“Oh, I wish I could try skating,” she said, laughing. “Do you think Papa would permit it, Miss Kinsworth?”
“You could ask him,” said Miss Kinsworth in a voice that didn’t hold out much hope for success.
The Princess pulled a face at her, then turned to Hero. “Do you skate, Lady Devlin?”
“I never have. Although if this weather keeps up, I fear we all may need to learn.”
Charlotte laughed again, then grew serious. The carefree child who’d been playing with her dog disappeared, her features schooled into a sober expression that gave a glimpse of the splendid queen she would one day be. “Miss Kinsworth says you wished to ask me about Jane Ambrose—about our lesson the day she died.”
“You’re the last person known to have had any meaningful interaction with Jane that day. Can you remember anything about that morning—anything at all—that might shed some light on what happened to her?”
“Sorry, no. Believe me, I have gone over our conversation in my mind. But I can’t think of anything.”
“Do you know where she planned to go after she left Warwick House?”
“I assumed she would be returning home, although I don’t believe she ever actually said. We spoke of the cold, and she told me she’d heard the Cambridge stage was snowed up for eight hours before they managed to pull it out with most of the passengers nearly frozen to death. But I can’t recall our discussing anything of a personal nature.”
“Did she seem worried or troubled to you?”
The Princess considered this a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think I would say she was troubled. But there was something different about her I can only describe as a sort of fierceness. As if—” She broke off.
“Yes, Your Highness?” prompted Hero.
“It was as if she had finally made up her mind about something and was both relieved and determined to carry through on her decision.” Charlotte gave a rueful smile. “I know it sounds an odd, fanciful thing to say, but I can’t think of any other way to describe it. And it’s no use asking me what she’d made up her mind about, because I’ve no notion at all.”
“It could mean nothing,” Hero said to Devlin later, after she’d related the conversation to him. She was leaning against the doorway of his dressing room and watching him tie a rough black cravat around his neck. The cravat was black for the same reason his breeches were worn and his shirt frayed: Kat Boleyn had arranged for him to meet a smuggler named Archibald Potter at a tavern called the Cat and Fiddle near Ratcliff Highway, and one did not venture into an area such as Whitechapel dressed like a Bond Street beau.
Devlin met her gaze in the mirror. “I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss Charlotte’s observations. When you grow up at court surrounded by toadies, scheming courtiers, and a family as uniformly peculiar as the Hanovers, you learn to read people early—and well.”
“True,” said Hero. “But what does it mean?” She pushed away from the doorframe to go stand at the window overlooking the snow-filled street. “I feel as if we aren’t getting anywhere. We just keep going round and round the same people and incidents, learning perhaps a bit more each time and yet never really discovering what we need to know.”
He glanced over at her, his eyes crinkling with a hint of a smile. “That’s because we’re missing something. Something important.”
“But . . . what?”
He reached for a battered, low-crowned hat with a jaunty red feather in the band and settled it on his head. “I don’t know yet.”
She frowned. “How will you recognize this Archibald Potter?”
“I’ll know him by his cocked hat and green striped waistcoat, and he’ll know me by this decidedly garish red feather—with our identities further confirmed by a prearranged conversation about my supposed recent travels to Jamaica.”
“Sounds decidedly insalubrious. You will be careful.”
Devlin checked the knife he kept sheathed in his boot, then slipped a small double-barreled flintlock into his pocket. “You keep saying that.”
She came to tug at the brim of his hat. “And you never listen.”
Chapter 29
The Cat and Fiddle was a smoke-fouled, ramshackle old half-timbered structure on John Street, not far from the vast warehouses of the East India Company. Sebastian selected a high-backed booth in a quiet corner, ordered a tankard of ale he had no intention of drinking, and settled in to wait.
Archibald Potter, when he appeared, looked more like a comfortable middle-aged shopkeeper than a smuggler. Somewhere in his late forties, he had full, ruddy cheeks, bushy side-whiskers, and a round, knobby nose. The combination could have made him look jovial and soft. It did not. His clothes were typical of an older generation, his waistcoat long and striped with green, his coat square-cut with broad lapels and large pockets. In place of a cravat he wore a stock, and he had a cocked hat perched above a periwig. He stared at the red feather in Sebastian’s hatband, then walked up to stand stiffly with his fingers tapping on the scarred tabletop. He was not smiling.
“I hear you’re just back from Jamaica,” he said in guttural French with a strong Kentish accent.
“The weather’s much better there than here,” replied Sebastian in the same language.
“Huh. Where isn’t it?” With a grunt, the free trader slid into the opposite bench. “Miss Kat says you want to know about smuggling in the Channel—with a particular emphasis on the activities of a certain Frankfurter we all know but few love. Says it’s got something to do with that lady found with her head bashed in up in Clerkenwell.”
“Yes.”
Potter stared at him long and hard. “She swears I can trust you.”
“You have my word.”
The free trader turned to call for a tankard of ale before resting his shoulders against the bench’s high back, his thick, bushy brows drawing together in a frown. “I’ve only ever known one other
