Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(81)
The sentiment was undeniably maudlin, but Sebastian suspected the tears he saw glittering in her eyes were real. He said, “Several weeks ago, someone stole a packet containing letters Charlotte once wrote to her cousin Captain Hesse. Do you know who did that?”
She focused on draping a doll-sized purple velvet cloak around the wax figure’s shoulders. “You think it vas me?”
“No, Your Highness.” Not necessarily. “But I’m hoping you might have some idea who did.”
She smiled faintly as she settled a miniature tin crown on the figurine’s head. “Vhen I vas first married, Vales gave me my own rooms at Carlton House and furnished them to his own taste. And then, several months after we ved, he sent servants to take back most of my furniture. He said he could not afford to pay for it. But I noticed none of the furniture in his rooms disappeared.” She held the wax figure at arm’s length, studying it. “He also took back the pearl bracelets he gave me as vedding presents and gave them to his mistress, the putain Jersey. She delighted in wearing them in my presence. And there was nothing—nothing—I could do about any of it.”
The implication was clear: As a new, young bride she had been alone and powerless, unable to defend herself in any way, let alone strike back. She was not so powerless anymore.
Is that what this is? he wanted to ask. A game of revenge against your bastard of a husband? With your daughter as the helpless pawn?
Except of course that one did not say such things to the Princess of Wales.
She took a pin and thrust it into the wax doll’s foot, her face twisting with bitterness as she shoved it deep. Then she laughed and said, “I hear he has a bad case of gout. I vonder how that happened?”
She picked up another pin, then paused to look over at Sebastian. “Vhen Vales sent my daughter down to Vindsor for months, trying to keep her avay from me, young Charles Hesse vas kind enough to carry letters back and forth between us. Then, vhen he and Charlotte were forbidden to meet, she came to me in tears, begging for my help.” The Princess shrugged. “So I passed correspondence between them and arranged for them to meet in my apartments in Kensington Palace. It vas all intensely romantic and utterly innocent, and I regret none of it.”
And locking them alone together in your bedroom? thought Sebastian. Was that “innocent”?
Caroline thrust the next pin deep into the wax figure’s bowels. “Are you familiar vith vhat happened to Sophia Dorothea, the mother of King George I? Her husband imprisoned her in the castle of Ahlden vhen she was just twenty-seven, and he kept her there for thirty-three years until she died. Then he ordered her casket thrown into the castle’s cellars.”
When Sebastian said nothing, she continued. “My aunt Caroline Matilda was sister to the present King. She married her cousin, the King of Denmark, who like Orange preferred men and vas all messed up in the head. He had her arrested and strangled at the age of twenty-three.”
Sebastian had heard George III’s unhappy sister died of scarlet fever, but he also knew that could simply be a tale put out for public consumption. She had most certainly died while under arrest, and her husband was utterly mad at the time of her rather convenient death.
“And you know vhat happened to my sister,” said Caroline darkly.
Sebastian nodded. Caroline’s sister, Augusta, had married Prince Frederick of Württemberg when she was just fifteen. He beat her so viciously the young Princess was given asylum by Catherine of Russia, only to then die under suspicious circumstances and be hastily buried in an unmarked grave.
Choosing another pin, Caroline thrust it with slow deliberation into the wax figure’s groin. “I vill do anything,” she said, “anything I must, to stop vhat the Regent is trying to do to my Charlotte.” She looked up to meet Sebastian’s gaze. “But I don’t have the Hesse letters, and I don’t know who does.”
It was a dismissal. Sebastian thanked her and bowed low.
As he backed slowly from her presence, he saw her throw the wax effigy into the flames and watch, smiling, as it flared up and then melted into nothing.
Chapter 47
Devlin was seated behind his desk, a disheveled lock of dark hair falling over one eye, his pen scratching furiously across a sheet of paper, when Hero came to stand in the library doorway.
“What are you doing?”
Looking up, he spun the page—covered with a rough graph of horizontal and vertical lines—around to face her. “Trying to make sense of four very tangled threads.”
As she drew closer, she could see that across the top of the page he’d written Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday . . . “With a calendar?” she said, coming to lean over the desk.
He nodded. “Of the last weeks of Jane Ambrose’s life. As far as I can tell, her trouble started here.” He pointed to the first Tuesday in January.
“The last day of the Great Fog,” said Hero.
Devlin leaned back in his chair. “That’s the day Jane accidently overheard Rothschild discussing his gold shipments to France, as a result of which he both dismissed her and threatened her.”
“Which had the unintended effect of sending her to visit her uncle Sheridan,” said Hero. “The first time.”
Devlin pointed to the following week. “This is when Jarvis sent one of his men to pick up Jane from Warwick House and bring her to him at Carlton House. He warned her to shut up and threatened dire consequences not only to her but to anyone else she should tell about the gold.”