Chapter 34
“It pains me to have to admit it,” said Hendon as he and Sebastian walked beneath the rows of snow-shrouded plane trees in St. James’s Park. “But Rothschild is telling the truth.”
Sebastian looked over at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“I wish I weren’t. You’ll never convince me there wasn’t another way to get that money to Wellington—a way that wouldn’t have included Rothschild pocketing nearly four times as much as Wellington is receiving.”
“How much?”
“You heard me. Rothschild is earning two million pounds out of the transaction.”
“That’s obscene.”
“Oh, yes. Without a doubt.” Hendon paused, his jaw tightening as he stared out over the snowy, undulating park. “The people of England are freezing and starving to death by the tens of thousands, and this man is being paid a premium to do what he’s been doing against our laws in secret for years. The entire damn family has grown enormously rich by financing both sides of this interminable war, and now Jarvis has given their London representative the opportunity to pretend he’s a patriot.” Hendon huffed a mirthless laugh. “If he were a patriot, he’d be transferring the money for nothing rather than making a fortune out of it.”
“And Napoléon suspects nothing?”
Hendon shook his head. “Napoléon may be a brilliant military strategist, but he has a soldier’s understanding of finance. He doesn’t believe in either paper money or government debt, and he’s convinced that a country’s economy is only strong when it has strong gold reserves. That’s why he’s been willing to allow his bankers to cooperate with London’s gold speculators. He’s convinced that Rothschild and those like him are weakening England.”
“But they are, aren’t they?”
“They are. Although not as much as Napoléon believes.” Hendon walked on in silence, his hands clasped behind his back, his face troubled. “You think Rothschild killed that woman?”
“It’s looking increasingly likely. Either Rothschild or Jarvis.”
“Jarvis, more likely. The Rothschilds might keep one of our age’s greatest intelligence networks, but I don’t think they’re anywhere near as fond of assassins as your father-in-law.”
“They might make an exception for someone who threatened a windfall of two million pounds.”
“True.” Hendon sighed. “It’s a damnable business, this war financing. I’ve heard Napoléon likes to say that when a government depends on bankers, the bankers control the government. I fear I’m beginning to agree with him.”
“Only beginning?” said Sebastian, and the Earl looked over at him and laughed.
A light snow was falling again by the time Sebastian climbed the hill to Brook Street. He found Hero sitting cross-legged on the hearth rug before the library fire, her head bowed as she focused on petting Mr. Darcy, who lay curled up nearby.
“They hanged her?” Sebastian asked quietly, going to pour himself a brandy.
Hero nodded. “Along with a man and his two boys. It was beyond ghastly. How can anyone possibly watch something like that for fun?”
“I don’t know. But tens of thousands do.”
She rested her hands on her knees as the cat stood and stretched. “Surely, you haven’t been at the inquest all this time?”
He shook his head. “The inquest was little more than a formality.” He came to sit in one of the upholstered armchairs beside her and told her of his discussions with Ambrose, Sheridan, and Rothschild.
“And Hendon confirmed this?” she said when he had finished.
“He did.”
She stared at the fire beside her. “Jarvis’s name keeps coming up. First with regard to Orange, and now this.”
“It does. But then, little of importance happens in this Kingdom that he’s not involved with in one way or another.”
“You think he killed her?”
Sebastian hesitated, then said, “It’s certainly a possibility.”
“Dear God.” She pushed to her feet and went to stare out the window at the quietly falling snow. “You’ve spoken to him?”
“Not yet.”
“I will,” she said.
He felt a heavy weight of sadness settle over him. Hero’s love for her father was deep and powerful, and Sebastian wasn’t sure what it would do to her if she were to discover Jarvis’s hand at work in this. But all he could say was “If that’s what you want.”
She turned her head to meet his gaze, her eyes dark and hurting. “It’s what I want.”
Jarvis was seated at the elegant French desk in his chambers in Carlton House when Hero arrived. According to his clerk, he’d only recently returned from the Foreign Office and was reading a report from Castlereagh. But he set the papers aside at the sight of her.
“I know about the gold, Rothschild, and Jane Ambrose,” she said without preamble.
He leaned back in his chair. “Oh?”
“That’s why you sent your carriage for her several weeks ago, isn’t it? Not because she was spying for you, but because she had accidently stumbled upon the details of the gold transfers through the Rothschilds. You had her brought here so that you could threaten her. Scare her.”
“Under the circumstances, do you blame me?”
Hero went to stand with her back to the window, her gaze on his face. “Our warships control the Channel. You’ll never convince me you couldn’t send that gold directly to Spain.”
“To Spain, yes. But Wellington is over the Pyrenees and into France now. The French bankers are insisting on heavily discounting our government notes to such an extent that Wellington was getting desperate. Sending the gold through Paris was easier, quicker, and, believe it or not, cheaper.”
“Cheaper?”
“Yes, cheaper. These things are complicated.”
“Obviously.” She kept her gaze hard on his face. “You told me you didn’t kill her, and I believed you.”
Jarvis pushed to his feet. “As it happens, I did not kill her. I won’t deny that if I had felt it necessary to eliminate her, I would have done so. But I had no reason to kill her. She had already told her uncle Sheridan about the gold, but I convinced her that she would be signing the death warrant of anyone else who heard about it from her. She wisely saw the importance of keeping quiet.”
“So who did kill her?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Rothschild?”
Jarvis shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“But you don’t care?”
“Is there a reason I should?”
She watched him walk over to pour wine into two glasses. “I’ve heard it said Rothschild brags that whoever controls Britain’s money supply controls the Kingdom—and you and I both know that he controls Britain’s money supply.”
Jarvis smiled. “Rothschild is an extraordinarily clever, ruthless, and unprincipled financier. But I could wipe him out just like that—” He raised one hand and snapped his fingers. “If he doesn’t realize it, he’s a fool.”
She tipped her head to one side. “So certain?”
“Yes.” He held out one of the glasses, and after a moment she took it.
She said, “Someone tried to kill Devlin in Fleet Street.”
“So I had heard.”
“Was that you?”
Jarvis took a sip of his own wine. “He told you I warned him?”
“As it happens, no; he did not.”
“Interesting.”
Hero waited a moment, then said, “I notice you didn’t say it wasn’t you.”
“Not this time.”
“I hope that was said in jest.”
Jarvis reached out to touch her cheek in a rare gesture of affection. “I did not try to kill your tiresome husband. Not yet.” He hesitated a moment, his expression vaguely troubled, or perhaps simply confused. “Why do you continue to take such a personal interest in this woman’s death? Simply because you happened to be the one to find her?”
“That’s part of it, I suppose. But it’s also because . . .” She paused, searching for a way to put her thoughts into words. “If I were to simply go on with my life, forgetting about her and how she died, then it would be as if I myself had had a part in killing her.”
“This is nonsense. You barely knew the woman.”
“You think that should matter?” She searched his face, but found none of the reassurance she so desperately needed to see there and gave a faint shake of her head. “This is the fundamental difference between you and me, isn’t it? The Kingdom and its monarchy mean everything to you, and you will do anything to serve and protect them. Yet the people—the hardworking, poor, everyday people who form the bedrock of what Britain is and always has been—are to you nothing more than the coal beneath our soil or the timber in our forests: a resource to be exploited and, if necessary, destroyed.”
“Oh, I care about the people of Britain. But on an individual level? No, of course not. That would be ridiculous.”
Hero shook her head. “I can’t understand that way of thinking.”
“A defect you obviously share with your husband,” said Jarvis.
But at that, Hero only smiled.