Chapter 26
I’ll walk when I leave here,” Sebastian told his tiger as they drew up before an impressive Park Lane town house overlooking Hyde Park. “So go ahead and take the chestnuts home now. Then I want you to see what you can find out about Mr. Damion Pitcairn—who his friends are, whom he fences with, any secrets he might be hiding.”
“Aye, gov’nor,” said Tom with a grin, scrambling forward to take the reins.
Sebastian stood on the flagway as the tiger drove off, his eyes narrowing as he studied the familiar red barouche drawn up nearby. Then he turned to mount the steps to the house of the formidable woman he still called Aunt Henrietta, although he now knew she was not, in fact, his aunt.
Born Lady Henrietta St. Cyr, the Dowager Duchess of Claiborne was Hendon’s elder sister. The sprawling mansion overlooking Hyde Park should by rights now be the residence of her eldest son, George, the current Duke of Claiborne. But George was no match for his awe-inspiring mother. On the death of his father, the amiable, middle-aged Duke had quietly elected to continue residing in the modest Half Moon Street establishment where he’d raised his family, rather than try to oust his widowed mother from the house to which she’d come as a bride more than fifty years before.
Now well into her seventies, the Duchess was one of the grandes dames of Society. She had a boundless curiosity about her fellow men and women, an inquisitive nature, and a flawless memory—all of which made her a particularly valuable source.
Sebastian was still on the second step when Her Grace’s dignified butler opened the front door and a tall, slim woman in her mid-forties stepped out. “Thank you, Humphrey,” she said to the butler with a smile. Then she turned, the smile fading from her lips at the sight of Sebastian.
“Good afternoon, Amanda,” Sebastian said to his half sister.
Amanda stiffened, her nostrils flaring on a quickly indrawn breath. She was his elder by a dozen years, the first of four children born to the marriage of the Fifth Earl of Hendon and his beautiful, wayward Countess, Sophia. She had the late Countess’s golden hair and elegant carriage, but facially she more closely resembled her father, Hendon, while her disposition had always reminded Sebastian of a vindictive, resentful wasp. As was her habit these days, she was dressed in an elegant, black-trimmed silver gown of half mourning, although her husband, Lord Wilcox, had been dead for well over four years—and she had heartily despised him for most of their married life.
“Devlin,” she said now, and brushed past him without another word.
Sebastian watched her walk away, her head held high, her back rigid. Then he turned to the Duchess’s now-frowning butler and said, “I take it Her Grace is in?”
Humphrey’s frown deepened. “I believe she is on the verge of retiring to dress for dinner, my lord.”
“Then I’m glad I caught her,” said Sebastian, brushing past the stoic butler. “In the drawing room, is she?”
Humphrey sighed. “She is, my lord.”
Sebastian found the Dowager seated beside the cold hearth, a half-empty glass of claret in her hand. “You timed that well,” she said when he came to lean down and kiss her cheek. “Amanda just left.”
“I know; we met on the front steps. She looked as if she would have loved nothing more than to rip into me about something, but the presence of Humphrey spoiled her sport. What have I done to earn her displeasure now?”
“Need you ask? She’s in a pelter over your involvement in the investigation of these latest murders, of course.”
“One would think she’d have grown accustomed to it by this point.”
“Amanda? Resign herself to something she considers both an outrage and a personal affront to her dignity? Surely you know her better than that.”
“True.”
She nodded to the cluster of decanters and glasses on a nearby table. “Pour yourself a glass of wine and have a seat. Or there’s brandy if you’d prefer.”
He settled in a nearby chair. “Thank you, but I don’t want to keep you too long.”
The Duchess fixed him with a hard stare. “Why do I get the distinct impression you’re here because of something to do with these ghastly murders?”
“Because you’re a very clever woman,” he said with a smile. “What can you tell me about Lady McInnis?”
“Laura?” Henrietta looked thoughtful for a moment. “Nothing to her discredit—at least, nothing beyond a somewhat lamentable tendency to prose on endlessly about the horrid treatment given the poor wretches in the city’s workhouses or some such thing.”
“Any chance she was having an affair?”
