Amanda Scott (25 page)

He was allowed visitors by then, of course, but between them, Sylvia and Wigan kept these to a minimum and made certain that their visits were brief. Each was warned to say nothing about the assassination, for despite his seemingly normal recovery, Greyfalcon had shown not the least sign of having remembered any of the events that had taken place at the time of his injuries, and it was still thought to be best to let nature take her course.

The cat nearly flew out of the bag one day when Lacey casually mentioned the battles raging in Parliament.

“What battles?”

Lacey shot a grimace of remorse at Sylvia, but spoke up quickly and with much the same casual air he generally affected. “Oh, you know, all the nonsense between Canning and Wellesley over the Regent’s debts. The word is that Wellesley may resign his cabinet post.”

That incident passed harmlessly enough, because his lordship wasn’t particularly interested in any of the combatants. On Monday morning, however, Sylvia had barely filled her plate in the breakfast parlor, when one of the younger footmen rushed in and, without apology, blurted, “Oh, miss, Mr. Wigan says will you come at once. His lordship is in a fine rage and is shouting for his clothes and his curricle. And he wants all of the newspapers for the past week, only, Miss Sylvia, they’ve been thrown out, the lot of them.”

“Never mind, Toby, I shall go up at once.”

She found Greyfalcon in his breeches and shirt, trying to tie his neckcloth.

“Damn the thing, why won’t it cooperate? What the devil are you doing in here?” he demanded when he caught her reflection in his looking glass. “Can’t a man have any privacy?”

“Wigan sent for me,” she replied calmly. “What has put you into such a rage, sir?”

“Don’t come the innocent with me, my girl. If you are not responsible for the fact of my having been kept in the dark for a week, then I shall be very much surprised. You may count yourself fortunate that I am still a trifle under par, or I would show you just how I feel about your mischief. Only look at that, and tell me if I am not right to be upset.” From a stack of papers, he pushed a copy of the
Times
toward her, then pulled it back again. “Not that. Where is the damned thing? Oh, here.” He extracted a broadside from beneath the newspaper and held it out to her. “See anything familiar?”

She saw with a frisson of shock that it was a drawing of the assassination. Both assassin and victim were clearly depicted, and she realized with a gasp that she recognized Bellingham. He was the burly man with the Roman nose who had accosted her outside Greyfalcon House.

Greyfalcon was watching her closely. “Ah, you do recognize him. Have you not seen this picture before?”

“No, sir, there were no pictures in the papers—certainly not in the
Times
—and those accounts are the only ones I have seen. How came you by this?” she asked in a sharper tone.

“I’ve my methods.” Then, as she continued to look at him, he shrugged, and did so without wincing, she noted. “All right, I realized this morning that I hadn’t seen the papers for a week and that it couldn’t have been entirely by oversight, since I’m quite certain I asked for them on more than one occasion. The most logical explanation would be a conspiracy among the lot of you, so I didn’t ask this morning. I greased young Toby in the fist instead and sent him out to get the
Times
and whatever else struck his fancy. His taste in papers appears to be somewhat more plebeian than my own, but the account there of Bellingham’s hanging, even in the
Times,
is lurid enough to appeal to the lowest taste.”

“He hadn’t been hanged yet when this was written,” Sylvia said, picking up the newspaper to scan the account indicated. “He’s to be hanged today.”

“Yes, for the proper amount of time, it says there.”

She shuddered, then looked at him curiously. “Why have you ordered your curricle, sir? I can see that you are in fine fettle this morning, but do you think you ought to leap out of bed and into a curricle in practically the same motion?”

“I had thought to find out whatever I might about that fellow. By this account he clearly had a grievance against the government, but I cannot imagine how he would know about that book when he appears to have spent the last few years languishing in a Russian prison. I want to see if I can discover why he wanted the book.”

“If he had a grievance against Mr. Perceval, possession of the book might have got him an audience at least,” Sylvia pointed out.

“Perhaps, but that still doesn’t answer the question of how he found out about the book in the first place, or how he knew you had a copy.”

“Major Teufel?” Sylvia suggested. “He is the Regent’s man, and he knew.”

“And Perceval, only Saturday, laughed in Prinny’s face when he demanded payment of his debts.”

