When Maidens Mourn (24 page)

“What happened to your sling?” she asked, looking up at him.

“It was in my way.”

“Now, there’s a good reason to stop wearing it.”

He huffed a soft laugh and went to pour himself a glass of wine. “Did Gabrielle ever mention an interest in Druidism to you?”

“Druidism? Good heavens, no. Why on earth do you ask?”

He came to stand with his back to the empty fireplace. “Because it turns out that she went back out to Camlet Moat at sunset the night before she died, to watch Sir Stanley enact some pagan ritual at an ancient sacred well on the island.
Drove herself
there, in fact, in a gig.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I wish I wasn’t. But Rory Forster saw her there, and Sir Stanley himself admits as much.”

“What was Forster doing at the island at sunset?”

“According to Rory? Retrieving a forgotten pipe—and hiding in the bushes. Although I suspect it far more likely that he went there with the intent of digging for buried treasure and was perplexed to discover he wasn’t going to have the island to himself that night.”

“Treasure?”

“Mmm. Buried by either Dick Turpin or a Knight Templar, depending upon which version one believes. Exactly a week before she was killed, Miss Tennyson stormed into Cockfosters and publicly accused Rory of ripping out the lining of the island’s sacred well.”

“In search of this treasure?”

Devlin nodded. “According to the legend, Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville hid his ill-gotten gains beneath the bottom of the well, and his spirit is supposed to appear to frighten away anyone who attempts to remove it. But his ghost must have been asleep on the job, because I checked, and someone recently made a right sorry mess of the thing.”

“You say she confronted Rory a week ago Sunday?”

He drained his wine. “The timing is interesting, isn’t it? That’s the day she was out there with Arceneaux. Then, just a few days later, she drove out to Gough Hall and had a stormy argument with Bevin Childe. She was a very confrontational and contentious young woman, your friend.”

Hero smoothed a hand down over her skirt. “So you spoke to Bevin Childe?”

“I did. He claims to have discovered something called the Glastonbury Cross amongst Richard Gough’s collections. I’m told it’s the cross that was said to have marked the graves of King Arthur and Guinevere at the abbey. Have you ever heard of it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it seems Miss Tennyson was convinced the cross was a modern forgery, and in the midst of a rather violent argument with Childe, she seized the cross and threw it in a lake.”

She was aware of him watching her intently. “What a…strange thing to do,” she said, keeping her voice level with effort.

He frowned and came to take the seat opposite her. “Are you all right, Hero?”

“Yes, of course; just tired.”

“Perhaps, under the circumstances, you’re doing too much.” He said it awkwardly; the coming babe, despite being the reason for their marriage, was something they never discussed.

She made an inelegant sound of derision. “If by ‘the circumstances’ you are referring to the fact that I am with child, let me remind you that gestation is a natural occurrence, not a dread debilitating disease.”

“True. Yet I do take special care of my mares when they are with foal.”

At that, she laughed out loud. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted by the comparison.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Oh, flattered, definitely.”

Their gazes met, and the moment stretched out and became something intimate and unexpected.

She felt her cheeks grow warm, and looked away. “How did you come to learn of Gabrielle’s confrontation with Childe over the cross?”

“Lieutenant Arceneaux told me.”

“Arceneaux? Now, that’s interesting.” She picked up the sheet of parchment she’d discovered and held it out to him. “I found this with Gabrielle’s papers.”

“‘Bid me to weep, and I will weep,’” he read, “‘while I have eyes to see.’” He looked up at her. “You know the poem?”

“No. But it does sound familiar, doesn’t it? I believe it may be from one of the Cavalier poets.” She closed the poetry book and set it aside. “But so far I haven’t been able to find it.”

“It’s the last three stanzas from Robert Herrick’s ‘To Anthea, Who May Command Him Anything.’”

Her eyes widened. “You know it?”

