“I think it likely, yes.”
She fit the second earring in place, then turned to face him. “I don’t see how any of this—as tragic as it was—could possibly have anything to do with the murders of Emma Chance and Hannibal Pierce.”
He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheeks. “I don’t know that it does. But . . . there are an extraordinary number of secrets buried beneath the seemingly peaceful veneer of this village.”
He was aware of her looking at him with quiet, thoughtful eyes. “Don’t you think that’s true of most villages?”
“Perhaps. But some secrets are more deadly than others.”
Chapter 22
Sebastian had journeyed to Ayleswick-on-Teme that summer for two reasons. The first and most important was to deliver Jamie Knox’s gift to his aged grandmother and, perhaps, learn from her some explanation for the uncanny resemblance between the two men. The second reason was more complicated and involved an ancient necklace with a mysterious past.
Cunningly wrought of silver and bluestone, the necklace had once belonged to Sebastian’s mother—the beautiful Countess of Hendon, who had played her lord false before staging her own death and absconding to Venice with her latest lover. According to legend, the necklace had been a gift from the ill-fated Stuart king James II to his natural daughter, Guinevere. And Sebastian had recently learned that a portrait of a woman wearing the necklace was said to hang in Northcott Abbey’s famous Long Gallery.
For the birthplace of Jamie Knox to be tied, somehow, to that hauntingly mysterious necklace seemed too coincidental not to be significant. Yet the problem was, what precisely did it signify?
Before they left for that evening’s dinner with Lady Seaton, Sebastian watched Hero slip the old necklace into her embroidered velvet reticule.
“It could all be a mistake,” he said. “The necklace in the painting could be similar but not the same.”
She looked over at him. “Two necklaces with the same legend attached to them?”
He shrugged, although he doubted she was fooled by his assumption of insouciance. She knew him too well. Knew how vitally important this quest for the truth about his parentage was.
She said, “What will we do if Lady Seaton doesn’t offer to show us the Long Gallery?”
He settled her cloak around her shoulders as a clatter of carriage wheels sounded outside the inn. “Then we’ll just have to give her a little nudge.”
Built of golden-hued sandstone late in the reign of Henry VIII, Northcott Abbey had something of the look of a medieval castle, with two square bays flanking the central entrance and a five-sided bay at each corner. But the rows of huge windows sparkling with myriad leaded panes showed that the massive pile had been built as a house, not a fortress; the mock parapet encircling its steeply pitched leaded roof was a sign of royal favor and purely for decoration.
“Impressive,” said Hero, one hand coming up to grasp the carriage strap as she leaned forward to catch glimpses of the house through gaps in the gently undulating park’s ornamental plantings of chestnut and lime, beech and oak. “I wonder what the man who built it did to receive such a choice allotment from his King’s plundering of the church’s wealth.”
Sebastian studied the house’s tall clusters of sixteenth-century twisting chimneys. “Well, amongst other services, he spent ten years as Good Ole King Henry’s ambassador to Spain—surely a tricky position to hold when your king is in the process of divorcing a daughter of Spain. Henry thanked him by making him the First Baron Seaton.”
She turned her head to stare at him. “However did you come to know that?”
“I looked it up before we left Brook Street.” He smiled at her expression of astonishment. “What? You think you’re the only one with research skills?”
“Huh. And the estate’s been in the same family ever since? Impressive.”
“Even more impressive when you consider that the Seatons have always been Catholic.” Until the passage of the Relief Act in 1778, Catholics had been forbidden to buy or inherit land or even own a horse. But a surprising number had somehow survived.
“One wonders how they managed to hold on to the place all those years,” said Hero.
“Extraordinary cleverness and lots of priests’ holes, one assumes.”
She stared up at the house’s stately, undulating facade as the carriage drew to a halt before the grand entrance. “Why do you suppose Lady Seaton went out of her way to invite us to dinner?”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want me to think she’s keeping Napoléon’s little brother hidden out here.”
A liveried footman jumped to open the carriage door as Hero turned her head to look at Sebastian. “You mean, because she fears he may be involved in these murders?”
His gaze met hers. “Something like that, yes.”