“So he didn’t hear?”
“I don’t think so.”
“When was this?”
The printer looked thoughtful. “Must’ve been three or four weeks ago now.”
“Before Somerset left for Kent?”
“Was he in Kent? I didn’t know that. I remember Jane had stopped in to see me that day on her way back from one of her lessons at the palace. It was before the letters were stolen, at the time the Princess was still trying to get them back, which is how we came to be talking about it.” Maxwell’s brows drew together. “You can’t be suspecting Christian of all people.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Would Jane have told her husband about the letters, do you think?”
“Ambrose?” Maxwell gave a harsh snort. “Not hardly. To be frank, they rarely spoke. And I doubt he would have been interested.” He cast another anxious look at his apprentice and dropped his voice even lower. “I didn’t kill the bastard. I swear it.”
“Unfortunately, you’re the only person who appears to have a motive.”
“What about his bloody creditors?”
“You know he was in debt?”
“I know.”
“How?”
Maxwell twitched one shoulder.
Sebastian said, “Did you tell Jane?”
“I think she suspected it.”
“But you never told her?”
Maxwell shook his head.
“Why not?”
“For the same reason I never told her about her husband’s philandering: because there was nothing she could do about it, and I knew it would only upset her.”
When Sebastian simply remained silent, Maxwell’s nostrils flared on a quick, angry breath. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Should I?”
“Someone is trying to set me up!”
“It’s certainly possible. The question is, who?”
“I don’t know!”
“How many people were aware of your relationship with Jane?”
“We’ve been friends for years. That at least was never a secret.”
“All right, look at it another way: Who would want to do you harm?”
The printer gave a low, humorless laugh. “Probably too many people to count—starting with your own damned father-in-law.”
“Who else?”
“Ambrose, maybe. But he was too selfish of a bastard to ever take his own life.”
Sebastian thought about the other dangerous men who had moved through Jane’s life in those final weeks: Rothschild, Wallace, van der Pals. All commanded the resources that could have enabled them to learn of the long-standing connection between Jane and her brother’s childhood friend. And Sebastian wouldn’t put it past any of them to have killed Ambrose in a calculated maneuver to deflect suspicion away from themselves and onto the hot-tempered, radical young journalist.
Or rather, have Ambrose killed, Sebastian reminded himself. The handsome Dutch courtier might conceivably do his own killing—and enjoy it. But with the exception of van der Pals, such men rarely did their own dirty work.
He became aware of Maxwell watching him thoughtfully. The journalist said, “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Not really. All I have at this point is conjecture. I’m still missing something—something that’s obviously vitally important. I wish I knew where the hell Jane went after she left the palace that last day, and why. You’re certain you have no idea where she might have gone?”
Maxwell sucked in a deep breath that shuddered his chest, and the look of soul-scouring anguish on his face was so profound that Sebastian almost—almost—believed it genuine. “I—” Maxwell’s voice cracked, and he had to begin again. “I lie awake at night, trying to remember every little thing she said to me, something I might have overlooked—something that might explain what happened to her. But I can’t think of anything. I just can’t.”
“Then it must have been something that came up unexpectedly.”
“What?”
But that was one more question to which Sebastian had no answer.
Chapter 49
“I spent some time out at Clerkenwell yesterday,” Alexi Sauvage told Hero as the two women walked the snowy paths of Berkeley Square. A large private garden the size of several city blocks, the square was maintained by the area’s residents and had a high fence of iron palings to keep out the riffraff.
“How is Jenny Sanborn?” asked Hero, looking over at her friend.
“As well as one might expect, I suppose. Although she wasn’t the only reason I went there. I was hoping the residents around Shepherds’ Lane might be more willing to open up to me than to Bow Street or his lordship.”
“And?”
Alexi shook her head, her flame-colored hair curling wildly in the moist air. “I couldn’t find anyone willing to admit they either knew Jane Ambrose or had seen her in the streets that day.”
Hero stared off across the square’s ice-covered clusters of shrubs and soaring plane trees. With the rising temperatures, the snow was beginning to melt, filling the air with a chorus of drips and plops. It was warm enough that Hero withdrew one hand from the new black fur muff she’d taken to carrying and reached up to open the top clasp of her pelisse. “I have the most wretched, demoralizing feeling that we’re never going to figure out who killed her. That whoever took her life and left her in that lane for us to find will simply be free to go on living his life as if she’d never existed.”
“I know,” said Alexi, her voice more troubled than Hero could remember hearing it. “We like to believe the world arcs toward justice—I suppose because it reassures us and makes us think there’s some sort of order to our existence. But what if we’re wrong? What if it’s all meaningless chaos and chance?”
“Even if it is, that doesn’t mean justice isn’t worth striving for. Less inevitable, perhaps, but not impossible.” Hero paused, then added, “Hopefully.”
Alexi gave a soft laugh. “Hopefully.”
The sound of approaching footfalls drew Hero’s attention to a dense clump of shrubs that hid the path ahead, and for some reason she couldn’t have named she felt again that vague, uneasy sense of being watched that had troubled her before.
“I think we should go,” she said, slipping her right hand back into her muff just as a fashionable man in a caped greatcoat and glossy high-topped boots came around the bend in the path. He drew up a moment as if in surprise, then sauntered
