“Especially when moving against the Hanovers might very well set in motion precisely the kind of popular movement the Tories fear the most,” said Kat, thinking about what Aiden O’Connell had said that morning in Chelsea.
He glanced over at her. “You mean a revolution?”
“Or a civil war.”
“I doubt they’d see the danger. Not men with the kind of hubris required to plot to overthrow a dynasty. It’s probably never occurred to them just how easily they could lose control of everything.”
“But what does any of this have to do with the death of Lady Anglessey?”
“I wish I knew.” Devlin tossed the towel aside. “I suppose she might simply have stumbled across something, the way Tom did in the alley behind the Norfolk Arms. Or…’’ He hesitated.
“Or she could have been involved in it herself,” said Kat, handing him the brandy.
He took a sip and looked up to meet her gaze. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”
Kat was thoughtful for a moment, remembering what else Aiden O’Connell had said, about a Stuart restoration leading to peace with France. Alain Varden was half-French.
“The Chevalier de Varden,” she said suddenly. “What are his political inclinations?”
“As far as I can tell, he has none—or at least none he’s made known. His brother-in-law, Portland, is obviously a Tory, as is Morgana’s husband, Lord Quinlan. But then, most men of birth and property are Tories—including Anglessey. And my own father.” Devlin went silent for a moment, the glass of brandy held forgotten in his hand.
“What is it?”
“When I saw Varden this afternoon at Angelo’s, he told me Guinevere wanted to leave Anglessey. That she was afraid of him.”
“Afraid? Why?”
“He said Anglessey killed his first wife.”
“Is that possible?”
“I’d heard his first wife died in childbirth. I was on my way to Mount Street to ask him about it when Lovejoy caught up with me this afternoon.”
“What are you suggesting? That Guinevere somehow found out about her husband’s involvement with the Stuarts and was afraid he’d kill her to keep her quiet? But…surely she wouldn’t betray her own husband. Would she?”
Devlin brought up one hand to rub his forehead, and she realized just how tired he was. Tired and frustrated. “Obviously, I’m still missing something. Something important.”
Slipping her arms around his waist, Kat pressed her body close to his. She would never be his wife, but she could know the joy of holding him, of loving him and being loved by him. She told herself that was enough. For his sake, it would have to be enough. “You’ll find it,” she said, her voice low and husky. “If anyone can, you will. Now come to bed.”
SHE AWOKE BEFORE DAWN to find the place beside her cold and empty. She turned her head, her gaze searching the room.
He was standing beside the window, one of the heavy drapes pulled back so that he could look out upon the gradually lightening street. He was turned half away from her so that all she could see was his profile, and he had his head bent, as if he gazed not at the street below but at something he held in his hand. It wasn’t until she slipped from beneath the covers and went to curl her arms around his shoulders that she realized he held his mother’s bluestone necklace, the silver chain threaded through the fingers of one hand.
“What is it?” she asked, nuzzling his neck. “What’s wrong?”
He reached back his free hand to cup her head in his palm and draw her around to him. “Amanda came to see me last night.”
“Lady Wilcox?” said Kat in surprise. As far as Kat knew, Devlin’s sister hadn’t spoken to him since February.
“She’s concerned that my unusual activities might harm her daughter’s chances of contracting a successful alliance. She wanted to know what had possessed me to do something so plebian as to take part in a murder investigation.”
“You told her about the necklace?”
“Yes.” He held up the necklace so that the triskelion swung slowly on its chain, tracing a short arc through the darkness. “She was puzzled, but not surprised.”
Kat studied the shadowed lines and angles of his profile, but he had all his emotions locked away someplace where she couldn’t see them. “Perhaps the implications escaped her.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a tight smile. “Oh, no. Amanda is nothing if not quick. She might have been puzzled that my mother would give up something she’d always held dear, but it never occurred to her to question what happened that day off the coast of Brighton.”
Kat drew in a deep breath. “What are you saying, Sebastian?”
He turned his head to look directly at her, and for one unguarded moment she saw it all—the bewildered mingling of anger and hurt, confusion and pain. “Amanda knows. She’s always known.” He let out a soft huff of laughter that held no humor. “That pleasure outing—the sinking of the yacht—it was all for show. My mother didn’t drown that summer. She simply left. She left my father and she left me. But she didn’t die.”
His hand closed over the necklace, his knuckles showing white in the first light of dawn. “She didn’t die.”
Chapter 53
Amanda was seated at her breakfast table, the Morning Post spread out beside her plate, when her brother strolled unannounced into the room. She didn’t look up.
The Countess of Hendon’s silver-and-bluestone necklace hit the newsprint beside her, the unexpected slap startling her enough that it was only with effort that she avoided flinching.
Holding herself composed, she lifted her gaze to Devlin’s. The blaze of emotion she saw there was so raw and powerful that her gaze veered away again before she could quite stop it.
“She’s still alive, isn’t she?” he said.
Amanda drew in a deep, steadying breath and defiantly stared into his terrible yellow eyes. “Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since that summer.”
He nodded, as if she’d only confirmed what he’d already suspected. “And Hendon?”
“He knows, of course. He has known from the very beginning. He helped to arrange it.”
She saw a flicker of—what? Surprise? Pain?—in the depths of those strange, animalistic eyes. “And why wasn’t I told?”
Amanda gave him a wide, malicious smile. “I suggest you ask Hendon.”
IT WASN’T OFTEN Sebastian allowed his thoughts to drift back to that long-ago summer, the summer before he turned twelve. It had been hot, days of unrelenting blue sky and a sizzling golden sun that turned the crops to dust in the fields. Wells that had never failed in a hundred years or more ran dry.
The Countess of Hendon had spent most of that spring and summer at the family’s principal seat in Cornwall. His mother loved London, loved the excitement and mental stimulation of the political salons as much as the endless round of balls, breakfasts, and shopping expeditions that occupied most women. But Hendon considered London an unhealthy place for women and children, especially when the streets turned dry and dusty and the air hung close. His involvement in affairs of state might keep Hendon himself tied to Whitehall and St. James’s Palace, but that year he insisted that his wife retire to Cornwall, and that Sebastian and his brother Cecil join her there when they came down from Eton.
Sebastian tried to recall how Sophie had occupied herself that summer, but his memories were of tramping the fields and woods with Cecil and swimming in the forbidden cove below the cliffs. In his recollections, she was an atypically distant figure seen riding out each morning on her neat bay hack. He had one clear image of an afternoon’s tea served on the sun-splashed terrace, Sophie’s smile bright yet still somehow…distant. And then, in July, the family had gone to spend the month in Brighton.