When she remained silent, he said, “I’d be the last person to deny that Jarvis is both ruthless and brutal. He would unblinkingly murder ten thousand men if he thought it would save England-or at least, England as he thinks it should be. But I can’t imagine him cutting out the hearts and gouging out the eyes of his victims for amusement.”
“I believe that was intended to throw suspicion on someone else.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not exactly an effective tactic, then.”
His words brought a flush of angry color to her cheeks. “I didn’t expect you to listen to me.” She set aside her wine untasted. But rather than leave, she said, “Have you given more thought to attempting to turn your child in its mother’s womb?”
The question took him by surprise. “I told Lady Devlin of your offer.”
“And?”
Sebastian looked beyond her, to where Hero now stood in the doorway.
Hero said, “You accuse my father of murdering your brother, then offer to help save my child. Why?”
Alexi Sauvage pivoted to face her. Physically, the two women could not have been more dissimilar. Where the Frenchwoman was small and almost unnaturally thin, Hero stood tall and strong. Yet both possessed a comfortable sense of self combined with a rare willingness to buck the conventions and expectations of their day.
Alexi Sauvage said, “I am a physician. That is what I do.”
“Yet you’ll understand, surely, if I distrust your motives?”
Something wafted across the Frenchwoman’s face. “If you are unwilling to allow me to attempt to turn the child, there are certain positions which sometimes achieve the same objective. You must kneel with your arms folded on the floor or mattress before you and your head resting on your hands. Do this for fifteen or twenty minutes, every two hours. It might be enough to nudge the child into turning itself.”
When Hero remained silent, Alexi Sauvage said, “Try it, please. But if the child still refuses to turn. . Do not wait too long. I promise, I mean you no harm.” She glanced over at Sebastian. “Good evening, monsieur.”
Then she swept from the room.
They listened to her light step descending the front steps. Hero’s gaze met his. “Do you trust her?”
“No,” he said, and took a long swallow of his wine.
Hero went to the window to watch the Frenchwoman climb into a waiting hackney. After a moment, she said, “Do you think she’s right, that Jarvis is behind this?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
She turned to look at him. “I think you need to talk to Hendon.”
He knew she was right. Not only was Hendon directly involved in the preliminary peace discussions, but no one knew better than Hendon what Jarvis was capable of.
That didn’t make what Sebastian was about to do any easier.
• • •
Once, Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, had been the proud father of one daughter and three strong sons.
The two older boys were his favorites, a reality the youngest child, Sebastian, accepted even as it grieved him more than he ever let anyone know. Over the years, he had sought endless explanations for his father’s harshness, for the undisguised mingling of anger and bemusement that so often pinched the Earl’s features when his gaze fell on his youngest and least satisfactory son. Was it because Sebastian was so unlike the Earl, in temperament and interests as well as in appearance? Or was it for some other reason entirely? Sebastian could never decide.
And then, one by one, Hendon’s sons died, first the eldest, Richard, and then his middle son, Cecil, leaving only the youngest, Sebastian, as the Earl’s heir. It wasn’t until Sebastian was a man grown that he’d learned the truth: that Hendon’s beautiful, laughing, golden-haired Countess had played her husband false. That Sebastian was not, in fact, the Earl’s own son, but a bastard sired by one of the Countess’s nameless, faceless lovers. As Hendon had always known.
Always.
• • •
The Earl was dozing in a chair beside the library fire in his massive Grosvenor Square town house when Sebastian came to pause in the doorway. Hendon was in his late sixties now, his body stocky and slightly stooped with age, his heavily jowled face lined and sagging, his hair almost white and beginning to thin.
Sebastian paused in the doorway, his gaze on the man he’d thought of as his father for twenty-nine years-the man the world still believed to be his father. Sebastian supposed that, in time, he would be able to forgive Hendon for all the lies of his growing-up years. But he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive the Earl for allowing those lies to drive Sebastian from the woman he’d once loved with all his heart and soul. The fact that Sebastian had found a new love in no way diminished either his anger or the hurt that fueled it. Yet as his gaze traveled over the old man’s familiar, once well-loved features, he felt an upswelling of powerful, unwanted emotions that he quickly suppressed.
He closed the door behind him with a click and watched Hendon draw in his breath in a half snore, then straighten with a jerk.
“Devlin.” The Earl swiped one thick hand over his lower face. “Didn’t hear you come in. This is. . unexpected.”
Since the two men had barely exchanged half a dozen painful, polite greetings for many months now, that was something of an understatement. Sebastian said, “I understand you’re involved with the delegation sent by Napoleon to explore the possibility of peace negotiations between our two countries.”
Hendon cleared his throat. “Heard about that, have you?”
“Yes.”
Hendon pushed to his feet and went to where his pipe and tobacco rested on a table near the hearth. “I expected you might, once you started looking into the death of that French physician-what was his name?”
“Pelletan.”
“That’s right; Pelletan.” He fussed with his pipe, filling the bowl with tobacco and tamping it down with the pad of his thumb. Then he cast Sebastian a sideways glance. “You know I can’t discuss the progress of the negotiations with you.”
“I realize that. What I’m interested in is the attitude of various individuals toward the possibility of peace. I’m told Jarvis favors continuing the war until our troops are in Paris and Napoleon is ousted from the throne.”
“I’d say that about sums it up, yes.”
“And Liverpool?”
“Ah. Well, the Prime Minister’s attitude is slightly different. He’d like to see Boney gone as much as anyone. But he’s also sensitive to the economic and political costs of the war. I suspect that if France would agree to withdraw to its original borders, Liverpool could find a way to live with the Corsican upstart. After all, Napoleon is now married to the sister of the Emperor of Austria; there’s something to be said for viewing their young child as a living union of the traditional with the modern. A reconciliation, of sorts.”
“True,” said Sebastian. He knew without being told where Hendon stood on the issue. As much as Hendon hated radicalism and republicanism, he’d been growing increasingly troubled by the toll that twenty years of war was taking on Britain and her people. “In other words, you and Liverpool are receptive to the negotiations, whereas Jarvis wants them to fail.”
“You said it; I didn’t.”
Sebastian watched the Earl light a taper and apply it to his pipe. “In my experience, Jarvis usually achieves what he wants.”
Hendon looked up, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked on his pipe, their gazes meeting through the haze of blue smoke. “Yes.”
“Any chance Jarvis could be actively working to ensure that the negotiations fail?”
“By literally butchering the members of the delegation, you mean?” Hendon sucked some more on his pipe, his eyes narrowing with thought. “Bit ghoulish, even for Jarvis, wouldn’t you say?”