“If you mean Lady Anglessey’s murder,” said Sebastian, “then yes.”
“According to both the magistrate and the Prince’s doctors, the death was a suicide.”
Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “Is that what you believe?”
Portland expelled a harsh breath and shook his head. “No.”
They walked along in silence for a moment, Portland worrying his lower lip with his teeth. At last he said, “I feel somehow as if this were all my fault.”
“How is that?”
“If I hadn’t given the Prince that note—”
Sebastian swung to face him. “You gave the Prince the note from Lady Anglessey?”
“Yes. Although, of course, I’d no notion who she was. She was veiled.”
“When was this?”
“Shortly after the Prince’s chamber orchestra began playing last night. I was approached by a veiled young woman who handed me a sealed missive and asked that I pass it on to the Prince.” Portland hesitated, his fair skin coloring. “It’s hardly the first time I’ve been approached in such a way.”
Sebastian kept his thoughts to himself. Over the years, the Prince’s paramours had ranged from common opera dancers and actresses such as Mrs. Fitzherbert to some of the grandest dames of the ton—Lady Jersey and Lady Hertford among them. It wasn’t uncommon for those close to the Prince to find themselves thrust into the role of procurer.
“I actually know Guinevere Anglessey rather well,” Portland was saying. “She is—was—a childhood friend of my wife, Claire. It never occurred to me that’s who I was dealing with.”
“You weren’t.”
Sebastian watched the man’s light gray eyes widen, watched the first shock give way to some other emotion, something that looked oddly like fear. “I beg your pardon?”
“By the time the Regent’s chamber orchestra began playing last night, Lady Anglessey had already been dead perhaps as much as six to eight hours.”
Portland stopped short. “What? But…that’s impossible.”
“The human body undergoes certain predictable changes after death. Temperature and the manner of one’s dying can accelerate or retard the process, but not by that much. I’m afraid there’s no mistake.”
“But I tell you, I saw her. She gave me the note.”
“You saw a woman, veiled. Do you remember how she was dressed?”
Portland stood very still, as if drawing into himself with the effort of memory. But in the end he simply shook his head. “No. I’m not certain of anything anymore. I mean, I’d have said she wore a green satin gown like Lady Anglessey. But if what you say is true, then that’s not possible, is it?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
The Home Secretary shook his head again, his features pinched with confusion. “I don’t understand. Who could she have been?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Sebastian, his gaze lifting to the gulls wheeling above the Strand. “But whoever she was, she was obviously involved in Lady Anglessey’s murder.”
SEBASTIAN SENT A FOOTMAN RUNNING FOR HIS CURRICLE, then stood on the Pavilion’s gravel sweep and watched as his tiger, Tom, brought Sebastian’s matched pair of blood chestnuts to a stand.
It wasn’t a practice that particularly appealed to Sebastian, this current fashion among the sporting gentlemen of the ton for entrusting prime horseflesh to young boys decked out in the yellow-and-black-striped waistcoats that had earned them the nickname tigers. But Tom had taken to his new profession with an innate talent that had caught Sebastian by surprise. Plus Tom had other talents not normally encountered in a gentleman’s tiger, talents Sebastian had at times found particularly useful.
A dark-haired, sharp-faced lad of twelve, Tom looked even younger, his slight frame still wiry and small despite the new bloom of health in his cheeks. Up until four months ago he’d been one of the thousands of nameless urchins scratching out a precarious living on the streets of London, a pickpocket with a murky past and a secret passion for horses. His loyalty to Sebastian now was fierce.
Aware of Sebastian’s gaze upon him, the boy drew up with a neat flourish. “They’re feeling their oats this mornin’ for sure, gov’nor,” he said, breaking into a gap-toothed smile.
“I’ll be certain to give them their heads for a stretch on my way out to Lord Anglessey’s.” Sebastian swung up to take the reins. “I want you to hang around here. See if you can find out what they’re saying in the kitchen and stables. One of the servants must have seen or heard something last night. I’m particularly interested in anyone who might have been carrying something unusual. Something large.”
Tom hopped down, his eyes flashing. “You mean, something big enough to hide a body in?”
There was no doubt about it—the boy was quick. Sebastian smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
Tom took a step back, one hand coming up to anchor his cap to his head as a salt-laden breeze gusted up from the Strand. “If’n anybody seen anythin’, gov’nor, I’ll find ’im, never you fear.”
“Oh and, Tom?” Sebastian added as the boy started to dash off. “Don’t lift anyone’s purse, you hear? Not even just for practice.”
Tom drew himself up with a show of wounded dignity and sniffed. “As if I would.”
Chapter 10
Unlike most members of the ton who hired narrow town houses on the streets of Brighton for the summer months, Oliver Godwin Ellsworth, the Fourth Marquis of Anglessey, possessed an estate of his own on the outskirts of town.
It was one of his lesser properties, and quite small compared to his main seat in Northumberland, but the house was neat and comfortable, and pleasantly situated on a hillside overlooking the clean sweep of the sea a reasonable distance from the noise and bustle of Brighton’s streets.
Leaving the chestnuts in the care of a groom, Sebastian found the Marquis in a garden of mossy brick paths and carefully tended roses that thrived in the lee of the high walls sheltering them from the worst of the salty winds blowing up from the sea. At the sound of Sebastian’s footsteps, Anglessey turned, an old man with once dark hair heavily laced now with strands of gray. Only a few years Hendon’s senior, he seemed older, his body thin, his face drawn with the lines of ill health and visibly weighed down by a heavy burden of recent grief.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me at such a time,” said Sebastian, pausing in a bright patch of June sunlight. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what has happened.”
The Marquis went back to clipping the spent blooms of a pale pink rose that twined around a stout pillar at the edge of the path. “But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”
The directness of the question took Sebastian by surprise. “No,” he answered with equal bluntness. “Lord Jarvis has asked me to look into the circumstances surrounding your wife’s death.”
The Marquis’s fist tightened around his secateurs. “To protect the Prince, of course.” He said it as a statement, rather than a question.
“That’s their motive, yes.”
The Marquis looked around, one eyebrow arched. “But not yours?”
“No.” Sebastian met the old man’s steady, intelligent gaze. “Do you think he did it?”
“The Prince?” Anglessey shook his head and went back to pruning the rose. “Prinny might be a drunken, overindulged, self-coddling idiot, but he’s not violent. Not like his brother Cumberland.” He paused to subject his handiwork to a critical assessment, his jaw hardening in a way that belied both age and infirmity. “But make no mistake about this: if I’m wrong—if I should discover Prinny did have something to do with Guin’s death—I won’t let him get away with it. Prince Regent or not.”