“What set him off?” he asked Claire.
She paused to push a stray lock of light brown hair out of her face with the back of one delicate wrist. “Who knows? Believe it or not, he’s better now than he was.”
Climbing to the top of the stairs, Sebastian found Hero walking back and forth before the nursery fire, the child’s rigid body held so that her shoulder pressed against his stomach, his little fists clenched tight, his face red and distorted with his howls. At the sound of Sebastian’s step, she turned, her quietly exasperated gaze meeting his.
“Here,” said Sebastian, and walked forward to take his screaming son into his arms.
“I showed the section of inscribed lead to my father,” Hero said sometime later, in a quiet moment when Simon dozed fitfully against her.
Sebastian had settled on the hearthrug beside her, his back propped against the side of her chair, a glass of wine in one hand. “And?” he asked, looking up at her.
“He says the tomb of Charles I was discovered just last week in St. George’s in Windsor Castle, when the workmen constructing a new passage to the royal vault accidentally stumbled upon it. Needless to say, he was not at all pleased by the possibility that someone might have made off with the royal coffin strap.”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his wine. “Interesting. Especially when you consider that Stanley Preston was an avid collector with a special interest in items from the Tudor and Stuart periods. He even has Oliver Cromwell’s head.”
“His actual head?”
“The actual head-along with those of Henri IV and the Duke of Suffolk.”
“How ghoulish-not to mention suggestive, given how Preston died.” She cautiously readjusted the sleeping child’s weight. “What manner of man was he?”
“Preston? Proud. Socially ambitious. Quarrelsome. Although, according to a rather interesting spinster I met, he was also a devout and devoted family man. The sort, she says, one could like in spite of himself.”
“If one could overlook the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves,” said Hero.
“Yes. But it never ceases to amaze me the number of otherwise decent members of our society who can overlook it without any difficulty at all. I suppose it’s because the institution is both legal and biblical-not to mention highly profitable. So it never occurs to most people to question the custom any further.”
He realized she was staring at him with an oddly intent, unreadable gaze. “What is it you’re not telling me?” she said.
He paused in the act of raising his wineglass to his lips. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a trickle of dried blood on your left temple.”
“There is?” He pushed to his feet and went to inspect his forehead in the mirror over the washstand. “So there is. That shot obviously came closer than I realized.”
“Someone shot at you? Tonight?”
He wet a cloth and dabbed at the cut. “Just as I was turning onto Brook Street. They must have been lying in wait for me.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to mention it to me?”
“They missed.”
“No, they didn’t.”
He dabbed at the dried blood again, his gaze still on his reflection in the mirror. “I’ve obviously stirred someone up. The problem is, I haven’t the slightest notion whom. The only vaguely possible suspects I’ve found so far are a hussar captain who’s been showing an unwelcome interest in Preston’s daughter-unwelcome to Preston, that is-and a banker who publicly quarreled with Preston the night he died. But the banker is by all reports out of town, and I haven’t even tracked down the captain yet.”
“Someone must see you as a threat,” said Hero, her voice oddly tight. “They tried to kill you.”
“It could have been meant as a warning.” The babe stirred and let out a soft cry, and Sebastian set aside the bloodstained cloth and turned to reach for the child. “Here; let me have him for a while.”
She hesitated, and he saw something flare in her eyes, something that was there and then gone, as if quickly hidden away from him. They’d grown so much closer in the months since their marriage, yet he knew she still kept many of her thoughts and feelings from him.
“What?” he said.
“Just. . be careful, Sebastian. I don’t understand what’s happening. But whatever it is, it’s ugly. Very ugly.”
“My dear Lady Devlin,” he said teasingly as he eased the now squalling infant from her grasp. “Are you worried?”
He expected her to answer with one of her typically wry, flippant responses.
Instead, she reached up to touch her fingertips to the flesh beside the still raw wound on his forehead and said, “Yes.”
Chapter 13
The royal residence of Windsor Castle lay in the provincial town of Windsor, some twenty miles to the west of London on the southern bank of the river Thames. Jarvis had dispatched one of his men that morning with a message warning the Dean to prepare for a visit to the royal vault. But by the time he arrived, the sun had long since slipped below the western walls of the castle.
The Honorable and Right Reverend Edward Legge, who served in the prestigious position of Dean of St. George’s Chapel, waited in the lower court to meet him, the ancient medieval battlements looming dark against a black sky. A ferociously ambitious cleric who’d long ago perfected the art of flattering and pleasing those in power, Legge was ponderous and fleshy, with startlingly dark, heavy brows and a weak chin. Now his jowly face showed slick with a nervous sweat despite the cold wind that whipped at his cassock and sent dried leaves scuttling across the castle’s wide, sloping lawns. At his side stood the chapel’s virger, Rowan Toop, with a horn lantern gripped tightly in one hand. The Dean might be in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the chapel, but it was the virger who oversaw the care and maintenance of the venerable old buildings and supervised the burial of the dead.
“My lord,” said the Dean, both men bowing low as a castle guard leapt forward to open the carriage door. “We are truly honored to-”
Jarvis stepped down with an agility surprising for one of his size and cut off the Dean with a curt, “I trust all is ready?”
“Yes, my lord. If I might be so bold as to offer your lordship a nice hot cup of tea? Or perhaps a glass of wine before we-”
“No.”
The Dean bowed again, his habitual bland smile still firmly in place as he held out a hand toward the chapel’s ornate western front. “If you’ll come this way, my lord?”
They followed the lantern-bearing virger into the medieval church’s vast, soaring nave, with its ancient stained-glass windows and elaborately carved ceiling and stately alabaster monuments. St. George’s was second only to Westminster Abbey as the burial place of kings and queens, princes and princesses-although over the years the precise location of certain royals had become somewhat fuzzy.
The entrance to the Prince of Wales’s new passage lay in the quire, guarded by a recently installed iron gate wrapped with a heavy padlock and chain. “Excuse me, my lord,” said the Dean, producing a large key. “This will take but a moment.”
Jarvis grunted, his gaze drifting over the colorful rows of helms and banners that hung above the intricately carved wooden quire stalls, for the chapel also served as home to the Knights of the Garter.
“As you can see, my lord,” said the Dean as he fumbled with the lock, “we’ve taken every precaution to ensure that there will be no repeat of the unfortunate scenes that followed the discovery of King Edward’s remains.”
“I should hope so,” said Jarvis. When workmen repaving the chapel late in the previous century had accidentally broken into the vault containing the seven-foot coffin of Edward IV, so many gawkers and relic seekers had managed to find their way into the crypt that they’d carried off much of what was left of Edward-one tooth, lock of hair, and finger bone at a time-before anyone thought to put a stop to it.