“You never connected the sealing of the crypt with the disappearance of your husband?”
She turned to face him, her soft blue eyes wide in a pale face. “No. Why ever would I?”
Why, indeed? thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “I understand it was Sir Nigel’s intention to visit his clubs the evening he disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“Any idea as to why he might have changed his mind and gone to St. Margaret’s instead?”
She looked at him blankly. “No.”
“You can’t think of any reason he might have decided to visit the crypt?”
She shook her head. “I can’t imagine. It was such a frightful place.”
“What can you tell me of his activities in the days immediately preceding his disappearance?”
“His activities?” She made a vague gesture with one gloved hand. “How much do you remember about a particular point in time thirty years ago?”
“I wasn’t born thirty years ago.”
She gave a soft laugh. “No, I suppose you weren’t. Neither was my son.” She walked on for a moment, lost in memories of the past. Then she said, “As I recall, he was very busy in those last weeks, riding back and forth to London nearly every day for meetings at the Palace and at Whitehall. He was something of a leader in the Commons, you know—allied with Pitt. If he hadn’t died, he would probably have been named foreign secretary when the government was reorganized. I know he wanted the position. It’s one of the reasons he went on the mission to the Colonies.”
Sebastian drew up short. “Sir Nigel was in America?”
“Why, yes; didn’t you know? He’d only just returned.”
Sebastian watched the gardener load his tools in the now empty wheelbarrow and push it back toward the stables. The rattle of his rake and shovel carried clearly on the breeze as he bumped over heavy ground. It seemed oddly inevitable that Sir Nigel had only just returned from the American Colonies. Somehow, everything kept circling back to the Americas.
Sebastian said, “In 1782, we were still at war with the rebels.”
“Yes, but there was growing opposition in Parliament to the King’s determination to continue the war effort. In the end, Lord North and the King agreed to send a mission to evaluate the true state of affairs in the Colonies.”
“Who were the other members of the mission?” Sebastian asked, although somehow, he already knew the answer.
She tipped her head to one side and hesitated, as if wondering how he would receive what she was about to say. “There were three of them: Sir Nigel; Charles, Lord Jarvis; and your own father, the Earl of Hendon.”
Chapter 23
Sebastian found his father at the Horse Guards.
“Walk with me,” said Sebastian, coming upon the Earl in the small circular hall overlooking Whitehall.
Hendon glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantel of the vestibule’s empty fireplace. “I’ve a meeting with Channing at—”
“This won’t take long.”
Hendon raised his eyebrows, his jaw working thoughtfully in that way he had as he studied his son’s face in silence. “Very well,” he said, and turned toward the door.
Sebastian waited until they’d reached the gravel path that ran along the canal in St. James’s Park before saying, “Thirty years ago, you were one of three men sent by the King to evaluate the situation in the American Colonies.”
Hendon’s forehead furrowed in a frown. “That’s right. Why do you ask?”
“The other two men were Charles, Lord Jarvis, and Sir Nigel Prescott?”
“Ah. I see. Yes, Sir Nigel was with us. I heard his body had finally been found. Who’d have thought, after all these years?”
“How long after the three of you returned from America did Sir Nigel disappear?”
Hendon’s lips pursed with the effort of memory. “A week. Perhaps less.”
Sebastian frowned. Lady Prescott had spoken of “weeks.” Yet after thirty years, one’s memory might be expected to grow distorted. “Did you think at the time his disappearance might have something to do with your recent mission to America?”
Hendon glanced at him sharply. “No. Why would I?”
Sebastian studied his father’s unexpectedly closed, angry face. “I don’t know. I’m not entirely certain I understand why the three of you were sent to the Colonies in the first place.”
Hendon was silent for a moment, the fingers of his right hand running absently up and down his watch chain. He said, “The King took the Americans’ rebellion against his authority personally. Very personally. He was determined they be punished for it. The problem was, once the French and Spanish entered the war against us, our ability to actually subdue the colonists was seriously compromised. We simply didn’t have the troops to fight the French and Spanish in every corner of the world, and occupy the rebellious colonies, too. We’d send the Army into an area and occupy it, but as soon as the Army left, the rebels would take control of it again.”
“There was opposition in Parliament to continuing the war?”
“That’s right. But the King remained adamant that it could be won. His idea was to concentrate on fighting the French in India and the West Indies while crushing the Americans financially—basically by destroying their maritime trade, burning their coastal towns, and supporting the natives on the frontiers, until the rebels came begging to be taken back under the King’s protection.”
“Even after Yorktown?”
Hendon sighed. “Yorktown was undeniably a turning point. The King remained resolute, but the surrender of Cornwallis emboldened the peace party in Parliament to move against His Majesty’s Prime Minister, Lord North. In the end, it was actually North who convinced the King to send a delegation to America, to evaluate the situation at first hand—and, if possible, to open channels to the members of the Confederation Congress, urging them to accept some form of dominion status, with a separate parliament loyal to a common king.”
“Why the three of you—you, Sir Nigel, and Jarvis?”
Hendon shrugged. “We were young, and willing and able to undertake what was potentially a dangerous voyage. I was in the Lords, Prescott was a powerful voice in the Commons, and Jarvis . . . Jarvis has always been the King’s man.”
“How long were you there?”
“Not long. In the end, our mission was overtaken by events here in London. Shortly after our departure, the House of Commons voted against continuing to fund the war, North’s government fell, and Parliament empowered the King to negotiate for peace.”
“So what did you do?”
“When word reached us in the Colonies in May, we wound up our affairs and sailed for home the following month. As I remember it, Sir Nigel was particularly furious about the vote in the Commons. He was convinced the rebellion could still be put down if the King could only prevail upon Parliament to devote the necessary funding to the cause.”
“And you?”
Hendon sighed. “You know my opinion of Republican principles and radical philosophies. Before we left for America, I would have told you the rebellion had to be put down at any cost, that the very future of civilization depended on it. But . . .” His voice trailed off.
“But?” prompted Sebastian.
Hendon worked his jaw back and forth. “I wasn’t in the Colonies a fortnight before I came to the conclusion that any continued attempt to subdue the Americans by military force was futile. It’s my opinion that we could have kept troops in America for a hundred years, and we still wouldn’t have defeated the insurgency.”
The sun had come out, throwing splotches of light and shade across the path and surrounding grass as they turned to walk beneath a row of elms. Sebastian studied his father’s aged, troubled face. “And Jarvis? What was his opinion of the situation?”