When Maidens Mourn (17 page)

The man who stood before the empty fireplace was dressed all in black: black breeches, black coat, black waistcoat, black cravat. Only his shirt was white. He stood with his dark head tilted back as he stared up at the portrait of the Countess of Hendon that hung over the mantel. With the grace of a dancer or fencer, he pivoted slowly when Sebastian entered the room to pause just inside the doorway.

“So we meet,” said Sebastian, and carefully closed the door behind him.

T
he man called Jamie Knox was built tall and lean, taller even than Sebastian, with wavy, almost black hair and the yellow eyes of a wolf or feral cat.

Sebastian had been told once that he had his father’s eyes—his
real
father’s eyes. But he’d always thought he looked like his mother. Now, as he stared at the face of the man who stood across the room from him, he wondered if it was his imagination that traced a resemblance in the tavern owner’s high-boned cheeks and gently curving mouth.

Then he remembered Morey’s strange reaction and knew it was not his imagination.

He crossed to where a decanter and glasses rested on a side table. “May I offer you a brandy?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The inflections were similar to that of the curly-headed man of the night before. The accent was not that of a gentleman.

“Where are you from?” asked Sebastian, splashing brandy into two glasses.

“Shropshire, by way of a rifle regiment.”

“You’re a rifleman?”

“I was.”

Sebastian held out one of the glasses. After the briefest of hesitations, the man took it.

“I fought beside riflemen in Italy and the Peninsula,” said Sebastian. “I’ve often thought it will be Napoléon’s insistence on arming his men with only muskets that will ultimately cause his downfall.”

“You may be right. Only, don’t go telling the French bugger himself, hmm?” Knox took a deep drink of his brandy, his intense yellow gaze never leaving Sebastian’s face. “You don’t look much like your da, the Earl, do you?”

“I’m told I resemble my mother.”

Jamie Knox jerked his chin toward the portrait over the mantel. “That her?”

“Yes.”

He took another sip. “I never knew my father. My mother said he was a cavalry captain. Your father ever in the cavalry?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

A faint gleam of amusement lit up the other man’s eyes. He drained his brandy with the offhand carelessness of a man well accustomed to hard drinking, then shook his head when Sebastian offered him another.

“You came around asking about my conversation with Gabrielle Tennyson last week.”

“So you don’t deny the confrontation occurred.”

“Why should I? She heard I’d uncovered one of those old picture pavements in my cellars, and she kept pestering me to let her take a look at it.”

“You mean, a Roman mosaic?”

“That’s it. Picture of a naked fat man holding a bunch of grapes in one hand and riding a dolphin.”

“You expect me to believe you threatened a woman over a mosaic?”

Knox’s lips curved into a smile, but the glitter in his eyes had become hard and dangerous. He looked to be a few years older than Sebastian, perhaps as much as thirty-three or -four. “I didn’t threaten to kill her. I just told her she’d be sorry if she didn’t back off. Last thing I need is some bloody bluestocking sniffing around the place. Not good for business.”

“Especially if she’s sniffing around your cellars.”

Knox laughed. “Something like that, yes.”

The rifleman let his gaze drift around Sebastian’s drawing room, the amusement slowly dying out of his expression. By Mayfair’s standards, the Brook Street house was not large; the furnishings were elegant but neither lavish nor opulent. Yet as Sebastian watched Knox’s assessing eyes take in the room’s satin hangings, the delicate cane chairs near the bow window overlooking the street, the gently faded carpet, the white Carrara marble of the mantelpiece, he had no doubt that the room must appear quite differently to a rifleman from the wilds of Shropshire than it did to Sebastian, who was raised in the sprawling splendor of Hendon House in Grosvenor Square and the halls and manors of the Earl’s various estates across Britain.

“Nice place you got here,” said Knox, his accent unusually pronounced.

“Thank you.”

“I hear you got married just last week.”

“I did, yes.”

“Married the daughter of Lord Jarvis himself.”

“Yes.”

The two men’s gazes met, and held.

“Congratulations,” said Knox. Setting aside his empty glass, he reached for the black hat he had rested on a nearby table and settled it on his head at a rakish angle. Then he gave a faintly mocking bow. “My lord.”

Sebastian stood at the bowed front windows of his drawing room and watched Jamie Knox descend the front steps and stroll
off down the street. It was like watching a shadowy doppelganger of himself.

Or a brother.

Sebastian was still standing at the window some moments later when a familiar yellow-bodied carriage drew up. He watched Hero descend the coach steps with her usual grace and then enter the house.

She came into the room pulling off a pair of soft yellow kid gloves that she tossed on one of the cane chairs. “Ah, good,” she said. “You’re finally up.”

“I do generally try to make it out of bed before nightfall,” he said.

He was rewarded with a soft huff of laughter.

Today she wore an elegant carriage gown of emerald satin trimmed with rows of pintucks down the skirt and a spray of delicate yellow roses embroidered on each sleeve. She yanked at the emerald ribbons that tied her velvet hat beneath her chin and tossed the hat onto the chair with her gloves. “I’ve just come from an interesting conversation with Mary Bourne.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Bourne. She’s sister to both Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt and the Reverend Tennyson, the father of the two missing boys.”

Sebastian frowned. He had a vague recollection of d’Eyncourt mentioning a sister staying with him. “Is she like her brother d’Eyncourt?”

