“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
She shook her head, although whether it was to refute his statement or to deny her need for safety, he couldn’t have said. “Peter. .” She swallowed. “He never beat me like this before. Not this bad. In the past, he was always careful to hurt me where it wouldn’t show. But this time. . I thought he was going to kill me.”
“What set him off? Do you have any idea?”
“He was out drinking most of the night and came home in a rage. He’s badly dipped, you see, and his brother is refusing to pay his debts. The last time the Duke rescued him from dun territory, he swore he’d never do it again. I knew he meant it, but Peter refused to believe it. Now he’s getting desperate. He ran through everything I brought to the marriage years ago, and he wants to get his hands on what my father left for Noel. I told him I wouldn’t help him do it-that I’d rather die. That’s when he started hitting me.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “He called me. . such names. Said he had put up with my bastard all these years, that the least I could do was help him now, when he needed it.”
“He knows Noel is your son?”
She nodded, the tears sliding freely down her cheeks. “I never deceived him.”
“Did you tell him Damion Pelletan was the boy’s father?”
“No. But I think he might have guessed.” Her fingers picked at the lace trimming of the sheets. “When Damion first begged me to go away with him, I told him I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but I’d made a vow and I believed I owed it to Peter to honor it. But then. .”
Her voice faded away. Sebastian waited, and after a moment she swallowed and started up again. “Last Wednesday, Noel left one of his boats lying in the entry hall. Peter tripped over it, and he turned around and backhanded Noel so hard he made his nose bleed. I couldn’t believe it. Peter had never hit him before. But that’s how it started with me; one day he lost his temper and slapped me across the face. He swore he’d never do it again. But he did. So I knew. . I knew it would be the same all over again with Noel. That’s when I realized I had to leave-with or without Damion.”
“So you told Damion you’d go with him when he left for France?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible Lord Peter discovered what you were planning?”
“I don’t know.” Her face crumpled with the force of her sobs, splitting open the cut on her lip so that it began to bleed again. “He may have. Oh, God. Has this all been my fault? Did Damion die because of me?”
Sebastian knew most people in their society would blame her, whether Damion died because of her or not. She had borne a child out of wedlock, then conspired to leave her noble husband for her former lover.
But he could not find it within him to either judge or condemn her for the tangle her life had become. She had been young and vulnerable when she gave in to her passion and the enchantment of love, and unwisely created a child. Torn from the future that might have been hers, she was forced by her parents and the dictates of their society’s stern, unforgiving sense of propriety to disown her own child and marry a man who agreed to give her a veneer of respectability in exchange for her father’s wealth. It was a contract she entered into in good faith, determined to honor the vows she made to a man whose easy geniality and practiced charm hid an angry, self-indulgent, and ultimately abusive petulance.
He said, “Lord Peter claims he was home with you the night Damion was killed. Was he?”
She shook her head from side to side against the pillow. “No. He was supposed to meet Brummell and Alvanley at White’s for dinner that night, but he never showed up. He said he spent the night drinking in some low tavern in Westminster and ended up getting into a brawl there. When he came home early the next morning, his clothes were covered in blood.”
“Was he hurt?”
“No. I think his knuckles may have been skinned, but that was all.”
“Where is he now?”
“I left him sleeping.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath. “I’ve made such a mess of things. What am I to do?”
Reaching out, Sebastian laid his hand over hers where it rested on the counterpane. “Right now, all you need to do is rest and get better.”
“Noel-”
“Is petting our cranky black cat in the drawing room. He’ll be fine.”
“I should see him-”
“I’ll have him come in after you’ve had some sleep.”
Her hand trembled beneath his, then lay still. And it occurred to him as he watched her eyes close and her breathing deepen with sleep that whoever had killed Damion Pelletan hadn’t only robbed a caring young physician of his life.
They’d also deprived a little boy of his father and a lonely young woman of the chance to reach again for the gentle love and happiness that had been snatched from her so long ago.
Chapter 52
Before he rang the bell of Lord Peter Radcliff’s town house in Half Moon Street, Sebastian loosened his cravat, tousled his hair, and splashed his face with some of the contents of the brandy bottle he held. Then he leaned one elbow against the doorframe, affected a slightly befuddled smile, and waited.
Radcliff’s butler was a small, slim man with a mouthful of large, crooked teeth and a long, sharp nose. He gazed at Sebastian with watery gray eyes and sniffed.
