Sebastian pushed to his feet. “If you’d rather answer the questions of His Majesty’s revenue men—”
“Fifteen years,” snapped Weston. “What else was I to do, after Liv wheedled her father into leaving his will the way he did? He was in his dotage by then, you know. The will never should have been allowed to stand, but it was. So what would you have me live on? Pin money doled out by my own wife, just so she can waste the ready on her damned gardens? I had no choice!”
“It’s her fault, is it?”
“Of course it is!” Weston stared at him, eyes wide, nostrils flaring with his hard, quick breaths.
Sebastian studied the man’s flushed, overfed countenance. “Do you remember a young woman named Lady Emily Turnstall?”
Weston looked confused. “Who?”
“Lady Emily Turnstall. She attended a house party given by the Irvings in September of 1791. She was just sixteen, and very pretty.”
Weston huffed a disbelieving laugh. “Do you seriously think I remember every green girl I ever met?”
“She was the daughter of the Earl of Heyworth. Quite richly dowered.”
Weston shook his head. “Sorry. If I ever met her, I don’t recall it. What has she to do with anything?”
“How about Alex Dalyrimple?” said Sebastian, ignoring the question. “The man who was gibbeted in 1793. You do recall him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Radical bastard. If you ask me, he should have been drawn and quartered as well as gibbeted.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? The brute terrorized the entire parish for months. If he’d had his way, they’d have set up a guillotine on the village green! No man or woman of birth or breeding would have been spared.”
“Took it personally, did you?”
“Who wouldn’t take it personally?”
His tone was one of moral outrage. But there was an element of bluster there too, that told Sebastian the man was being less than honest.
About any number of things.
Chapter 45
The discovery that Ayleswick was part of an established smuggling conduit opened up a disturbing new possibility.
Free traders had long been used by both London and Paris to secretly slip men and messages back and forth across the Channel. And Sebastian had no doubt that Paris had moved quickly to exploit a smuggling operation that was already in existence when Lucien Bonaparte arrived in Shropshire as a paroled prisoner of war. From his days as an exploring officer, Sebastian knew enough about the way these things worked to have a pretty good understanding of how messages would move along the route, first to Ayleswick, and then to whatever trusted courier finally delivered the sealed packets to Bonaparte himself.
It was possible Eugene Weston knew his smuggling operation was being exploited by Paris, although Sebastian found that unlikely; the man’s role was that of financier and nothing more. Yet given the distance of some thirty or more miles between Ayleswick and the Bonapartes’ estate in Worcestershire, forwarding such messages would have been both time-consuming and delicate. Was that the real reason Lucien had brought his family to spend the summer at Northcott Abbey? To be in closer contact with Paris now that the situation on the Continent was sliding toward disaster? Were the repairs to his estate simply a convenient excuse? And if so, what was Lady Seaton’s role in all this? Did she know of her guests’ contact with Paris? Or was she simply being used?
Pondering the possibilities, Sebastian rode through the village, then spurred his horse on to Northcott Abbey. As he rounded a bend thickly planted with rhododendrons, a vista opened up before him and he found himself looking down on the ornamental lake, its normally placid, reflective surface now ruffled by a stiffening breeze. A familiar figure clothed in breeches, high-top boots, and a well-tailored coat paced back and forth before the picturesquely sited Roman temple.
Sebastian checked for a moment, then wheeled his horse down the slope toward the lake.
The drum of hoofbeats brought Lucien Bonaparte around, his brow furrowed with the agonies of poetic composition. But at the sight of Sebastian, his face cleared. “Good afternoon, my lord! This is a pleasant surprise.”
Sebastian swung from the saddle and dropped easily to the ground. “Good evening, Senator. How is the epic coming?”
Lucien Bonaparte heaved a weary sigh. “There is a reason the ancients personified the Muses as female. I fear Calliope is a fickle creature, capricious and at times damnably difficult to woo.”