl is in a panic, and Jane has been beside herself because of it.”
“What betrothal?” Sebastian said.
Maxwell’s eyebrows pinched together in a vaguely puzzled frown. “Don’t you know? To William, the Hereditary Prince of Orange. They’re keeping it quiet because Orange wants to make certain his position in the Netherlands is secure before the betrothal becomes known. But it’s all been arranged since before Christmas. As soon as he’s confident they have control of the situation there, it will be made public.”
“You know this for a fact?” Sebastian had a sudden, distinct memory of Jarvis saying, The last thing the Regent needs at the moment is to have Princess Charlotte’s name bandied about in conjunction with that of a woman unwise enough to get mixed up in something as tawdry as murder. He now understood what was so critical about “the moment.”
Maxwell threw down the rest of his drink. “I wouldn’t have said anything about it except I assumed given her ladyship’s relationship to Lord Jarvis that you already knew. Truth is, there’s some would think me more than a bit daft coming here, her ladyship being Jarvis’s daughter and all.”
The statement did much to explain the animosity Maxwell had shown toward Hero before. “I wouldn’t be looking into Jane Ambrose’s death if I were Jarvis’s tool,” said Sebastian. “If that’s what you mean.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would.”
“You said the betrothal has been arranged since before Christmas. So did something else happen at the court recently?” Sebastian asked. “Something that might have disturbed Jane when you saw her on Wednesday?”
Maxwell hesitated a moment, then said, “Not that I’m aware of, no. I think she was simply angry with the lot of them—with the Regent for caring more about his grand vision for rebuilding London than about his own daughter’s happiness, and with Lord Jarvis for having pushed the Orange marriage in the first place. It’s all his scheme, of course. They’re going to turn the Dutch Republic into a monarchy and vastly expand its territory with the idea of making it into a powerful bulwark against the French—with poor Princess Charlotte as the hapless plum on the top of the pudding.”
“Charlotte agreed to this?”
“She did, yes. That bloody father of hers, he told her that if she didn’t marry he’d keep her locked up with stodgy old governesses and subgovernesses until the day he died. She held out for a while, but she knew he could do it to her—hell, look at all those old maid aunts of hers. In the end, she met Orange just once at a dinner party and agreed that very night to marry him. Jane told me she regretted it almost instantly.” Maxwell set aside his empty glass with a soft clink. “But there’s no turning back for her now, poor girl.”
“Another brandy?” offered Sebastian.
“Thank you, but no. I must go. You needn’t ring for a footman. I can find my own way out.”
Sebastian walked with him to the top of the stairs. “When I asked Edward Ambrose about his wife’s family, he never mentioned a brother named Christian. In fact, he led me to think she had no family left alive. Why was that, do you suppose?”
Maxwell paused with his hand on the banister. “Probably because he wishes Christian Somerset actually were dead.”
“Any particular reason?”
His lip curled. “Royal patronage is important for a playwright, isn’t it? I imagine it’s more than a tad embarrassing for Ambrose, having a former radical journalist as a brother-in-law—particularly one who spent the better part of two years in Newgate for calling the Prince of Wales a fat spendthrift who persecutes his wife and oppresses his people.”
“When was this?”
“That we were in prison? From the fifteenth of January 1808 to the twenty-second of December 1809.” Maxwell huffed a rough, humorless laugh. “They were kind enough to let us out a few days early for Christmas.”
Sebastian understood now why Hero had recognized the names of Christian Somerset and Liam Maxwell. Sebastian himself had been off fighting the Hanovers’ wars at the time and had
