Sebastian had heard George III’s unhappy sister died of scarlet fever, but he also knew that could simply be a tale put out for public consumption. She had most certainly died while under arrest, and her husband was utterly mad at the time of her rather convenient death.
“And you know vhat happened to my sister,” said Caroline darkly.
Sebastian nodded. Caroline’s sister, Augusta, had married Prince Frederick of Württemberg when she was just fifteen. He beat her so viciously the young Princess was given asylum by Catherine of Russia, only to then die under suspicious circumstances and be hastily buried in an unmarked grave.
Choosing another pin, Caroline thrust it with slow deliberation into the wax figure’s groin. “I vill do anything,” she said, “anything I must, to stop vhat the Regent is trying to do to my Charlotte.” She looked up to meet Sebastian’s gaze. “But I don’t have the Hesse letters, and I don’t know who does.”
It was a dismissal. Sebastian thanked her and bowed low.
As he backed slowly from her presence, he saw her throw the wax effigy into the flames and watch, smiling, as it flared up and then melted into nothing.
Chapter 47
Devlin was seated behind his desk, a disheveled lock of dark hair falling over one eye, his pen scratching furiously across a sheet of paper, when Hero came to stand in the library doorway.
“What are you doing?”
Looking up, he spun the page—covered with a rough graph of horizontal and vertical lines—around to face her. “Trying to make sense of four very tangled threads.”
As she drew closer, she could see that across the top of the page he’d written Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday . . . “With a calendar?” she said, coming to lean over the desk.
He nodded. “Of the last weeks of Jane Ambrose’s life. As far as I can tell, her trouble started here.” He pointed to the first Tuesday in January.
“The last day of the Great Fog,” said Hero.
Devlin leaned back in his chair. “That’s the day Jane accidently overheard Rothschild discussing his gold shipments to France, as a result of which he both dismissed her and threatened her.”
“Which had the unintended effect of sending her to visit her uncle Sheridan,” said Hero. “The first time.”
Devlin pointed to the following week. “This is when Jarvis sent one of his men to pick up Jane from Warwick House and bring her to him at Carlton House. He warned her to shut up and threatened dire consequences not only to her but to anyone else she should tell about the gold.”
“And it worked,” said Hero. “She shut up.”
“She did. She doesn’t appear to have told anyone else—not her brother, not Liam Maxwell.”
“Because she didn’t want to risk their lives,” said Hero quietly. “So she kept it all to herself. The poor woman. She must have been so frightened, and with no one to turn to for advice or support.”
Devlin pointed to the following Sunday. “It was just a few days after that when Princess Charlotte received word that the packet containing her letters to Hesse had been stolen from his trunk in Portsmouth. By the time Jane came for their lesson on Monday, the Princess was in a panic, and Jane offered to ask Caroline if she knew what had happened to the letters. She went out to Connaught House the very next day—Tuesday. But Caroline said she’d had nothing to do with the letters’ theft.”
Hero studied the calendar. “Then what?”
Devlin tapped the square representing the day after Jane’s visit to Connaught House, a Wednesday. “This is when Jane went to see Lord Wallace. Given the timing, I seriously doubt it had anything to do with piano lessons for young Miss Elizabeth Wallace.”
“Jane suspected Wallace was involved in the letters’ theft?”
“I think so. And if she was right—if Wallace actually was behind both the theft of the letters and now all these deaths—then how the devil do we prove it? Because you can be certain his lordship isn’t doing his own dirty work.”
“Something obviously made Jane decide to ask Wallace about the missing letters but not the other Whigs around Caroline—not Brougham, not Earl Grey, but Wallace. Why?”
“Because she knows him for the nasty piece of work he is?”
Hero gave a startled huff of laughter. “Perhaps. Although I can’t help but wonder what she hoped to accomplish by going to see him. Surely she didn’t expect him to actually admit to the theft, let alone give her the letters?”
“Probably not. Although she might have thought she could convince him not to publish them by appealing to his better nature.”
“Does Lord Wallace have a better nature?”
“He must. His belief in everything from the evils of slavery to the need for public education suggests a basic core of decency—somewhere deep down below all that massive self-regard and natural abrasiveness.”
Hero frowned as she studied the rough calendar. “Your handwriting is appalling. What happened on that Thursday—exactly one week before she died?”
“That’s the day Peter van der Pals asked Jane to spy on Princess Charlotte for Orange—and promised nasty repercussions if she told anyone about it.”
“Only, this time Jane didn’t keep silent. She felt honor bound to speak up, and so she warned Miss Kinsworth.”
“She did. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize the lovely Lady Arabella was listening at the keyhole. Which is why on the following Monday—just days before Jane was killed—she and Vescovi had that argument beside the ice-skating pond in St. James’s Park.”
“That’s when Vescovi told Jane about the Prince of Orange’s sexual interests.”
Devlin nodded. “Jane went the very next day to see her uncle Sheridan and ask him for the truth. It was as she left Savile Row that van der Pals waylaid her and raped her.”
“To punish her for telling on him,” said Hero.
“To punish her,
