When Falcons Fall (32 page)

Thursday, 12 August

T
he inquest into the death of Jude Lowe was held less than twenty-four hours later, immediately after those that had already been scheduled. The verdict was justifiable homicide.

Afterward, Sebastian and Archie Rawlins walked out to the crossroads, where the blacksmith and two of his sons were working with pickaxes and shovels to dig up what was left of Hannah Grant. No one had given them official permission, but Sebastian suspected no one was going to stop them either, just as he had no doubt the vicar would allow Hannah to be reburied in the churchyard. There was much that was disgusting about Benedict Underwood, but there was some good there too.

Sebastian watched in silence as Miles Grant, his face wet with silent tears, tenderly placed his daughter’s skull in a wide-topped basket. Then Sebastian’s gaze shifted to the Ship, deserted now in the late-afternoon sunlight. He’d learned only that morning that Lowe was a widower, that his wife had died of fever less than a year ago. And he found himself thinking of Lowe’s three boys, and what would happen to them now.

Archie said, “I’m still having a hard time getting used to the idea that Jude Lowe has been killing people around here for fifteen years and more.”

“From the sound of things, he stopped for quite a few years in there.”

“I wonder why.”

“Perhaps there was no one he wanted dead.”

Archie pushed out a strangled huff of air. “I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “There’ve been so many deaths these last ten days. It’s not going to be easy for the people of the village to absorb it all. They’ve lost too many, over the years.”

“At least it’s finally over.”

Archie nodded. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you’ve done. I never would have figured this out if you hadn’t been here.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. If it’d been up to me, I’d have hanged the vicar. The vicar!”

“Jude Lowe was a very clever man.”

“He certainly fooled me. I hope to God I never have to face anything like this again.”

“You’ll do all right. Just keep an open mind and remember that simply because an explanation seems to fit doesn’t mean it’s true.”

They turned back toward the village, the towering old gibbet casting its long shadow across a section of the coach road left muddy by the previous day’s rains. After a moment, Archie said, “So how do you know when you finally have it right?”

“I’m not sure. You just do,” said Sebastian, and Archie threw back his head and laughed.

Later that evening, as the sun slipped toward the purple hills of Wales, Sebastian climbed the lane to the churchyard. He stood beside Emma Chandler’s graveside for a long time, while the rooks flew in to roost in the nearby yew, fluttering and cawing as they settled in for the night.

He felt an intense, painful bond with this woman he had come to know only after her death. They had both come to Ayleswick-on-Teme in the hopes of discovering the identity of the man who had sired them. Both had failed. But only Emma had lost her life in the quest.

So adrift was he in his own thoughts that it was a moment before Sebastian heard a woman’s faint footfalls and the swish of fine cloth, and realized he was no longer alone.

“Am I interrupting you?” asked Lady Seaton, walking up to him. She wore a simple muslin dress with a light blue spencer and a wide-brimmed straw hat that framed her golden curls in a way that made her look deceptively young and vulnerable.

“No, not at all,” he said.

She tipped back her head to look up at him, the warm evening breeze fluttering the blue satin ribbon of her hat across her cheek. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Of course.”

“I believe I told you I once met Lady Emily.”

“Yes.”

She drew a deep breath and nodded, as if confirming the truth of her earlier statement or perhaps simply encouraging herself to go on. “What I didn’t tell you was that we met on the last night of the Irvings’ house party. They held a grand ball—a masquerade—and although I wasn’t well, Seaton insisted I attend. He felt the need to trot out his wife on occasion, you see, to reassure the local gentry that despite the irregular nature of his activities he still retained my love and devotion.”

Sebastian said nothing, and after a moment, she went on. “Leopold was an extraordinarily attractive man with a most deceptively charming manner. He had a way of paying attention to a woman, of smiling at her, that could make her feel the most beautiful, most fascinating and desirable woman in the world.”

“And he turned his charms on Lady Emily?”

“He did, yes. I watched them. You might think it was because I was jealous, but it wasn’t. Not by then. I knew what he was like, and I worried about her.”

Sebastian remembered the words the sixteen-year-old girl had written to her governess.
He is so handsome that my head would surely be turned were it not for Liv’s warnings. . . .

“I could tell she was flattered—how could she help but be? She was so young and innocent. But she was wise enough not to forget that he was a married man. And while she seemed happy enough to have the opportunity to practice the arts of flirtation with a master, I could see that she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the tenor of his attentions. In the end, she excused herself and went outside for some air. She was trying to get away from him, of course. But I’m afraid he took it the wrong way.”

“He followed her?”

She nodded. “I should have gone after them immediately. Instead, I waited, hoping she’d come back. And then Lady Irving buttonholed me as I was headed toward the terrace. She was so persistent, I’d only just managed to extricate myself when I saw Leopold slipping back in through the glass doors. He was vaguely disheveled, and when Lady Emily didn’t come back at all, I went looking for her, fearing the worst.”

“And you were right.”

“Yes. I found her in the shrubbery, hysterical. I knew he’d forced himself on some of the village girls, but . . . I never imagined he’d so forget himself as to do the same to a young gentlewoman. I helped her to her room; made her promise to let me come to her aid in the event she should find herself in trouble as a result of that night’s work.” Lady Seaton’s gaze dropped to the grave beside them. “Obviously, it was a promise she didn’t keep. But, my God, how I wish she had. You can have no notion of my joy the day his lordship’s lifeless body was carried home.” She looked up at him. “But you knew that, didn’t you? Did you imagine I’d killed him?”

