Why Kings Confess (16 page)

T
hat night, in his dreams, Sebastian breathed again the familiar scent of orange blossoms. Except this time the laughing shouts of the children were far away, like a haunting portent of things to come. This time, he felt the sharp edge of a too-tight rope biting deep into the flesh of his wrists and a hot, sticky wetness that trickled down the side of his face from the gash near his eye.

The moonlight was the color of bleached pewter, the air frigid with the sudden chill that darkness can bring to the mountains even after a warm spring day. He sat with his legs sprawled awkwardly before him, his bound hands wrenched painfully behind his back. The ground beneath him was bare, hard-packed earth. A fitful wind bent the crooked limbs of the trees overhead and filled the night with dancing, grotesque shadows.

He could smell wood smoke and the tantalizing aroma of roasting meat, hear the murmured voices of tired soldiers. The burnt-out shell of what had once been a gracious villa sprawled nearby, its empty arched windows glowing orange from the light of scattered campfires kindled within the lee of its protective stone walls.

The woman was careful not to get too close to him. Her skin was kissed golden by the sun, her hair a halo of fire in the night. She wore the rough trousers and rugged shirt of a Spanish peasant, with a bandolier slung across the fullness of her breasts. She looked like a Spanish
guerrillero
, but she was not. She was French, like the men who had captured him.

She said, “He won’t let you die easily.”

Sebastian gave her a smile that was supposed to be cocky but, thanks to his split lip and swollen face, probably came out lopsided. “Is that why you’re here? To spare me the delights your Major Rousseau has planned for me in the morning? Out of the goodness of your heart, I assume?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Your colonel betrayed you. You do realize that, don’t you?”

He deliberately widened his smile and felt the cut at the corner of his mouth crack open and bleed again. “I don’t believe you.”

“Then you are a fool.”

“Most men are, sooner or later.”

She’d been hunkered down before him, arms draped over her knees in the posture of one who has spent many nights around a campfire. Now she pushed to her feet. “It doesn’t need to end this way.”

“With my death? I think that’s a foregone conclusion.”

“True. Yet death can come with agonizing, unbearable slowness. Or it can come quickly . . . when there is no need to prolong it.”

Sebastian forced himself to hold her gaze, his voice calm, although his guts were roiling with the knowledge of the horror her words promised. “I’ll think about your offer.”

“Don’t think too long.”

She took a step back, then another and another, careful not to turn away until she was far beyond his reach, as if there weren’t two guards with their muskets trained on him, as if he weren’t tied up like a hog ready for slaughter.

The pounding of the blood in Sebastian’s ears had grown so loud that he could no longer hear the rush of the wind through the cedars overhead or the melancholy song of a lark heralding the coming of the day. Then he opened his eyes to find a familiar room filled with the soft light of early dawn.

He turned his head to see Hero asleep beside him, her dark hair tumbled around her face, her lashes long and dark against the flesh of her cheeks. Yet the emotions from the distant past remained so intense that he had to suck in a deep, shaky breath in an attempt to ease them.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his curled fists pressing into the softness at his sides. He felt Hero’s splayed hand warm against the small of his bare back.

“Bad dreams again?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

He rose to his feet.

She watched him walk across the room. “Going someplace?”

“I want to talk to Alexandrie Sauvage’s woman again.”

She pushed up on her elbow. “At this hour?”

“The sun’s nearly up.”

“Devlin—”

He turned to look back at her.

“When you knew Alexandrie Sauvage before, in Portugal . . . was she your lover?”

He went to kneel beside her on the bed, his knees denting the mattress at her hip, his gaze locked with hers. “No. I killed her lover.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise he would have killed me.”

“Then she can’t blame you for it.”

“If she killed me—even in self-defense—would you blame her for it?”

Hero didn’t even blink. “Yes. Forever.”

Tuesday, 26 January

The frigid morning air smelled of coal smoke and fresh horse droppings and roasting coffee. Sebastian pushed his way through the early crush of apprentices, tradesmen, and women wrapped in their warmest shawls with the handles of market baskets looped over their arms, their breath showing white in the misty air. Heavy gray clouds pressed down on the city, obscuring the feeble light of the rising sun and promising more snow or a biting sleet. He was crossing the square toward Alexi’s house when one of the women he’d spoken to before, a street vendor, called out to him from behind her stall.

“She’s back, y’know.”

Sebastian paused beside the stall, the warm odor of eel pies rising from the tray before him. “You mean Madame Sauvage?”

“Aye. Came back just last night, she did. Got a big gash on the side o’ her head—just here.” She tilted her head and put up a hand encased in a darned wool glove to touch the matted gray hair above her ear. “Says she don’t know who done it, but we all know.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“That cabinetmaker, Bullock! That’s who. Any fool can see that.”

