C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

“’E’s a duke, even though ’e’s the son of a count? And ’is da is a count, but also a prince-the son of a king?”

“I know it’s rather confusing. But that’s the way the French do it. They aren’t quite as tidy about titles and ranks as the English.”

“Makes no sense, if ye ask me,” said Tom. “No wonder they can’t even talk English proper-like.”

The near leader stumbled, and Sebastian steadied his horses. He could see the mossy gray roof of the medieval church of Stoke Mandeville soaring above the treetops in the distance. The road was narrow here, a copse of beech undergrown with hazel closing in around them as he nursed the tired team up the slope. And he felt it again: a sensation of being watched that came on suddenly and intensely.

He swept around a sharp bend to find the roadway blocked by a fallen limb. He reined in hard, the team of grays coming to a snorting standstill. Tom was about to jump down and run to their heads when Sebastian said in a low voice, “Don’t.”

A man stepped from behind a thick stand of brush. He wore greasy canvas trousers and a threadbare brown corduroy coat and had an ugly horse pistol thrust into his waistband. His gaunt face was unshaven, his accent that of the streets of London as he said, “’Avin’ a spot o’ trouble there, yer lordship?” He reached up to grasp the leaders’ reins above their bits. “’Ere, let me ’elp.”

Rather than being calmed by his presence, the grays whinnied and tossed their heads, nostrils flaring.

Sebastian’s hand tightened on his whip. “Stand back.”

“Now, is that any way to respond to my friend’s most generous offer of assistance?” asked a second man, this one mounted astride a showy chestnut that he nudged forward until he came to a halt some five or six feet from the curricle. He held a fine dueling pistol in his left hand; the gleaming wooden grip of its mate showed at his waist. Unlike his companion, this man wore buckskin breeches and an elegant riding coat, and his accent was pure Oxbridge. He had a rough wool scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face, so that all Sebastian could see was his dark eyes, their lashes as thick and long as a young girl’s.

For a moment, his gaze met Sebastian’s. Then the horseman blinked and extended the muzzle of his pistol toward Sebastian’s face.

“Run!” Sebastian shouted at Tom. Surging to his feet, he sent the lash of his whip snaking out to flick the chestnut on its flanks.

The horse shied badly, its rider lurching in the saddle, the pistol exploding harmlessly into the treetops.

“You bastard,” swore the horseman, dragging his mount back around as he reached for the second pistol.

This time Sebastian’s lash struck the chestnut’s withers. The horse reared up just as its rider squeezed the trigger.

The shot sent Sebastian’s beaver hat tumbling end over end into the lane. “Bloody hell,” Sebastian swore, and jerked his own small double-barreled flintlock from his coat pocket.

The horseman’s eyes widened above the scarf, his hands tightening on his reins as he kicked the chestnut into a plunging gallop that carried him down the hill and around the bend, chevrons of mud flying up from the frenzied horse’s hooves.

With an ugly snarl, the brown-coated ruffian stepped back from Sebastian’s team and pulled the horse pistol from his waistband.

Sebastian thumbed back the hammer on his flintlock and shot him right between the eyes.

The man turned a slow, ungainly pirouette, then fell hard.

“Gor,” whispered Tom, creeping from behind a nearby clump of hazel to stare down at the man’s sprawled, still form. “Is he dead?”

“I told you to run,” said Sebastian as the tiger leapt to calm the now frantic, plunging horses. “You all right?”

“Aye,” said Tom, whispering soothing words that the grays seemed to understand. “Who ye reckon that lot were?”

“I don’t know.” Sebastian jumped down from the curricle’s high seat to drag both the dead assailant and the downed limb from the roadway. He hesitated a moment, then yanked off the dead man’s coat and threw it over his face in case someone with delicate sensibilities should happen to drive past before he made it back with the proper authorities. “But whoever sent them obviously wants me dead.”

T hat afternoon, Hero went to visit her mother, Annabelle, Lady Jarvis.

Her affection for her mother ran deep, although the two women were little alike. Whereas Hero was tall, dark haired, and determinedly frank in her manner, Annabelle had in her youth been pretty and petite, with soft golden curls and melting blue eyes and a sweetly charming smile. Hero had a dim memory of that woman, vivacious and loving and far more intelligent than she ever allowed anyone-least of all her husband-to suspect. But an endless succession of miscarriages and stillbirths had gradually drained her energy and sapped her confidence and joy. And then, one dreadful night, her last brutal labor had ended with another dead child, and Annabelle had suffered an apoplectic fit that left her weak in both mind and body.

Yet even with her nerves shattered and her memory and reason a shadow of what they’d once been, Annabelle still somehow managed to hold her own in the glittering, often cutthroat world of the haut ton. And Hero knew she grasped far more about her husband’s clandestine affairs than Jarvis had ever realized.

The two women settled down for a cup of hot chocolate before a roaring fire in Annabelle’s dressing room and chatted for a time about the latest cut of sleeves and the newest rosewater tonic. Then Hero looked over at her mother and said, “I hear there’s a French peace delegation in town.”

Annabelle’s soft blue eyes clouded with wariness as she groped for her chocolate cup. “Where did you hear that, darling?”

Hero gave her mother a good-natured smile. “From Devlin.”

“Oh, dear. I fear Jarvis will not be happy to learn that he knows.”

“Devlin already confronted him about it. He denied it, of course.”

“Yes, it’s all very secretive.”

Not for the first time, Hero found herself wondering if her mother listened at keyholes or if Jarvis was so convinced of his wife’s idiocy that he no longer took care what he said around her.

“And it’s still quite preliminary, as well,” Annabelle said. “At least, that’s what I heard your father saying to someone the other night.”

“Yet it’s encouraging that the delegation is here at all.”

“It is, yes. It seems difficult these days to remember a time when we were not at war with the French.”

Hero said, “But surely the British and French positions are quite far apart? I mean, I can’t believe Napoleon will agree to abdicate.”

“Oh, no; he’s definitely not the type to slip quietly off the world stage, now, is he?”

“Would Britain agree to a peace that left Bonaparte as Emperor of France?”

“Well, some would be willing to see it happen.”

But not others. The words, although unsaid, hung in the air.

Hero fiddled with her cup. “I would imagine the British position is somewhat conflicted, given the French royal family’s presence here as the Prince Regent’s personal guests. Obviously, Prinny would like to see the Bourbons restored to France-both because he feels for their situation as a fellow royal, and because deposed kings by their very existence tend to undermine the legitimacy of every royal still stubbornly clinging to his own crown. And yet, which is more of a threat to the English monarchy? The survival of Napoleon’s empire? Or the continuation of a long, expensive war that has lost the support of England’s hungry people and threatens to bankrupt the state?”