“Claire,” she said to the Frenchwoman who was folding clothes into a chest in the small room off the nursery. “Do you see that man-there, near the cart? Do you know who he is?”
Claire Bisette came to stand beside her, a chemise held in her hands. “No. I’ve never seen him before. Why?”
But Hero simply shook her head, unwilling to admit to a sense of foreboding for which she had no real basis.
Leaving the nursery, she sent word to the stables to have her barouche brought around, then changed into a carriage dress of green gros de Naples with a vandyked shoulder cape trimmed in black. By the time she left the house, an icy wind had kicked up, the lamplighter and his boy hurrying to touch flame to the last of the oil lamps that stretched in a line toward Grosvenor Square.
They caught her eye as the footman was handing her up into her carriage. And for a moment, she saw the man again, tall and dark, with long black hair and a scar across one cheek, standing near the corner of Davies Street.
Then he drew back, the wind fluttering a torn page of newspaper in the gutter and bringing her the scent of the coming rain.
Chapter 56
By the time Sebastian reached the French chapel on Little George Street, a fine cold rain had begun to fall from out of a heavy black sky.
He paused in the shadows cast by the jutting angle of the nearby stables. The night smelled of wet pavement and fresh horse droppings and hot oil from a distant streetlamp flickering in the wind. A faint light spilled from the church facade’s three high windows and from the carriage lanterns of the lone barouche drawn up before the chapel portal; a coachman wearing the livery of the Comte d’Artois dozed on the carriage’s high seat. But otherwise, the narrow street lay dark and deserted beneath the coming storm.
Settling his hat low against the rain, Sebastian gently tried the front doors of the chapel. They were locked. He glanced again at the sleeping coachman, then slipped around the side of the chapel to the narrow passage that led to the sacristy door. The rain was falling harder now, sharp, needlelike drops with the sting of sleet. He’d almost reached the short flight of steps when he heard the stealthy footsteps of someone entering the passage behind him.
Sebastian whipped around.
A young man dressed in an unbuttoned greatcoat and a top hat drew up abruptly with a faint, nervous laugh. He looked to be perhaps twenty-five years of age, his features unremarkable except for a pair of large dark eyes as thickly lashed as a girl’s.
“The Chevalier d’Armitz, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“You were being very quiet,” said Sebastian. “You weren’t by chance trying to sneak up on me, were you?”
“Now, why would I want to do that?” The Frenchman held his left arm straight down at his side, his hand half-hidden by the folds of his coat. In the deep shadows of the passage, he must have been confident that no man could possibly see the dagger clenched in his fist. “Just thought you ought to know that the church is closed.”
“I see candlelight.”
The Chevalier advanced one step, then another. “It’s a private ceremony.”
“Oh? And what sort of ceremony might that be?”
“A funeral.”
“Yet there is no hearse.”
“The body has already been buried elsewhere.” The rain drummed around them. The Chevalier kept coming, the knife held out of sight, his features composed in an affable expression as if they were engaged in a pleasant conversation. “It’s the practice amongst certain emigre families to preserve a loved one’s heart separate from the body. The urns are kept in a vault here, in the chapel, for the day when they may be returned to France.”
“In this case, to the Val-de-Grace?”
“As it happens, yes.” He drew up perhaps four feet from Sebastian, his smile slowly fading into something intense. “You are a difficult man to kill, Monsieur le Vicomte.”
“Yet you keep trying.”
“The odds are better this time, I think.”
“Oh? Because you have a knife in your hand and I don’t?”
A faint cloud of surprise followed by uncertainty drifted across the Chevalier’s face, then cleared. “I’ve heard you have the eyes and ears of a cat. I never credited it, myself.”
“Your mistake.”
He shook his head. “I think it’s an image you cultivate.”
“I’ve heard you have a fondness for stabbing men in the back. Literally. Yet my back is not turned.”
“I’m adaptable,” said the Chevalier. Still smiling, he lunged forward, the knife flashing up toward Sebastian’s heart.
Sebastian pivoted to grab the Chevalier’s outthrust arm with one hand while grasping his fist with the other. Gritting his teeth, Sebastian twisted the fist hard, the knife handle giving him leverage. He saw the flash of shock in d’Armitz’s face as the Frenchman realized just how badly he had miscalculated.
The knife slid from the Chevalier’s helplessly limp hand into Sebastian’s own. Yanking up the Frenchman’s arm, Sebastian drove the blade straight into his heart.
“But. .,” sputtered the Chevalier, eyes widening as he smacked into a reality he could not finesse, an opponent he could not cheat, a fate he could not elude. Then fury replaced astonishment, an indignant rage made all the more acute by the realization that his luck had finally run out.
“Not quite as adaptable as you thought,” said Sebastian, wrenching the blade free.
The rain poured around them, wetting the Frenchman’s upturned face and mingling with the blood soaking his white waistcoat. The light of comprehension was already fading from his eyes. Yet the rage remained, like a fiery hot coal doomed to extinction in an unforgiving darkness.
• • •
The door to the sacristy opened soundlessly to Sebastian’s touch. The space beyond was small and untidy, the air thick with the smell of dampness and stale incense and a musty odor often associated with old men’s clothes. A narrow band of flickering candlelight spilled into the dark room through the door to the chapel itself, which stood slightly ajar.
Sebastian paused in the shadows. From here, he could see most of the two rows of empty benches and the wooden west gallery built above the main entrance. The church appeared deserted except for the old priest, clothed in his white alb with the gold-embroidered black stole draped around his neck. He stood before one of the wall-mounted monuments, open now to reveal a shallow niche containing a row of urns. He had his hands raised, the low drone of his voice echoing through the stillness.
“Requiem?ternam dona ei, Domine.”
Sebastian heard a rustle of cloth, a light step, and Lady Giselle Edmondson moved into his line of vision. She wore a high-waisted gown of black cashmere scalloped and edged with crepe. A black lace veil draped her head, the delicate folds accentuating the fair luster of her hair without hiding her face. In her hands she held a clear rock crystal urn mounted with two silver handles and a silver lid and base. Within lay a red-brown heart he suspected had once belonged to Damion Pelletan.
“Et lux perpetua luceat ei. .”
She stood with her head bowed, her eyes closed, her beautiful features composed into a study of intense concentration and reverence as the words of the priest washed over her.
“Requiescat in pace. .”
Sebastian shifted so that his view took in the rest of the chapel. He half expected to find Marie-Therese here, as well. But the church was utterly empty except for the aged priest and Lady Giselle.