“Laura McInnis? I wouldn’t have said so, no. If she was, she must have been extraordinarily discreet, for I’ve heard nothing of it.”
“I’m told her marriage to Sir Ivo was no love match.”
“No, not at all. My understanding is she married McInnis largely because he was her brother’s best friend and her father pushed the match. Her father—the previous Viscount Salinger—was a hopeless gamester, you know. All done in. At one point Laura was set to marry a young cavalry lieutenant. He was the younger son of a younger son, but her portion was so small, Salinger was initially relieved to have someone take her off his hands. Then the old goat managed to catch a rich cit’s daughter for his heir, Miles.” The Duchess wrinkled her nose. “Septimus Bain was his name. Horrid, grasping little man. Bain balked at the idea of his daughter’s sister-in-law becoming the wife of a mere army officer and following the drum, so old Salinger forbade the match.”
“And Laura acquiesced?”
“She was underage at the time, so short of bolting for the border she didn’t exactly have a choice, did she? The lieutenant went off to war while Laura promised to be faithful to him until she turned twenty-one and would be free to marry without her father’s consent. Except the lieutenant hadn’t been gone more than a few months when word came that he’d been killed.”
“So she married Sir Ivo?”
“Not right away, but something like two or three years later.”
“Do you recall the name of this lieutenant?”
“As it happens, I do. He’s a major now—Major Zacchary Finch. I noticed he was mentioned in the dispatches from Waterloo.”
“I thought you said he was dead?”
“No, only that Laura heard he was dead. As it turned out, he’d been wounded and captured. But that wasn’t discovered until several months after she’d married McInnis.”
“Tragic.”
“It was, rather.”
“I assume he’s currently with the Army in France?”
“That I can’t tell you. I believe he was wounded, so he may have been shipped home.”
“Where is ‘home’?”
“It was Leicestershire—his grandfather was the Earl of Arnesby, and I believe Finch’s father was the vicar in a village not far from Priestly Priory. But if the father’s dead, then the living will have gone to some other relative by now. The family has always bred prodigiously, and they have a tendency to run to boys.”
“Good God. Where do you get all these details?”
She gave an elegant sniff and pushed to her feet. “People talk and I listen. And now you must excuse me; I’m having dinner with Hendon tonight.” She watched him carefully stand up and said, “I see your leg is still bothering you.”
“A bit.”
“Somehow I suspect chasing a murderer halfway across London last month didn’t help it.”
He stared at her. “How did you hear about that?”
But she only smiled as she turned away.
“You think this Major Zacchary Finch could be the man Sir Ivo accused Laura of having an affair with?” said Hero later that evening when she and Sebastian retired to the drawing room after dinner. She was sitting beside the empty hearth, setting neat stitches into the hem of a gown she was making for the new baby, while Sebastian stood beside one of the open windows overlooking the street and sipped a glass of port.
“It seems possible—if he’s back in London,” said Sebastian, looking over at her.
She was silent for a moment, her attention seemingly all for her stitches. Then she said, “It strikes me as a strangely intimate thing for Emma to have told her brother’s fencing master—even if he did chance to come upon her when she was upset and crying.”
Sebastian took a slow swallow of his wine, his gaze shifting again to the darkened scene below. The night was warm and mostly clear, with a waning moon that was still nearly half-full and illuminated the few puffs of high clouds scuttling across the black sky in the balmy wind. The street was unusually quiet for the hour; he could see only a footman walking an aged pug and the half-obscured figure of a well-dressed man who’d been standing in the shadows near the corner for long enough to make Sebastian feel uneasy. He turned his head to look at Hero. “I could be wrong, but I have a worrying suspicion there was considerably more going on between the brilliant, handsome young fencing master and his student’s pretty sister than he wants me to know about.”
Hero looked up from her sewing. “That is worrying.”
He glanced back out the window; the figure was still there. “I can’t see a man of Sir Ivo’s ilk taking that sort of development kindly.”
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
Sebastian took another sip of his port. “There’s a man across the street, near the corner. He’s been standing there staring at the house since we came up from dinner.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know,” said Sebastian, setting aside his drink and pushing away from the window. “But I think it’s time I find out.”