Page 20 of Who Cries for the Lost

Carafe in hand, he glanced over at her. She was no longer smiling. “You’re looking very serious this afternoon. I think I can guess why you’re here.”

“Can you?”

“Devlin’s involvement in Bow Street’s investigation of the Sedgewick murder isn’t exactly a secret.”

“I didn’t expect you to admit that the captain worked for you.”

“If you were listening carefully, you’d know that I admitted no such thing.”

“So you’re saying—what? That he was working with Castlereagh instead? Or was it Bathurst?”

He smiled and set the carafe aside. “I’ve no idea.”

It was such a blatant, obvious lie that she laughed out loud. “Of course not. So do you know why he was killed?”

“I do not.”

“But you have some idea.”

“The authorities suspect that Frenchwoman.”

He saw the flare of worry in her eyes and understood its cause, for the French midwife had delivered Simon, and Hero credited her with saving both their lives. But all she said was, “I didn’t ask who the authorities suspect.”

He took a sip of his wine and said nothing.

Hero’s fist clenched around the strings of her reticule. “Did you see him after his return from Vienna?”

“Why would I?”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It wasn’t meant to.” He was aware of a new sound of footsteps, these coming down the stairs from the bedrooms above, and said, “Let me put it this way: I have no idea who killed Sedgewick, or why.”

She was silent for a moment, her gaze hard on his face. “I don’t believe you.”

He huffed a soft laugh but sobered quickly. “Enough of this. I’ve just received some far more important news: Napoléon has left Paris.”

He watched the color drain from her face. “When?”

“June twelfth.”

“Dear Lord,” she whispered. “And Wellington?”

“Is presumably still in Brussels.”

“Amusing himself at all the most fashionable dinners, picnics, and balls?”

“Hopefully not still.”

They turned at the sound of the room’s door opening. “Hero!” said his wife, Victoria, coming to grasp her cousin’s hands and kiss both her cheeks. “I saw your carriage. How are you?”

She moved slowly, for she was big with child, and like Hero’s dead mother, Victoria was a petite, dainty thing, with fair hair and blue eyes and a charming smile that she used most effectively to disguise the formidable extent of her intellect and learning and the strength of her will. She was, with perhaps the exception of Hero herself, the most brilliant woman Jarvis had ever known. But unlike Hero, she was more than content to hide it all behind the cheerful, gentle face Society demanded of the female sex.

“I’m well, thank you,” said Hero, a faint hint of color touching her cheeks, for Jarvis knew she found it vaguely mortifying to be with child at the same time as her own stepmother. “And you? When do you expect to be confined?”

“Any day now, surely,” said Victoria, easing her bulk down into a nearby chair. “Although it would be nice for the babe to wait until after the French Ambassador’s ball on the eighteenth. Do you go?”

“Hendon particularly wants Devlin to attend, so I suspect we shall.”