“It seems less improbable now than it did.”
“Why? Because the woman repulsed his advances? Don’t be ridiculous. England is full of women panting for the opportunity to copulate with a future king. He need only look at one and smile.”
“Yet what would happen, I wonder, should such a vain, sensitive prince encounter a woman with the courage to rebuff his advances?”
“No woman has ever accused His Highness of forcing himself upon her.” The words were crisp, carefully enunciated, just bordering on anger. “Ever.”
“Perhaps. Yet his father—a model of domestic fidelity if ever there was one—dropped his breeches and attacked his own daughter-in-law just last year.”
Jarvis’s hand tightened around the handle of his umbrella, although he managed to keep his voice calm, his face serene. “The Prince Regent is not going mad.”
Devlin’s lean face remained impassive. Unreadable. “Tell me about the dagger. The one you took from Guinevere Anglessey’s body.”
Jarvis gave the Viscount a warm, reassuring smile. “Now, why would I do that?”
Devlin’s smile was just as calculated and decidedly chilling. “I keep asking myself that same question. You might not like it when I come up with the answer.”
SEBASTIAN ARRIVED BACK AT HIS HOUSE on Brook Street to discover Sir Henry Lovejoy there before him.
“Sir Henry,” said Sebastian, opening the door to the library, where the chief magistrate of Queen Square was reading the Morning Gazette in one of the caned chairs beside the front bow window. “I trust you’ve not been waiting long?”
Lovejoy folded the Gazette into a neat rectangle and stood up. “Not long, no.” He was a tiny man, barely five feet tall, with a high-pitched voice, thick eyeglasses, and a serious demeanor. He was also, Sebastian knew, passionately devoted to what he did.
Tossing aside his greatcoat, hat, and gloves, Sebastian crossed to the brandy decanter on the table beside the empty hearth. “A glass of wine with me?”
“Thank you, but no.” The little magistrate clasped his hands behind his back, cleared his throat, and said, “I heard the strangest story this morning, about some fellow impersonating a Bow Street Officer. A handsome young man with what were described as almost animalistic eyes.”
“How odd.” His face deliberately bland, Sebastian flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his rough-cut coat. “Is that why you’ve come? Did you think this fellow might be a relative of mine?”
The faintest hint of a smile lifted the little magistrate’s thin mouth. “No, actually. I’ve come because we’ve discovered your Yorkshire jarvey.”
Chapter 25
“He remembered the fare quite clearly,” said Lovejoy. “It’s not often a lady takes a hackney to the East End.”
Sebastian lowered his glass in surprise. “The East End?”
“That’s right. Giltspur Street, in Smithfield.”
“Where exactly on Giltspur?”
“The jarvey couldn’t say. It seems Lady Anglessey had the fellow let her off at the top of the lane. The last he saw of her, she was walking toward the market.” Lovejoy cleared his throat again. “I sent one of the lads over there. Had him ask around. No one remembers having seen her.”
That was hardly likely, Sebastian decided, going to pour himself another drink. The sight of a young lady as beautiful as the Marchioness of Anglessey in a walking dress of Pompeian red was not something to be forgotten so quickly. Yet even the most respectable citizens of London were often reluctant to be overly cooperative with the constables. An unassuming man asking more subtle questions might well learn something of interest.
BY THE TIME SEBASTIAN PAID OFF HIS HACKNEY at the bottom of Giltspur Street, the rain had stopped again, although the clouds still hung low and oppressive over the open, death-haunted grounds of Smithfield Market.
It was a meat market now. But once, two hundred years before, in the days of the Tudors, they had burned people here at Smithfield. The Catholics had burned the Protestants to save their souls from the everlasting fires of hell, while the Protestants had burned the Catholics because that’s what one did with people whose vision of God didn’t exactly match one’s own. It’d always struck Sebastian as a strange thing to do in the name of a Christ who’d taught his followers to turn the other cheek and love their neighbors as themselves. But then, Christ’s followers had frequently been slack in their application of that part of His teachings, massacring in His name everyone from the olive-skinned inhabitants of Jerusalem to the Irish of Dublin.
Clad in the unfashionably cut greatcoat and serviceable leather breeches of a country gentleman of modest means, Sebastian pushed his way through the throngs of people crowding the streets, many of them drovers in town for Market Monday. They came from as far away as the north of England and Scotland, driving the great herds of cattle and oxen needed to feed the million or so inhabitants of the city. But there were local people here, too, journeymen and apprentices, servants and shopkeepers, for Sunday was the only day most people had off work.
The atmosphere was relaxed, jovial, the street filled with glad voices and laughter, the rich aromas of broiling meat and fermenting ale mingling with the ever-present smells of mud and unwashed bodies and urine. At the first cross street, Sebastian paused, his gaze scanning the signs of the various shops fronting the lane: tanners and chandlers mixed in with coal merchants and distillers, button sellers, and woolen drapers. All were humble establishments, not the kind of businesses typically frequented by a marchioness. What was Guinevere Anglessey doing here?
He walked on, past the shuttered windows of a tea dealer and the haberdasher beyond. All were closed now for the Sabbath. On Monday, he would send Tom to go into each shop in turn. But something told him Lady Anglessey had not come here in search of tea or buttons.
Halfway up the street he came upon an ancient, half-timbered inn called the Norfolk Arms. Tall and well kept, it had somehow survived the Great Fire of 1666. From the looks of it, it had been here since the days of Edward and Mary Tudor and the martyrs’ pyres of Smithfield.
Sebastian started toward the inn. A couple of half-grown boys ran past, careening into him before darting off again with a shouted apology. A one-legged soldier, his face hideously deformed by a saber slash across his cheek, leaned on a rag-wrapped stick and rattled his cup with softly murmured pleadings.
Sebastian dropped a coin into the outstretched receptacle. “Where’d you serve?”
Drawing in a deep breath, the beggar squared his shoulders proudly and said, “Antwerp, sir,” in a heavy Scots brogue. Beneath his unkempt beard and matted hair and sallow, scarred skin, he was actually quite young, Sebastian realized, probably no more than five-and-twenty.
“You here every day, are you?”
A grin stretched the Scotsman’s scarred cheek and deepened the lines prematurely fanning out from his pain-filled gray eyes. “Aye. This be me spot.”
“There was a young woman came past here, last Wednesday afternoon. Dark haired. Pretty. A lady, actually. Wearing a red gown and pelisse. Did you see her?”
The man gave a breathy laugh. “There be nothing wrong with me eyes. Very fetching she was, too, to be sure. She gave me five shillings, she did.”
“Did you happen to see where she went?”
The soldier jerked his head toward the ancient inn behind him. “Aye. She went in the Norfolk Arms here.”
Sebastian knew a rush of triumph and expectation quickly dampened down. “How long was she in there? Do you know?”
The man thought about it a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t rightly say. I don’t recollect I saw her come out.”