“Not really. I asked her recently if the rumors we’re hearing about a possible Orange alliance are true, but she pretended to know nothing about it.”
“What makes you think she was only pretending?”
Godwin’s lips twitched into a ghost of a smile. “Jane was always an appallingly bad liar. The truth was writ all over her face.” The smile faded away into something bleak and sad. “And now she’s just . . . dead.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
Godwin went to stand at the bowed front window, his features solemn, his gaze on the wind-driven snow collecting in the corners of the mullions. After a moment, he shook his head. “I’ve no idea.”
“She never spoke to you of any enemies?”
“Jane? I wouldn’t have said she had any.” He gave a heavy, pained sigh. “I’ve always believed that men are not innately evil—that the evil we see in the world around us is the result of our age’s benighted social conditions and archaic institutions rather than some inherent human flaw. But my Mary never shared my belief in the perfectibility of mankind.”
“And Jane?”
“Jane told me once that her heart agreed with me, but her head suspected Mary was probably right.”
“Did she read your late wife’s works?”
“She did, yes—although only quite recently. I’ve sensed a change in her these last few months, as if she were questioning some of her earlier beliefs, searching for new answers. The loss of her two boys last year, one right after the other, hit her hard. I think she was still finding her way toward understanding and accepting it.”
Sebastian shook his head. “How can anyone understand or accept such a loss?”
“Perhaps one cannot.”
Sebastian settled his hat on his head and turned toward the door. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“Have I been of assistance? I hope so. It’s a dreadful thing, if what you say is true. She was such a talented, good-hearted young woman. Why would anyone want to kill her?”
Sebastian paused with a hand on the latch. “What do you know of her relationship with Liam Maxwell?”
“I assume she knew him through her brother—although he was always far more radical than even Christian, let alone Jane.”
“Yet he and Jane were close friends.”
“Were they? I didn’t know that. I’ve always been better acquainted with Somerset than with his former partner. Maxwell’s far too much of a rabble-rouser for my taste. I’ve never believed in initiating change through violence—even before the French Revolution showed us just how ugly that approach can be.”
“But Maxwell does?”
“He does, yes—although he’ll tell you he favors the American model over the French version.”
Sebastian found himself remembering Maxwell’s bitter words on the House of Orange and the destruction of the Dutch Republic, and knew a deep disquiet. “What’s the man’s background?”
“Maxwell? I believe he spent his early years in India. His father was in the East India Company, and his mother was raised there. But both died when he was still a lad. He went to Westminster as a King’s Scholar.”
“That can’t have been easy.”
“No. I’ve always suspected it contributed more than a bit to his radical philosophies.”
“Probably.”
Godwin gave him a hard look. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m simply trying to understand Jane better. Did you happen to speak with her last week when she was here for your daughter’s lesson?”
Godwin shook his head. “She didn’t come. She sent a message saying she wouldn’t be able to make it.”
“Did she do that often?”
“No. Truth is, I can’t remember her having done it before. Ever.”
Chapter 15
Jarvis was at breakfast in Berkeley Square when his daughter, Hero, walked into the room and closed the door behind her.
“Did you kill Jane Ambrose?” she asked without preamble, jerking at the ribbons of her black velvet hat.
Jarvis cut a piece of ham. “I did not.”
“Obviously I don’t mean personally.”
Jarvis calmly chewed and swallowed. “The answer is still the same.”
“Do you know who did?”
“I do not. And unless her death should somehow threaten affairs of state, nor do I care.” He reached for the stout ale that always accompanied his breakfast. “Would you like a plate?”
She shook her head. “I’ve already breakfasted. Thank you.” But she did push away from the door and come to sit at the table.
She was Jarvis’s only surviving child. Once he’d had a son, a sickly, peculiar lad named David who’d died and been buried at sea years ago. All the other infants his late, tiresome wife, Annabelle, had managed to carry to term had either been born dead or died soon after. Annabelle herself had been dead four months now, and Jarvis had already dispensed with his black sleeve riband.
Hero still wore full mourning.
He had never thought his daughter a particularly attractive woman. She was too tall, her features too masculine, her gaze too direct and unabashedly intelligent. But she did look good in black, and he had to admit that marriage and motherhood had improved her. “How is my grandson?” he asked.
“Endlessly curious and fiercely determined.”
“Good.”
She placed her hands flat on the table and leaned into them.
“Is it true that Prinny has forced Charlotte to agree to marry William of Orange?”
“No one ‘forced’ her. The Princess made the decision of her own free will.”
“When given a choice between marrying Orange and being immured with a bunch of foul-tempered old women until she dies, you mean.”
“Well, at least until the Prince of Wales dies. At that point—assuming her poor old mad grandfather is also dead—she will be Queen and thus free to do as she pleases.”
“Both of Prinny’s parents are still alive. He could live another thirty or forty years.”
“He could.”
She fixed him with a fierce gaze. “Orange can’t be a proper husband to her and you know it. Such a marriage would make her life wretched.”
“This isn’t about Charlotte’s happiness. It’s about what’s good for the Kingdom—not to mention the future of all of Europe.”
“And you think a miserable union between our future queen and a man known to prefer handsome courtiers will be good for England? Did the disastrous marriage of Prinny and his poor