“Yes.”

A strange smile played about her lips. “I used to lie awake at night and entertain myself concocting various ways in which I might murder him and get away with it. But I never would have found the courage to do it. Fortunately, someone else did it for me.”

“Did you know, even then?”

“That someone had killed him? Oh, yes. But I didn’t know who.” She drew a deep, shaky breath. “I haven’t told Crispin the truth—that Emma Chandler was his half sister, I mean.”

“Will you?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it might make it easier for him, to know they could never have married, even if she had lived. But then I think, the woman he loved is already lost to him; what good would it serve for him to have to live with the horror of knowing he’d desired his own sister? Perhaps it would be best after all to leave him with the memory of his lost love intact.”

“How well does Lord Seaton remember his father?”

“Hardly at all. He was very young when his father died. And Leopold never had any interest in what he used to call ‘snotty-nosed nursery brats.’”

“Does he know what his father was like?”

“You mean, does he know Leopold had a nasty habit of slaking his lust on the village girls, willing or not? I don’t believe so, no. But I must admit, I hadn’t thought of what it would do to Crispin, to learn such an ugly truth about his father.”

“He may eventually hear some of it anyway, from someone in the village.”

“Yes.” She searched his face, and he wondered if she saw there the traces of his own long-ago, secret anguish that their conversation had dredged up. “So what are you saying? That I should tell him?”

“You’re the one who must bear the burden of keeping this a secret for the rest of your life.”

“I would do it for Crispin, gladly. If only I could be certain it was right.”

“There’s no denying secrets can be dangerous. Yet some secrets . . . I believe some secrets are best left unknown. It would be different, had she lived.”

“Yes. Yes, it would.” She gave him a faint, tremulous smile. “Thank you, my lord.”

He watched her walk away, her head held high, her back rigorously straight, her features carefully schooled into an expression that betrayed not a hint of the turmoil in her heart.

Or the admirable strength of her will.

Friday, 13 August

The next morning, Sebastian had two obligations to fulfill before he left the village.

First he climbed the lane to the vicarage, where Benedict Underwood was supervising two workmen repairing a gap in the orchard wall. Taking the vicar aside, he warned Underwood that if he ever laid a hand on his cousin Rachel Timms again, Sebastian would not only make certain he lost the living of Ayleswick, but see to it that he was never given another parish.

The Reverend’s practiced benevolent smile remained firmly in place.

Sebastian said, “And if you think Rachel Timms is too afraid of losing Hill Cottage to be honest with me, then you should know that I’ve promised her a cottage on my own estate down in Hampshire, should that come to pass.”

Underwood’s smile slid away.

Sebastian touched a hand to his hat. “Good day to you, Reverend.”

After that, he walked out to the little whitewashed cottage beside the stream.

He found Heddie Kincaid dozing on a bench in the warm sunshine. And there, hat in hand, he expressed his sorrow for the death of her son.

She lifted her blind face to him, showing him the ravages left by another unbearable loss. “I don’t blame you for it,” she said, her voice breaking. “Maybe if Jude’d had a better da, things would’ve turned out different. But . . .” She paused to draw a painful breath. “I was always afraid he’d end up being hanged. So in a sense I suppose you could say I’m grateful to you for sparing us that.”

She asked him then to sit beside her, and he spoke to her of Jamie Knox and of the child the ex-rifleman had had by the barmaid, Pippa, and how much the boy resembled his dead father.

As he talked, he was aware of Jenny watching him through the window of the cottage. It wasn’t until he rose to take his leave that she came to stand in the open doorway, her arms crossed at her chest. Her face was hard, her eyes red and swollen from her own grieving.

“I didn’t send him after you,” she said. “Jude, I mean. I wanted you to know that.”

Sebastian paused beside her. “But you did speak to him after I left.” It was more a statement than a question.

She stared across the stream to where Jude’s three orphaned sons were playing with a puppy. “I was hoping Jude’d tell me I was wrong about him. But he didn’t, and in the end all I did was warn him that you’d figured it out. For that, I am sorry.”

Sebastian nodded, although he wasn’t sure if she was sorry because she’d put his life and Hero’s in danger, or because Jude had ended up dead.

She said, “His father, Daniel Lowe, was without a doubt the meanest man I’ve ever known, and even worse when he had the drink in him, which was often. I’m not sure who he beat more, Jude or Jamie. But after Jamie left, Jude was the only one he had to use his fists on.”

“Daniel Lowe died in ’ninety-seven?”

Jenny nodded. “Fell off a haystack onto a pitchfork. I always figured Jude did for him, although Jude never admitted it. I think maybe he was the first person Jude killed.”

Sebastian wasn’t so certain of that. But all he said was, “I’m surprised he didn’t kill Eugene Weston long ago.”

“He wanted to. But he and the major were in the free-trade business together. Weston always liked to claim he didn’t take to smuggling until after old man Irving died, but it wasn’t true; he and Jude had teamed up long before that—a good six months before Alex was hanged. Jude had the brains and the guts to organize and oversee everything, but Weston was the one with the money. Jude needed him.”