He waited until she fell asleep to wrap his arms around her. She needed his warmth. But it was Theo he thought of as she dreamed beside him—another child, vulnerable and beloved, that he'd failed in the dark.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“The manservant was taken?”
“Yes,” Rokeby said. “He's being held at the gendarmerie here in Nice. We expect to release him, however—it's no crime to be employed by a renegade.”
“Unless, of course, one has assisted in his crimes,” von Stühlen observed.
“There's not the least evidence this man did so. Or none that would stand up in court.”
“And being the servant of a barrister, he presumably knows the rules of evidence?”
“Being an Englishman should be enough,” the diplomat retorted.
Von Stühlen repressed a smile. They were so proud of their laws, these English lords, as though an unwritten constitution could erase the barriers of wealth and privilege. They regarded him with something like pity—something like contempt—as the product of a feudal world. And yet, he could learn more from Fitzgerald's valet in half an hour than Rokeby had managed in two days. He understood the fine points of pain.
“I must talk to him,” he said with finality. “Particularly if you intend to let him go. And when he leaves his gaol, I will follow him.”
“You think he'll go after Fitzgerald, then?”
“Naturally.”
Rokeby shrugged. “Suit yourself. It's no affair of mine. I think you've made a mistake, first to last. The fact that Miss Armistead vouches for Fitzgerald ought to be enough. She's above reproach. Didn't you have an interest in that quarter at one time, von Stühlen?”
Had Rokeby witnessed his humiliation at Ascot?
That would account for the determined coldness, the air of tolerating him only for the sake of Lord Cowley's good opinion.
The lines deepened on von Stühlen's face; his teeth bared in a grin. Without warning, he reached across Rokeby's desk and grasped the man by his lapels, pulling him half out of his seat.
“You worthless rabbit,” he hissed. “A child could have taken Patrick Fitzgerald. You lost him on a pair of donkeys. He has probably crossed into Spain by now—or taken ship for North Africa. The Queen shall hear exactly how you betrayed her trust.”
Rokeby stood rigidly; but his eyes held contempt. “Unhand me. Before I'm forced to call you out.”
Von Stühlen laughed. “Your career is finished, my friend. Be thankful you've still got your life.”
Unlike Cannes, which still retained the air of a seaside fishing village, Nice was a sprawling port, and had been since ancient times. The Greeks had named it for their goddess Nike, and Rome had colonized its streets. Von Stühlen was a student of the classics—like Albert, he had spent hours debating Plato at Bonn—but he rode past the ruins of the Ancients without glancing to either side, until his fly pulled up in the Rue de la Gendarmerie.
Rokeby had spoken with Gibbon before the French police tossed him in a cell and forgot about him. The valet knew nothing of Fitzgerald's plans, however, or even which direction he might have taken from the hotel in Cannes. On the subject of the dead boy he'd proved more forthcoming.
“Mr. Theo was alive when last I saw him, the night of the seventeenth. Escorting his mother to Sheerness, he was; mounted on his hunter, and riding alongside her gig. What happened to him after, I cannot say—my master and I, and Miss Armistead, having took ship across the Channel. But one man has hounded Mr. Fitz from London to Cannes, and that's this German with the eye patch—Count von Stühlen. First Mr. Septimus Taylor was struck down in chambers, and now it's poor young Theo. Mr. Fitz calls the German a killer.”
Rokeby was brought to a stand by this account. He knew von Stühlen had been the one to find Fitzgerald's son. It was possible he'd fired the pistol that killed the boy—but it was totally improbable. Von Stühlen traveled with the authority of the Queen. The man had the ambassador's confidence. Why shoot a seventeen-year-old on a remote island?
If after the encounter in his consular office Rokeby revised his opinion of von Stühlen, the outcome remained the same. He wanted von Stühlen out of Nice as soon as possible. He permitted the Count to interrogate Gibbon.
“Strip his shirt and take him out into the courtyard,” he ordered Gibbon's turnkey in flawless French.
The valet tore his arm from the gendarme's grasp impatiently. “Leave me be. And get that fellow out of my sight, damn yer eyes.”
“He doesn't speak English,” von Stühlen said wearily.
A second gendarme hurried forward and grasped Gibbon's free arm. Gibbon was hauled, stumbling, into the courtyard. His shirt was ripped from his body.
Von Stühlen held out his hand for the horse whip. He watched idly as Gibbon was tied by the wrists, hands over his head, to a wooden post in the middle of the courtyard; it was employed, from time to time, for executions by firing squad. The manservant was short, like all of his kind, but sturdy enough; his exposed back made a simple target.
Von Stühlen cracked his whip.
Gibbon let out a yell of shock and pain.
Von Stühlen struck him again.
Deep furrows in the muscle, immediately oozing red.
The whip hissed through the air a third time.
“I don't know anything!” Gibbon screamed wildly. “I don't know where Fitzgerald's gone!”
Von Stühlen strolled toward him, the coils of leather dangling from one hand. The man was breathing heavily, sweat pouring from his face; such a little thing. Three strokes. Von Stühlen had seen men whipped to death in his time.
“I don't care where he's gone,” he said. “I want to know why he came.”
“What?”
“Why he came to Cannes in the first place. Tell me.”
“Miss Georgie's health! She's got an inflammation of the lung!”
Von Stühlen retraced his steps.
He lashed the valet again.
And again.
The man was screaming at every stroke, the whip cutting fresh furrows over old, the skin hanging from his back in raw strips. Von Stühlen considered the choice: aiming for the arms next, and possibly exposing the vertebrae of the neck, or lashing the back repeatedly until the spine was cut.
“Why did he come to Cannes?”
No answer but a scream.
Von Stühlen sighed. This was growing tiresome. He expected the man to die eventually, but he preferred to learn something before he did. He walked toward him again.
“I can order them to dust your back with salt,” he said conversationally. “I've seen it done. Agonizing, I assure you. Why did Fitzgerald come to Cannes?”
Gibbon was sobbing now, his eyes screwed closed. “You killed Master Theo,” he gasped. “Didn't you? And said Mr. Fitz done it. You bastard.”
“Gendarme—some salt, please.”
“No!”
Von Stühlen grasped the man's hair in his fist. “He left you here, didn't he? He ran—and you've had to suffer for it. You don't owe him a thing. Tell me why he came to Cannes.”
“To see the Prince,” Gibbon slurred. His eyes were barely focusing. “To meet young Leopold. Miss Georgie knows why the lad's ill.”
Von Stühlen frowned. He had assumed the Royal Household had drawn Fitzgerald south—there could be no coincidence in that coincidental meeting—but he'd suspected a kidnapping: the boy held hostage against a promise of clemency from Victoria. Von Stühlen still did not know why she was hunting Fitzgerald and Georgiana Armistead—the precious letters from Albert he'd used as a bargaining chip had told him nothing. Or at least, nothing he'd understood.
Leopold's illness. There had been one letter from Albert, requesting notes made at the boy's birth; and a second, he recalled now—so insignificant he'd barely read it—informing Dr. Armistead the notes had been burned . . .