“You mean the man who holds her responsible for the death of his brother?”

“That’s right.”

“And how, precisely, does he blame her for the death of a man who succumbed to gaol fever?”

“She’s the one accused Abel Bullock of murder, she did.”

“Whom had he murdered?”

“His own wife, that’s who. Mattie was her name. Now, I’m not sayin’ she were anythin’ like an angel—she had a tongue on her could blister the hide off a mule, and she was a bit too fond of the gin, if ye know what I mean? But then, what woman wouldn’t be, if’n she had to put up with the likes of Abel Bullock?”

“What happened?” Sebastian asked.

“Mattie come to Madame Sauvage one night maybe three, four weeks ago. A sight she was, with both eyes black and a split lip and hurtin’ so bad she could hardly walk. Madame Sauvage had delivered Mattie’s last babe, ye see, so I guess Mattie figured she could trust her. Claimed she’d tumbled down the stairs, but any fool could take one look at her an’ see she’d been worked over by a man’s fist. Kicked her too—right in her belly. Madame Sauvage did what she could, but some things can’t be fixed. Died, she did. Somethin’ ruptured inside her.”

“There was an inquest?”

“Aye. Problem was, the Bullock brothers, they both swore she’d fallen down them steps. And though there was plenty what heard her screaming an’ Abel cursin’ her and hittin’ on her, folks was too scared to step forward and say it.”

“Afraid of the Bullock brothers, you mean?”

The woman dropped her voice and leaned forward, her eyes opened so wide he could see the white rimming her gray irises. “Mattie weren’t the first them two ’ave killed.”

“So what happened?”

“Madame Sauvage come forward. Said there weren’t no doubt but what Mattie’d had a beatin’, and that before Mattie breathed her last, she said her husband had done it.”

“And the coroner believed her?”

“She was real persuasive, she was. They committed Abel to Newgate to stand trial. Not for manslaughter, but murder.”

“He died of gaol fever before he came to trial?” asked Sebastian, his head tipping back as he studied the attic windows in the Dutch-like roofline of the corner house.

“He did. And ever since, Sampson Bullock’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s gonna make her pay. He says—” She broke off, her mouth sagging open, her head turning as a low rumble reverberated across the square.

Sebastian saw a flash of light behind the windows on the fourth floor of the corner house. A concussive blast shattered the morning calm, splintering windows and sending roof tiles and singed rafters exploding upward on a massive white plume of billowing smoke.

Then a hail of gritty dust and glass and burnt debris rained down on the screaming crowd in the square.

H
is breath coming harsh and fast, Sebastian tore up the stairs. He paused on the second landing to yank off his cravat and tie it around his mouth and nose. From above came the crackle of flames biting into dry old wood and the roar of a combustion so fierce he could feel the draft on the sweat of his forehead. Somewhere between the second and third floors he came upon a little girl in a singed pinafore, her fair curls framing a pallid, smudged face. He scooped her up, her limp hand dangling as he plunged back downstairs with her.

He was aware of grim-faced men pushing past him up the stairs, some armed with axes, others carrying flexible leather hoses clamped together with brass fittings. He stumbled out into the rubble-strewn, misty square to find it filled with screaming women and shouting men and the clanging bells of the engines, each with a pair of men frantically working the cross handles to pump water from their cisterns. He started across the pavement toward the square’s central gardens, rubble and broken glass crunching beneath his feet, and heard someone scream, “Georgina!”

The child in his arms stirred, and he turned to see a woman, tears streaming down her blackened face, her muslin gown hanging in dirty tatters, stumble toward him with arms outstretched.

“Georgina! Oh, thank God!”

Surrendering the child to her mother, Sebastian pushed his way back across the street. Someone handed him a tankard of ale and he paused to gulp it down thankfully. He was giving it back to a buxom woman with a tray when his gaze fell on the body of Alexi Sauvage’s Basque servant, Karmele, lying on the pavement where someone had left her, so blackened and shattered he didn’t need a second look to know she was dead.

Bloody hell.
Swiping his sleeve across his face, he headed back into the house just as a tall, skinny man with a nasty gash across his forehead stumbled out the door to croak, “Ain’t nobody left alive in there.”

Sebastian grabbed his arm as he passed. “You’re certain?”

The man stared at him mutely and nodded, red-rimmed eyes pale in a black, sweat-streaked face.

Sebastian let his head fall back, his gaze raking the top of the house. Feather-light streaks of black ash were still falling from out of the misty gray sky. But the flames had subsided, leaving the air thick with the pungent stench of wet, burned wood.

