C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

“I would appreciate that,” said Sebastian, his gaze scanning the slice of street visible through the stable’s open doorway.

He’d been aware of a vague, niggling sensation of unease ever since he left Golden Square. Now, as he studied the steady stream of wagons, carriages, and carts that filled the street, whips cracking, iron-rimmed wheels rattling over paving stones, he identified the source of that unease: He was being watched. He could not have said by whom, but he had no doubt that he was the object of someone’s intense scrutiny.

“Them clouds might look nasty,” said O’Malley, misunderstanding his concern, “but me bones say we won’t be gettin’ no snow fer a day or so yet.”

“I hope your bones are right.”

“Ach, ain’t ne’er failed me yet, they haven’t. Broke both me legs an’ an arm back in ’eighty-seven, I did. The surgeon was all fer hackin’ off the lot of ’em, but I told him I’d rather be dead. He swore I would be soon enough, but I proved him wrong. Been over twenty-five years now, and I ain’t been surprised by the weather since.”

Sebastian cast a last glance at the darkening, wind-scoured street, then turned away. “Let’s have a look at those sweet goers of yours, shall we?”

The creamy white team proved to be every bit as impressive as O’Malley had said they would be. Sebastian settled with the stable owner, then walked out into the noisy bustle of Boyle Street. He could see an organ grinder standing at the corner; nearby, a blind beggar, aged and stooped, shook his cup plaintively at the press of tradesmen and apprentices hurrying past. A girl with a tray full of frost-nipped watercress, her face pinched with cold, called, “Ha’penny a bunch!” He studied each in turn, but he couldn’t recall having seen any of them in Golden Square.

Every fiber of his being alert and tense, he turned toward home. But the unpleasant sense of being watched slowly evaporated, like the lingering memories of an unpleasant dream.

• • •

Sebastian returned to Brook Street to find Hero seated in one of the cane chairs at the drawing room’s front bow window, a lighted candle on the table beside her, her head tipped to one side as she studied a sheet crowded with names and qualifications. The big, long-haired black cat who had adopted them some months before slept curled up on the hearth.

He paused in the doorway for a moment, just for the pleasure of looking at her. She was an unusually tall woman with large, clear gray eyes, an aquiline nose, and the kind of strong facial structure that was generally described as “handsome” rather than pretty. He had disliked her intensely the first time he met her. Now he wondered how he could ever live without her.

She looked up, caught him watching her, and smiled.

“What’s this?” he asked, going to peer over her shoulder.

“A list of nursery maids suggested by the agency.” She frowned and set the page aside. “I don’t like the idea of entrusting my child to some young, ignorant country girl who’s barely more than a child herself.”

He went to warm his hands at the fire. The cat glanced up at him through slitted eyes, then settled back to sleep. “So tell them you want someone older. And educated.”

“I intend to.”

He turned to face her. “I’m planning to drive out to Buckinghamshire in the morning. If I change teams twice on the way out and three times on the return journey, I should be back in London by midafternoon at the latest. But if you feel uncomfortable about me going out of town, I won’t.”

She looked at him in confusion. “Why would I-” Enlightenment dawned, and she gave a startled trill of laughter. “Good heavens, Devlin, I hope you don’t mean because of the babe?”

“I don’t want you to be-”

“Left alone? I have a house full of servants and the best accoucheur in London ready to rush to my side at a moment’s notice. I will not be alone. Apart from which, this babe is not coming anytime soon.”

“So certain?”

“I have it on the authority of Richard Croft himself. And if you insist on hovering about me until it does come, you’re liable to drive me mad.”

He gave a rueful smile. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to do that.”

She pushed to her feet, the swelling weight of the child making the movement awkward, and went to draw the drapes against the coming night. “Where in Buckinghamshire?”

“Hartwell House.”

She paused to look at him over one shoulder. “Good heavens; you think the Bourbons could somehow be involved in Damion Pelletan’s death?”

“They might be.”

He told her of his visit to the Gifford Arms Hotel, and the conversation Madame Bisette had overheard the night of Pelletan’s murder, and his own less-than-productive confrontation with Jarvis.

“Do you know anything about a peace delegation from Paris?” he asked, watching her closely.

“No. But I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Jarvis won’t tell you anything. Not now.”

She gave him a smile that curled the edges of her lips and brought a secretive gleam to the shadowy depths of her intense gray eyes. “I don’t intend to ask Jarvis.”

• • •

That evening, as he was preparing to make an early start the following morning, Sebastian sent for his valet.

Jules Calhoun was a slim, elegant gentleman’s gentleman in his early thirties, with straight flaxen hair and twinkling eyes. Affable and extraordinarily clever, he was a genius at repairing the ravages the pursuit of murderers could sometimes wreak on Sebastian’s wardrobe. But for all his skill with boot blacking and starch, Calhoun was no ordinary valet. Born in one of the worst flash houses in London, he was familiar with parts of the city-and segments of its population-that would cause most valets to shudder with horror.

“Ever hear of a man named Bullock?” Sebastian asked. “I’m told he’s a big, scar-faced tradesman with a shop somewhere in the vicinity of Golden Square.”

Calhoun shook his head. “I don’t believe so, my lord. I can look into him, if you wish.”

Sebastian nodded. “But cautiously. I understand he has a nasty disposition.”

Saturday, 23 January

S ebastian left London before dawn, driving O’Malley’s team of fast creamy whites and with his own young groom, or tiger, Tom, clinging to the perch at the rear of the curricle. The boy had been with Sebastian for two years now, ever since he’d tried to pick Sebastian’s pocket in a low St. Giles tavern. Sebastian had been on the run at the time, charged with a murder he didn’t commit. The young street urchin had saved Sebastian’s life, although Tom always contended they were more than even.

They drove through misty flat meadows filled with frost-whitened grass, and sleepy villages with stone-walled, thatched-roof cottages and wind-ruffled millponds where ducks foraged amongst the freeze-nipped reeds that grew in the shallows. The sun rose in a muted pink haze above winter-bared stands of elm and birch, and still they pressed on, the team’s galloping hooves eating up the miles, their heaving sides dark with sweat by the time Tom blew up for the change.

“We ain’t never gonna make ’Artwell ’Ouse in three hours,” said Tom, critically eyeing the new team as it was put to.

Sebastian snapped shut his watch and smiled. “Yes, we will.”

They made it in just under two hours and fifty minutes.

An elegant small manor dating to the time of the Tudors, Hartwell House had been hired by the exiled Bourbons some four years before. Sebastian had heard that Sir George Lee, the owner, was not happy with the treatment his estate was receiving at the hands of the royals. As Sebastian drew up his curricle on the ragged gravel sweep before the manor’s small porch, he thought he could understand why.