When Falcons Fall (26 page)

C
rispin Seaton sat beside the raw earth of Emma Chandler’s grave, his head bowed, his forearms resting on spread knees. He didn’t look up when Sebastian walked across the sunlit grass toward him. The sky was still brutally cloudless, and Crispin’s small bunch of meadow daisies and poppies was already beginning to wilt in the heat.

Sebastian said, “I’m sorry.”

The younger man nodded, his throat working hard as he swallowed. “I’ve been sitting here thinking about the first time I kissed her. The fields were dusted with a late snow and it was so cold, her nose was red, like a child’s. But then I kissed her, and her lips were so warm. I remember looking into her eyes, and they were so soft, so beautiful, I knew then that I could look at her forever and never tire of it. And now . . . now she’s down there in the ground. She can’t see or feel anything, and I’ll never be able to touch or look at her again. Ever.”

Sebastian raised his gaze to stare up the hill, toward the ruined medieval watchtower that stood guard over the village. “You told me you heard about Emma Chance’s death on your way back from the Lake District and suspected she might be Emma Chandler. Except, now I discover that you were actually here in Ayleswick that Sunday, the evening before she was killed. You saw her and you spoke with her. So why the lie?”

Crispin held himself very still, his hands dangling limply. Then his head fell back, displaying a face ravaged by grief. “How did you know?”

“You were seen.”

The younger man’s features pinched with puzzlement. “But . . . I didn’t ride all the way into Ayleswick. I hadn’t even reached the crossroads when I saw her walking along the road.” He drew in a shaky breath. “I couldn’t believe it was her.”

“You stopped?”

“Of course I stopped.”

“Did she tell you why she was here?”

Crispin nodded, his throat working visibly as he swallowed.

“Why was she crying?”

Crispin stared at him. “How did you know she was crying?”

“I told you; you were seen.” It said something about the intensity of the exchange between the two young lovers, that Seaton hadn’t even noticed Charles Bonaparte trotting down the road behind them. “Why was she crying?”

Crispin swiped a shaky hand over his face. “We were . . . arguing.”

“About what?”

“Does it matter?”

“I rather think it does.”

The young Baron nodded and shifted to clasp his hands around his bent knees. “She told me she’d discovered her father was someone from Ayleswick, so she’d decided to come here posing as an officer’s widow on a sketching expedition so she could find out who he was. I wanted to know how the blazes she thought we could ever marry when everyone in the village now thought she was someone she wasn’t.”

“What did she say?”

He stared at the new grave before him. “She said, How could she marry me when there was a chance that
my
father was also
her
father?”

Sebastian held himself very still. He was finding it oddly difficult to draw his next breath, much less ask the questions he needed to ask in a calm, even voice. “Had she made any progress in discovering her father’s identity?”

Crispin shook his head. “She said she’d eliminated the old Squire because Archie told her his father was fair-haired, and Samuel Atwater for the same reason. But that was about it.”

“I’m not quite certain I understand how she thought she could possibly discover the truth.”

“I don’t know either. What was she going to do? Come right out and ask Major Weston if by chance he’d raped some earl’s sixteen-year-old daughter two decades ago? Ask the
vicar
, for Christ’s sake? I had the impression she thought she’d somehow recognize her father when she saw him.”

“Except that Emma looked like her mother,” said Sebastian. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

A faint hint of color crept into the younger man’s cheeks as his gaze drifted away. “I was afraid that if you knew I’d been here and then left—that we’d quarreled—then you might think I’d killed her.”

“Where did you go, after you came upon her on the road?”

“What do you think? My God! I’d just discovered that the woman I loved and wanted to marry thought there was a very good chance she was my sister! You can have no idea what that’s like. No idea at all.”

Sebastian stared out over the sun-soaked tombstones around them, conscious of a familiar pounding in his temples. Because the truth was that he understood only too well what Crispin Seaton was going through. He’d been through it himself.

