Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(37)
They had lived apart now for seventeen years. At first the Prince had allowed Caroline to see her daughter once a day. Then he’d restricted their visits to once a week, then once a fortnight, then every three weeks. Frequently the visits were suspended entirely for months at a time, while correspondence between mother and daughter was strictly forbidden. Sebastian suspected it was one of the main reasons Princess Charlotte’s tutors, servants, and ladies were always being sacked—because they were suspected of smuggling letters between the lonely young Princess and her mother.
Caroline’s newest residence, Connaught House, lay on the northern side of Bayswater Road, overlooking the ancient hanging site of Tyburn and the rolling expanse of Hyde Park beyond that. “Gor,” said Tom, his face tight and solemn as he stared at the former location of the infamous scaffold. “I wouldn’t want t’ look out me window every mornin’ ’n’ see that.”
Sebastian handed his tiger the reins and dropped to the ground. “Perhaps princesses aren’t as intimidated by gallows as the rest of us.” Although even as he said it, it occurred to Sebastian that this particular princess probably had more reason to fear than most. If the Prince of Wales—with Jarvis’s assistance—could have connived it, Caroline would have been dead long ago.
Given Sebastian’s connections to Jarvis, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had refused to receive him. But after a few minutes’ wait, he was shown up to a small, light-filled room with a row of tall windows overlooking a snowy rear garden. Caroline—wearing a plain old fustian gown and a decidedly ratty mobcap—stood at a low table near the windows and was busy sculpting a man’s head out of clay.
“I hope you don’t mind if I keep vorking,” she said, grinning as she held up hands stained with clay. Despite being the descendant and niece of British kings and a resident of England herself for almost nineteen years, Caroline’s German accent was still quite heavy.
“Your Royal Highness.” Sebastian executed a low, courtly bow. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
She gave a loud, hearty laugh. “If you knew how few visitors I receive these days, you vould not be as surprised as you appear.”
Sebastian found himself smiling. There was nothing arrogant, pretentious, subtle, or subdued about Caroline. She had never been a beauty, although most people acknowledged that in her youth she was pretty, with a fresh complexion, deep-set blue eyes, and fine fair hair. But the intervening years had coarsened her figure and ground down her once sunny, effervescent good humor beneath the endless pressures of heartache, loneliness, boredom, frustration, and fear. Prinny had twice tried to divorce her by unsuccessfully charging her with adultery—the penalty for which would have been death.
Now her eyes narrowed as she looked Sebastian over with a frankly assessing and openly curious gaze. “Vhy are you here?”
His answer was as blunt as her question. “Jane Ambrose was found dead on Thursday, Your Highness. All indications are that she was killed, but because she was Princess Charlotte’s piano instructor, the palace will not allow her death to be investigated.”
“It vas murder? Mein God,” whispered Caroline, her hands stilling on the bust. “Poor Jane.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Yes, of course. I’ve known Jane for years.” Caroline herself had a reputation for playing the piano extraordinarily well. In fact, when she was younger, in Germany, she’d studied with a number of famous masters, practicing faithfully four and more hours a day. Now her eyebrows drew together in a troubled frown. “Vhy vill the palace not allow an investigation?”
“Ostensibly their motive is to prevent any hint of scandal from touching the Princess. But it’s also possible they’re hiding something.”
Caroline was silent for a moment, her attention seemingly all for her sculpture again. She might have been an unexpectedly simple woman, but she was not stupid. And she’d been dealing with Prinny’s plots, machinations, lies, and schemes for the better part of two decades. Her gaze still on her work, she said slowly, “You’ve heard that fat pig of a husband of mine tricked Charlotte into agreeing to marry Orange?”
“I heard the Regent had pressured her.”
“Oh, he more than pressured her. He tricked her. He likes to say he promised never to try to force her into a distasteful marriage. But vhat do you call it when a father shouts at his daughter, calling her an obstinate, silly fool vhile threating to shut her up for life if she doesn’t marry?”
“Would he do that to her?”
“Of course he would do it. He cares for no one but himself—and that nasty mother of his, I suppose,” she added as an afterthought.
When Sebastian refrained from comment, she said, “Last December he made Charlotte agree to meet Orange at a dinner party at Carlton House and then pushed her into promising she’d give him an answer about the match that very evening.” Her nostrils flared with indignation. “Who does that?”
“So what happened?”
“Charlotte saw Orange for two hours—two hours!—at a dinner attended by a number of others including Liverpool and his vife. And then, vith everyone still there, Vales pulls her aside and says, ‘Vell, vhat do you think of him?’”
“What did she think?”