They stared at each other. “Greyfalcon, what are we thinking? This is too dreadful for words.”

He nodded. “Teufel is known to have a near doglike devotion to his master. He has no morals to speak of, and fewer notions of civility. We can deduce without much fear of being wrong that Bellingham acted as his agent on at least one occasion in the past, and Teufel is the Regent’s faithful minion. Is it possible that the Regent is somehow involved in Perceval’s assassination?”

Sylvia’s eyes widened as she had another thought. “Greyfalcon, do you remember what happened when you were hurt?”

“Not all,” he said. “I don’t remember seeing Bellingham, for example, but that’s not to be wondered at. By the look of this drawing I must have been behind him, and I’d not have seen him so clearly as this, anyway, because there were a number of people milling about. I heard what must have been the shot and then someone bashed into me and everything went black. No doubt the fellow who hit me was trying to get out of the way. Sensible thing to do with some crackbrain firing off a pistol.”

“What are we going to do?”

He was silent for a long moment, then sighed. “I think, however much I dislike the notion, that we are going to do nothing.”

“Nothing!”

“Nothing. Consider, Sylvia, what evidence we have. None. You can recognize Bellingham. You are nearly certain that Teufel must have intercepted your letter to Perceval. You never received a reply to your second letter, or I to my first, so they must have gone astray as well. There is a pattern, certainly, but the fact remains that we cannot prove a link from the Regent to Teufel to Bellingham.”

“You must talk to Bellingham, then.”

He shook his head. “It is too late. Read the paper. He may not have been hanged when the account was written, but he is now. His execution took place at eight o’clock this morning. I had just thought to find people who knew him, to question them, but now even that might be dangerous.”

“Gracious, but what if—”

“What? You think he might have been innocent? He wasn’t that, whatever else he may have been. He shot Perceval, all right, in front of dozens of witnesses. Moreover, he confessed to it on the spot and handed over not just one gun but two. His only remorse seems to be that he believes he shot the wrong man. He is quoted here as saying under examination that he ought to have shot Leveson-Gower instead.”

“Well, Leveson-Gower was our ambassador to Russia when Mr. Bellingham was arrested and imprisoned. No doubt he believed that his ambassador ought to have helped him.”

Greyfalcon nodded, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. “Look here, Sylvia,” he said suddenly, his eyes hard as his gaze caught and held hers, “I want you to promise me you will say nothing of this discussion of ours to anyone. Not to Lord Arthur or Mama, certainly, and not to Lady Joan. The matter of the book has got to be laid to rest. With Perceval dead, there is no one other than the broadsiders who will be interested in it anyway. The Tories are still in power, and the Regent will just have to deal with them on his own. In fact, probably the best thing to do with that book is to burn it before someone uses it to raise a dust he can’t settle.”

But although she agreed to obey him in the matter of keeping silent, Sylvia could not agree to destroying the book without at least discussing it with her father. She had been brought up to have too high a regard for books to treat the destruction of one lightly. And Lord Arthur was firmly opposed to the idea.

“Nonsense,” he said when she broached the subject to him. “That copy may well be the last in existence. No need to puff off the fact that we have it, of course, but Perceval don’t want it now, and we owe it to history to keep the book. Indeed, I think I should perhaps like to dip into it, to see what all the fuss was about. Then I’ll just put it with the rest of my books at the manor house.”

Even Greyfalcon had no objection to that. Nowhere could a book be more safely lost than among Lord Arthur’s other volumes, he told Sylvia with a laugh.

“Indeed, sir, I doubt that anyone would take the time and trouble to look all through Papa’s books to find that one.”

“You will remember what I said to you earlier, however,” he said in a low, commanding tone. “You are not to mention any of our suspicions to a soul. I mean that, Sylvia. It can do no good and may well do harm.”

Sylvia agreed, as much because she had come during the past weeks to care a great deal for him and for his opinions as for any other reason. And she had every intention of obeying him, for it was not difficult to realize that her safety might depend upon her silence. After all, the Regent was not without powerful friends.

