Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(32)

She laughed. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”



They sought refuge in a nearby coffeehouse with a roaring fire and the welcoming aroma of freshly baked scones. She was on her second scone when she said casually without looking up, “There’s something else you wanted to ask me about, isn’t there?”

He smiled, because she had always known him so well. Dropping his voice, he leaned in closer over the table. “I need to talk to a smuggler familiar with Rothschild’s operation in the Channel. I don’t mean one of his confederates, but a competitor—someone who would be willing to tell me what I need to know.”

The request might have struck a casual listener as beyond bizarre. But then, few in London knew that as a fierce Irish patriot, Kat had once passed information to the French, or that she was the widow of a flamboyant ex-privateer who’d dabbled in smuggling himself.

“You think Rothschild could be involved in her death?”

“It’s possible. Can you find someone?”

A flicker of something unidentifiable crossed her features. But all she said was “Give me a few days.”

After that, they talked for a time of Simon’s coming birthday and Hendon’s recent attack of the gout. Then Kat fell silent, her face thoughtful.

“What?”

“I was remembering one of the reasons why I’d come to doubt Edward Ambrose’s reputation as a genial man. About a year or so ago, when we were doing his Fool’s Paradise, his wife was at the theater helping organize the costumes. He got into a disagreement with her over something, and I saw him take hold of her wrist and twist it hard enough that she gave a small gasp.”

“It was deliberate?”

“Oh, yes. And what made it particularly chilling is that he was smiling all the time he did it.”

“Lovely.”

She nodded. “I saw him do something similar just a few days ago.”

“When?”

“Tuesday evening. I was walking past the Opera and noticed them standing at the top of the steps, beneath the portico. It was raining, and I wasn’t near enough to hear what they were saying, but it was obvious the conversation was tense. He grabbed her by both arms and shook her—quite hard. And then she pulled from his grasp and ran away. It was beginning to get dark, but I could see her face well enough as she passed to know that she was crying.”

“Bloody hell,” said Sebastian.

Kat met his gaze, her features solemn. “If he did kill her, I hope you can prove it.”

Sebastian took a swallow of his tea, found it cold, and pushed the cup aside. “Believe me, I’m trying.”



Sebastian turned his steps once more toward Soho Square. The snow was falling now in windblown swirls, a billowing curtain of white lit by a strange light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

It was only midday, but he found himself walking through nearly deserted streets, the ice stinging his cheeks, his breath a frozen mist that hovered around him. Where did they all go? he found himself wondering—the tradesmen and cart drivers, costermongers and paupers whose voices normally echoed through the narrow, canyon-like streets of the city? For how long could they continue to seek refuge from a winter too brutal to be borne before they began to starve, go mad, die?

He walked on, his shoulders hunched against the driven snow as he tried to put together the puzzle of Jane Ambrose’s death with three-quarters of its pieces still missing. In the last forty-eight hours his grasp of the woman she once was had begun to strengthen, the reality of her life and the way she’d lived it emerging like a shadowy form still half hidden by a storm. He saw a talented musician denied the brilliant career that could have been hers had she only been born male, and a devout, loving mother, faithfully honoring her religion by enduring an unhappy marriage only to then be devastated by the loss of both her children.

How could such a woman come to terms with that blow? he wondered. Impossible to do, surely, without questioning every assumption, every platitude by which she had always sought to live. Jane’s brother swore she’d taken her marriage vows too seriously to ever think of leaving her husband or taking a lover. But had that remained true? Would Christian Somerset know if it did not?

Jane’s husband had made a practice of hitting her. Hurting her. What would a man such as Edward Ambrose do if he discovered his wife’s infidelity—or suspected it? Hit her in the face? Rape her?

Kill her?





Chapter 19

The body of Jane Ambrose lay in a silk-lined coffin set up on two straight-backed wooden chairs before the dining room windows overlooking Soho Square. Her face was like wax, her body shrinking in on itself so that she looked diminished, so much less than the vibrant woman she’d been in life. The laying-out woman had dressed her in a high-necked gown of simple black muslin with a black lace-trimmed bonnet that effectively hid both the shattered side of her skull and the exploratory incisions from Alexi Sauvage’s abbreviated postmortem examination. The strange, inexplicable burns on her hand were covered by fine black gloves. Any other secrets her body might have had to tell were hidden and would never be known.

Edward Ambrose stood beside his dead wife’s coffin, his gaze on her still, pale face. His shoulders were slumped, his cravat askew, and he looked up at Sebastian’s entrance to show an unshaven face with eyes swollen as if from lack of sleep. He gave all the appearance of a man devastated by the death of a wife he loved. But then, Sebastian had seen men weep inconsolably at the gravesides of women they’d killed.