All of which meant she might actually have been killed in London, and her body brought down to Brighton.
“That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Hendon, when Sebastian explained his reasoning to his father that evening over a glass of brandy in their private parlor at the Anchor. “And just how do you suppose this mythical killer managed to slip the lady’s corpse into the Yellow Cabinet? He could hardly have strolled through the Pavilion bearing her lifeless body in his arms, now, could he? Or do you imagine he smuggled her inside rolled up in a carpet, like some blackguard straight out of a circulating library romance?”
Sebastian watched his father walk over to the table beside the empty hearth and pour himself another brandy. “What are you suggesting? That she traveled down to Brighton unbeknownst to her husband, simply to commit suicide by some mysterious means after arranging to have her dead body fall on a dagger in the Regent’s Yellow Cabinet? Oh yes, and then lay there unnoticed for another six hours or so while the servants built up the fire and cleaned the room around her?”
Hendon set the brandy decanter down with a thump. “Don’t be ridiculous. What I’m suggesting is that your Irish friend doesn’t know what in the bloody hell he’s talking about!”
He broke off, his head turning at the sound of a discreet tap at the door. “Excuse me, my lord,” said the Earl’s valet, every inch of his body rigid with disapproval as he executed a short bow. “Viscount Devlin’s tiger is here to see him. He says he’s expected.”
Sebastian brought up a fist and coughed to hide his smile. Tom was not a favorite with the Earl’s staff. “That’s right. Please show him in.”
Not content to be left cooling his heels in the hall, Tom had already appeared in the open doorway, his face pinched and drawn with disappointment.
“Well?” said Sebastian as the manservant bowed himself out. “What did you discover?”
“Nothin’, gov’nor,” said the boy, his voice heavy. “Not a blessed thing. Nobody could remember seein’ nothin’ out of the ordinary. Not till all them nobs started screaming their heads off and running outta there like fleas off a dead dog.”
Hendon let out his breath in a self-satisfied humph and raised his brandy to his lips.
“Any speculation?” Sebastian asked the boy.
“Oh, aye. Lots o’ that. The kitchen maids, they’re all atwitter at the thought the Regent done the lady hisself, while the stable lads, they reckon Cumberland’s behind it somehow. And they’re all talkin’ about this Hanover C—”
Tom broke off to cast a quick glance at Hendon.
“Go on,” prompted Sebastian.
Tom sniffed and lowered his voice. “It’s said in whispers, of course. But there’s some as will have it the whole family isn’t just barny. They’re sayin’ the Hanovers is cursed. And that England will be cursed, too, as long as the Hanovers—”
“That’s rot nonsense,” roared Hendon, surging up from his chair.
The boy stood his ground, his eyes narrowed and wary. “It’s what they’re saying.”
Sebastian rested one hand on the boy’s shoulder and gave him a light squeeze. “Thank you, Tom. That will be all for now.”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll ever understand why you brought that boy into your household,” said Hendon, after Tom had taken himself off.
“You think my gratitude should have been sufficiently served by a simple thank-you and the gift of perhaps a gold watch? Tom saved my life, remember? Mine and Kat’s.”
Hendon’s jaw tightened in that way it always did whenever Sebastian did something of which Hendon disapproved—or that disappointed him. Once, the Earl of Hendon had boasted of three strong sons to succeed him. But fate had left him with only Sebastian, the youngest and least satisfactory. “I think most would have considered a small pension more than adequate,” said Hendon.
“The boy is useful.”
“Good God. And in what way might a pickpocket be of use to a gentleman of quality?”
“To survive on the streets requires agility, a talent for keen observation, and quick wits. All abilities I can use.” Besides, the boy always wanted to work with horses, Sebastian thought, although he didn’t say it. Hendon would only have scoffed. “He seems to have managed to control his larcenous activities these last four months.”
“Or so you think.”
Sebastian drained his brandy and set the glass aside. “I’d best say good night. I plan to start for London at dawn.”
“London?” Hendon’s lips pursed in disapproval. “I thought the business with this murder would at least keep you away from there for a while.” Of course, it wasn’t London itself Hendon found objectionable; what troubled the Earl was the beautiful young actress he knew Sebastian would be seeing there.
Refusing to be drawn into an argument on that score, Sebastian turned toward the door. “I don’t see what else I can do here. Anglessey has agreed to allow Paul Gibson to transfer the Marchioness’s body to his surgery for a postmortem. Even if Lady Guinevere wasn’t killed in London, someone there might be able to tell me where she went—and why.”
THE NEXT MORNING DAWNED COOL, with a fine mist that drifted in from the sea in heavy, salt-laden patches of white swirling dampness to collect between the rows of tall, stately town houses and in the narrow winding alleyways of the Lanes.
Sebastian held the chestnuts in check until they were clear of the last straggling hamlet. Then he gave the big blood geldings their heads and let them run with the wind before easing them down to an even trot that ate away at the miles. By the time they reached Ed-burton, the strengthening sun had begun to burn away what was left of the fog. On the far side of the village, the rolling expanses of the South Downs could be seen quite clearly, stretching out in all directions. It was there Sebastian’s growing conviction that he was being followed solidified into a certainty.
Chapter 12
Even in the thickness of the fog, Sebastian had been aware of a steady drumming of hoofbeats, staying always a comfortable distance behind them. One horse, he decided, ridden at a steady clip, never gaining, but not falling too far behind, either.
Then the mists began to thin to faint wisps of elusive white that hugged the deeply cut road’s stone walls and brambly hedgerows while laying bare the surrounding fields of green barley and flax. At that point, the shadowy horseman dropped back. But Sebastian’s eyesight was considerably keener than most others’. As the wide vistas of the South Downs opened up beneath a strengthening sun, he began to catch glimpses of a single, dark-clad rider mounted on a big bay, first seen in the distance through a tangle of hazel, then half-hidden by a copse of fine beech.
Thoughtful, Sebastian urged his chestnuts to a faster trot. The mysterious horseman quickened his pace, too. They continued on that way for a mile, two. Sebastian brought his pair down to a walk.
Their shadow dropped back.
“Don’t, whatever you do, look behind us,” Sebastian ordered his young tiger. “But I think…no, I am quite certain, actually, that we are being followed.”
Tom went visibly stiff with the effort of resisting the urge to turn around and look for himself. “Since when?”
“Since we left Brighton, it would seem.”
“What we gonna do?”
Sebastian held the chestnuts to a steady pace. They were winding up a gradual incline, the twisting road thrown into deep shade by a stand of poplars. But at the top of the slope the ground evened out, the road running across a broad common of vivid green pastureland dotted with a peacefully grazing herd of black-and-white milk cows.
Without looking behind, Sebastian whipped his team into an easy gallop so that the man behind them was forced to do the same. They streamed across the common, the sun shining on the chestnuts’ wet flanks, Sebastian urging his team on ever faster until the road crested a sudden rise and fell away rapidly before them in a long, steady sweep.