The gentleman beside him, a fair-skinned man with flaxen hair and an exaggerated neckcloth, looked vaguely familiar, although Sebastian couldn’t quite place him. Snagging a glass of Madeira from a passing waiter, Sebastian went to slouch with deliberate insouciance into the empty seat opposite the two men. “I understand congratulations are in order,” he said, interrupting their conversation without preamble or apology.
Ellsworth stiffened and swung his head to fix Sebastian with a cold stare. “I beg your pardon?”
Sebastian smiled. “Surely you’re not going to pretend you haven’t heard about the death of your dear aunt Guinevere? Everything that threatened to stand between you and Anglessey’s title and fortune has now been removed. Hence”—Sebastian lifted his glass in a kind of toast—“congratulations.”
The unknown gentleman with the flaxen hair and monstrous neckcloth met Sebastian’s steely gaze for one fleeting instant, then slipped quietly away to go stand nervously at the far end of the room.
“That’s always assuming, of course,” Sebastian added as if in afterthought, “that you were nowhere near Brighton on Wednesday last?”
A faint but discernible line of color touched Ellsworth’s cheekbones. “Don’t be ridiculous. I spent most of last Wednesday at Gray’s Inn.”
“In court?”
The man’s color darkened. “I’ll be damned if I can see what business it is of yours.”
Sebastian met his angry stare with a bland smile. “Alibis are always such handy things to have, don’t you agree? If you’re lucky, it might not even occur to the authorities that you could easily have hired someone to do the dirty deed for you.”
Ellsworth brought his own glass to his lips and took a slow, thoughtful swallow before saying with commendable sangfroid, “Very true. But it does rather beg the question, does it not? I mean, why kill the lady in such a flamboyant and decidedly public way? Why not simply hire a couple of footpaths to attack her sedan chair one dark night?”
“Why not indeed?” agreed Sebastian. “Or a highwayman to hold up her carriage on Hampstead Heath? You’ve obviously given some thought to it.”
Ellsworth let out a short, sharp laugh before leaning forward to say, “My debts aren’t that pressing.” His lips were still smiling, but a hard-edged warning glittered in his gray eyes.
“Rumor has it otherwise.”
“Rumor has it wrong.”
Sebastian rested his head against the chair’s high upholstered back. “So what did you think of her? Your late aunt, I mean.” Anyone seeing them from across the room would assume they were having a nice, friendly conversation. “Strange to think of her as your aunt when she was—what? Nearly ten years your junior?”
“Not so strange in our world, is it? London is full of gently bred young ladies panting like bitches in heat after a title or a fortune. Or both.”
Bitter, ugly words. But then, the reality was harsh. Firstborn sons—men of wealth and title—were shamelessly pursued and fought over, while younger sons, and sons of younger sons such as Ellsworth, were seen as dangerous pariahs to be shunned, guarded against, despised.
“And the young Lady Guinevere wanted both?” said Sebastian.
“A prime article like her? Why should she settle for anything less?” Ellsworth’s lips curled into a sneer. “Surely you don’t think she married my uncle for love?”
Sebastian studied the brooding, angry lines of the other man’s face. He was remembering the time, years ago at Eton, when some baronet’s son had eased Ellsworth out of the captainship of his house’s football team. Two weeks later, in a rough and confused tumult of play, the boy’s arm had been broken so badly he had to be sent home for the rest of the year. There were whispers at the time that Ellsworth had deliberately snapped the boy’s arm, although of course nothing could ever be proved. Sebastian heard later that the boy’s arm never did heal right.
“And your uncle?” said Sebastian. “Did he have reason to regret his marriage, do you think?”
Ellsworth gave a harsh laugh. “What? Apart from the fact she was playing him false?”
Sebastian had half expected it, and still the words troubled him more than he could have explained. “You mean with the Regent?”
“I wouldn’t know about the Regent. But you don’t really believe Anglessey fathered that so-called heir his lady wife was carrying, do you?”
“Older men than he have succeeded in siring sons.”
“Perhaps.” Ellsworth tossed down the dregs of his wine and pushed to his feet. “But not this one.”
Chapter 15
The breeches were of the finest plush velvet, with a coat of satin-trimmed blue velvet to match. Together with the silk stockings and snowy white shirt, they formed a livery fit for the footman of a duke—or at least for the boards of the Covent Garden Theater, which is where the costume was normally seen.
Twitching uncomfortably in his starched shirt, Tom supposed there were some fellows who might find the ensemble attractive. But as far as he was concerned, the rig made him look like a popinjay.
“Stop fidgeting,” said Kat, her normally precise diction slurred by the need to speak around a mouthful of pins.
Tom fell obediently still. His back itched unmercifully, but he didn’t move. He had a sneaking suspicion Miss Kat wasn’t above sticking one of her pins into him, if he didn’t do what he was told.
They were in Miss Kat’s dressing room at the theater, and she was busy adapting to his small frame the page’s livery she had borrowed from the theater’s costume collection. “I don’t see why we’re doin’ this,” Tom grumbled. “I got me a bang-up livery already, what the Viscount give me when he made me his tiger.”
“Huh.” Miss Kat moved around to do something to a seam of the breeches. “One look at that yellow-and-black-striped waistcoat of yours, and Lord Anglessey’s servants would mark you down as coming from the household of a sporting gentleman. Those in service have very decided opinions on the subject of young sporting gentleman, and few of those opinions are charitable. You’d be lucky not to find yourself sent off with a flea in your ear.”
Tom swallowed the argument he’d been about to make. The humiliation of yesterday’s failure to scout out anything of use at the Pavilion still burned within him. He was determined to wheedle the information Devlin needed from Lady Anglessey’s servants, and if that meant dressing up like some eighteenth-century fop—well, then, he’d do it.
Tom craned his neck to get a better look at the seam Miss Kat was taking in. “That’s crooked.”
“I’m an actress, not a seamstress.” She bit off her thread and sat back on her heels to survey her handiwork. “And this livery belongs to the theater. You tear it, or spill anything on it, and I’ll take the cost of it out of your hide.”
Tom stepped off the low box she’d had him standing on. “’Ow would I tear it?”
She laughed, an open, spontaneous laugh that made him grin. She was bang-up, for being such a famous actress and all. She was also the best pickpocket he’d ever seen, although he supposed most folks didn’t know that.
“Tell me about this man, the one who was following his lordship yesterday,” she said in an offhand kind of way as she bent to assemble her scattered pins and threads.
“I didn’t see ’im afore ’e come up with us. But then, no one’s got eyes and ears like his lordship’s.”