Chapter 29
“The first American War ended decades ago,” said Hero as their carriage rolled through the dark, windswept, wet streets of Mayfair toward the Park Lane home of the Duchess of Claiborne.
It was the first chance they’d had to speak in private, for Sebastian had arrived back at Brook Street with barely enough time to scramble into his evening clothes.
“How could it possibly have anything to do with what’s happening today? ”
“It might not. But it is curious, don’t you think?
Of the five friends—six, if we count Emmanuel Royston-Jones—four of their fathers served in the American War.
And the sons of three of those four men are now dead.
I’ve sent a note to Lovejoy, asking him to look into the fathers’ service records.
But that will only tell us where they were and when; it won’t necessarily tell us if there’s something ugly in their pasts besides Waxhaw Creek. Something that might lead to murder.”
“But it’s been thirty-five years since Yorktown. Who would wait thirty-five years for revenge?”
“Someone who has only recently learned a painful truth about the events of those years, perhaps? Or…”
“Or?”
“Or someone who is only now in a position to exact their revenge.”
“Such as someone who has been fighting in the French wars and recently returned home?” said Hero as their coachman reined in the horses to join the long line of carriages waiting to disgorge their passengers in Park Lane. “Or someone from America who has finally been able to reach Britain?”
“It makes a certain amount of sense, doesn’t it?”
Hero met his gaze, her features solemn. “Yes. Yes, it does.”
“Amazing,” said the Dowager Duchess of Claiborne, greeting them at the door in a splendid gown of mauve silk, with three snow-white plumes nodding from her towering turban and the famous Claiborne diamonds glittering around her neck. “You came.”
“Of course we came,” said Hero, bending slightly to kiss the Duchess’s rouged cheeks.
“Did you think we wouldn’t?” said Sebastian.
“Yes,” his aunt said baldly.
Sebastian laughed softly as he let his gaze rove over the hundreds of silk-and-jewel-bedecked aristocrats crowding Her Grace’s reception rooms. A rout was something less than a ball but considerably grander than a mere card party, although there could be dancing later, and a room was often set aside for those who preferred cards to music and chatter.
Basically it was a place to see and be seen, and the Duchess of Claiborne’s routs were always so crowded as to be labeled a “crush” by those lucky enough to be invited.
Many would be eagerly scanning the write-up in tomorrow’s Morning Chronicle in the hopes of finding that their names had been mentioned.
“Heaven preserve us,” said the Duchess, watching him. “I knew it. Who are you looking for?”
“Lord Bridgewood. Is he here yet?”
“As it happens, he is. He arrived perhaps twenty minutes ago with Sidmouth and Jarvis. And if you provoke a scene in the middle of my party, I swear I’ll never forgive you. Do you hear me, Devlin?”
“I won’t. I promise.”
But the dowager simply huffed something under her breath and turned away to greet her next guest.
“It’s interesting Aunt Henrietta thinks you might cause a scene in the middle of her rout,” said Hero as they worked their way through the clumps of laughing, tipsy women in wispy silks and satins and sweating men in formal evening dress. “Have you provoked a brawl at one of her parties before?”
“Not that I recall,” said Sebastian. He could see the Baron now, on the far side of the Duchess’s vast front drawing room, deep in conversation with Lord Jarvis. Then Bridgewood turned and began to weave his way through the shimmering, candlelit crowd, toward the rear of the house.
“Is his lordship avoiding you, do you think?” said Hero, watching him.
“Perhaps,” said Sebastian as Bridgewood disappeared into the room in which the Duchess had set out an array of drinks and delicacies to help sustain her guests until supper. “Or perhaps he’s simply hungry.”
Bridgewood was standing beside a table groaning beneath an array of everything from prawns and buttered crab to cakes, jellies, and ices, all artfully arranged on overflowing silver trays or in cut glass bowls that glittered and gleamed in the flickering light of three massive branches of beeswax candles.
He had a half-filled plate in one hand and was stuffing a fat prawn into his mouth when Sebastian walked up to him.
“Lord Bridgewood,” said Sebastian. “Do you have a moment?”
The older man swallowed. He was not smiling. “Toole warned me that you’ve been looking for me. What the blazes do you think you’re about, bothering the man? He’s just lost his only son, for God’s sake.”
“As it happens, Sir Samuel approached me,” said Sebastian, aware of an obvious, pronounced shift from the Baron’s earlier, pleasant manner toward him. “I was wondering if you were with General Keebles at the Battle of Cowpens.”
Bridgewood’s frown deepened. “I was not. Why?”
“What about Waxhaw Creek? You were there, weren’t you? And at Yorktown. Were Toole and Upcott there as well?”
Bridgewood’s face darkened. “Listen here, Devlin: If this is about the murder of my son’s friends, I consider it in damnably poor taste for you to be haranguing me about it in the middle of a bloody rout.”
