Why Kings Confess (20 page)

P
aul Gibson spent the afternoon explaining the functions and structure of the human kidney to a full theater at St. Thomas’s Hospital. Normally, he would good-naturedly rap the knuckles of any dozing audience member with a boiled fibula and patiently field questions that showed a decided lack of attention on the part of confused students. But not today. Today, every sleepy student, every ridiculous question, filled him with an unholy rage. It took a while, but he finally admitted to himself the origins of his uncharacteristic irritation.

He wanted to get back to Tower Hill. To Alexi.

Sure, then, but you’re six kinds of a bloody fool,
he told himself in disgust.
What are you thinking? That a fine young woman such as her might be interested in you? That she might see you as a man—a real man, with all of a man’s needs and desires and dreams?

Laughing at himself, he determinedly refocused his attention on the task at hand and resolved to think no more about her.

Then he let his audience go half an hour early.

He hurried back across London Bridge to the city, the crutch he used when he had to cover great distances swinging with a rhythmic
tap, tap
. The fog was so thick it could strangle a man if he made the mistake of breathing too deeply, and Gibson could feel the beads of moisture-encrusted grit reddening his eyes, until between the fog and his own watering vision he was nearly blind.

And still he hurried on.

He’d just passed the Monument when he knew, again, that he was being followed.

He whirled around, stumbling awkwardly as he almost lost his balance. “Who is it?” he called, his voice echoing hollowly back at him from out of the impenetrable murky gloom. “Why are you following me?”

For a long, dreadful moment, he heard only the drip of moisture and the splash of a wherryman’s oars out on the river. But he knew this time that it wasn’t his imagination. Someone was following him. Someone had been following him, off and on, for days. And rather than feel foolish for believing it, he suddenly felt foolish for ever having doubted it. For doubting himself. For having kept his fears and suspicions quiet.

For not having hailed a bloody hackney when he left the hospital.

“What do you want from me?” he cried, his hand tightening around the cross brace of his crutch.

The shape of a man materialized out of the fog. Massive shoulders. Broad barrel chest. Long, heavily muscled arms. At first, the features were indistinct. Then Gibson saw the overly long, curly black hair and knew he was looking at Sampson Bullock.

“What do you want?” asked Gibson again.

Bullock drew up, an insolent smile slitting his beard-stubbled face. “What makes ye think I want anything with ye?”

“I know who you are. You’re Bullock.”

The smile broadened. “Told ye ’bout me, did she? Did she tell ye ’bout how she killed me baby brother?”

“She told me he beat his wife so badly she died.”

The smile was gone. “Never did. The bloody bitch fell down the stairs.”

“Don’t you mean he kicked her down the stairs?”

As soon as the words were said, Gibson wondered what kind of crazy, foolhardy courage had moved him to utter them. Once, he’d been a scrappy fellow, more than able to hold his own in a brawl and not above fighting a bit dirty when the occasion warranted it. But those days were far behind him, whereas Sampson Bullock looked like the kind of man who could wring the neck of an ox with his bare hands.

Gibson watched the big tradesman’s upper lip curl, his nose wrinkling as he gritted his teeth together as if in a snarl. Then a strange light of amusement flooded into his face, and he laughed.

“She’s stayin’ wit’ ye again, ain’t she? Like ye can protect her.” The tradesman’s small black eyes swept him scornfully. “A one-legged Irish surgeon? Think yer up to it, do ye?”

One of his big hands swept out to close around Gibson’s neck, the fingers digging deep into flesh and sinew. Still smiling, Bullock swung Gibson up and around to slam his back against the brick wall of the shop beside them. He was dimly aware of his crutch falling to the pavement with a clatter. All his being was focused on the viselike grip squeezing his throat, choking off his air.

“What’s the matter, Irishman? Can’t breathe?”

Gibson clawed frantically at the massive hand clamped around his throat. He heard a roaring in his ears. His vision dimmed, took on a strange, bloodred hue. He felt rather than saw Bullock thrust his face so close that his rough beard scraped Gibson’s cheek and a foul odor of rotten teeth washed over him.

“Ye tell her. Tell that bitch fer me. Tell her I’m gonna get her when I’m good an’ ready. But I’m gonna make her pay a bit more first.”