He tore off the cravat he’d shoved back down around his neck and used it to wipe his face. Six years in the army had given him a painful familiarity with gunpowder explosions. He had no doubt as to what he had just witnessed, just as he had no doubt that Alexandrie Sauvage had been the intended target. The blast had been sited directly beneath her rooms.

What kind of monster could without hesitation or remorse risk killing or maiming an entire house full of innocent men, women, and children, simply to murder one woman? Who would do something like that? And why?

He glanced back at Karmele’s body to see a young woman with a halo of dark red hair kneeling on the pavement beside her, one charred hand cradled in her lap, her head bowed as if in silent prayer. An empty market basket rested on the pavement beside her.

Sebastian walked up to her, not stopping until the toes of his Hessians nearly touched the worn, mossy green gown puddled on the debris-strewn pavement around her. He watched her stiffen, her gaze lifting slowly from his boots to his face.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

She shook her head. “The cold, damp weather always makes Karmele’s rheumatism act up. I offered to go buy the bread this morning.”

He hunkered down beside her, his gaze hard on her face. “If you know anything—
anything
—that might explain who is doing this, or why, you must tell me.”

Her face was ashen pale, the sprinkle of cinnamon across the high bridge of her nose standing out stark as she lifted her gaze to the fire-blackened bricks of the roofline above them. “What makes you think this was directed at me? It could have been an accident.”

“This was no accident. It was a small charge of gunpowder deliberately staged in the rooms directly beneath yours. What do you know about the tenant on the floor below you?”

She shook her head. “Last I heard, the rooms were empty. There was an old widow—a Mrs. Goodman. But she died a week or so ago.”

She fell silent, her gaze coming to rest, again, on her woman.

He said softly, “Are you all right?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.” But he knew what she was thinking, that this was all somehow, ultimately, her fault, that she had caused Karmele’s death.

He said, “How long ago did you leave the building?”

“Just minutes before the explosion. I was crossing Brewer Street when I heard it.”

“It’s possible you left right after the killer set the fuse. You didn’t notice anyone strange as you were leaving?”

“No.” She cast a quick, probing glance at the crowd of people milling about them. “Are you saying whoever did this could still be here?”

Sebastian let his own gaze drift around the rubble-strewn square, thronged now with gawkers. “Whoever lit that fuse would have wanted to be well away from the building itself before the powder blew. But I doubt he went far. He’d want to be here to see it—and to make certain nothing went awry.”

“But something did go awry,” she said, her voice a husky rasp. “I am still alive.”

He brought his gaze back to her face. “Why would someone want to kill you? Not Damion Pelletan, but
you
?”

“I do not know! Mother of God, you think I would not tell you if I did?”

He held her furious gaze for one long moment. “Yes.”

•   •   •

Jules Calhoun let out a pained sigh. “I may be able to salvage the buckskins, my lord,” he said. “But the coat and waistcoat are hopelessly ruined. And the cravat.”

“Sorry,” said Sebastian, pulling a clean shirt over his head.

“And your boots! I fear they may never be the same again.”

“If anyone can save them, you can.”

Calhoun made an inelegant noise deep in his throat.

Sebastian said, “When you were asking around Tichborne Street about Bullock, did anyone mention whether or not he had a military background?”

Calhoun looked up from the boots. “I don’t believe so, no. Why?”

“He has what looks like a scar from a saber slash across his cheek. I’d be interested to know if he spent some time in the army—and if so, with what sort of a unit.”

“You think Bullock could have set that gunpowder to explode?”

“I’d find it difficult to believe he has the requisite knowledge—unless there’s something in his background we don’t know about.”

Calhoun turned toward the door, the charred clothes held in one extended hand. “I’ll see what I can find, my lord.”

“Calhoun?”

The valet paused to look back at him.

“Be careful.”

•   •   •

The conviction that Alexandrie Sauvage was hiding something remained.

And so that afternoon Sebastian went to see one of the few people he knew in London who was familiar with her—and still alive.

He’d no doubt that Claire Bisette had honestly told him all she could remember of Alexi’s visit to her lodgings that night with Damion Pelletan. But a woman raw with grief over her child’s recent death was unlikely to make a reliable witness.

He found Cat’s Hole crowded with beggars and seamen and vendors selling everything from pickled eggs and salted herrings to cracked old shoes and mended tin pots. The air was thick with the smell of the river and overflowing bog houses and unwashed humanity. His knock on the door at the end of the corridor off Hangman’s Court went unanswered for so long he was beginning to think Claire Bisette had moved away. Then the door swung slowly inward to reveal the sad-eyed woman he remembered from the other night.