Sebastian studied the older man’s flushed, angry face and tightened jaw. “You think I’m haranguing you? By asking if you saw service with the fathers of the men killed?”
“I do, yes.”
“So it has occurred to you that there might be a link between something that happened thirty-five years ago in the colonies and what’s happening here in London now?”
“No, damn your eyes.”
“Do you know who wrote that anonymous letter to the Morning Chronicle blaming Keebles for the disasters at Yorktown and Cowpens?”
“How the devil would I know that?”
“I thought you might…if you were there.”
“I told you, I wasn’t at Cowpens,” said the Baron.
“I know what you’re doing. You think you can distract attention from the investigation of that damned Radical fencing master.
Well, let me tell you right now, it’s not going to work.
” He slammed his plate down on the table at his side and stalked off toward the entry hall.
A moment later, over the roar of aristocratic voices, Sebastian heard the Duchess say, “Leaving us already, Lord Bridgewood? What a pity.”
It was when Sebastian was working his way back toward Hero that his father-in-law found him.
“What the devil do you think you’re about?” demanded Jarvis without preamble, his voice low and icy. “Delving into events thirty-five and more years in the past!”
Sebastian studied the powerful man’s narrowed eyes and hard face. “Well, that was fast. Know something about it, do you?”
But Jarvis simply shook his head, his face giving nothing away. “War is ugly. It always has been and always will be. In the heat of the moment, men get carried away by their passions. Things happen.”
Sebastian snagged a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and forced himself to take a long, slow swallow before answering. “You think you need to tell me that, do you?”
“Given your own military service, one assumes it shouldn’t be necessary.”
“It isn’t. But if the things Lord Bridgewood and his friends did thirty-five years ago are the reason their sons are dying today, then I’d say someone obviously doesn’t agree with your opinion that war excuses any and all atrocities.”
Jarvis pitched his voice even lower. “You’re mad. You hear me? Gilbert Keebles, Marcus Toole, and Phineas Upcott are victims of the same Radicals who would tear our nation apart and kill us all if we let them. And if you weren’t so blinded by your own prejudices, you’d see that.”
“My prejudices?”
“That’s right. Don’t play stupid with me. I’m well aware of your friendship with a certain Jamaican swordsman. You’ve been seen meeting with him twice now.”
“My, my, aren’t your minions efficient? Watching Pitcairn as well as Kate Price and poverty-stricken staymakers, are we?”
“Of course we’re watching them. They’re Spenceans, in case you didn’t know.”
“Oh, I know,” said Sebastian, taking another sip of his champagne.
Jarvis’s normally iron composure was beginning to slip. “Consort with revolutionaries if you must,” he hissed. “But you keep my daughter out of this. Do I make myself clear?”
Sebastian studied his father-in-law’s angry, flushed face. “Up to something, are you?”
Rather than answer, Jarvis simply grunted and started to turn away.
“Tell me this,” said Sebastian, stopping him. “Do you actually know something that might explain these murders?”
“As it happens, I do not. But anything that agitates the populace to this extent is a damnable nuisance. It’s past time Bow Street found someone to hang.”
“And if they hang the wrong man and the murders continue?”
“Then they’ll simply need to find someone else to hang, won’t they? Lord knows we’ve plenty of scoundrels in want of hanging—and that includes a certain seditious violinist of your acquaintance.”
“You think Papa knows what’s behind these killings?” said Hero later as they settled in their carriage and headed for home.
“He claims he does not. But then, we both know Jarvis’s attitude toward truth telling. And the fact that he felt moved to warn me to back off suggests that something happened in the colonies all those years ago. Something he’d rather keep buried.”
“Do you think Lady Keebles would know?”
“She might, although I doubt it. And even if she does, I can’t see her admitting to anything that might tarnish the General’s famous legacy.
But Keebles had a brother who made something of a name for himself as a barrister in the City, and from what I’m hearing, he and the General never got along.
He might be willing to talk about it…assuming he’s still alive. ”
Hero was silent for a moment, watching the flickering light from the passing gas lamps catch the raindrops chasing each other down the windowpane beside her.
“Think about this,” she said. “Anyone old enough to have been a victim of General Keebles and company in the American War would need to be at least forty-five or fifty today, if not more. Do you think it’s possible someone of that age has suddenly decided go on a killing spree—and somehow managed to single-handedly overpower three strong young men and a healthy young woman? ”
“We don’t know that whoever the fathers victimized is the same as the person now seeking revenge. What if the murderer is their victim’s son? It could even be someone who wasn’t born thirty-five years ago.”
Hero turned her head to look at him. “You’re thinking it’s Pitcairn, aren’t you?”
Sebastian met her gaze and nodded. “Or someone like him.”