“I turned my horse around and rode back to Ludlow,” Crispin was saying. “I took a room at the Angel and set about getting mind-numbingly drunk. I stayed that way for days. It’s . . . it’s all just a blur. I finally woke up on Friday determined to ride back here and have it out with her. Except, by then everyone was talking about the inquests being held down in Ayleswick. I heard the name Emma Chance and—” His shoulders shook and he dropped his face into his hands, muffling his voice. “I kept telling myself it had to be some kind of mistake. She couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t.”

Sebastian understood now why Emma had told Reuben early Monday morning that she hadn’t been able to sleep. Upset by the previous evening’s confrontation with the man she loved, she’d finally given up even trying and left her bed before dawn to go down to the river to paint a pack bridge used by smugglers. She must have been exhausted all that day.

And by dawn the next morning she was dead.

He studied the younger man’s bowed head, the wind-ruffled fair hair gleaming golden in the sunlight. He believed Crispin Seaton’s grief was genuine. But he knew, too, that Crispin wouldn’t be the first murderer to weep at his victim’s graveside.

L
ater that afternoon, as the sun sank toward the Welsh hills, Sebastian sat at the large central table in their private parlor with Emma Chandler’s two sketchbooks spread open before him. He was comparing the sequence of her landscape sketches with that of her portraits.

He stared at them a long time, trying to make sense of what he knew of this woman’s death and the others that had both flowed from it and preceded it. Finally he said, “I know why Emma named the subjects of some of these portraits but not others.”

Hero looked over at him from where she was mending one of Simon’s dresses in a chair beside the window. “Why?”

“Her main purpose was obviously to draw and name each of the men mentioned in her mother’s letter. But three were already dead, so she drew Archie in the hopes that he bore some resemblance to his dead father, and Jenny Dalyrimple because she must somehow have realized ‘the man at the Ship’ referred to in her mother’s letter was actually Jamie Knox, and Jenny is Knox’s twin.”

“So why did she draw Martin McBroom and Hannibal Pierce?”

“Because she was an artist, and both men have interesting faces. As does the chambermaid, Mary Beth. But she didn’t name them because their identities weren’t important.”

“She didn’t draw Crispin,” said Hero.

“No. But she knew exactly what he looked like, didn’t she?”

They had found Crispin’s last letter to Emma tucked into her reticule, and its presence there told them all they needed to know about her feelings toward him. Now Hero set aside her sewing and came to stand behind Sebastian, looking over his shoulder as he flipped slowly through the dead woman’s drawings. She said, “Do you think Crispin could have killed Emma?”

“I’d think it more likely if she’d died that night—if he’d killed her in a rage. But I find it difficult to believe he rode off, only to come back twenty-four hours later to put his hand over her face and quietly smother her to death.”

“But he could have done it. He did lie.”

“He did. Although I’m beginning to think he may have lied to protect his mother.”

“Lady Seaton?” Hero sank into the chair beside him. “You can’t be serious.”

“I wish I weren’t.”

She shook her head. “I’m not following you.”

“Let’s suppose, for argument’s sake, that the man who raped Lady Emily Turnstall twenty-two years ago was the same gentleman who impregnated Sybil Moss and Hannah Grant.”

“We don’t know for certain that Hannah was with child.”

“No. But bear with me a moment. We’ve been assuming that Sybil and Hannah were killed by whatever gentleman seduced them—namely Lord Seaton, the Reverend, or Major Weston—with Seaton being eliminated because he’s now dead. But what if those women were actually killed by the guilty man’s angry, jealous wife?”

“What a ghastly thought,” said Hero. “Although if you’re right, it means Agnes Underwood and Liv Weston should also be considered suspects.”

“True. Except Reverend Underwood and Major Weston are both still very much alive, whereas Leopold Seaton is long dead. Supposedly he fell off his horse one dark night riding home drunk from the Blue Boar and cracked his head open on a conveniently situated stone bridge.”