“I’m sorry to bother you again,” he said, removing his hat. “But I wonder if I might ask you a few more questions about the night Dr. Damion Pelletan was killed?”

He realized she was younger than he’d first taken her to be, probably closer to thirty than forty. She had her dark blond hair pulled back into a neat bun, and the wild look of unimaginable anguish he remembered had been replaced by a quiet kind of hopeless despair that was in its own way even more heartbreaking to witness.

She nodded and stepped back to allow him to enter.
“Monsieur.”

The room was as cold and forlorn as it had been the first time Sebastian had seen it. And he knew without being told that she had spent the money he’d given her not on fuel or food for herself, but on securing a proper burial for her dead child.

As if aware of the drift of his thoughts, she squared her shoulders with a ghost of pride and said, “What was it you wished to know?”

“I realize this might be a difficult question to answer since you’d never met Damion Pelletan before that night, but . . . did he seem at all agitated in any way? Angry? Or perhaps even afraid for some reason?”

Her eyes narrowed. Instead of answering, she said, “How is Alexi Sauvage?” The question was not the non sequitur it might have seemed.

“She is much improved. Unfortunately, the blow to her head has affected her memory. She recalls little from that night. Which is why I was hoping you might be able to help us piece together what happened, and why.”

The Frenchwoman continued to stare at him for a moment longer. But the answer seemed to satisfy her. She went to stand at a small cracked window overlooking the dark, narrow courtyard below. “I found him a most gentle, generous man, and he could not have been kinder to me. But . . .”

“But?” prompted Sebastian.

“Since your last visit, I’ve been trying to recall everything that was said that night. He and the
doctoresse
were arguing—and I don’t mean about Cécile.”

“Do you remember what about?”

“The conversation was held in undertones, but I heard enough to understand that the disagreement was over a woman. Not a patient, but someone from Dr. Pelletan’s personal life.”

“A woman?”

She nodded. “I had the impression the woman was someone from his past who is now wed to another. I could be wrong—it was all said in whispers, and I was so very distracted—but I had the impression he wanted this woman to leave her husband.”

“And Alexandrie Sauvage thought that would be a mistake?”

“She did, yes.”

“Did she say why?”

“If she did, I did not hear it. When your child is ill . . .” Her voice trailed away.

Claire Bisette was a woman whose life had been crowded with unimaginable hardships and sorrows. For the sake of her child, she had kept going, struggling every day to find food, to survive. But now, with Cécile dead, it was as if something had died within her too. And Sebastian knew it was her will to live.

He said, “When was the last time you ate?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It does not matter.”

“It does.” He removed one of his cards from his pocket and held it out to her. “My wife is due to be confined shortly and is in need of a nursemaid for our first child. She would prefer to engage someone older and better educated than those typically sent by the employment agencies. I realize that such a position is far below the station to which you were once accustomed, but it is a beginning.”

Rather than take the card, she shook her head, one hand running self-consciously down the side of her ragged, old-fashioned gown. “I could not possibly present myself to your wife looking like this.”

“A lack of proper clothing is easily remedied, unlike deficiencies in education, experience, and character.”

When she refused to take the card, he laid it on the wooden mantel of the cold hearth. “I’ll tell Lady Devlin to expect you,” he said, and then left before she could hand it back to him.

•   •   •

Sebastian tried to remember what Alexandrie Sauvage had told him about Lady Peter Radcliff. But when he thought about it, he realized he couldn’t recall having discussed the beautiful, sad-eyed Frenchwoman with Damion Pelletan’s sister at all. When she’d been fighting for her life in the aftereffects of concussion and possible pneumonia, he could understand the omission. But he found it difficult to believe that a woman truly interested in finding her brother’s killer would fail to disclose his dangerous interest in another man’s wife.

Lady Peter’s reasons for failing to reveal the true extent of her involvement with the young French doctor were considerably easier to understand.

•   •   •

Lord Peter Radcliff’s beautiful French-born wife was watching her little brother race two gaily colored wooden sailboats across the narrow strip of ornamental water in Green Park when Sebastian walked up to her. A blustery wind scuttled a tumble of gray clouds overhead, sending shifting patterns of light and shadow across the ruffled surface of the water and billowing the cloth sails of the crudely fashioned boats. “Noël,” Lady Peter called, laughing. “I think the blue one is going to win.” Then she froze, the merriment dying from her eyes as she turned her head to see Sebastian.

She wore a fur-trimmed pelisse of dark hunter green wool made high at the throat and long in the sleeves. And it occurred to Sebastian that even on balmy days she invariably stayed away from styles that revealed too much of her skin.

But nothing could disguise the livid bruise that rode high on her left cheekbone.