Chapter 18

Later that afternoon, as a weak sun sank lower in the cloud-filled sky, Sebastian walked through the ancient piazza of Covent Garden. Most of the vegetable and fruit sellers were gone by now, their stalls shuttered, the cobbles underfoot mushy with spoiled fruit and cabbage leaves mixed with dung. The air was filled with the cooing of the pigeons strutting along the pediment of the church of St. Paul’s and the laughter of a gang of ragged street children playing chase amongst the shuttered sections of the market. Soon the district’s theaters would be opening, and the focus of Covent Garden would shift from produce market to evening entertainment. Only the flower sellers were still here, their section a colorful collage of sweet-smelling lilies, daffodils, violets, and tulips.

He came across Kat Boleyn, the woman he was here to find, selecting a bunch of white violets near the piazza’s northern arcade. She was a strikingly attractive woman with luxurious auburn-lit hair, a wide, sensuous mouth, and brilliant blue eyes of the same distinctive shade as Stephanie’s—the famous blue St. Cyr eyes Kat had inherited from her natural father, the Earl of Hendon.

She was the toast of London’s stage, as acclaimed for her acting ability as for her beauty. But when Sebastian first met her, she’d been a young unknown actress of sixteen and he barely twenty-one. Their ill-fated love had haunted him for years, while the discovery of her parentage—so tangled up with his—had nearly killed him. There’d been a time when he believed he’d never come to terms with it all. But they’d eventually managed to forge a new kind of relationship with an affection much like that of the sister and brother they’d once thought themselves.

She looked up then, saw him, and smiled.

“Do you come here every day before your performance?” he asked, walking up to her.

She laughed and handed the flower seller the coins for her posy. “When I can.”

They turned to walk through the banks of fragrant flowers toward the Strand. “I saw Hendon,” she said, holding the posy to her nose and breathing deep. “He tells me you’re trying to find who killed Ashworth.”

“Trying. You’d be amazed at the number of people who wanted to murder him—and for very good reasons.”

She glanced over at him. “Frankly, I’m glad he’s dead.”

“That seems to be a common sentiment shared by almost everyone I’ve spoken to so far, with the notable exception of his father and best friend.”

“The father, I can understand. But what kind of man has a monster like Ashworth as a friend?”

“Someone who’s a bit of a monster himself, I suspect. Although Sir Felix hides it better than most.”

“Hendon is afraid people will start to suspect Stephanie.”

“So am I.”

They walked on in silence for a time. The shadows were beginning to deepen with the approach of evening, and he could smell the briny tang of the sea on the incoming tide as they drew closer to the river. He said, “Are you familiar with a tarot card reader named Marie-Claire Blanchette?”

“Yes, of course; she’s quite well-known. Why?”

“Ashworth raped her daughter. When the girl discovered she was with child by him, she killed herself.”

“Dear God. Surely you aren’t suggesting Madame Blanchette might have murdered him in revenge?”

“I think it’s certainly possible.”

“I’d have expected such a woman to find a more creative way to make him suffer.”

“You know her?”

“Not well. But I have met her.”

“Is there any truth to the rumor that she passes information to Paris?” The question was not as odd as it might have seemed to someone who didn’t know Kat, for there’d been a time when she herself had spied for the French. She was no longer active, but he knew she kept in contact with some who were. Her allegiance was not to France but to Ireland, the conquered land of her mother’s people, and he’d never been able to hold it against her. How could he, when he knew what England had done to Ireland?

What they’d done to Kat’s mother.

“I don’t believe so, no,” she said.

“But you don’t know for certain?”

Kat was silent for a moment. They had reached the Strand now, and the breeze was stronger here. She put up a hand, holding her hair back from her face. “How much have you heard about her background?”

“Virtually nothing. Why?”

“I don’t know anything about her early life. But at some point during the Directory, she read Josephine Beauharnais’s cards and predicted she would marry a handsome young officer who would someday become emperor.”

“Surely the tale is apocryphal?”

“Perhaps. But there is no doubt that Josephine set great store by her predictions. As a result of her patronage, Madame Blanchette became enormously popular. And then, shortly after Napoléon crowned himself emperor, Josephine badgered Madame Blanchette into reading his cards. She didn’t want to, but how could she refuse?”

“So what did she tell him?”

“She told him he had the capacity to achieve greatness, to bring freedom and peace to all of Europe. But she also warned him against trying to exceed the fame and conquests of Alexander the Great, saying he would ultimately fail and die in disgrace.”

“That can’t have been popular.”

“It wasn’t. Napoléon was so enraged that she had to flee France.”

Sebastian watched a boy dart past, shouting something he didn’t quite catch. “It does seem unlikely that she would now be spying for him—unless of course he’s forcing her to cooperate by threatening family members still in France.”

“It’s possible. But I suspect the rumors are simply malicious, begun by someone who wanted to discredit her—someone she angered or frightened. She often knows things about people that they think they’ve managed to keep hidden. Whether she ‘sees’ the information with the help of her cards or acquires it from talkative servants, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Knowledge can be a dangerous thing.”

She turned her head as a shout went up farther down the Strand, a huzzah that rippled through the crowd around them.

“What the devil?” said Sebastian.

And then they saw her: Grand Duchess Catherine, waving to the people from her open-topped barouche, her smile wide, her luxuriously dark curls fluttering beneath the poke-fronted bonnet that people were beginning to call “the Oldenburg” in her honor. Beside her, Princess Ivanna Gagarin looked both smaller and more subdued, and yet still managed to be a forceful presence. The mustachioed Colonel Demidov sat on the bench facing them, his arms crossed at his chest, his expression alert as the Grand Duchess played to the crowd, turning to acknowledge first one side of the street, then the other. Watching her, Sebastian found himself wondering if someone had told the Tsar’s sister how much the crowds’ cheering of her infuriated the Regent, so that she now encouraged it simply to annoy him.