“You’re suggesting his loving wife actually bashed in his head, instead? And then killed Emma when she found out the young woman was her husband’s child?” Hero was silent for a moment. “But Lady Seaton didn’t know why Emma was here.”

“We think she didn’t know, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t. Apart from which, she could actually have an entirely different motive if Emma was killed because she accidently stumbled upon a meeting between Lucien Bonaparte and someone delivering a message from Paris.”

“If there was a message from Paris that day. And if Lady Seaton knows of Lucien’s contact with Paris. That’s three ifs,” said Hero.

Sebastian found himself smiling. “You’re right; it is.”

Hero began slowly turning the pages of Emma’s second sketchbook. “When one meets her, Lady Seaton seems so feminine and even-tempered. Could she really be that different? That . . . evil?”

Sebastian stared down at Emma’s sketch of Northcott Abbey, its leaded windows sparkling in the summer sunshine. Virtually every aspect of a gentlewoman’s existence, from her tastes and talents to her behavior and basic personality, was expected to conform to their society’s narrow definition of womanhood. Some women were lucky: They were born fitting into that tight, predetermined mold. But most struggled their entire lives to cope with the discrepancy between the reality of who they were and the illusion of what their society expected them to be.

Some, like Hero—and, he realized, Emma Chandler—were independent minded enough to go their own way regardless of the consequences. But few were that brave. Most learned early to affect a false persona, to hide their intelligence and determination and tuck away their true selves behind a gentle, smiling, unnatural facade. And he had no doubt into which category Grace Seaton fell.

“I think Lady Seaton is very good at playing whatever role other people expect her to play. What she’s actually like is anyone’s guess.”

“But how could she have managed it? Physically, I mean. She’s so tiny. And then there’s what happened to Hannibal Pierce. Even if she’s a marvelous shot, I can’t imagine her ladyship creeping through a misty churchyard with a rifled pistol to shoot Hannibal Pierce. Or hiding in the bushes beside the river to leap out and bash Reuben Dickie over the head.”

“No. But she has a very devoted cousin.”

“Samuel Atwater?” Hero considered this possibility in silence for a moment. “Ironically, I can believe her capable of murder easier than I can him. I find him rather likeable.”

“So do I.” Sebastian went to stare out the window at the lane leading up the hill to the ancient church, where a yellow-wheeled whiskey stood beside the lych-gate, the reins of its glossy bay held by one of the village lads. “Of course, it’s always possible that Leopold Seaton really did fall off his horse and crack open his own head, and I should be looking into Liv Weston and her pitchfork-wielding gardener instead.”

Hero came to stand beside him, her gaze, like his, on the elegant woman now weaving her way through the churchyard’s scattered tombstones. “If you are right, how can you possibly prove it?”

“I don’t know.” He turned away from the window and reached for his hat and gloves. “Whoever is doing this has in all likelihood killed at least six people. And I have absolutely nothing but supposition to go on.”

Sebastian found Lady Seaton in the same place he’d come upon her son that morning: at Emma Chandler’s graveside.

She wore a demure light blue carriage dress with a round straw hat, her golden curls clustered poignantly about the pale, delicate features of her face. She held her hands nestled one inside the other and pressed against the gown’s high waistband, and she had her head bowed. But her eyes were open and she appeared more lost in thought than engaged in prayer.

At the sound of Sebastian’s footfalls, she raised her head to look at him. She did not smile. A sheaf of purple heather and spiny yellow gorse rested against the new grave’s bare dirt; it was a strange offering, but he did not need to ask to know that she had brought it. She stared at him for a long moment, and he knew again the sense that this was a woman who kept all genuine thoughts and emotions carefully hidden from public scrutiny.

She said, “Crispin told me of his conversation with you this morning.”

Sebastian stood on the far side of the grave, his hat dangling in one hand. “Did he tell you he was in love with Emma Chandler?”

She nodded. “He confessed that to me days ago.”

