Chapter 13
Hero was coming down the front steps of her father’s house when a sporty curricle drawn by a pair of high-stepping matched chestnuts swept around the corner. It was driven by a down-the-road-looking man in a caped driving coat and a high-crowned hat; a diminutive, sharp-faced tiger perched on the seat at the rear.
The driver reined in behind her waiting carriage, his horses snorting and tossing their heads as Hero changed direction to walk toward him. “What are you doing here?” she asked, looking up at him.
“I came to see your father,” said Devlin.
She laughed. “I think I know why.”
He glanced back at Tom. “Hop down and meet us back at Brook Street—and tell her ladyship’s driver to do the same, if you would?” To Hero, he said, “Fancy a drive in Hyde Park, my lady?”
It was the fashionable hour for the promenade in the park, which meant that the roadways were clogged with a colorful medley of stylishly dressed young gentlewomen in barouches, turbaned dowagers in ponderous landaus, and gentlemen in high-perched phaetons, tilburies, or sporty curricles, all weaving their way through a crush of showy hacks controlled by riders with widely varying degrees of skill. They crawled up the crowded avenue.
“You think Jarvis was telling you the truth?” Devlin asked when she had finished telling him of her conversation with her formidable father.
“In part, at least,” said Hero, wishing she’d thought to bring a parasol. The sun was only just beginning to sink toward the western horizon, its mellow light filtering down through the leafy branches of the rows of stately chestnuts and plane trees to cast a dazzling pattern of light and shadow across the fashionable throng. “But only in part. He claims Sedgewick was not working with him.”
“In that, at least, I’m inclined to believe him.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Really? Why?”
“Because Sedgewick was a bit of a loose cannon, and Jarvis is generally very careful about the men he employs.”
“He has been known to make mistakes.”
“He has. But when I saw Bathurst, he let slip that he’s been discussing Sedgewick’s murder with Bow Street. And I can’t see him doing that unless the War Office’s interest in his murder extends beyond the simple death of a former Army captain.”
She thought about it a moment. “Yes, that does seem rather telling.”
“Of course, it’s possible Sedgewick was on a mission that involved both Bathurst and Castlereagh, but I haven’t managed to see Castle-reagh yet. They were all at sixes and sevens by the time I reached the Foreign Office.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Hero. “You were right when you said Napoléon wasn’t going to simply sit around waiting for Wellington to attack him in July. Jarvis says they’ve received word that he left Paris for the frontier more than two days ago.”
“Damn,” whispered Devlin softly, the features of his face tightening as he stared out across the sunlit park toward the south.
She knew what he was thinking: that in just a few days, tens of thousands of men, including friends he’d known and fought beside for years, would face death. And yet because of his inability to regain the strength in his wounded leg in time, he wouldn’t be there at their side. All he could do was sit and wait to hear the news of the momentous events that were about to happen.
Reaching out, she rested her hand, lightly, on his arm. But all she said was, “It makes the timing of Sedgewick’s death particularly interesting, wouldn’t you say?”
He brought his gaze back to her. “It does indeed. I wish we knew precisely why he was in Vienna. You don’t think his wife knows?”
Hero shook her head. “She seems to think he went there mainly to visit some castle famous for a ghastly series of witchcraft trials. I suppose it’s possible she was being disingenuous, but I don’t think so . . . or at least, not in that.”
“You think she knows about Alexi Sauvage?”
“I’m not sure. She was shocked and upset by Sedgewick’s death, obviously—who wouldn’t be when her husband’s mutilated body has just been hauled out of the Thames? But I don’t know if I’d say she is grieving, precisely. She may not know about Alexi, but I’d be surprised if she’s entirely ignorant of her husband’s habits. She doesn’t strike me as particularly intelligent or learned, but she’s not stupid. And I don’t think she’s still so lost in love as to close her eyes to the signs of his straying.”
“Hence her failure to report him missing for days?”
“It would explain it.”
“Do you know if Jarvis saw Sedgewick before he died?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t say.”
“Interesting. It suggests he’s being less than honest when he says he doesn’t know who killed Sedgewick, or why.”
“Well, I noticed he didn’t say he doesn’t care who killed the man.”
“That I can believe. If Sedgewick was on a mission to Vienna—whether at the behest of Bathurst, Castlereagh, or Jarvis himself—then I’ve no doubt Jarvis actually cares a great deal.” He was silent for a moment, carefully maneuvering his curricle around a skinny, pimply youth in a phaeton with a blowsy black mare that was more interested in the grass at the side of the road than in her master’s commands. Then he said, “The Bourbons have a well-earned reputation for sending their assassins to quietly stab—or garrote—those they want silenced, with the victims’ bodies then being tossed into the Thames. If they saw Sedgewick—or the information he carried—as a threat, then I can see them ordering him killed. Although I’d be even more likely to suspect them if his body hadn’t been mutilated. That suggests something more personal is going on here.”
“Perhaps,” said Hero. “Although to some people, all politics is personal, and that’s particularly true of the Bourbons.”
“It is indeed.”
She stared out across the tops of the plane trees, their leafy green canopies shifting restlessly now with the growing wind. “What I don’t understand is where the headless corpse Gibson showed you fits into all this.”
“As you said, it’s always possible the two killings are completely unrelated.”
“Yes, but what are the odds?”
“Probably not good,” he admitted. “But it is possible.”
She brought her gaze back to his face. “Remember those Austrian witch trials Eloisa was telling me about—the ones Sedgewick was so interested in? She says that many of the victims had their hands cut off before they were killed, and then their bodies were decapitated.”
Devlin reined in sharply and turned to face her. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“No,” said Hero. “Neither do I.”