Kat remained silent as the Russian women rolled past. Then she said, “I hear she arrived in London early as part of a scheme to catch herself a new husband.”

Sebastian looked over at her. “Not one of Prinny’s fat old brothers, surely?”

“Hardly. I believe her intended target was the Regent himself.”

“But Prinny already has a wife—however much he might despise her.”

Kat raised her eyebrows. “Inconvenient wives are easily eliminated if one is ruthless enough. And the Grand Duchess is reputed to be quite ruthless. Her lady-in-waiting, Princess Ivanna, is said to possess a special talent for poisons.”

“She does?”

“Mmm.” Kat was still staring after the Tsar’s sister. “I wonder if the Princess of Wales realizes how lucky she is that Her Imperial Highness has taken such an instant, intense dislike to the Regent.”

Sebastian studied her faintly smiling profile. “I won’t ask how you know all this.”

She gave a soft laugh and turned their steps back toward the theater. “No, don’t.”

---

Paul Gibson was in his surgery tending a boy’s broken arm when Sebastian arrived at Tower Hill.

“Ah,” said the Irishman, glancing over at him. “I was hoping you’d stop by. Give me a moment to finish up here; I want to show you something.”

The boy’s name was Alan, and he looked to be about fourteen. A butcher’s apprentice, he was big and strong and grim faced as Gibson set the arm and wrapped it up. “Be smart and don’t try to use that arm for six weeks,” Gibson told the lad. “If you listen to me, you shouldn’t lose it.”

“Ole Grimes won’t like it.”

“Tell Ned Grimes he’ll have to answer to me if he gives you any trouble.”

“And what will you do to ‘Ole Grimes’ if he ignores your warning?” asked Sebastian after the boy had taken himself off.

“Refuse to treat his gout,” said Gibson with a smile. He picked up the flickering oil lamp that rested on a nearby table, for darkness was beginning to fall. “I finished your dead valet right before the lad, Alan, showed up.”

“And?” said Sebastian as Gibson’s lantern cast wobbly patterns of light and shadow across the yard.

Gibson unlocked the outbuilding’s door and pushed it open. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”

Edward Digby lay facedown on the stone table in the center of the room. Gibson hung the lantern from the chain suspended over the slab, and for a moment it swung back and forth, the golden light playing over the dead man’s back. The gaping knife wounds and startling purple-and-white patterns of lividity—caused by the way his blood had settled—were rendered hideous by the shifting shadows.

Gibson put up a hand to still the lantern. “From the looks of things, I’d say it’s more than likely he was killed the same night as Ashworth—maybe even by the same knife.”

“Huh,” said Sebastian, walking around the body.

“He wasn’t attacked with quite the same fury as Ashworth, but whoever did it wasn’t very neat or experienced.”

“You think the killer kept stabbing to make certain he was dead?”

“It’s definitely a possibility.” Gibson pointed to the purple-red and white splotches discoloring the dead man’s back. “What I wanted to show you was this. See the evenness of the pattern? It suggests he was lying flat on his back for quite some time after he was killed.”

“But he wasn’t found on his back. He was on his side, propped against the alley wall.”

Gibson nodded. “That’s what the fellows who brought him here told me.”

Sebastian looked up. “Bloody hell. Why move the man’s body hours after he was killed?”

“That I can’t tell you. But I can tell you this: He wasn’t naked when he was killed. There were threads in his wounds.”

“So he was killed and then stripped and moved? That’s even more bizarre.”

“I’d say so, yes. Given that he was left not far from Ashworth’s house, it isn’t as if the killer could have been hoping the body might not be identified.”

Sebastian went to stand in the doorway, his gaze on the dark, deceptively peaceful garden beyond. If he were the type to leap to conclusions, he’d probably assume that the valet’s death—and the bizarre circumstances surrounding it—meant that this murderer couldn’t possibly be a woman. But Sebastian had learned long ago the danger of hasty deductions, particularly when his thinking was clouded as it was now by his own emotional involvement.

When he was desperate to find something—anything—that could point the finger of suspicion away from the niece he loved.

He swung around abruptly to stare at the shrouded form lying on one of the wide shelves that ran across the old building’s rear wall. “That’s Ashworth?”

“Yes.”

He went to draw back the sheet, exposing the dead nobleman’s waxen face. “You said there’s no way to tell if he was poisoned?”

“Depends on the poison. The effects of some are so violent, it’s hard to miss. And sometimes with cyanide, you get a faint, almond-like smell, although not always. The fact is, the world is full of poisons, and we’ve no reliable way to detect any of them.”

“What about a drug that would leave a man alive but unable to move or fight back?”

“A large enough dose of laudanum would do that. Was he an opium eater?”

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me, though.”

“You’re back to thinking Ashworth might have been drugged rather than simply passed out?” Gibson looked thoughtful. “There are other substances that would have an effect similar to laudanum, but in a small enough dose that it might conceivably have been slipped to him. A purer tincture of opium, perhaps. There are others, but I don’t know that much about them.”

“Know anyone who does?”

“Alexi, actually. She’s off delivering a babe at the moment, but I can ask her about it.”

Sebastian drew the sheet back over Ashworth’s face, conscious of a rising tide of anger and frustration thrumming through him. “The bastard caused such untold pain and suffering in life. Now he’s dead, and he’s still causing it.”

“At least he’s dead,” said Gibson.

“Yes. And yet the killing goes on.”