“Er, yes. Of course. That’s Mr. Gage. But I’m not certain I know any counts. Do you by chance mean Mr. Stuart?”
She nodded her head, her feathers bobbing. “One of his many eccentricities. The man has several titles, has gone by many names, and yet now he most often chooses to be addressed as a simple mister. I suppose out of respect for his grandfather.” She leaned closer, flapping her fan in front of her so that the feathers waved in the breeze it created, and her musky French perfume wafted under my nose. “You know, of course, that his grandfather was Bonnie Prince Charlie himself.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” I replied carefully.
“Oh, I assure you, it’s not just a rumor.”
I met her gaze. “What do you mean?”
Her fan snapped shut. “My dear, I’m well acquainted with the family. His grandmother acted as chaperone to my sisters and me when we were in Paris. Before the revolution, of course.” She turned back to the dancers, opened her fan, and resumed fanning herself. “And my father acted as something of a financial advisor to the young count when his grandmother passed away.”
“So you were childhood friends?”
Lady Bute laughed. “Oh, no. I didn’t meet the count until many years later. He came to Switzerland to collect some of his family’s old documents and letters. My father had been keeping them safe for him.”
“And your father would not have handed them over to him if he wasn’t certain he was who he said he was.”
She gestured toward me with her fan. “Precisely.”
I contemplated the implications of a direct descendant, particularly a male, of the Stuart royal line being alive, and in Scotland. His grandfather’s bid to reclaim the Scottish and English thrones during the Jacobite Rising of 1745–46 ended in disaster. Did Mr. Stuart have similar designs?
Surely not. Not only did people whisper about his claimed heritage as if it were a joke, but the man himself did not seem to be making any real effort to gain support for his cause. However, I knew from experience that some men were craftier than others. Though, I would have thought that with Philip’s position, he would have at least heard rumblings. It would be impossible to keep such a thing completely quiet.
“Most people seem to think his claimed ancestry is fabricated,” I couldn’t resist pointing out. “And Mr. Stuart doesn’t seem to care to correct them.”
She sighed. “I know. It’s rather sad, really. But rest assured, he is of Stuart royal blood. Even our government has admitted so.”
I turned to her in surprise. “They have.”
She nodded firmly. “Why else do you think they went so far as to accuse him of high treason, with their evidence contrived by British agents and even Scottish gentlemen? Fortunately, he was in Paris at the time, and with the help of his friends and the French police, he was able to prove the charges were nothing but outright lies and ridiculous exaggeration.” She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, yes. They know exactly who he is. They would hardly have gone to all the trouble otherwise.”
A shadow of suspicion was stirring in my mind. “When was this?”
“Twelve, thirteen years ago.” She waved her fan as if it were no consequence.
Perhaps before Ian Tyler of Woodslea died? I turned to ask her if she knew who the Scottish noblemen had been, but she was already rising from her chair. I joined her.
“Lovely to meet you, Lady Darby,” she proclaimed, before sweeping across the floor toward a pair of older gentlemen standing in the doorway to our right.
I watched her go and then sank back in my chair.
Bonnie Brock had claimed that the victims weren’t saints, and that they weren’t true friends to Scotland. Was he a Jacobite? Did he believe the Stuarts to be the rightful kings? I would have thought the criminal would care little who was on the British throne, but maybe I was wrong.
So if Buchan and Tyler and Casselbeck were the Scottish gentlemen who conspired to see Mr. Stuart accused of high treason, then perhaps Mr. Stuart wanted revenge.
I frowned. But snatching their bodies for ransom after they were dead seemed an awfully strange way to go about it.
“If I didn’t know you better, I would think you were trying to scare people away.”
I blinked up at Gage. “What?”
He grinned and pulled me to my feet. “You’re scowling. Rather fiercely, I might add.”
I glared at him. “No, I’m not.”
He arched his eyebrows in skepticism, and I tried to relax my face.
“I was thinking.”
“About something unpleasant obviously.”
Now it was my turn to arch my eyebrows.
He swiveled so that we were standing almost side by side, both of us looking out over the dancers. “Well, think on this. Mr. Fergusson was betting rather heavily at the tables tonight, and Lord Shellingham was definitely not happy about it.”
“Looking out for his friend?”
“Or irritated the man was making such a spectacle of himself and his newly plump bank account.”