Chapter 27 #2
She absorbed this with the stillness of a woman who had received bad news before and knew that flinching accomplished nothing.
“The investigation. Where does it stand?”
I gave her a precise summary. The consortium behind Hale's shipping enterprise had been trafficking arms through Belgian channels to East Africa—lawful in itself, but with consequences that had reached well beyond what the law contemplated.
Sir Nigel Davenport, the man who had managed the consortium's investments, dead—his body found in a hansom cab with a blade in his chest at Victoria Station.
Financial records partially recovered but incomplete, the most recent six months destroyed.
The investigation pursuing leads that would, we hoped, lead us to the unidentified killer.
“And my son’s connection to Hale’s household?”
“Personal, ma’am. Not connected to the consortium’s activities.”
A pause. She did not elaborate on the nature of the personal connection. Neither did I. We understood each other.
“You are certain?”
I was not certain. I had no evidence linking the Prince to the arms trafficking—but neither had I been able to examine the full scope of the consortium’s records, and the six months of destroyed documents remained an open question.
What I had was the absence of evidence, which was not the same thing as evidence of absence.
But the Queen did not want qualifications. She wanted reassurance.
“I have found nothing to suggest otherwise, ma’am.”
This was true. It was also carefully worded, and I suspected she recognized as much. But she chose to accept it, which told me how badly she needed it to be so.
“The personal matter must not become public,” she said. “I will not have my son’s name dragged through the newspapers in connection with a murdered arms dealer and his widow. The damage to the Crown would be incalculable.”
“I understand, ma’am.”
“Then resolve it. Find the killer. Conclude the investigation. And ensure that whatever is personal remains so.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She was silent for a moment, and I thought the audience had concluded. But Victoria had not held the throne for half a century by leaving questions unasked.
"And Lady Rosalynd." It was not a question. It was an opening, precisely placed, and she watched me the way a chess player watches an opponent who has not yet seen the threat on the board.
"She has been invaluable to the investigation, ma'am."
"I am aware of her value. I would not have involved her otherwise." A pause, deliberate and measured. "That is not what I am asking."
The silence that followed was the kind only a queen could create—the kind that demanded filling whilst making it perfectly clear that anything used to fill it would be weighed, measured, and found either true or wanting.
"Lady Rosalynd is a remarkable woman, ma'am."
"That is not an answer, Steele."
"No, ma'am. It is not."
She regarded me with an expression I could not entirely read—part assessment, part something older and less easily named. She had loved once, deeply and completely, and lost that love to typhoid fever in a castle not unlike this one. Whatever she saw in my careful evasion, she recognized it.
"The Rosehaven family is an old one," she said. "And the girl has sense. That is rarer than you might imagine." She adjusted the black silk at her wrist—a small, habitual gesture. "Do not make a mess of it."
Whether she meant the investigation or something else entirely, she did not clarify. And I did not ask.
She regarded me for a long moment. Then something in her expression shifted—not softened, precisely, but eased. The sovereign giving way, for an instant, to the woman.
“You look tired, Steele.”
“It has been a long fortnight, ma’am.”
“Then conclude it. Before this becomes a long month.” She waved a hand—small, imperious, final.
"If I may, ma'am. Before I withdraw, there is one matter I would put before you."
She had been on the point of dismissing me with a second wave of her hand. The hand stilled.
"Subjects do not put matters before their sovereign, Steele. They are summoned. They answer. They obey."
"I would not presume on my own account, ma'am. The request is not for myself."
A beat. "Then on whose behalf?"
"The public's."
She studied me with the still, weighing attention of a woman who had heard every variety of petition and refused most of them. I held her gaze. At length, she inclined her head a fraction.
"Speak. Briefly."
I set out the matter as I had carefully prepared it—pared to its essentials, framed in the language she would recognize as her own concern, requiring the Crown's hand to set in motion. She heard me out without interruption, and without expression. When I had finished, she was quiet a long moment.
"We shall consider it," she said. Nothing more.
Having obtained as much as I could, I bowed and withdrew. Behind me, the door to the Oak Drawing Room closed with a sound that carried, in its quiet finality, the full weight of what I had just promised.
Find the killer. Bury the scandal. Protect the Crown.
The quid pro quo I’d asked in return was to be considered. Whether it was approved or rejected, I would learn in time.
I walked out of Windsor Castle into the fading afternoon light. I did not look back.