C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

“And the others? Foucher and Bondurant? Did he have trouble with them?”

She frowned, as if considering the question. “I would say he was wary of both Colonel Foucher and the clerk, Bondurant. But I do not know if he ever quarreled with them.”

“What about someone he might have met in England?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t meet many people here in London. That was one of the main reasons the delegation hired that hotel in York Street, was it not? To avoid having to interact with many Englishmen?”

She paused, her lips parted as if with a sudden thought.

“What?” asked Sebastian, watching her.

“Last week-I think it was early Thursday morning-Noel and I were walking in Hyde Park. We saw Damion and another man there, near the Armoury. It was obvious their words were heated, so I stopped Noel when he would have run up to them.”

“Did Damion see you?”

“He did, yes. Noel called out ‘Bonjour!’ before I could hush him, so Damion glanced over at us. But I knew from the expression on his face that he wanted us to stay away.”

“What sort of expression? Annoyance?”

“Not annoyance. More like an odd mixture of anger and fear.”

“Do you know who the man was?”

“I don’t number him amongst my acquaintances, but I doubt there is anyone in the West End of London who would fail to recognize him. It was Kilmartin. Angus Kilmartin.”

Sebastian had a sudden clear recollection of having seen the small, bowlegged Scotsman descending the stairs from Jarvis’s apartments. “Do you have any idea why Damion would have been meeting him?”

“No; none at all.” She looked beyond him, to where the nursemaid was now trying to separate the two squabbling boys. “Truly, monsieur , I must go.”

He touched his hand to his hat and bowed his head. “Thank you for your assistance, Lady Peter. If you think of anything else that might be useful, you will let me know?”

“Yes, of course.”

She turned away, the wind gusting hard enough to snatch at the rim of her bonnet. She put up a hand to steady it, and the movement pulled at the sleeve of her pelisse, baring her forearm between the braided cuff and her kid gloves. Against her pale flesh, a row of four livid bruises showed quite clearly.

Bruises in the exact pattern left by an angry man closing his big, strong hand around a woman’s fragile wrist.

A ngus Kilmartin was seated alone at a small table near the fire in White’s somber, overheated dining room when Sebastian walked up and settled in the chair opposite.

“I don’t recall issuing an invitation for you to join me,” said the Scotsman, his voice pleasant, his face never losing its habitual expression of mild amusement.

“That’s quite all right,” said Sebastian. “I don’t intend to stay long.”

Kilmartin grunted and cut himself a slice of beefsteak.

Sebastian said, “I hear you’ve recently been awarded a new contract with the Navy.”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations.”

Kilmartin glanced up at him. “You say that as if you disagree in some way with the procedure.”

“Why would I?”

Just two decades before, Angus Kilmartin had been an obscure Glaswegian merchant. Today, there were few lucrative industries in which he was not invested. From his mills in Yorkshire rolled the cloth used to make uniforms for Britain’s soldiers and sailors. His foundries supplied them with cannon and firearms, while from his shipyards came an endless supply of the frigates and gunboats that helped Britannia rule the waves. Over the course of twenty years of war, as Britain’s artisans and craftsmen starved and sheep grazed amidst the ruined cottages of displaced Highland clansmen, Angus Kilmartin had prospered far beyond most men’s wildest dreams.

“Why, indeed?” he said, carefully buttering a piece of bread. “Is this why you are here? To discuss my business ventures?”

“Actually, I’m curious about how you came to know a French doctor named Damion Pelletan.”

Kilmartin chewed slowly and deliberately before swallowing. “You refer, I take it, to the young man recently set upon by footpads in St. Katharine’s?”

“He was certainly killed in St. Katharine’s, although I seriously doubt footpads had anything to do with it.”

“And what makes you imagine I knew him?”

“You were seen arguing with him last Thursday morning in the park. That’s the day he was killed, incidentally.”

Kilmartin only smiled faintly, his chin tucked, his eyes downcast as he worked to cut himself another slice of beef.

Sebastian watched him. “So you don’t deny it?”

The Scotsman paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, his eyes going wide. “Why should I? Pelletan was a physician. I consulted with him over a medical matter. I see no reason to furnish you with the particulars.”

“And you would have me believe you met with him in the park to argue a medical matter?”

“I didn’t exactly ‘meet with’ him. I encountered him by chance. We fell into a dispute.”

“Over a medical matter.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder, how did you come to hear of him? He hadn’t been in London long.”

“Someone recommended him to me. I don’t recall now precisely whom.”

“One of the Bourbons, perhaps?” suggested Sebastian sardonically.

Kilmartin gave a faint, tight-lipped smile and shrugged. “Perhaps. Who can say?”

Sebastian let his gaze drift around the elegant, high-ceilinged room. “I assume you’ve heard the rumors?”

“London is full of rumors. Endlessly. To which do you refer?”

“To the suggestion that the fiasco in Russia has weakened Napoleon to the extent that he is now willing to explore the possibility of making peace with England.”

“Never happen,” said Kilmartin.

“So certain?”

“Napoleon would never agree to England’s terms.”

“And if he did?” Sebastian watched the other man’s face. “You would stand to lose a lot of money.”

Kilmartin’s smile never slipped. “All good things must come to an end.”

“True. But some eventualities can be postponed. Especially by those ruthless enough to use any means possible.”

Kilmartin leaned forward, his grip on the knife and fork tightening. “What are you suggesting? That I had Damion Pelletan waylaid and murdered in some back alley in the hopes that it might disrupt the delegation from Paris? How absurd.”

“I never suggested Pelletan was part of a delegation from Paris.”

For a moment, Sebastian’s words seemed to hang in the silence between them. The Scotsman froze, his narrowed gray eyes fixed on Sebastian’s, a dark malevolence replacing the faint derision that had been there before.

He kept his voice low and even, his knife suspended in the air between them. “If I proposed to put an end to Boney’s somewhat tentative peace feelers, I would do it by killing that fat former priest masquerading as a diplomat. Not his doctor.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Too obvious. Why kill Vaundreuil when you can get rid of him in a different way? The man is morbidly obsessed with his own health. It’s conceivable that without his doctor, he might decide to abandon his attempts at diplomacy and scuttle back across the Channel.”

The humor was back in the other man’s eyes. “Really? Then Pelletan’s killer was more clever than I realized. I’d like to take credit, but I’m afraid I can’t.”

Sebastian watched the Scotsman set down his knife and reach for his ale.

“Why did you really meet with Pelletan in the park last Thursday morning?”

Kilmartin rolled his ale around on his tongue, his lips pursed, his eyes alive with mischief. But he only shook his head, as if hugging to himself some secret too amusing to share.