Having decided that to make their suspicions known would simply not be sensible, Sylvia was a little leery of attending the Carlton House ball the following night. She had every expectation of seeing Major Teufel among the guests, and she was not by any means certain that she would be able to control her expression well enough to keep the man from guessing that she harbored suspicions of his complicity in the Perceval assassination.

She could not let Joan down, however. They had planned together for this event for weeks, and it was to be one of the major social events of the Season. If she found it surprising that everyone expected life among the members of the
beau monde
to go on as usual after the assassination of the prime minister, she was intelligent enough, too, to realize that when it came to a choice between offending the royal family and offending the family of a politician, there could be no choice. Politicians came and went. The royal family went on forever.

Certainly there was not the least hint of mourning at Carlton House when the carriage carrying the Reston party drew up at the north front Tuesday night. Besides Reston, Lady Joan, and Sylvia, the group included Lady Ermintrude Whitely, who fluttered her fan and began at once to look about for her particular friends, and Mr. Lacey, who was dressed with his usual flamboyance in pantaloons, a maroon coat, and an emerald brocade waistcoat. There was a light rain falling, but the guests did not have to worry about getting damp, for each carriage could be driven right in under the portico, where its passengers stepped down upon perfectly dry carpeting with the assistance of the footmen on duty there.

The Reston party mounted the wide steps to the great hall, which was a spectacular chamber surrounded on all four sides by open screens of Ionic columns and surmounted by a coffered, top-lit ceiling. The mahogany furniture designed many years before by Henry Holland contrasted with the richer gilded furniture the Prince had acquired since that gentleman’s departure.

“I have been here many times since the fete last year in celebration of the Prince’s accepting the Regency,” Lady Ermintrude confided behind her fan to Sylvia as they passed through the main hall and then through the pages’ hall to the circular drawing room, “and I declare his highness changes the furniture so often that one can scarcely catch a glimpse of each new arrangement before it is turned off for another.”

“And each lot,” put in Joan, who had overheard, “is more fantastical than the last. Only wait until you see the octagonal vestibule, Sylvie. We will pass through it when we go downstairs to the conservatory later in the evening, for I promise you ’tis a sight that ought not to be missed.”

Sylvia was missing very little. She had never been to Carlton House before, and it was truly a sight to inspire awe. Her only wish was that Greyfalcon might be there to share the experience with her. He would mock the extravagance and the magnificence equally. Of that she had no doubt. But it would be fun to hear what he had to say. Indeed, after all the time she had spent in his company during the past week, this evening without him seemed a trifle flat.

She knew that the huge room in which they now found themselves was where the Regent held receptions, and that even more often he used it as a music room. Tonight it was clearly the main reception room for the ball. She looked about her for a glimpse of the queen, who had promised, for once, to act as her son’s hostess, but she was disappointed, for her majesty was nowhere to be seen.

“They will both be in the throne room,” Joan informed her in an undertone. When Sylvia turned to look at her in astonishment, she smiled. “I couldn’t think of anyone else you might be searching for. The throne room is there to the south. The dancing will be in the crimson drawing room, there.” She pointed to the north end of the room.

“His highness had the old throne room turned into an audience chamber last year,” Reston told Sylvia. “Said it was too small, that he wanted something grander.”

“Wait till you see it,” his wife said with a grin.

Indeed, the room was all that Joan had promised. Dominated by an elaborate stuccoed, painted, and gilded ceiling supported by an elaborately carved and gilded entablature above gilt pilasters, the vast chamber boasted overdoors representing the orders of the Garter, the Bath, St. Patrick, and St. Andrew, heavy red velvet curtains festooned with gold fringe over white silk, and a magnificent red-and-gold carpet.

The Regent and his mother occupied a pair of matching, heavily carved chairs at the west end of the room, and Lord and Lady Reston, Miss Jensen-Graham, and the others in their party moved to join the guests who were being presented. Since it was not a formal presentation by any means, the line moved quickly, and it was not long before Sylvia was making her curtsy, first to the Regent and then to the queen. She had been formally presented the year of her come-out, but she had not seen her majesty since, and she was appalled to note how much older the woman looked. Still, she received a gracious smile and a kind word. As she rose from her curtsy and began to move aside to make room for the next person, she caught the Regent’s eye upon her. She could not mistake the appraising look he gave her and was annoyed with herself for blushing.