“I wouldn’t think you’d care.”
“Do you know how many mollies have been beaten to death by London mobs?”
“No. But I would imagine it’s a fair number.”
“It is.”
Sebastian watched the mist drift between the dark trunks of the trees. He could smell the damp grass and the wet stones of the walk and the spilled blood of the murdered man. “If you’re not going to tell me who you think did this, then why the bloody hell did you have the magistrates alert me to what happened?”
An unexpected smile flashed across the molly’s somber features. “It was amazing the effect your name had on the local constabulary. One minute they were all set to hustle me off to the nearest roundhouse. Then I chanced to utter your name, and it was like a magic talisman. I’d tried asking them to contact Provence, but they seemed to find it difficult to believe that the uncrowned King of France would consort with one of my kind.” She paused. “You obviously consort with all kinds.”
Sebastian suspected chance had nothing to do with it. But he simply rose and said, “I suggest you avoid dark parks and arcades for a while-or else, if you must, carry a muff gun and keep your wits about you. If you should suddenly think of someone with an interest in doing away with you, you know where to find me.”
He was turning toward Sir Henry when he recalled something Lady Giselle had said to him the previous night, at the Duchess of Claiborne’s soiree. He paused. “What can you tell me about the ‘Dark Countess’?”
Serena leaned back against the bench’s rails. “Good God; what has she to do with anything?”
“I have no idea. Who is she?”
“No one knows, actually. That’s one of the reasons why she’s called the ‘Dark Countess.’ She lives in a castle in Thuringia and has never been seen in daylight-only glimpsed in the shadowy interiors of carriages. When she walks the castle’s grounds, she is always veiled, and she dresses only in black-black gown, black gloves, black veil. She has a man with her-a count, although they say he is neither her husband nor her lover. Speculation has it that he may be a courtier. Or her keeper.”
“Her keeper?”
“Mmm. Those who serve her are kept carefully guarded. But rumors have naturally circulated. They say she’s in her mid-thirties and is as blond and blue-eyed as our own dear Marie-Therese was as a child. Oh, and she has a fondness for the fleur-de-lis.”
The stylized lily or iris had been associated with the royal family of France for a thousand years. Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. Only that one can understand how certain speculation might have arisen. The journey of Marie-Therese from Paris to Vienna in 1795 was cloaked in secrecy, as were her years in the Temple. Some believe she was raped while in prison, that she was pregnant when released by the revolutionaries and had to be hidden away. Others suggest that her experiences overturned the balance of her mind, so that after her release she was either unable or unwilling to take up the kind of prominent role required of the only surviving child of the martyred King and Queen of France.”
“The theory being that an imposter was put in her place, while the real Marie-Therese lives out her life in seclusion in a castle in Germany?”
“That is the theory, yes. Although anyone with any sense knows that it is pure myth.”
“Why is that?”
Ambrose LaChapelle met his gaze. “Because anyone undertaking to arrange such a dangerous substitution would be certain to select an imposter with a strong mental fortitude and unshakable balance. Whereas the Marie-Therese the world has seen these past eighteen years. .” He shrugged and shook his head, as if unwilling to put the rest of his thoughts into words.
“Is she mad?” Sebastian asked quietly.
The courtier thrust the splayed fingers of one hand through his hair in a typically masculine gesture. “She is damaged. No one can deny that. You’ve noticed her voice? They like to say it is the result of her refusal to speak to her jailors-that she found it difficult to make sounds once she finally began to speak again. Yet she also likes to boast of her proud responses to the revolutionaries’ taunts and questions, and she frequently recites her rosary aloud.”
“So what did happen to her voice?”
“I have heard that severe emotional trauma can permanently affect one’s vocal cords, although there are also those who suggest she screamed so long and so loud that it damaged her voice.”
“Was she raped in prison?”
“If she was, she would never admit it. But when one thinks of what was done to her brother. .” Again, that silent, suggestive lifting of the shoulders. “I’ve heard her say she used to sit up all night, dressed, in a chair because she was afraid to undress and go to bed. Why do that unless something had happened to make her afraid? Can you really imagine that the men who did such vile things to the boy Prince would spare the Princess? An attractive but despised young woman, alone and utterly in their power?”
Sebastian shifted his gaze to the gravel carriageway. The men from the nearest deadhouse had arrived and were shifting the jeweler’s body onto their shell. He watched them lift the burden between them with a grunt.
A new explanation for Damion Pelletan’s murder, and for the attempted murder of his sister, was beginning to take shape in his imagination. He said, “The man who killed your friend. . what did he look like?”
The courtier frowned with the effort of thought. “I didn’t see him well-he wore a greatcoat and scarf, with his hat pulled low over his forehead. All I can say with any certainty is that he was dark-haired and roughly your height, only slightly stockier.”
The description matched that of the man who had attacked Sebastian at Stoke Mandeville and again in York Street, although he had no doubt it also matched any number of other men in London. “He didn’t say anything?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Did you notice his eyes?”
“His eyes? No. Why?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I’ll ask you one more time: Who would have reason to kill you?”
But Serena simply stared off across the park, as if looking for the answer in the mists that swirled among the winter-bared trees.
Chapter 45
Thursday, 28 January
The next morning, Sebastian was easing on his Hessians when Calhoun said, “You know how you asked me to look further into Sampson Bullock, my lord?”
Sebastian glanced over at his valet. “Discovered something interesting, did you?”
“You were right, my lord: Bullock spent six years in the Ninth Foot. He came back to London when his unit was reduced in 1802, after the Peace of Amiens.”
“In other words,” said Sebastian, stomping his foot into his boot, “he knows more about gunpowder than your average cabinetmaker.”
“Considerably more, I should think. He was in the artillery.”
• • •
Sampson Bullock was flooding a new tabletop with boiled linseed oil when Sebastian walked up to him. The fog was still so thick that a deep gloom filled the shop, and the cabinetmaker had lit the lantern suspended over his work. The air was heavy with the smell of warm oil and freshly shaved wood and rank male sweat.
Sebastian stood for a moment, arms crossed at his chest, and watched the cabinetmaker turn the pale raw wood a deep, rich brown as the oil soaked into the surface. Bullock glanced up at him, then dipped his cloth into the tin of oil and went back to rubbing the piece.
“Wot ye want from me?” he demanded after a moment. “I got nothin’ t’ say t’ ye.”
“I understand you were in the Ninth Foot. The artillery, to be precise.”
“Aye. Wot of it?”
“I would imagine you know a fair bit about gunpowder, don’t you?”
Bullock kept his gaze on his work, although Sebastian noticed his movements had become slower, more deliberate. “Suppose I do? Wot of it?”