“Ah. It wanted only that,” said Ambrose, raising the bottle to his lips without bothering to use the glass that stood near his elbow.
“Bit early, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“So, are you drowning your sorrows or assuaging your guilt?” asked Sebastian.
“You say that as if the two were mutually exclusive.”
When Sebastian remained silent, Ambrose took another drink, then wiped his wet lips with the back of one hand. “I was a rotten husband to her. She was brilliant and beautiful and giving, and I took it all without appreciating any of it.”
“And you hit her.”
Something flared in Ambrose’s eyes, something that was hidden when he dropped his gaze to the bottle again.
“Exactly how deeply in debt are you?” said Sebastian, then added when Ambrose’s head jerked up, “And don’t even think about trying to deny it.”
Ambrose slumped back in his seat. “How the devil did you discover that?”
“Did you think I would not?”
Ambrose shook his head and swallowed hard.
Sebastian said, “How deep?”
Ambrose’s face twitched. “Nearly five thousand pounds. A large but not insurmountable sum for a man in my position. Theoretically.”
“Theoretically.”
“I did not kill my wife,” said Ambrose, his lips pulling away from his teeth as he enunciated each word carefully. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it? You think my debts somehow implicate me in her death. Well, believe me, you couldn’t be more wrong.”
“Why the bloody hell should I believe you?”
“Why?” Ambrose gave a ragged laugh. “Because only a fool would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping. “You don’t understand, do you? Oh, I had a couple of plays produced before Jane and I married, but their reception was only lukewarm. It wasn’t until I turned my hand to opera that I had real success. Lancelot and Guinevere opened a week after our first wedding anniversary.”
“You’re saying—what? That Jane was your muse?”
Ambrose gave a ringing laugh. “My muse? God, that’s rich. For all intents and purposes, Jane was Edward Ambrose. Oh, I wrote some of the libretto. But the music—that glorious music was all Jane’s. Not mine. Jane’s.”
Sebastian watched the playwright bring the bottle to his lips and drink deeply, a rivulet of alcohol escaping to run down the side of his chin. “Did no one ever suspect?”
Ambrose set down the bottle with studied care. “Her twin, James, knew the truth. She couldn’t hide it from him; he knew the instant he heard that first opera that the music was hers. She never told Christian, but I think he pretty much figured it out, too.” He brought up trembling hands to rake the disheveled hair from his face with splayed fingers. “So you see, I’m the last person who’d ever want Jane dead.”
“Unless she threatened to leave you.”
Ambrose froze with his elbows still spread wide, his gaze on Sebastian’s face.
Sebastian said, “I can see a certain kind of man who owed his success—his very livelihood—to a woman becoming enraged if she threatened to leave him.”
“Jane would never have left me.”
“She would never leave you when walking out on her marriage meant losing her sons. But now? If she found out you were drowning in debt and spending the money she’d actually earned on a mistress? I can imagine her at least threatening to leave you. And I can see you flying into a rage and hitting her, the way you’d hit her so many times in the past. Only this time she struck her head on something when she fell and she didn’t get up again. And when you saw what you’d done, you wrapped her body in—what? A carpet? A blanket? An old greatcoat?—and carried her out into the snowy night to leave her in Shepherds’ Lane.”
Ambrose stared at him, jaw slack, nostrils flaring with alarm. “No.”
“The only thing I don’t understand is, why Shepherds’ Lane? Did you mistakenly think her lessons with Mary Godwin were on Thursdays rather than Fridays?”
“I didn’t kill her, damn you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Ambrose might be drunk, but he wasn’t too drunk to know that men had swung on flimsy conjectures such as this. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. “You . . . you were asking me the other day about the Rothschild girl Jane was teaching.”
“Yes.” Sebastian frowned. “Why?”
Ambrose leaned forward. “Jane had an aunt who was married to Sheridan—Richard Sheridan. Sheridan and I never exactly got along, but he came to see me last night. Spun some crazy tale about Rothschild and gold shipments to France, and wanted to know if Jane had ever talked to me about it.”
“Had she?”
“No. I’d never heard any of it before. But Sheridan was damnably upset about it all. I can tell you that. Went away muttering under his breath. I couldn’t catch most of it, but he was saying something like ‘I blame myself.’”
“‘I blame myself’?”
Ambrose nodded. “I did tell you I thought her strangely frightened by her last meeting with Rothschild. Didn’t I tell you?”
“You did.”
“So you’ll look into it?”
“I will.” Sebastian pushed up from the table. “Why would Jane tell her late aunt’s husband what was frightening her but not her own husband?”
Ambrose’s head fell back as he stared up at Sebastian. “What do I know of the government’s gold policy? Sheridan spent decades in Parliament.”
“That he did,” said Sebastian, reaching for his hat.
But Edward Ambrose only tipped his head and frowned, as if the larger implications of his statement eluded him.
Richard Sheridan was feeding scraps to a colony of stray cats in the noisome alley behind his house when Sebastian came to stand with one shoulder propped against a nearby corner.
“How’d you find me?” asked the old man without looking up. He was wearing a tattered greatcoat, scuffed boots, and the same nightcap Sebastian had seen on him before. Gray stubble shadowed his unshaven face.
“Your