Confessed.
The word choice struck him as significant.

She said, “Georgina had spoken to me several times of her friend at school, so I recognized her name, once it became known.”

“She’d told you of Crispin’s interest in Emma?”

“No.” She smiled faintly as she said it, drawing out the long vowel sound. “That she kept to herself. But then, Georgina and her brother have always been close. He asked her to keep it quiet, and she did.”

Lady Seaton fell silent again, her gaze dropping to the raw earth between them. “I wish she had told me why she was here. I might have been able to help her.”

Sebastian found his imagination boggling at the thought of Emma confiding to this elegant, cool gentlewoman her suspicions that Lady Seaton’s dead husband might have been guilty of rape. He said, “You met Lady Emily Turnstall?”

“I did, yes. But only briefly.”

“How much do you remember of that long-ago September?”

“Little, I’m afraid. I was increasing at the time and most dreadfully unwell. But . . .” Her voice trailed off, her nostrils flaring on a suddenly indrawn breath. “Surely you’re not suggesting that’s why she was killed?”

“I think it very likely, yes.”

She ran her hands up and down her arms as if she were cold, although the evening was still golden warm. “And the others—Reuben Dickie and that man from London? What have they to do with a house party twenty-two years in the past?”

“Probably nothing. But they may have seen something the night Emma was killed, something that could betray her killer’s identity.” He hesitated, then said, “It’s possible the same person was also responsible for the deaths of Sybil Moss and Hannah Grant.”

Her gaze flew to his, her pretty mouth going slack with surprise. He caught an unexpected flicker of what looked very much like fear lurking in her startlingly blue eyes. Then she lowered her thick lashes and looked away again. “But Sybil and Hannah committed suicide.”

“I think not.”

She gave a little shake of her head. “Those women died years ago. How can you possibly think there’s any connection between their deaths and what happened to Emma Chandler?”

“Because someone in Ayleswick obviously likes to solve his problems with murder.”
Or her problems,
thought Sebastian. “Did you never consider it?”

“That the two girls hadn’t killed themselves?” She hesitated. “There was talk at the time. But I never credited it for an instant. What a troublesome thought.”

He said, “I understand you invited Emma to Northcott on Saturday.”

“I did, yes.” She looked both puzzled and vaguely suspicious. “Why?”

“I was wondering how you met her.”

“We were introduced by Agnes Underwood when I stopped by the vicarage Friday afternoon. She mentioned Emma was interested in sketching the historic buildings in the area, and I suggested she visit Northcott Abbey.”

“Did she ask about your late husband?”

A faint frown puckered her pretty forehead. “She may have. I don’t recall now exactly what we spoke of.” She gathered her skirts. “And now you must excuse me, my lord. I don’t like to leave Devon—my horse—waiting too long.”

He watched her walk away, her head held high, her features comfortably settled into a look of gentle goodwill she’d been practicing since childhood.

Before he left the churchyard himself, Sebastian turned to enter the old parish church.

The passage of the most recent Catholic Relief Act had enabled the Seatons to build a small, unobtrusive Catholic chapel on the grounds of Northcott Abbey. But for generations before that the family had had to hide their faith, attending services at the village church on Sunday and burying their dead in its crypt.

Built without aisles, the church of St. Thomas was the same age as the earliest construction of the priory that now lay in ruins to the west. Its sandstone walls were thick, its windows small and rounded, the air permeated with the odor of cold, dank stone and lost centuries of incense and blessed candles.

Memorials to those interred in the crypt below lined the worn sandstone walls and floor of the nave. The oldest were those dedicated to the first generations of Rawlinses; but the most elaborate were those of the Seaton family. It didn’t take Sebastian long to find the engraved marble slab of Lady Seaton’s lord. Leopold Seaton had died on the sixth of February 1798, less than two weeks after Hannah Grant was found floating in the millpond. A coincidence? Possibly. But Sebastian doubted it.