C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

Sebastian was aware of Hero coming down the stairs toward them. But all he said was, “What information?”

“The day before he was killed, Damion told me he had overheard a conversation between Vaundreuil and Charles, Lord Jarvis. He couldn’t catch everything that was said, but it was enough to convince him that Vaundreuil is engaged in a double game-that rather than representing France’s interests, he is deliberately playing into Jarvis’s aims, which are basically to see that these peace overtures go nowhere.”

It fit only too well with what Lady Peter had told him. Yet Sebastian found it difficult to accept anything this woman said at face value. He said, “It’s my understanding that both Andre Foucher and Camille Bonderant were included in the delegation specifically to prevent that sort of connivance.”

“Yes. And now Foucher is dead too.”

Sebastian leaned back against his desk, his arms coming up to cross at his chest. “You’re suggesting Foucher might also have discovered Vaundreuil’s activities? Or that Damion might have told him?”

“I don’t know. But it seems reasonable, does it not?”

“And the attack on Golden Square?”

“Was presumably meant to kill me, on the assumption that Damion must also have told me what he knew.”

“And how does any of this explain the macabre mutilation of the bodies? Pelletan’s heart and Foucher’s eyes?”

“That I do not know.”

Sebastian walked over to pour two glasses of burgundy. He held one out to her, and after a moment, she took it.

He said, “Vaundreuil may well be playing a double game; he would hardly be the first to do so. But I find it difficult to believe him ghoulish enough to desecrate the bodies of his colleagues. To what purpose?”

“I’m not suggesting Vaundreuil is the killer.”

Sebastian studied her fine-boned, tightly held face. And he understood why she had withheld such a vital piece of information from him for so long. “I see. Not Vaundreuil, but Jarvis. That’s why you didn’t tell me before? Because you think Jarvis is the killer, and you feared I would betray you to him because he happens to be my father-in-law? Or is it because you suspected me of being in collusion with him?”

When she remained silent, he said, “I’d be the last person to deny that Jarvis is both ruthless and brutal. He would unblinkingly murder ten thousand men if he thought it would save England-or at least, England as he thinks it should be. But I can’t imagine him cutting out the hearts and gouging out the eyes of his victims for amusement.”

“I believe that was intended to throw suspicion on someone else.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not exactly an effective tactic, then.”

His words brought a flush of angry color to her cheeks. “I didn’t expect you to listen to me.” She set aside her wine untasted. But rather than leave, she said, “Have you given more thought to attempting to turn your child in its mother’s womb?”

The question took him by surprise. “I told Lady Devlin of your offer.”

“And?”

Sebastian looked beyond her, to where Hero now stood in the doorway.

Hero said, “You accuse my father of murdering your brother, then offer to help save my child. Why?”

Alexi Sauvage pivoted to face her. Physically, the two women could not have been more dissimilar. Where the Frenchwoman was small and almost unnaturally thin, Hero stood tall and strong. Yet both possessed a comfortable sense of self combined with a rare willingness to buck the conventions and expectations of their day.

Alexi Sauvage said, “I am a physician. That is what I do.”

“Yet you’ll understand, surely, if I distrust your motives?”

Something wafted across the Frenchwoman’s face. “If you are unwilling to allow me to attempt to turn the child, there are certain positions which sometimes achieve the same objective. You must kneel with your arms folded on the floor or mattress before you and your head resting on your hands. Do this for fifteen or twenty minutes, every two hours. It might be enough to nudge the child into turning itself.”

When Hero remained silent, Alexi Sauvage said, “Try it, please. But if the child still refuses to turn. . Do not wait too long. I promise, I mean you no harm.” She glanced over at Sebastian. “Good evening, monsieur .”

Then she swept from the room.

They listened to her light step descending the front steps. Hero’s gaze met his. “Do you trust her?”

“No,” he said, and took a long swallow of his wine.

Hero went to the window to watch the Frenchwoman climb into a waiting hackney. After a moment, she said, “Do you think she’s right, that Jarvis is behind this?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

She turned to look at him. “I think you need to talk to Hendon.”

He knew she was right. Not only was Hendon directly involved in the preliminary peace discussions, but no one knew better than Hendon what Jarvis was capable of.

That didn’t make what Sebastian was about to do any easier.

• • •

Once, Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, had been the proud father of one daughter and three strong sons.

The two older boys were his favorites, a reality the youngest child, Sebastian, accepted even as it grieved him more than he ever let anyone know. Over the years, he had sought endless explanations for his father’s harshness, for the undisguised mingling of anger and bemusement that so often pinched the Earl’s features when his gaze fell on his youngest and least satisfactory son. Was it because Sebastian was so unlike the Earl, in temperament and interests as well as in appearance? Or was it for some other reason entirely? Sebastian could never decide.

And then, one by one, Hendon’s sons died, first the eldest, Richard, and then his middle son, Cecil, leaving only the youngest, Sebastian, as the Earl’s heir. It wasn’t until Sebastian was a man grown that he’d learned the truth: that Hendon’s beautiful, laughing, golden-haired Countess had played her husband false. That Sebastian was not, in fact, the Earl’s own son, but a bastard sired by one of the Countess’s nameless, faceless lovers. As Hendon had always known.

Always.

• • •

The Earl was dozing in a chair beside the library fire in his massive Grosvenor Square town house when Sebastian came to pause in the doorway. Hendon was in his late sixties now, his body stocky and slightly stooped with age, his heavily jowled face lined and sagging, his hair almost white and beginning to thin.

Sebastian paused in the doorway, his gaze on the man he’d thought of as his father for twenty-nine years-the man the world still believed to be his father. Sebastian supposed that, in time, he would be able to forgive Hendon for all the lies of his growing-up years. But he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive the Earl for allowing those lies to drive Sebastian from the woman he’d once loved with all his heart and soul. The fact that Sebastian had found a new love in no way diminished either his anger or the hurt that fueled it. Yet as his gaze traveled over the old man’s familiar, once well-loved features, he felt an upswelling of powerful, unwanted emotions that he quickly suppressed.

He closed the door behind him with a click and watched Hendon draw in his breath in a half snore, then straighten with a jerk.

“Devlin.” The Earl swiped one thick hand over his lower face. “Didn’t hear you come in. This is. . unexpected.”

Since the two men had barely exchanged half a dozen painful, polite greetings for many months now, that was something of an understatement. Sebastian said, “I understand you’re involved with the delegation sent by Napoleon to explore the possibility of peace negotiations between our two countries.”