He smiled. “That surprises you, does it? Did you imagine I spent all my time riding to hounds and drinking brandy and trying to pop a hit over Gentleman Jackson’s guard?”

She felt an answering smile tug at her lips. “Something like that.”

“Huh.” He pushed up and went to compare the bold hand of the poem to the flowing copperplate that filled Gabrielle Tennyson’s notebooks. “This doesn’t look like her writing,” he said after a moment.

“It’s not.”

He glanced over at her. “You know whose it is?”

She came to extract one of the notebooks from the pile. “Here. Look at the translation of
The Lady of Shalott
Gabrielle was working on; you’ll see the handwriting of the poem matches that of the alterations and notations someone else made in the margins of her work. I think the poem was given to her by Philippe Arceneaux.”

Devlin studied the notations, his lips pressing into a tight line.

Hero said, “Do you think the Lieutenant was more in love with her than he led you to believe?”

“‘Thou art my life, my heart, my love,’” he quoted, setting the translation aside. “It rather sounds that way, does it not? Not only that, but I’d say Miss Tennyson was in love with him too.”

Hero shook her head. “How can you be so certain?”

He looked down at the creased sheet he still held in his hand. “Because she kept this.”

Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux and his scruffy little dog were watching a cricket match at Marylebone Park Fields on the northern outskirts of the city when Sebastian came to stand beside him.

A warm sun washed the grass of the nearby hills with a golden green. They could hear the lowing of cows, see a hawk circling
lazily above the stand of oaks edging the field. The batsman scored a run and a murmur of approval rippled through the crowd of spectators.

Sebastian said, “You’ve acquired a fondness for cricket, have you? You must be one of the few Frenchmen ever to do so.”

Arceneaux huffed a low laugh. “Most of my fellow officers consider it incomprehensible, but yes, I have.”

“I gather you’ve also acquired a fondness for our Cavalier poets.”

“Pardon?”

“‘A heart as soft, a heart as kind, / A heart as sound and free / As in the whole world thou canst find / That heart I’ll give to thee,’” quoted Sebastian softly as the bowler delivered the ball toward the batsman.

“A lovely piece of poetry,” said Arceneaux, his attention seemingly all for the bowler. “Should I recognize it?”

“It’s from a poem by Robert Herrick.”

“No ball,”
called the umpire.

The relentless August sun beat down on the open field, filling the air with the scent of dust and hot grass. Arceneaux held himself very still, his features wooden, his gaze on the fielders.

Sebastian said, “The same poem you copied out and gave to Miss Tennyson.”

The Frenchman’s throat worked as he swallowed. A sheen of perspiration covered his newly sun-reddened face. “You found it, did you?”

“Lady Devlin did.”

“How did you guess it was from me?”

“The handwriting matches the notations you made on Miss Tennyson’s translation of
The Lady of Shalott.
”

“Ah. Of course.”

They turned to walk away from the crowd and take the lane that curled toward the rolling countryside stretching away to the
north. The dog trotted on ahead, tongue lolling happily, tail wagging. Sebastian said, “I hope you don’t intend to insult my intelligence by attempting to continue denying the truth.”

Arceneaux shook his head, his gaze on the herd of cows grazing placidly in the grassy, sunbaked pasture beside them. At the top of the slope, a stand of chestnuts drooped in the airless heat, their motionless leaves a vivid green swath against an achingly clear, forget-me-not blue sky. “You want the truth, my lord? The truth is, I fell in love with Gabrielle the first time I saw her. I was in the Reading Room at the museum going over some old manuscripts, and I just happened to look up and…there she was. She was standing beneath the high windows of the Reading Room, waiting for an attendant to hand her the book she wanted, and…I was lost.”

“She returned your affections?”

