“Yes.”
“Hero tells me you encourage her in this barbaric nonsense of refusing to hire a wet nurse.”
“I support her, yes. But the decision is hers and hers alone.”
“What drivel.” Jarvis turned toward the door. Then he paused to look back and say, “Oh, by the way; Lord Oliphant has inexplicably disappeared. Speculation of an accident or foul play will likely appear in tomorrow’s papers, but I’m told the body shouldn’t surface for another four or five days, depending upon the weather. At that point it will be concluded he must have slipped and fallen into the river during Tuesday night’s storm. And if he had succeeded in harming either my daughter or my grandson, you would be dead by now as well.”
The two men’s gazes met and held.
Then Jarvis nodded and walked out of the room.
After the previous night’s storm, the day had dawned clear and sunny, with the streets washed clean by the rain.
Driving himself in his curricle, Sebastian curved along the southern edge of Hyde Park toward Knightsbridge and Hans Town. His first stop was Sloane Street, where he found Miss Jane Austen walking in the gardens of Cadogan Square. She wore an old-fashioned round bonnet and her sensible brown pelisse, and her cheeks were ruddy with the cool, fresh air.
“Lord Devlin,” she said when she saw him coming toward her. “You’ve read the news in this morning’s papers?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed as her intense gaze searched his face. “And none of it’s true, is it?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. But that can only mean . . . The killer was Knightly? Why?”
“Because he feared Preston and Sterling were in possession of information he was desperate to keep from becoming known.”
“And so he killed them? And cut off their heads in his rage? Who could have believed him capable of such viciousness?”
“A wise woman once noted that it is difficult to know the true sentiments of a clever man.”
Her small, dark eyes shone with amused delight. Then she shook her head. “Not so wise, given that I thought him another Colonel Brandon—staid, steadfast, and boring.”
“And how did Miss Preston receive this morning’s news?” asked Sebastian as they turned to walk along the garden path. “Do you know?”
“I don’t think she believes the reports in the newspapers either. But she is understandably relieved. She and Captain Wyeth plan to be wed as soon as possible, rather than wait for the passage of the customary twelve months of mourning.”
“Sensible. They’ve waited enough years already.”
Miss Austen glanced over at him. “I hear Lord Oliphant has disappeared.”
“So he has.”
“And you’re not going to explain any of it to me, are you?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m confident in your ability to use your imagination.”
Continuing down Sloane Street toward Chelsea, Sebastian turned his curricle to run along the square, then drove into the lane that led toward Bloody Bridge.
“What we doin’ ’ere again?” said Tom.
The chestnuts snorted and tried to shy as Sebastian guided them across the bridge and into the fields that stretched away on either side of the rutted road. “I have an idea.”
He drove through market gardens fresh and green after the previous night’s rain, toward the tower of the small country chapel that rose above the elms and hawthorns of its churchyard. The way he figured it, Rowan Toop must have come upon Preston’s body not long after the killing and, in his terror, accidentally dropped whatever satchel contained the King’s head and coffin strap. The virger had obviously managed to retrieve the severed head. But he must have still been flailing about trying to find the coffin strap when he heard the approach of the young couple from the Rose and Crown. At that point, he had abandoned his search and—with the King’s head tucked under one arm—run in the only direction possible: across the bridge into Five Fields. Rattled by what he’d seen and terrified of being caught in possession of relics plundered from the royal chapel, Toop’s first instinct, surely, would have been to hide the item he’d hoped to sell to Stanley Preston.
And where better to hide a dead man’s head than in a churchyard?
A small, neoclassical structure, Five Fields Chapel was not old, having been built in the previous century. But its churchyard was already overflowing, for there never seemed to be enough room to bury London’s endless supply of dead.
After reining in beside the lych-gate, Sebastian handed Tom the reins and dropped lightly to the ground. “I won’t be long.”