Ambrose walked away to stand looking out the window at the narrow snow-filled garden to the rear of the house. “Husbands and wives quarrel. Why should I deny it?”
“What was the quarrel about?”
“If I tell you, you must assure me that it will go no further.”
“Within reason, of course.”
Ambrose hesitated, then said, “I was angry because Jane had paid a visit to the Princess of Wales.”
Whatever Sebastian had been expecting, it wasn’t that.
Caroline, Princess of Wales, was the Regent’s estranged wife and mother to Princess Charlotte. Once she had been highly sought after by members of the ton, an enthusiastic hostess famous for giving unusual, amusing dinner parties frequented by everyone from men of letters such as Lord Byron and Walter Scott to the painter Thomas Lawrence and Whig politicians like Brougham and Wallace. But when the Prince of Wales became Regent, most of Society dropped her cold. Few cared to alienate the Prince, who was now both head of state and head of the royal family—and who had a reputation for holding a grudge forever and exacting petty revenges.
“The Regent’s patronage is important to a man in my profession,” Ambrose was saying. “You know the way he treats those who dare have anything to do with Caroline. What husband in my position wouldn’t have been angry?”
“When did Jane visit Charlotte’s mother?”
“I don’t recall precisely. Sometime last week.”
“Why?”
Ambrose looked as if the question puzzled him. “I’ve no idea. What does it matter why she went? Do you imagine the Prince cares what her motives might have been?”
“It matters if it had something to do with her death.”
Ambrose brought up a hand to rub his forehead. “Oh, yes, of course. I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“No. I can see you weren’t.”
A faint flush touched the other man’s cheeks, but he remained silent.
“Did you know Lord Wallace was planning to employ Jane to instruct one of his daughters?”
“Wallace?” What looked like a habitual kind of fury hardened the other man’s eyes. “No. She didn’t tell me. Good God, what was she thinking?”
“To deal with someone who has made himself such a public enemy of the Prince, you mean?”
“Yes!”
“Perhaps she didn’t care.”
“Obviously.”
“Any chance she was romantically involved with another man?”
Ambrose let his hand drop, his jaw tightening. “You can’t be serious. What are you suggesting now?”
The playwright was either oblivious to his wife’s friendship with Liam Maxwell, or very good at hiding uncomfortable truths he didn’t want known. Rather than answer, Sebastian said, “A day or two before she was killed, your wife was raped. Did you know?”
Ambrose stared at him. “No.”
“She didn’t say anything to you about it?”
“Good Lord, no.”
“It wasn’t you by any chance, was it?”
Ambrose took a hasty step forward, his hands curling into fists. “I should call you out for that.”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” said Sebastian dryly.
“Get out. Get out of my house. Now.”
Sebastian inclined his head and turned toward the door. But he paused to glance back and say, “One more thing: You told me you were here on Thursday afternoon. But I don’t recall your saying where you were that evening.”
Ambrose stayed where he was, his breath coming in hard, angry pants. “I was still here, damn you.”
“In your library working on your libretto?”
“Yes!”
“Alone?”
“Of course.”
In a household such as this, without a butler or footmen, the door was typically answered by a housemaid with numerous other duties, which meant that Ambrose could easily have left the house and come back hours later without any of the servants knowing.
Sebastian said, “I’m curious as to why you led me to believe Jane’s family was dead when her brother Christian Somerset is still very much alive.”
“Why do you think? For the same reason I objected to her visit to Princess Caroline.”
“Yes, of course. And how did you learn of that visit, by the way?”
“Jane mentioned it to me.”
“On the steps of the Opera?”
Ambrose hesitated a moment too long, then said, “Yes.”
“Without also mentioning why she went?”
“I told her I didn’t want to know.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
Ambrose gave a short, bitter laugh. “You should know as well as anyone the swirl of intrigue that surrounds Caroline.”
“Are you suggesting Jane was involved in that?”
“I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t care to know. If you think it so important, I suggest you ask the Princess yourself.”
“I intend to,” said Sebastian.
Ambrose simply stared back at him, his jaw set hard and his eyes now hooded.
Chapter 20
Wrapped in a warm carriage robe and with a hot brick at her feet, Hero crossed the frozen city in a horse-drawn sleigh. The farther east she traveled, the more wretched were the snow-filled lanes and courts, the more desperate the bleak eyes raised to watch her pass. This part of the city had long been a crumbling, overcrowded morass of grinding, soul-destroying poverty and aching want. Now, after endless paralyzing weeks of cold, life there was becoming unbearably grim. Near St. Giles, a water main had broken during the night, flooding the street with what had become a thick sheet of ice. Those few lucky children with shoes were running and sliding across the frozen surface, arms windmilling, voices shrieking with laughter. But their mothers stood watching solemnly, faces tight with fear, for a broken main meant no water in addition to no food and no heat.
Jenny Sanborn, the cooper’s wife Hero was coming to see, lived at the end of a noisome alley in a miserable one-room hovel that looked as if it had been built as a lean-to shed for animals. When they drew up before the shed’s rough door, Hero could hear the muffled sounds of a woman weeping within. Exchanging a quick glance with her coachman, Hero looped the handle of her food basket over one arm and went to knock on the door.
The door was opened by a skinny, ragged girl of about six whom Hero remembered from the other night. “Hullo,” said Hero, crouching down until she was level with the child. “You’re Sarah,