He gave an odd smile. “She didn’t fall in love with me at first sight, if that’s what you’re asking. But we quickly became good friends. We’d go for walks around the gardens of the museum and argue passionately about the competing visions of love in the two sections of the
Roman de la rose
or the reliability of the various medieval chroniclers. She was several years older than I, you know. She used to tease me about it, call me a little boy. I suspect that if I’d been her own age or older, she would never have allowed our friendship to progress the way it did. But as it was, she felt…safe with me. She told me later she’d fallen in love with me before she’d even realized what was happening.”

“Did you ask her to marry you?”

“How could I? Situated as I am, a prisoner of war?” He pointed to the mile marker in the grass beside the road. “See that boundary? Under the terms of my parole, I am allowed to go no farther.”

“Yet you did venture beyond it, the day you and Gabrielle went up to Camlet Moat.”

Sebastian expected the man to deny it again. Instead, he gave a
halfhearted shrug and said, “Sometimes…sometimes men succumb to mad impulses, I suppose, of frustration and despair and a foolish kind of bravado. But…how could I ask her to be my wife? How could I ask any woman to share such a circumscribed life, perhaps forever?”

“Yet some paroled French officers do marry here.”

“They do. But they don’t marry women like Gabrielle Tennyson. I loved her too much to ask her to live in a garret with me.”

“She had no independence of her own?”

The Frenchman swung to face him. “Good God. Even if she had, what do you take me for?”

“You would hardly be the first man to live on his wife’s income.”

“I am not a fortune hunter!”

“I never said you were.” Sebastian studied the other man’s boyish, tightly held face and asked again, “Did you ask her to marry you?”

“I did not.”

Arceneaux turned away, his gaze following the dog, who now had his nose to the ground, tail flying high as he tracked some fascinating scent to the prickly edge of the hedgerow, then sat down and let out a woof of disappointment and frustration.

Sebastian said, “I think you’re still lying to me, Lieutenant.”

Arceneaux gave a ragged laugh. “Oh? And would you blame me if I were?” He flung his arm in an expansive arc that took in the vast urban sprawl stretching away to the south. “You know the mood of hysteria that has swept over the city. Tell all those people Gabrielle Tennyson had a French lover and see what sort of conclusions they leap to. They’d hang me before nightfall.”

“Were you lovers? And I mean that in every sense of the word.”

“Monsieur!”
Arceneaux held his head high, his nostrils flaring with indignation, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

“I should tell you that a postmortem has been performed on Miss Tennyson’s remains.” Sebastian hesitated. “We know she was no maid.”

“Why, you—”

Sebastian flung up a forearm to block the punch Arceneaux threw at his jaw.

“Bâtard!”
spat Arceneaux when Sebastian grabbed his wrist and held it.

Sebastian tightened his grip, his lips peeling away from his teeth as he leaned in close, enunciating his words with careful precision. “God damn it. Cut line, Lieutenant. Whose honor do you imagine I’ve insulted? Yours?” To suggest that a gentleman had seduced a woman he was unable or unwilling to marry was indeed a grave insult. “Because this isn’t about you, Lieutenant—”

“If you think I care about that—”

“And it isn’t about Gabrielle Tennyson’s honor, either,” Sebastian continued, ignoring the interruption. “It’s about finding the man—or woman—who killed her, and who probably killed those two little boys with her. So tell me, what do you know of Miss Tennyson’s interactions with Sir Stanley?”

“For the love of God, what are you suggesting now?” Arceneaux jerked back hard against Sebastian’s hold.

Sebastian let him go. “Take a damper, would you? I’m asking because when an attractive young woman and an older but still virile man are thrown often into each other’s company, people talk.”

“Who?” Arceneaux’s fists clenched again. “Who is suggesting there was anything between them?”

“Lady Winthrop, for one. The woman was obviously more than a little jealous of the time Miss Tennyson spent with her husband.”

The Frenchman spat in distain. “Lady Winthrop is a fool.”

“Is she?”

“She lost her husband long ago, only not to Gabrielle. She lost him to his grief over his dead children, and to his passion for the past, and to the whispered wisdom of the Druids.”