The Bourbon’s jovial face went slack. “Ghastly, is it not? All those dead men, strewn across Russia.”
The genuine depth of his grief took Sebastian by surprise. He found himself wondering if Marie-Thérèse had ever spared a moment’s sorrow for the war dead of the nation over which she hoped one day to reign as queen. Somehow, he doubted it. She was too busy hugging her own misery and loss to herself.
As if aware of the drift of his thoughts, Provence said, “But you did not come all the way out here to discuss either philosophy or my long-lost youth, did you?”
Sebastian smiled. “No, sir. I wonder, have you ever heard of a young French doctor named Damion Pelletan?”
“Hah.” Provence slapped the arm of his chair in triumph. “That’s why you’re here, is it? Told you so, Ambrose; didn’t I?”
Sebastian glanced at the courtier, who kept his gaze trained straight ahead, his features composed in an expressionless mask. “So you did know him?”
“Me? No.” Provence nodded toward a small redbrick building half-hidden by a nearby stand of oaks. “Look at that. See it? I’m told that at one time, it was a rectory. Now it is home to a duke, two counts, their wives and children, their aged mothers, and their unwed or widowed sisters and their children. There isn’t an outbuilding on the estate that isn’t overflowing—barns, stables, even an old Gothic folly in the gardens. In the main house itself, we’ve had to divide chambers and erect partitions in the gallery. I occupy what was once a small study off the library; Marie-Thérèse has an apartment next to the muniment room, and the exiled King of Sweden is in the chapel. More than two hundred people live here. Think about that! Aristocratic men and women raised in the finest chateaux of France, now sleeping in stalls and chicken coops. Believe me, in such conditions, very little happens at Hartwell House that is not soon known by all.”
The spires of the estate’s neo-Gothic chapel rose before them, delicate and somber in the cold winter light. Provence stared at it for a moment, then said, “What I’m trying to say is that even though she hugs the truth of it to herself, it’s well-known that my niece sees many physicians. Even after all these years of marriage, she still hopes for a child. God knows, this family will never get any heirs from my loins, and nothing is more important to Marie-Thérèse than seeing the House of Bourbon restored to France for all eternity.”
Sebastian said, “She is still relatively young.”
“She is, she is. And there’s no denying her mother took long enough to begin breeding.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the soaring spires of the chapel before them. It was well-known that Marie Antoinette’s long delay in childbearing was due entirely to her husband the King’s failure to consummate their marriage for seven years. A number of rumors had circulated at the time, although most had eventually been laid to rest.
But the same rumors continued to swirl around the Comte de Provence’s own marriage. Some said his wife repulsed him, while others claimed he preferred his mistresses. And then were those who said that Louis Stanislas’s interest in women had always been tepid and had waned completely in his later years.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” said the uncrowned king, his head tilting back, good-humored pleasure suffusing his plump face as his gaze moved with obvious appreciation over the delicate tracery of the chapel’s arched windows.
But Sebastian was looking instead at the courtier, Ambrose LaChapelle.
The man was a bundle of contradictions. The tales of his courage as a volunteer in the Prince de Conde’s army of counterrevolutionary exiles were legendary. A superb horseman, expert marksman, and skilled swordsman, he had once supported himself as a fencing master.
But there were whispers of another side to the French nobleman. Some said the courtier was known to don women’s clothing and cruise the darkened arcades of Covent Garden and the Exchange, where he was known as “Serena Fox.” And Sebastian found himself thinking about the mysterious, unknown man and woman who had sought out Damion Pelletan on the night of his death.
And about the bloody footprint left by a woman’s shoe on a broken slat in the noisome passage where the physician had met his grisly end.
Chapter 13
“I ain’t ne’er seen nothin’ like them stables,” said Tom, his voice hollow with disgust. “They only got two ridin’ ’orses in there. Two! An’ one of ’em is reserved special fer the Princess. ’Alf the stalls ’ave been turned into rooms and ’ave people livin’ in ’em. There was some old woman kept tryin’ t’sell me a straw ’at she’d made, all the while claimin’ she was the Comtesse de somethin’eranother.”