Still smiling, Bullock moved his outstretched arm back and forth, grinding the back of Gibson’s head against the rough brick wall behind him.

Then he took a step back and let Gibson go.

Gibson lost his balance, falling to his good knee, his peg leg sprawled out to one side as he struggled to keep from collapsing. He cradled his burning throat in his hands, sought to draw air deep into his lungs. He smelled his own fear in the sweat that slicked his body, felt the fog damp against his face.

When he looked up, the man was gone.

•   •   •

Gibson was bent over a basin, trying to pour water over the back of his head, when Alexi came to take the pitcher out of his hand.

“Here; let me do that for you.”

She took the cloth from his other hand and worked to gently clean the blood and bits of grit left by the bricks. “What happened to you?”

“Sampson Bullock evidently believes that the best way to ensure that his messages are delivered is to grind the messenger’s head into the nearest wall.”

Her hands stilled at their task. “Bullock did this?”

“It’s nothing.”

“What did he say?”

Gibson straightened slowly. He was painfully conscious of having stripped off his coat, so that he stood before her in shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

“What did he say?” she asked again when he didn’t answer.

He reached for a towel to dry his face and the back of his neck. Water dripped from his hair to run down his cheek, and he swiped at it.

She said, “I take it he threatened me?” She set aside the cloth she still held and turned toward the door. “I think I’ll go tell Mr. Sampson Bullock that if, in the future, he has anything to say to me, he needs to learn to say it to my face.”

“No.”

He snagged her arm, hauling her back around to look at him. Her color was high, her fine brown eyes snapping with anger. He said, “What happened today wasn’t about threatening you. It was about demeaning me, about making me feel his power and emphasizing my own weakness. If you go see him now, you’ll be helping him to shame me. It’d be like saying I can’t even take care of myself, let alone you.”

She drew in a quick breath that parted her lips and jerked her chest. “You saved my life. I never meant to bring you danger. But that’s what I have done.”

He gave her what he hoped came off as a cocky smile. “I’m not as helpless as you and Sampson Bullock seem inclined to believe.”

“I know you’re not helpless.”

Their gazes met, held. She was still so close to him. And somewhere along the line, without him quite noticing it, the conversation had subtly shifted. Perhaps not so much in words, but in focus. He realized he was still holding the towel and awkwardly set it aside, suddenly at a loss for what to do with his hands.

He was painfully attuned to the subtle charge of raw awareness in the room, conscious of each breath he drew, of the rhythm of his blood pumping through every part of his being, of her nearness. He watched her pulse beat at the base of her slim white throat, and the moment was so powerful he found himself wishing it could stretch out and last forever. And then, just when he feared it would, she reached to cup her palm against his cheek. Tipping her head, she brushed her mouth against his, and he felt himself tremble.

He told himself not to be a fool, that it was a kiss of gratitude, that she couldn’t be thinking of him as a man—not the kind of man a woman kissed with passion and took into her own body. Then he saw the saucy smile that lifted her lips, and he forgot to breathe.

She took his hand and led him into the room she had made her own. A single candle had been lit against the drab gloom, casting a warm golden glow over the bed’s simple counterpane.

He started to say something, but she pressed two fingers to his lips.

“Shhh,” she said.

She let go of his hand and took a step back, her gaze locked with his. He watched her arms come up, her fingers working as she loosened the ties of her gown. She let it fall into a puddle on the floor at her feet. Her petticoat followed. She untied her shift, and with exquisite care, clenched her hands in the fine linen. Then she swept her arms up and over her head, stripping it away.

She stood before him naked except for her stockings and garters. She was so finely made, her skin so fair and soft, with a faint sprinkling of cinnamon across the mounds of her small high breasts. Her limbs were long and impossibly slender, her waist and hips narrow, the juncture of her legs a fiery triangle.

“I love you,” he said.

“No, you don’t. You don’t know me.”

“I know you.”

She shook her head. But she was still smiling.

Reaching out, he fisted his hand in the heavy fall of her hair, drawing her to him.

