C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

“No.”

“No?”

“No.” The Frenchman went back to his writing.

Sebastian said, “Did you know Damion Pelletan has a sister here in London?”

“I did, yes. Now you really must excuse me; I am very busy. Would you kindly go away and allow me to finish my work?”

“In a moment. Are you not even curious to know what happened to him?”

“I am a diplomat, not a policeman. The wrong kind of curiosity is a luxury I cannot afford. If Damion Pelletan’s murderer must go free for the negotiations to continue, then so be it.”

“I can understand that. But what if Pelletan was killed by someone intent on disrupting your mission? Surely it has occurred to you that the murderer might well try again-by targeting someone else in your party?”

Vaundreuil dropped his pen, a splotch of ink flowing across the paper as his head came up. His gaze met Sebastian’s across the room, then jerked away as footsteps sounded on the paving outside the inn’s sashed windows.

Sebastian heard a man’s voice, followed by a woman’s gentle laughter. It took him a moment to realize who it was. Then he saw Colonel Foucher walking side by side with Madeline Quesnel, a market basket slung over her arm.

And there was no disguising the raw fear that gusted across her father’s face as he confronted a new and obviously terrifying possibility.

• • •

A smothering envelope of dense fog was descending on the city, yellow and heavy with the bitter stench of coal smoke.

Leaving the Gifford Arms, Sebastian turned toward the hackney stand at the end of York Street. It was only midafternoon, but the streets were unnaturally deserted, the pavement slick with condensation and grime, every sound magnified or distorted by the suffocating shroud of foul, heavy moisture. He could hear the rattle of a harness in the distance, the shouts of boatmen out on the river. .

And the steady rhythm of a man’s footsteps that seemed to start up out of nowhere and gained on him, fast.

S ebastian walked on, his senses suddenly, intensely alert.

The shadow’s footsteps kept pace with him.

He passed a gnarled old workman in a blue smock, his gray bearded face beaded with moisture, his head bent as he hurried on without a second glance. A moment later came the thump of two bodies colliding and the workman’s angry, “Oy! Why don’t ye watch where yer goin’?” The shadow’s footsteps hesitated for an instant, then resumed and quickened.

Sebastian stepped sideways, turning so that his back was to the brick wall of the town house beside him as he stopped and listened.

Damn this fog.

A man stepped out of the swirling mist: a gentleman, clad in a fashionable greatcoat and beaver hat with a heavy scarf that obscured the lower part of his face. He held his left hand straight down at his side, the folds of his greatcoat all but obscuring the dagger clutched in his fist.

“Looking for me?” said Sebastian.

For one startled instant, the man’s gaze met Sebastian’s and his dark, heavily lashed eyes blinked as he realized just how radically the situation had suddenly altered. Not only had he lost the benefit of surprise, but it was considerably easier to knife a man in the back than to confront him face-to-face.

Sebastian took a step forward. “What’s the matter? Can’t get at my back?”

The would-be assailant turned and darted into the street.

Sebastian leapt after him.

A team of bay shires appeared out of the fog, heads bent as they leaned into their harnesses, the heavily loaded dray they pulled rattling over the uneven paving. The man drew up and spun around, his knife flashing just as Sebastian’s foot slid on the wet stones. Before he could jerk out of the way, the blade slashed along Sebastian’s forearm. Sebastian fought to regain his balance on the icy pavement, slipped, and went down hard.

The man whirled and ran.

“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, scrambling to his feet, his bleeding arm held crimped to his chest. A whip cracked, the air filling with harsh shouts and the jingle of harness as a wide-eyed pair of grays reared suddenly in the gloom. Sebastian ducked out of the way of the horses’ slashing hooves, then swerved to dodge a lumbering dowager’s carriage.

By the time he reached the opposite footpath, the greatcoated man in the heavy scarf had disappeared.

• • •

“Your questions are obviously making someone uncomfortable,” said Gibson, laying a neat row of stitches along the gash in Sebastian’s arm.

Sebastian grunted. “The question is: Who?” He was seated on the table in Gibson’s surgery, stripped to his waist, a glass of brandy cradled in his good, right hand.

Gibson tied off his thread. “Any chance Monsieur Harmond Vaundreuil could have had his own physician killed?”

“You mean because he discovered someone-probably Kilmartin-was trying to bribe Pelletan?” Sebastian took a slow swallow of his brandy. “It’s certainly possible. It wouldn’t matter whether or not Pelletan actually accepted Kilmartin’s bribe, if Vaundreuil somehow came to hear of it. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Vaundreuil is afraid of something. I just don’t know what.”

“The other members of his delegation, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.” He remembered the horror Vaundreuil had shown when told the killer had removed Pelletan’s heart. He still believed that horror was real. But it was always possible the Frenchman had simply been ignorant of his own henchman’s viciousness.

Sebastian watched Gibson smear a foul-smelling salve over the wound. “What I find difficult to understand is why Vaundreuil or one of his associates would want to plant a charge of gunpowder in Golden Square in an effort to kill Damion Pelletan’s sister. But then, that could be because Madame Sauvage is being considerably less honest with us than she could be. About a lot of things.”

He was aware of Gibson stiffening. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve discovered that Damion Pelletan was trying to convince Lord Peter Radcliff’s pretty young wife to run away with him. In fact, Pelletan and his sister were actually arguing about it just moments before he was murdered. Now, why do you suppose she neglected to tell us that?”

A woman’s voice sounded from the doorway behind him. “I’ve told you there is much I still don’t recall from that night.”

Sebastian turned to look at her. She wore the same old-fashioned gown from that morning, the smudges of black at her knees still visible from where she’d knelt beside the body of her dead servant woman. And it occurred to him that everything she owned had probably been lost in the explosion and fire.

He glanced at Gibson, who was preparing to wrap a bandage around the injured arm. A faint but clearly discernable flush of color rode high on the surgeon’s gaunt cheekbones. And Sebastian knew without being told that Gibson had offered the now homeless Frenchwoman a place to stay-and she had accepted.

He looked back at Madame Sauvage. “How long had you known?”

“That Damion wanted Julia to return with him to France? He only told me that night, as we were walking up Cat’s Hole to see Cecile.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“You mean that he had discovered Radcliff was beating her? Yes.”

“And it never occurred to you that a man violent enough to use his fists on his helpless young wife might also be violent enough to kill the man proposing to steal that wife away from him?”

“I told you, I only learned what Damion intended the night of the attack. I simply did not recall it.”

Sebastian let his gaze drift over the pale, fine-boned features of her face. Not only was she a habitual liar, but she wasn’t particularly good at it. How the hell Gibson couldn’t see that was beyond him. But all he said was, “Tell me about your father’s autopsy of the Dauphin in the Temple Prison.”