“Ah, there you are,” said Sebastian, staggering slightly as he straightened. “I’m here for Radcliff.”
The butler sniffed again. “I’m afraid Lord Peter is not presently at home to visitors.”
“Still abed, is he?” Smiling cheerfully, Sebastian pushed past the startled butler and crossed the entrance hall toward the stairs. “That’s quite all right. He won’t mind me waking him.”
“But- My lord! You can’t do that!”
Sebastian took the steps two at a time. “Not to worry. I can guarantee he’ll be delighted to see me.” Pausing halfway up the stairs, Sebastian swung around to hold the bottle aloft as if it were a rare prize. “What you see here is some of the best brandy never to pay a penny of tax into the coffers of good ole King George.” He pressed one finger to his pursed lips and winked. “But shhh; mum’s the word, eh?”
“My lord, please!”
“That will be all,” called Sebastian gaily, running up the rest of the stairs.
At the top of the second flight, he threw open the doors of two rooms before finding the right one. The chamber lay in darkness, the heavy drapes at the windows closed tight to exclude all light. The space was large and square, furnished with a high tester and delicate Adams chests, its pastel-hued walls accented with beribboned moldings picked out in cream. The air reeked of stale sweat and despair and the alcohol-tinged exhalations of the man who snored loudly from the depths of the bed.
Sebastian closed the door behind him and locked it, then crossed the room to do the same to the door leading to the dressing room.
The man in the bed did not stir.
Radcliff’s clothes lay scattered across the floor where he had obviously discarded them on his wobbly path to the bed. First the cravat, then a meticulously tailored coat dropped on the floor with its sleeves inside out. Sebastian saw a waistcoat, its crumpled, white silk front splattered with dried blood, and he felt a surge of rage that was like a hum in his ears.
It was Julia’s blood.
The bottle still gripped in one fist, he went to stand beside Lord Peter.
Sprawled on his back in a tangle of sheets, he had one bare leg dangling off the edge of the bed, his nightshirt rucked up around his hips. He lay with his face turned to one side, his golden hair plastered to his forehead with dried sweat, his lips pursed so that his breath whistled softly on its way out.
Sebastian stared down at him for a moment, then crossed to the window and yanked open the drapes.
The cold light of midmorning flooded the room. Lord Peter gave a strangled half snore, then resumed his previous cadence.
Setting aside the bottle, Sebastian fisted both hands in the frilled front of the man’s nightshirt. “Come on; up with you, then,” he said as he hauled the drunken man’s limp body out of the bed and swung him around to slam his back against the carved wooden post of the bed with enough force to rattle the frame.
“Wha-?” Radcliff wavered, his eyes fluttering open, his mouth foolishly agape as his legs crumpled and he slid down against the side of the bed.
Closing one hand around the brandy bottle’s neck, Sebastian smashed it against the carved bedpost, raining down brandy and broken glass on the drunken man’s head and shoulders.
Radcliff shook his head like a dog coming in out of a storm. “What the devil?”
Crouching low, Sebastian grabbed another fistful of Radcliff’s nightshirt with one hand and pressed the sharp edge of the broken bottle up under the man’s chin. “Give me one good excuse to slit your throat,” he said, enunciating each word with awful clarity, “and believe me, I will. I’ve just had a surgeon to tend your wife’s injuries. It’s no thanks to you she’s not dead.”
“Julia? Wha’d the bitch say? If she told you-”
Radcliff let out a yelp as Sebastian increased the pressure on the sharp edge held against his throat.
“Don’t. Don’t ever let me hear you use a word like that to describe your wife again. Do I make myself understood? I have no mercy for a man like you. There’s a special place in hell for a man who uses his fists on his own wife, and I’ll be more than happy to send you there.”
Lord Peter stared up at him with bulging eyes. He might not be entirely sober, but he was now wide-awake. “You’re mad.”
“I may well be. I’m beginning to suspect that we all are, each in our own way.”
“You can’t come in here, threatening me, acting like I’m some-”
Sebastian shifted his weight in a way that made Lord Peter break off and draw a quick, shallow breath.
Sebastian said, “In case you haven’t noticed, I am already here. Where you made your mistake was in lying to me. You told me you spent last Thursday night at home with your wife. You didn’t. You got into a row with her. You were angry about her renewed acquaintance with an old childhood friend-”
“He wasn’t simply some ‘old friend’! He was her lover.”