She pressed her naked body hard against the length of him, her mouth opening beneath his as the kiss became a savage, breathless onslaught that went on and on. She tore at his clothes, working to rid him of his waistcoat, his shirt. He felt her fingertips skim his naked back, and the sensation was so raw that he cried out. Then she moved to the buttons of his flap, her hands brushing the exquisitely sensitive flesh of his groin, and he almost lost control.

He said, “I don’t know if I can do this. It’s been so long—”

She laughed and pushed him down on his back, his wounded head cradled by her soft pillow, her flesh glowing golden in the candlelight as she straddled him. “Then let me do it.”

She bent her head to kiss him again, and touched him tenderly. And when the time was right, she put him inside her.

He felt her envelop him with her warmth and her love, and he surrendered himself to her, to his passion and her gift of herself. Only, it came to him, as her head fell back, her mouth open and her eyes closed, as the rhythmic contractions of her inner body pulled him over into the abyss with her, that what she had really given him was the gift of himself.

•   •   •

Afterward, when they lay cradled in each other’s arms, they spoke of many things, of his childhood in Ireland, of her days with the Grand Army in Spain, of her frustration as a physician unable to practice the full range of medicine in England.

“You could go back to Italy,” he said, even though the very suggestion tore at his gut and tightened his throat, so that he felt as if he were strangling again. “Or Germany. They have a long tradition of female physicians in Germany too, don’t they?”

“They do, yes.”

She was silent for a moment. She lay on her side, her elbow bent, her head propped up on one fist as she traced a delicate pattern across his bare chest with her free hand. After a moment, she said, “There’s something I haven’t told you. Something I believe may help explain what happened to my brother.”

He had been lying lost in a pleasant, half-dreamy state of warmth and quiet contentment. Now he found himself instantly alert.

He listened as she told him. Then he said, “You need to take this to Devlin.”

She pushed up on both hands so she could stare down at him. “Are you mad? Lord Jarvis is his wife’s father!”

“He is, yes. But Devlin is not Jarvis’s ally. Far from it, in fact. If anyone can find your brother’s killer, it’s Devlin. He’ll not be letting Jarvis’s involvement turn him from his purpose—and he’ll not be betraying you to his lordship either, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Her gaze met his. “I don’t trust him.”

He caught up the heavy lock of hair that had tumbled forward to half hide her face. “One of these days you’re going to be needing to tell me what happened between the two of you, in Portugal. But not now. This isn’t about the past. It’s about the men and women who are dying here, in London, today. First your brother, then Karmele, now Foucher. If you know anything that can stop it, you must tell Devlin.”

“You trust him?”

“With my life.”

Her lips parted, trembled with uncertainty and proud stubbornness and an onslaught of memories he could only guess at. Then she nodded, and he found himself both humbled and inspired in a way he could not have defined.

T
hat evening, Sebastian was in the library reading Augustin Barruel’s work on the Revolution when he heard a peal at the front door. Lifting his head, he listened to a woman’s soft French voice. A moment later, Morey appeared in the doorway.

“A Madame Sauvage to see you, my lord. She says it is in regards to the murder of her brother, Monsieur Damion Pelletan.” The majordomo’s expression remained remarkably bland. But then, he had been in Sebastian’s employ for more than two years; like Tom and Calhoun, he wasn’t easily overset.

“Show her in,” said Sebastian, and set aside his book.

He came from behind his desk as Alexi Sauvage entered the room. She drew up just inside the doorway, one hand knotted in the strap of her reticule, the other holding close the worn plaid shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders.

“Please, have a seat,” he said, indicating the chairs before the fire.

She shook her head. “What I have to say will not take long. I am only here because of Paul.”

Paul.

His reaction to her use of Gibson’s given name must have shown on his face, because her chin came up. “He says that I should trust you, that I have been wrong to keep back information that might help you to make sense of what happened to Damion. That Jarvis is your enemy too.” She paused, then added, “I hope he is right.”

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 André 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 Napoléon to explore the possibility of peace negotiations between our two countries.”

Hendon cleared his throat. “Heard about that, have you?”

“Yes.”

Hendon pushed to his feet and went to where his pipe and tobacco rested on a table near the hearth. “I expected you might, once you started looking into the death of that French physician—what was his name?”

