“I am, yes. You’ve heard about that, have you?”
“I found her.”
He said it matter-of-factly, as if stumbling upon dead bodies were an everyday occurrence—although she noticed a muscle twitch along the side of his jaw.
“Ah,” she said. “Then I think I know who you are. Monsieur Charles Bonaparte, yes?”
He hopped off his stone and landed in a crouch before straightening slowly, his head tilted, his large brown eyes solemn as he regarded her fixedly. “It doesn’t bother you? That he’s my uncle, I mean.” There was no need to specify which he they were talking about.
“Of course not. Why should it? I hope no one would think to hold me responsible for the actions of all my relatives.” Especially my father, she thought.
He gave a delighted laugh. “Are they infamous?”
“Some. It’s inevitable, you know. We all have them.” Some more than others.
He came to sit on one of the stones beside her, his dangling feet swinging back and forth, his gaze sweeping the skies. There was an alertness, a watchfulness about him that intrigued her.
She said, “Do you come here often?”
He nodded toward the peregrine circling overhead, its long, pointed wings blue-black now in the gloaming of the day. “It’s a grand place to see birds at sunset.”
“You’re interested in birds?”
“Oh, yes.” He tipped back his head, his expression rapt as he followed the falcon’s soaring flight. “It’s a female, I think. They’re bigger than the males, you know. I’ve read they can go over two hundred miles an hour when they dive. Can you imagine? Two hundred miles an hour!”
“However did anyone manage to time them?”
The boy laughed. “I haven’t the slightest idea.” Then he sat forward eagerly. “Look! There she goes.”
Together they watched as the falcon folded back its tail and wings, its yellow feet tucked up as it launched into its stoop. At first, Hero couldn’t see what it was after. Then she spied a single hapless dove flapping desperately toward the clump of birch on the side of the hill.
Oh, hurry, hurry, she thought, even though she knew it was already too late.
The falcon hit the dove in midair, striking its prey with clenched feet and then neatly turning to catch the dove as it tumbled, dead, toward the earth.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Napoléon Bonaparte’s precocious nephew. “Although . . .” He hesitated. “I know the peregrine needs to eat, but I can’t help feeling sorry for the dove.”
They sat together in silence for a moment, contemplating the necessary cruelty of nature.
Then the boy went very still and nodded carefully toward one of the tower’s crumbling walls, “Look! It’s a pied flycatcher. Did you know you can tell an insectivore by its broad, pointed bill?”
“You know a lot about birds,” said Hero, watching him with a smile.
“I want to be an ornithologist when I grow up. I want to travel all over the world and discover new species no one has ever identified before.”
Hero studied his sun-browned, eager face. It was an endearing and oddly compelling ambition for a boy whose uncle dreamt of his family ruling the world.
“I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to,” she said.
He pulled a face. “My uncle says princes don’t become ornithologists.”
“I don’t know about that. Peter the Great of Russia was fascinated by everything from shipbuilding to clock making. And George III was always passionately interested in farming.”
“Yes. But he went mad,” said Charles Bonaparte.
“True.”
A flicker of movement near the stand of birch caught the boy’s attention. She saw his eyes narrow and thought at first he must have spied another bird; then she looked closer and saw the angular line of a top hat silhouetted against the shrubbery.
“Bah,” said the boy under his breath. “It’s him again.”
The man’s face was still obscured by shadows cast by the overhead branches, but she could easily discern the fashionable, military-like cut of his coat and his carefully tied snowy white cravat. “Who is it?”
“He calls himself Hannibal Pierce. He followed us here from Thorngrove—our house in Worcestershire. He watches us. Mainly he watches my father, but sometimes he watches me. Follows me. Papa says he works for your government.”
“Was he following you this morning?” asked Hero as the man stepped out of the copse of trees into the fading light.
“I don’t think so. But I don’t always see him. Sometimes I throw rocks at him and tell him to go away, but Mama says I shouldn’t do that.”
The man called Hannibal Pierce paused, one hand coming up to adjust his hat. He was making no attempt to keep out of sight or to conceal his interest in his subject. Just quietly waiting.
Then he turned his head to stare directly at them, and Hero sucked in a quick breath.
She didn’t say anything. But the boy was watching her now, and Charles Bonaparte was a very observant young man.