He could hear the rattle of carriage wheels on the pavement outside, the whisper of ash falling on the hearth. The memory of that spring was like a frozen shiver across the skin, an incubus that stole his breath and tormented his soul. “No; I do. I should have told you before.” He found he had to draw a deep breath before he could go on. “I met her three years ago, when I was serving as an observing officer for a vain, pompous, and extraordinarily vindictive colonel named Sinclair Oliphant. Wellington’s forces were already beginning to push into Spain, and Oliphant was in charge of securing the mountain passes out of Portugal.
“One day, he ordered me to carry sealed dispatches to a band of partisans said to be camped in a small valley below the ancient convent of Santa Iria. Except it was all a hoax. Oliphant knew the partisans weren’t there, and he’d had one of his spies tip off a French force operating in the area. They were waiting for me.”
Hero stared at him. “He deliberately had you captured? But . . . why?”
“There was a large landowner in the area—Antonio álvares Cabral—who was refusing to cooperate with Oliphant. álvares Cabral wanted to make certain the French were gone for good before he risked throwing in his lot with the British. I didn’t know it at the time, but the dispatches I carried were false; they were written specifically to fool the French into thinking the abbess of the convent of Santa Iria was in league with the partisans.” Sebastian kept his gaze on his wine, glowing warm and red in the fire’s light. “The abbess was álvares Cabral’s daughter.”
Hero’s hand had stilled its rhythmic motion. “Alexandrie Sauvage was with the French forces?”
“She was—although she was Alexi Beauclerc then. By that time, her first husband had died, and she’d taken up with a French lieutenant named Tissot.”
“So what happened?”
“After he read the dispatches I’d carried, the French major, Rousseau, rode off with some of his men. He was planning to torture me in the morning for whatever other information I might have, then kill me. But I managed to escape shortly before dawn—by killing Lieutenant Tissot.”
“Alexi Sauvage’s lover?”
“Yes.”
There was more to the story, of course—much more. But he wasn’t sure he was capable of talking about it. Still.
Hero had the sensitivity not to press him. She said, “You think Alexi Sauvage would deliberately hurt Gibson, just to get back at you?”
“I don’t know. But my distrust of her motives doesn’t stem only from what happened in Portugal. She’s a beautiful young Frenchwoman who attended one of the best universities in Europe. Gibson is a one-legged Irish opium eater who learned everything he knows about surgery on the world’s battlefields.”
“He’s a good man.”
“He is. But I’m not convinced Alexandrie Sauvage is the kind of woman to appreciate that. She keeps lying to us—about her father’s theft of the Dauphin’s heart, about her brother’s intentions with Lady Peter, about the fact that Damion Pelletan even was her brother.”
“Not telling you something isn’t exactly the same as lying.”
“It is in my book—at least when we’re talking about murder.”
“I can understand her lingering animosity toward you. But if she truly loved her brother . . . why be so secretive?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced at the clock, set aside his wine, and rose to his feet.
She rose with him, upsetting the disgruntled cat, who arched his back and glared at Sebastian. “I still can’t believe you’re going to ask Marie-Thérèse about her brother’s heart in the middle of your aunt Henrietta’s soiree.”
“Not Marie-Thérèse; Lady Giselle. I have it on excellent authority that Marie-Thérèse will never condescend to speak to me again, ever since I committed the unforgivable sin of daring to contradict her royal personage. It’s one of the many hazards of believing in the divine right of kings; you start equating yourself with God, which means you see your enemies as not merely annoying or unpleasant, but the literal servants of Satan.”
“What do you expect Lady Giselle to tell you?”
“Nothing, actually. But I want to watch her face when I ask her whether or not Marie-Thérèse knows about the fate of the Dauphin’s heart.”
“Surely you don’t think Marie-Thérèse killed Damion Pelletan?”
“Do I think she personally cut out his heart? No. She and Lady Giselle were closeted in prayer that night, remember? But I’d say she’s more than capable of delegating the task to one of the hundreds of sycophants hanging around Hartwell House.”
“But . . . why? Why would she want the heart of a man whose only sin was that his father performed an autopsy on a dead child?”
“Revenge? Malice? An exchange of missing body parts? I don’t know. But the connection is there, somewhere. I just haven’t found it yet.”
? ? ?
London might still be thin of company, but virtually everyone who was anyone appeared to have decided to attend the Duchess of Claiborne’s soiree that evening. As he pushed his way through the crowded reception rooms, Sebastian counted two royal dukes, a dozen ambassadors, and nearly enough peers to fill the House of Lords. The strains of one of Haydn’s string quartets drifted through the cavernous town house. The rendition was exquisite, although no one really seemed to be listening to it.