“I was concerned.” Jarvis smiled. “If not quite for the reasons I led you to believe.”
“Would peace with France really be so bad?”
“As long as Napoleon still rules as Emperor? Yes.”
“Who would you have in his place? The Comte de Provence?”
“For a time. He is next in line, after all, and one must at least appear to observe the traditional order of succession. Provence is a fool and ridiculously infatuated with the more extreme permutations of constitutional monarchy. But he’s old before his time and hopelessly fat. He won’t last long.”
“And then what? His brother, Artois? The man is a dangerous reactionary as well as being foolish and vain and hopelessly profligate. The French would never put up with him for long.”
“I think perhaps you underestimate Artois’s enthusiasm for repression. He watched the mistakes his brother Louis XVI made back in 1789, giving in to one demand after the next, when a few well-placed whiffs of grapeshot would have scuttled the entire Revolution before it had a chance to gather momentum.”
Devlin remained silent.
After a moment, Jarvis smiled. “You know, of course, that I’ve had men watching the French delegation since their arrival?”
“I didn’t know, but I can’t say that I’m exactly surprised. Would you have me believe they observed something useful?”
“As to its usefulness, that is not for me to say. But I do know they witnessed an interesting quarrel between Damion Pelletan and his sister on the night he died.”
The Viscount’s eyes narrowed. “You knew Alexandrie Sauvage was Pelletan’s sister?”
Jarvis kept his gaze on the mirror, his fingers adjusting the folds of his cravat.
Devlin said, “Where precisely did this quarrel occur?”
“At the Gifford Arms. I’m told that a man and a woman arrived first; they spoke to Pelletan for a time, then retired. Madame Sauvage appeared just as Pelletan was about to return to the inn.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”
“Really? How industrious of you. Only, I gather you somehow neglected to hear of the quarrel which then took place.”
“And what precisely was the subject of this quarrel?”
“That, my informant was too far away to hear.”
“Then how did he know it was a quarrel?”
“It was rather heated. There was no mistaking the level of passion involved.”
“And the man and woman who came before? Who were they?”
“My observer was unable to make an identification.”
“Indeed?”
Jarvis smiled at the Viscount’s posture of stiff incredulity. “Yes, indeed.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because this obsession of yours with the death of Damion Pelletan is becoming tiresome. You belong at home with your pregnant wife.”
“Hero is fine. Believe me, she wouldn’t thank you for encouraging me to hover anxiously about her.”
Jarvis smoothed the line of his waistcoat, his gaze hard on his son-in-law’s face. “If my daughter dies because of the babe you planted in her belly, I swear to God, I will kill you. Personally.”
Devlin’s gaze met his and held it. And Jarvis saw there a deep and quiet awareness of the looming danger to Hero that Jarvis realized matched his own.
“She’s not going to die.”
Chapter 39
Alexandrie Sauvage answered Sebastian’s knock at the door of Gibson’s surgery on Tower Hill.
“Gibson is in the yard, performing the autopsy on Colonel Foucher,” she said.
“Good.” Sebastian brushed past her when she would have shut the door again. “You’re the person I wanted to see.”
She stood for a moment with one hand on the latch, the fog creeping in around them. Then she closed the door and turned to face him. “What do you want?”
She wore the only dress she now possessed, although she had fastened an apron over it. The apron was liberally smudged with grime, and there was a dirty streak across one cheek. He realized she’d been scrubbing the small room to the right of the door, making it her own. He should have been relieved to discover that she was staying in the surgery rather than in Gibson’s house. Only he wasn’t sure it made much of a difference.
He said, “You told me that the night Damion Pelletan was killed, you went to the Gifford Arms and found him standing in front of the inn.”
“Y-yes,” she said slowly, as if mistrusting where his questions were leading.
“What exactly did you say to him? ‘There’s a sick child I’d like you to look at; please come’?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Nothing else? And then you left for St. Katharine’s?”
“Yes.”
“And as you walked up Cat’s Hole, he told you he wanted Lady Peter to run away with him, and you quarreled?”
“Yes.” She stared back at him, her brown eyes dark with suspicion and what looked very much like hate.
He said, “So what did you argue about at the Gifford Arms? Given everything I’ve learned about Damion Pelletan, I find it difficult to believe you had to work to convince him to come with you. So what the devil were you quarreling about?”
“Who told you we argued at the inn?”
“Damion was part of a French delegation sent to London on a delicate mission. It’s hardly to be wondered at that he was being watched.”
“By Jarvis, you mean?”
When Sebastian didn’t say anything, she huffed a scornful, breathy laugh. “What exactly are you suggesting? That I quarreled with my brother, lured him into a dark alley, cut out his heart, and then hit myself over the head? Oh, and then blew up my servant woman when she threatened to expose my evil deeds to the world?” Bright color appeared high on her cheeks. “I am a doctor. I save lives; I do not take them.”
It had, in fact, occurred to him that she might be far more involved in her own brother’s death than she would like them to believe. But all he said was, “The argument at the inn: What was it about?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell you. It involves a secret that is not mine to reveal.”
Sebastian stared at her. “What the devil do you think I’m going to do? Shout it from the rooftops? Take out an advertisement in the Times? God damn you! Three people are already dead. How many more must die before you start being honest with me? Tell me what the bloody argument was about.”
She went to stand at the narrow window overlooking the lane. But the fog was so thick it was like trying to look through yellow soup.
She said, “Damion had discovered that I knew. . something. That I had known it, for nine years. Something he believed I should have told him. I’m sorry, but more than that I cannot say.”
For nine years. Nine years. .
“Bloody hell,” said Sebastian. He was seeing a blond, green-eyed boy sailing two painted wooden boats across the water, while his sister watched him with a mother’s intense love and pride. “It’s Noel Durant, isn’t it? The boy isn’t Lady Peter’s ‘brother’; he’s her son. By Damion Pelletan.”
She turned to stare at him, her face slack with astonishment. “You knew?”
He shook his head. “No. I’d assumed Pelletan came to London because he’d somehow learned of Lord Peter’s treatment of his wife. But he came because of the boy, didn’t he? How did he ever happen to learn the truth?”
“From an old priest whose deathbed he attended in Paris. The priest was delirious. At first Damion thought he was only rambling nonsense. Except the more he heard, the more the old man’s words came to make sense.”
“Julia Durant knew she was with child before she left Paris?”
“She did, yes.”
“Then why the hell didn’t she tell the man she claimed to love?”
“Because she was sixteen. Because she was afraid. Because her father had assured her the family’s flight from France would be temporary. Only, it wasn’t.”
“And so she found herself a refugee in London,” Sebastian said softly. “Unwed, and growing increasingly heavy with child. The poor girl.”