Sebastian walked over to the bottle of surprisingly fine French brandy from Martin McBroom’s cellars and poured himself a glass. “Which is to say, she looks a lot like me.”
“Yes.” Hero set the sketchbook aside, her gaze on his face. “I assume Jenny also noticed the resemblance?”
“How could she not?” Sebastian took a slow swallow of his brandy and felt it burn all the way down. “She said Knox had written to her about me. He told her he thought Hendon might be their father—until he got a good look at the Earl.”
“And she doesn’t know any more about their father than Jamie did?”
“If she does, she’s not talking. About a lot of things, actually.”
“What are you going to do next?”
“Pay a visit to this Dr. Higginbottom. Hopefully he can tell us something about how and where Emma Chance actually died. Although I have my doubts.”
“Not all country physicians are incompetent.”
“No. But few have much experience with postmortems. And I’ve never needed Gibson’s rare genius more than I do with this one.”
“Perhaps Higginbottom will surprise you.”
Sebastian drained his brandy with a grunt and set the glass aside.
Chapter 9
Sebastian hated looking at the victims of violent death.
He’d spent six years in the army, fighting King George III’s wars from Italy and Portugal to the West Indies. He’d seen men blown into unidentifiable bloody strips of flesh by cannon fire and disemboweled by the swift, hot rush of lead. He’d decapitated men with the singing slash of his own cavalry sword and ridden through villages filled with nothing but bloating, blackened, fly-ridden corpses. Yet the sight of the cold, waxy corpse of a murder victim still hit his gut, still left him feeling sick and shaky and filled with a crusader’s rage.
Someone had once told him that he was locked in a war with death—a useless vendetta that he could never win. But while he acknowledged that possibility, it hadn’t changed anything.
Dr. Hiram Higginbottom lived in an old farmhouse just off the road that stretched northeast toward Ludlow. As was the case for most country doctors, the practice of medicine was something he did on the side. He also ran a large herd of sheep and hired cottagers to tend his orchards and milk his cows and plant, hoe, and harvest his fields.
The distance was not far, but this time Sebastian chose to drive himself in his curricle, an elegant, lightly sprung chaise drawn by a pair of white-socked chestnuts.
“Word round about the stables is that she killed ’erself,” said Tom, the sharp-faced, half-grown lad who served as Sebastian’s tiger, or young groom. “They’re sayin’ that if somebody’d murdered ’er, there’d ’ave been blood, and there weren’t no blood.”
“No, no blood.” Sebastian swung the curricle in between two drunken brick gateposts and ran up a long drive flanked by rolling green pastures dotted with sheep. “I do trust you haven’t felt inclined to try to change their minds with your fists.”
Tom clung to his perch at the rear of the curricle and remained silent.
Sebastian ducked his head to hide his smile. “While I appreciate the impulse, I somewhat doubt your pugnacious approach will have its desired effect.”
“My pug-what?”
“Pugnacious approach,” said Sebastian, drawing up before a two-story square brick farmhouse that looked as if it had been built early in the previous century. “In other words, focus more on listening to what the locals are saying and give over attempting to protect my reputation. Understood?”
“Aye, gov’nor.”
Sebastian handed Tom the reins and hopped down to the rutted, weed-choked sweep.
Once, the house must have been gracious; he could still follow the ghostly outlines of a pleasure garden long since vanished beneath what had now been turned into more pastureland. All that remained of the once extensive borders and beds was a stand of gnarled, overgrown yews that must throw the house into a sepulchral gloom, and a broken sundial marooned in a patch of thistles. The front step was cracked; only faint traces of paint showed on window frames weathered gray, and crows nested in the eaves. It occurred to Sebastian that if Dr. Hiram Higginbottom conducted his autopsies with the same care he showed the upkeep of his house, then the chances of finding out exactly how Emma Chance had died were slim.
A breeze kicked up, bringing him the smell of manure from the nearby barns and the pungent pinch of burning tobacco.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” said a gravelly voice from behind him. “That grand London lord with all the nonsensical notions.”
Sebastian was getting more than a bit tired of hearing himself described as “that grand London lord.” He turned slowly to find a man seated on a rusty bench buried in the depths of the yews.