“Oh, no; she’s far worse. She’s a saint, you know.”

Sebastian laughed out loud.

“No, it’s true; I mean that quite literally. She’s a Calvinist. You can have no notion of the misery it brings her, knowing that she alone can look forward to the joys awaiting her in heaven whilst the vast majority of her family is doomed to suffer the everlasting torments of hell.”

“She actually told you that?”

“She did. Personally, I suspect she derives enormous satisfaction from the comfortable conviction that she is one of the chosen elite while everyone around her is doomed to burn. But then, self-perception is not one of her strong suits.”

Sebastian leaned back against the windowsill, his arms crossed at his chest, his gaze on his wife’s face. Her eyes were sparkling and a faint flush rode high on her cheekbones. He found himself smiling. “So why did you go see her? Or were you looking for d’Eyncourt?”

“No. I knew d’Eyncourt would be at Westminster. I wanted to talk to Mary Bourne alone. You see, I’ve been puzzled by the arithmetic.” Hero sank into one of the chairs beside the empty hearth. “D’Eyncourt told you he is his father’s heir, right? Except, d’Eyncourt is only twenty-eight, while little George Tennyson—the elder of the missing boys—is nine years old. That means that if d’Eyncourt’s brother were indeed a younger son, he would need to have sired his own son at the tender age of seventeen. Obviously possible, but unlikely, given that he is in holy orders.”

“So what did you discover?”

“That the boys’ father is actually thirty-four years old.”

Sebastian pushed away from the window. “You’re certain?”

“Are you suggesting the woman might have mistaken the ages of her own brothers? D’Eyncourt is the baby of the family. He’s younger than his brother by a full six years.”

The bells of the abbey were tolling seven when d’Eyncourt emerged from Westminster Hall and turned toward Parliament Street. The setting sun soaked the ancient buildings with a rich tea-colored light and cast long shadows across the paving.

Sebastian fell into step beside him.

The MP cast a quick look at Sebastian, then glanced away
without slackening his pace. There was neither surprise nor puzzlement on his smoothly handsome features. “I’ve just received a note from my sister Mary, telling me she enjoyed a visit from Lady Devlin this afternoon. My sister is an earnest but guileless woman. As such she is frequently slow to see the subterfuge in others. It wasn’t until some time after Lady Devlin’s departure that my sister began to ponder the direction their conversation had taken.”

Sebastian showed his teeth in a smile. “Ah, yes; Lady Devlin is quite practiced in the arts of guile and subterfuge, is she not?”

D’Eyncourt pressed his lips together and kept walking.

Sebastian said, “And once Mrs. Bourne realized the indiscretions of her talkative tongue, she immediately sat down and dashed off a note to her baby brother warning him— What, exactly? That you were about to be caught out in a very telling lie?”

D’Eyncourt drew up at the edge of the Privy Gardens and turned to face him, a slim, elegant man with a smug air of self-assurance. “I never claimed to be my father’s firstborn. I simply told you that I am his heir. And that is the truth.”

“His only heir?”

“Yes.”

“How can that be?”

D’Eyncourt’s thin nostrils quivered with indignation. “That is none of your affair.”

Sebastian advanced on him, backing the dandified parliamentarian up until his shoulders slammed against the rough stone wall behind him. “Gabrielle Tennyson’s death made it my affair, you god damned, pompous, self-congratulatory son of a bitch. A woman is dead and two innocent little boys are missing. If you know anything—
anything
—that can help make sense of what has happened to them—”

“I am not afraid of you,” said d’Eyncourt, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed.

“You should be.”

“You can’t accost me in the streets! What are you imagining? That those two children stand between me and my father’s wealth? Well, you are wrong. My father disinherited my older brother and made me his sole heir when I was six years old. Why else do you suppose my brother took holy orders and now serves as a rector? Because that is his future! Everything my father owns—the estates, the investments—all will in due time pass to me.”

“I can think of only one reason for a man to disinherit his twelve-year-old son and make his youngest child his sole heir.”

Two bright spots of color appeared on d’Eyncourt’s cheeks. “If you are suggesting that my brother was disinherited because he is…because he is
not
my brother, then let me tell you right now that you are sadly mistaken. My brother was disinherited because by the time he reached the beginnings of puberty it had become obvious to our father that his health and temperament were totally unsuited for the position which would be required of him.”

“But not unsuited to his becoming a rector?”

D’Eyncourt stared back at him. “The requirements of the two callings are utterly dissimilar.”

“So tell me,” said Sebastian, “how has your brother adjusted to having a fortune of some half a million pounds wrested from his grasp?”

“He was, naturally, somewhat aggrieved—”

“Aggrieved?”

“Aggrieved. But he has with time grown more accustomed to his situation.”

“As an impoverished rector at Somersby?”

“Just so.”

Sebastian took a step back.

D’Eyncourt made a show of adjusting his cravat and straightening the set of his coat. “I can understand how it might be difficult for someone of your background to understand, but you must remember that my family’s wealth—while substantial—is only
recently acquired. Hence the rules of primogeniture do not apply. My father is free to leave his property as he sees fit.”

“True,” said Sebastian. “But it occurs to me that if your father could change his will once, he is obviously free to do so again—in favor of his two grandsons, this time.”

D’Eyncourt stiffened. “If you mean to suggest—”