Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,82

oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

Chapter 48

G ilbert-Christophe de LaRivière was drinking a glass of port in solitary splendor at his own table when Sebastian walked into the Frenchman’s dining room, trailed by the Count’s French butler frantically sputtering, “Mais, monsieur le vicomte! Vous n—”

LaRivière’s languid gaze met Sebastian’s. Then he glanced at the butler now wringing his hands and said, “Leave us.” Leaning back in his chair, the French Count took a slow sip of his port. “Bit high-handed even for you, isn’t it, Devlin?”

Sebastian shut the door in the butler’s face. “We need to talk. Now.”

LaRivière waved one slim white hand in the general direction of the two long rows of empty chairs. “By all means, do have a seat.”

“Thank you, but I’ll stand.”

A faint suggestion of a smile hovered about the Frenchman’s thin lips. “As you wish.”

“You know why I’m here?”

“I presume it has something to do with the events that gave rise to the rather hysterical message I recently received from Lord Seaforth.”

“Something. But not all.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

Sebastian wandered the room, taking in the gleaming walnut wainscoting, the exquisite Venetian chandelier, the heavy Sheffield plate. The life-sized painting of one of the most beautiful women Sebastian had ever seen.

“Your wife?” said Sebastian, pausing before the portrait.

“My late wife.”

She was breathtakingly exquisite. She’d been painted with her glorious fair hair loose and unpowdered and her gown slipping off her shoulders in a style that was reminiscent of the Restoration era. Her face was heart-shaped, her enormous eyes a brilliant violet, her mouth full and pouting and seemingly made for kisses and everything sinful. It was a beguiling combination of innocence and seduction, vulnerability and power that had beckoned more than one man to his doom.

“She was lovely,” said Sebastian.

“That she was,” agreed the Frenchman, still lounging at his ease.

“Was she a willing participant in your little seduction schemes? I wonder. Or did you force her compliance?”

“Oh, Chantal enjoyed seducing men, believe me.” Again, that faintly derisive aristocratic smile. “You’ve been talking to someone, have you?”

“Several people.”

The Count gave a very Gallic shrug. “It was inevitable, I suppose.”

“Is that why you tried to have me killed?”

The amusement deepened. “Did someone try to kill you? How . . . distressing.”

“That they tried? Or that they failed?”

“What do you think?”

Sebastian continued his perambulation of the room. “Eighteen years ago you set your lovely wife to seduce a green young man with a promising career at the Foreign Office. He tumbled desperately in love with her and in due course also tumbled into bed with her. At which time you—playing the part of the outraged husband, no doubt to perfection—charged in and caught them in flagrante. It’s an old, rather tired game, but it still works, doesn’t it? The husband threatens a crim. con. case that would both disgrace and bankrupt the victim, and the victim begs to settle out of court. Only, in this instance the victim had no money. He did, however, have access to information—information that could be passed on to Paris. Not for ideological reasons, mind you, but for vulgar monetary gain.”

LaRivière sipped his port. He was no longer smiling. “I see you judge us harshly—an easy thing to do, no doubt, when one has never seen their country ripped apart and destroyed by revolution. We did what we had to do to survive. Vulgar and otherwise.”

“You were living in this house at the time. It’s not as if you’d been forced to take refuge in a chicken coop.” Sebastian had seen French countesses and duchesses reduced to living in old barns.

“Believe me,” said LaRivière, “it was not nearly so well-appointed twenty years ago.”

“Your two masters have paid you well, have they?”

“Well enough. I also made some extraordinarily wise investments.”

“Based on tips passed to you by your two masters?”

“Perhaps.”

Sebastian resumed walking. “Unfortunately for you, the same sensibilities that made the first of the young men in question susceptible to Chantal’s seductive wiles also meant that playing the role of traitor to his own country preyed upon him to a disastrous extent. He quickly fell apart and was dismissed from the Foreign Office.”

“I presume you’re going someplace with this?”

“I am; bear with me. Your first victim having thus lost his usefulness, you then set your sights on Crispin Hayes. Except this time you chose poorly. Oh, he was every bit as susceptible as his friend to Chantal’s seductions—she must have been an extraordinarily talented