“Nine years ago. Not now.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Yes. And I believe her.” Sebastian let his gaze drift over the other man’s face, slick with sweat and slack now with the aftereffects of too much alcohol and too little sleep. “Is that why you followed Pelletan to St. Katharine’s and stuck a knife in his back?”
“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t. I won’t deny I was angry; what man wouldn’t be? I even went to the inn where the bastard was staying. I was going to tell him that Julia is my wife and he’d better stay the hell away from her. But I didn’t even do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because when I got there, he was standing on the footpath outside the inn, talking to Lady Giselle.”
Sebastian stared at him. “Are you telling me you saw Damion Pelletan talking with Lady Giselle Edmondson?”
Radcliff looked puzzled by Sebastian’s vehemence. “That’s right. Why?”
“How do you know the woman you saw was Lady Giselle?”
“Because I recognized her. How do you think? She was wearing a hat with a veil, but she’d pushed back the veil and the light from the oil lamp beside the door was falling full on her face.”
“Did you hear anything of what was said?”
“No; of course not. What the bloody hell do you think I am? I don’t go around eavesdropping on other people’s private conversations.”
“Was there a man with her?”
“There was, but I couldn’t tell you who. He stayed in the background.”
“So then what happened?”
“I don’t know. I left.”
“You left? Why?”
“At first I’d planned to wait in the shadows until she went away, and then confront him. But the longer I stood there, the more I realized that would be a mistake.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Because I’m not a killer, whatever you may think. And I realized that if I approached him then, in the rage I was in, I might very well murder him. So I left. I won’t say I’m sorry the bastard is dead because I’m not. But he didn’t die at my hand.”
“Where did you go after you left York Street?”
“I don’t know. I wandered the streets for a while-I couldn’t say for how long. I ended up in a low tavern someplace in Westminster. At one point I got into a brawl with a drunk who drew my cork. Then I spent what was left of the night in a back room with a whore I wouldn’t even recognize if I saw her again.”
Sebastian studied Lord Peter’s haggard face. He’d said he had no mercy for men like Radcliff, but that wasn’t exactly true. If not mercy, then he at least acknowledged a measure of pity even though he knew it was probably misplaced. In his own way, Lord Peter was a victim. A victim of a society that valued show above substance, birth above real worth. A victim of a hereditary system that brought up younger sons in an indulgent, pampered atmosphere even as it tormented them with the knowledge that the vast estates and palatial homes they’d enjoyed as children would never be theirs. And he was a victim of his own weakness, the recognition of which led him to strike out in anger and frustration at his wife when what he really wanted more than anything else was to be admired and indulged and loved.
Sebastian said, “Listen to me carefully because I’m going to say this only once. Your wife is going to leave you, and you are going to let her.”
“What? You’ve no right to-”
Radcliff made a strangling sound as Sebastian subtly shifted the broken edge of the bottle against his throat.
“If your debts are as pressing as I suspect they are, you might consider fleeing the country. I hear America is a good place for people looking to start over.”
Radcliff’s face contorted with revulsion. “America?”
“Frankly, I couldn’t care less where you go. But you will make no attempt to contact your wife or her son again. And if I ever hear of you laying a hand on her, I’ll kill you. It’s that simple. Do I make myself clear?”
“What does it matter to you, what happens to her?”
“It matters,” said Sebastian, and let him go.
Sebastian walked back down the stairs and out of the house, only dimly aware of the butler, two housemaids, and a footman peering at him wide-eyed from around the doorframes as he passed.
Outside, the air smelled of coal smoke and the coming rain. He paused on the footpath, his gaze on the jumble of rooftops and chimney stacks that jutted up dark against a gray sky. Was Radcliff lying? Sebastian doubted it. Men like Radcliff were basically cowards; they beat their wives because it gave them a sense of power and control so sorely lacking in other aspects of their lives. Sebastian couldn’t see a man like that somehow finding the courage to stalk a rival through the cold, dark alleys of St. Katharine’s and then cut out his heart in some twisted ritual of symbolism and revenge.
But what occupied Sebastian’s thoughts as he turned toward the home of the Comte d’Artois in South Audley Street was the vital piece of information Lord Peter had unknowingly provided. Sebastian had believed that Marie-Therese and Lady Giselle passed the night of Damion Pelletan’s murder closeted together in prayer for the martyred King Louis XVI. He’d thought their role in Pelletan’s death-if it existed at all-had been limited to directing their minions from afar.
Now he wasn’t so sure.