Frozen solid and milky white under a cloudy sky, the canal in St. James’s Park was crowded with skaters of all ages.
Hero bought a cup of hot cider from one of the booths pitched near the lake’s snow-encrusted banks and strolled along the edge of the ice, her gaze moving over the laughing, shouting mass of skaters. A few were well-dressed young bucks—mainly Scottish by the sounds of it—who belonged to skating clubs and obviously took their sport seriously. But most were considerably less practiced, either creeping cautiously along with shiny new blades strapped to their boots or else striking out in ungainly rushes that inevitably ended in spectacular crashes.
It didn’t take her long to spot the Italian harpist Valentino Vescovi. A lanky, craggy-faced man dressed in black with a red scarf tied around his neck, he was in a class by himself, gliding effortlessly across the ice as he executed an intricate pattern of graceful figures reminiscent of a courtly dance.
She stood for a time watching him. But after throwing one or two glances in her direction, he finally skated straight toward her, stopping with a flourish just offshore by leaning back on his heels with the acorn-tipped fronts of his skates pointing into the air.
He was a man somewhere in his thirties or forties, with dark hair and an expressive, mobile face. He’d come to London perhaps a dozen years before via Amsterdam—which was presumably where he’d learned ice-gliding. “Bene!” he said, his breath coming fast from the recent exercise. “I’d like to think you’re focused on me because you admire my skating. But that’s not it, is it? You are here because of Jane Ambrose, yes?”
Hero choked on her cider. “How did you know?”
His dark eyes gleamed with what might have been amusement. “You were at Warwick House this morning, Lady Devlin. And the walls there have ears.”
“Evidently.”
He said, “What I don’t understand is why you wish to speak with me.”
“I’m told you had an argument with Jane Ambrose last Monday. A very public argument. Here, by the canal.”
“Ah.” He climbed carefully off the ice to perch on a nearby bench and set to work unstrapping the skates from his boots. “I did, yes. It was so public, in fact, that I see no point in attempting to deny it.”
“Your honesty is refreshing.”
He glanced up, the first skate loose in his hand, and bobbed a self-deprecating little bow. “Grazie.”
“Care to tell me the subject of your disagreement?”
He bent over his task again. “A certain personage told Mrs. Ambrose something about me. Something . . . unflattering. And no, I have no intention of spreading the information any further by telling you what it was.”
“Was it true?”
“As it happens, yes, it was true. But I managed to convince her it wasn’t as serious as it sounded.”
“And which ‘personage’ told this ‘unflattering’ truth about you?”
He lifted one shoulder in a very Italian shrug as he tugged at the leather straps holding the second skate to his boot. “I do not recall.”
“I don’t believe you.”
At that he laughed out loud. “No? Well, believe this: If I were ever to decide to kill someone, it would be the figlio di puttana who was spreading such tales of me.” He looked up, his face now utterly serious. “Not Jane Ambrose.”
An older man and a little girl sailed past on the ice, the man skating, the grinning child simply holding on to the tails of his coat and gliding along in his wake. Hero said, “What do you know about the friendship between Jane and the Dutch courtier Peter van der Pals?”
The harpist’s expressive face twitched into a frown as he pursed his lips. “I don’t think I’d go so far as to call it a ‘friendship.’”
“What would you call it?”
He gave another shrug that could have meant anything and nothing. “Van der Pals played the gallant, and I suppose she enjoyed having a handsome, well-connected young man seem to find her interesting and attractive.”
“That’s all?”
He threaded the straps of his skates together and fastened the buckles. “That’s all. And then he began to make her uncomfortable.”
“How?”
Vescovi pushed to his feet. “Presumably because he began expecting favors she was unwilling to grant him.”
Hero studied the harpist’s bony, wide-featured face. “Were they lovers?”
“Goodness gracious, no.”
“So certain?”
“Yes.”
“Did she have a lover, do you think?”
He looped the skates over one shoulder. “It’s hardly the sort of thing we discussed.”
“No? Yet you know van der Pals wasn’t her lover and that he made her uncomfortable?”
“Oh, yes.”
Hero handed her cup to the booth’s boy and turned with Vescovi to walk up the packed icy footpath that ran along the canal. Hero said, “I was told Jane became jealous when van der Pals transferred his attentions to another woman.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s not true?”
“Hardly.”
“So was van der Pals flattering Jane in an attempt to convince her to spy on Princess Charlotte for him?”
Vescovi’s brows twitched together, but he kept staring straight ahead and remained silent.
“That is it, isn’t it?” said Hero.
The Italian let out his breath in a long, pained sigh. “Princess Charlotte might be young and tucked away in her own crumbling, cramped establishment separate from the rest of the royal family’s various palaces and castles. But her household is still part of the royal court.” He grimaced. “And show me a court that isn’t alive with intrigue and spying.”
“Is that why you warned Jane to be careful?”
“That was part of it, yes.”
“Only a part?” Hero studied the Italian’s bony, troubled profile. “Who do you think killed her?”
“I wish I knew, believe me.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Why?” He drew up and swung to face her, his dark eyes intense and shadowed. “Because I teach Princess Charlotte to play a musical instrument, just as Jane Ambrose taught the Princess to play an instrument, and now Jane is dead.” His face went oddly bleak, as if he were maintaining his composure with effort. “You think I’m not afraid?”
“You think she might have been killed by someone you both knew? Someone who might also be a threat to you?”
“I see it as a possibility, yes. You do not?”
“So exactly whom do you have in mind?”
“No one in particular.”
“No one? If you’re afraid, why not be more honest with me?”
“I have told you nothing that isn’t true.”
“Perhaps. Yet I suspect there is much that you could tell me but have not.”
He stared off across the white, undulating expanses of the park, its bushes and hollows now reduced to anonymous snow-covered mounds and dips. “The truth is frequently more dangerous than a lie.”
“Then tell me who you are afraid of,” Hero said quietly.
“Ah.” His lips twitched into a self-deprecating, unexpected smile. “But that would be the most dangerous of all.”