“Et lux perpetua luceat ei . . .”
She stood with her head bowed, her eyes closed, her beautiful features composed into a study of intense concentration and reverence as the words of the priest washed over her.
“Requiescat in pace . . .”
Sebastian shifted so that his view took in the rest of the chapel. He half expected to find Marie-Thérèse here, as well. But the church was utterly empty except for the aged priest and Lady Giselle.
“Anima ejus, et anim? omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam . . .” The priest’s chanting was reaching a crescendo. Sebastian pushed the door open wider and walked into the chapel.
“Dei requiescant in p—” The priest’s head turned, his voice trailing off into a high-pitched squeak as his eyes widened and his jaw sagged.
At first, Giselle must have assumed Sebastian’s footsteps belonged to her cousin, for she turned slowly, her head coming up as she opened her eyes. Her reaction was more controlled than the priest’s.
She stared at Sebastian for a moment, then said, “I take it that’s my cousin’s blood?”
It was only then that Sebastian became aware of the spurt of dark blood across the front of his coat and waistcoat, and the bloody knife he still clenched in one hand. “It is.”
“He’s dead?”
“He is, yes.”
He saw the flame of emotion in her eyes, fury mingled with careful calculation rather than grief.
“Monsieur!” protested the priest. “You would bring a bloody weapon of murder into the house of the Lord?”
“My apologies, Father.” Keeping his gaze on Lady Giselle, Sebastian carefully laid the knife at his feet, the metal hilt clinking against the stone paving.
She said, “I am aware of what you must think, but you are wrong. The Chevalier did not kill Damion Pelletan.”
“I know.” Sebastian continued walking toward her, his empty hands at his sides. “But you intended to kill him. That’s why you followed his hackney when he left the Gifford Arms that night, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps. Yet in the end, what we intended is immaterial. If all those who wished ill of their fellow beings were held accountable, England would soon be very thin of company.”
“So what did happen that night?”
She shrugged. “When the hackney set Pelletan and the woman down at the entrance to Cat’s Hole, I told my coachman to pull up and sent the Chevalier to follow them on foot.”
“To Hangman’s Court?”
“If that is the name of that foul cesspit, then the answer is yes.”
“And then what?”
“While Armitz waited, he became aware of another man loitering in the shadows—a large, rather crude ruffian with dark curly hair.”
“Sampson Bullock.”
“Yes.”
Sebastian studied her calm, flawlessly composed features. “How did you know his name?”
“Does it matter? The point is, Armitz watched Bullock follow Pelletan as he left Hangman’s Court. At one point, the woman must have heard something because she started to turn. Bullock struck her in the head with a cosh and stabbed Damion Pelletan in the back. Armitz waited until the man left, then came to me.”
“And you returned together to where Damion Pelletan and his sister lay?”
She tilted her head to one side. “How did you—”
“How did I know you were there, in the alley? I found the prints left by your shoes.”
“But you could not possibly have known the shoe prints were mine.”
“No,” he agreed, then said, “Why did you return with Armitz to Cat’s Hole?”
Her hands moved possessively over the crystal urn in her hands. “I needed the heart.”
Sebastian studied the proud lift of her chin, the gleam of self-confident righteousness in those deceptively soft blue eyes. “You cut out his heart yourself, didn’t you? That’s why you went back with Armitz. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. So you did.”
“Yes.”
He’d known it, and yet, hearing her calmly admit it made the fact seem somehow worse. He could not rid himself of the image of this delicate, ethereally beautiful woman surrounded by the refuse of a dark, foul alley as she savagely hacked Damion Pelletan’s heart from his still-warm flesh. He said, “You believed Pelletan the Lost Dauphin, the only surviving son of the martyred King of France; and yet you would have killed him, had someone else not done so first. Why?”
She stared back at him. “He was not fit to rule. He was not raised as a prince, and his mind had been hopelessly corrupted by the influence of the Revolution. When the Bourbons are restored to the throne of France, it will not be through him.”
“Yet you would see his heart given a place of honor amongst the royal tombs in Val-de-Grace?”
“He is still a son of St. Louis.”
“Does Marie-Thérèse know? Does she know you would have killed the man she believed might be her brother?”