“Pelletan.”

“That’s right; Pelletan.” He fussed with his pipe, filling the bowl with tobacco and tamping it down with the pad of his thumb. Then he cast Sebastian a sideways glance. “You know I can’t discuss the progress of the negotiations with you.”

“I realize that. What I’m interested in is the attitude of various individuals toward the possibility of peace. I’m told Jarvis favors continuing the war until our troops are in Paris and Napoléon is ousted from the throne.”

“I’d say that about sums it up, yes.”

“And Liverpool?”

“Ah. Well, the Prime Minister’s attitude is slightly different. He’d like to see Boney gone as much as anyone. But he’s also sensitive to the economic and political costs of the war. I suspect that if France would agree to withdraw to its original borders, Liverpool could find a way to live with the Corsican upstart. After all, Napoléon is now married to the sister of the Emperor of Austria; there’s something to be said for viewing their young child as a living union of the traditional with the modern. A reconciliation, of sorts.”

“True,” said Sebastian. He knew without being told where Hendon stood on the issue. As much as Hendon hated radicalism and republicanism, he’d been growing increasingly troubled by the toll that twenty years of war was taking on Britain and her people. “In other words, you and Liverpool are receptive to the negotiations, whereas Jarvis wants them to fail.”

“You said it; I didn’t.”

Sebastian watched the Earl light a taper and apply it to his pipe. “In my experience, Jarvis usually achieves what he wants.”

Hendon looked up, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked on his pipe, their gazes meeting through the haze of blue smoke. “Yes.”

“Any chance Jarvis could be actively working to ensure that the negotiations fail?”

“By literally butchering the members of the delegation, you mean?” Hendon sucked some more on his pipe, his eyes narrowing with thought. “Bit ghoulish, even for Jarvis, wouldn’t you say?”

“Perhaps. What about the possibility that Jarvis has suborned Vaundreuil himself?”

“To be honest, I’ve wondered about that. I’ve no proof, mind you; it’s just a feeling I have.”

Sebastian nodded and started to turn away. “Thank you.”

“Devlin?”

He glanced back at the Earl.

Hendon’s teeth clamped down on the stem of his pipe. “How does Lady Devlin?”

“She is well.”

“And my grandson? When is he expected to make his appearance?”

The child would be no true grandchild to Alistair St. Cyr. But if a boy, he would someday become, in turn, Viscount Devlin and eventually Earl of Hendon. “Soon,” said Sebastian after only a moment’s hesitation.

Hendon nodded, his lips relaxing into a faint smile. And Sebastian knew again the whisper of an old emotion he did not want, a sensation all tangled up with every painful and joyous memory of a childhood he had no desire to revisit.

“You’ll let me know?” Hendon asked gruffly.

“Yes.”

And then, because there was nothing more to say, Sebastian left.

•   •   •

The night was cold, the fog a thick, foul presence that seemed to press down on the city. Sebastian walked through empty streets, his footsteps echoing hollowly in the moisture-laden air. He was trying to sort through a tangle of evidence and explanations surrounding this baffling series of murders. But his thoughts kept returning, unbidden, to a lonely old man standing beside his hearth, his pipe in his hand, his startlingly blue eyes clouded with a host of contradictory emotions that Sebastian suspected the Earl himself never completely understood.

He was about to turn and climb the steps to his house when he became aware of someone running behind him.

He whirled, his hand going to the dagger in his boot just as a breathless voice exclaimed, “My lord Devlin?”

One of Lovejoy’s constables appeared out of the fog, his open mouth sucking air painfully, his somewhat ponderous stomach jiggling with his half trot.

Sebastian relaxed. “Yes; what is it?”

The constable drew up, his full, florid face slick with sweat despite the cold, his hands on his knees as he hunched over and sought to even his breathing. “Begging your lordship’s pardon, but there’s been a murder. Sir Henry thought you might like to know.”

“What’s happened?”

“A gentleman’s been murdered in Birdcage Walk.” The constable straightened, his breath still coming in panting gasps. “Leastways, the lady—er—gentleman with her—er, him—says it’s a gentleman. A gentleman dressed up like a lady, it is. Never seen nothing like it in all my born days!”