Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,83

woman. But when you came barging in and played your practiced role as the outraged husband, Crispin didn’t react quite the same way as his friend—perhaps because his friend had tried to warn him about Chantal.”

LaRivière gave a regretful sigh. “I should have killed McHenry as soon as he was dismissed from the Foreign Office.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t.”

“A miscalculation on my part. I feared his death might arouse unpleasant suspicions.”

“And yet that apprehension didn’t stop you from killing Crispin.”

LaRivière took a slow sip of his wine. “I didn’t, you know—kill him, I mean. I’m not saying I didn’t consider it. But he beat me to it by killing himself. The dupe was utterly besotted with Chantal, convinced that she loved him with a fervor to equal his own and was looking to him to save her from her evil husband—me. Then he discovered he’d been played for a rank fool and he couldn’t bear it. Some men find that sort of shame impossible to live with, I’m afraid. It was his own frailty and damaged sense of amour propre—combined I suppose with the pain of unrequited love—that drove him off that bridge.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Again, the shrug. “Believe as you wish. It makes no difference.”

“Was that why Nicholas came here that night? Because he thought you’d killed his brother? Or was the argument all about Chantal?”

“I really don’t recall.”

“Oh, you recall, all right. You argued, one of you pulled a pistol—I’m assuming that was you—and in the ensuing struggle the pistol went off and Chantal was killed.”

“That’s one theory.”

Sebastian came to rest his hands flat on the tabletop and leaned into them. “You’re lucky Nicholas Hayes didn’t shout the truth about your treason to anyone and everyone who would listen.”

“Ah, but by then your estimable father-in-law had already made his move. Jarvis convinced the noble young man to keep quiet for the sake of both his brother and king and country—and, presumably, for the sake of his own skin. I wonder when he realized his mistake. As they were loading him on the transport to Botany Bay? What a fool he was.”

“You’re suggesting, I take it, that Nicholas had reason to want to kill Jarvis as well?”

“I would, if I’d been treated so shabbily. Wouldn’t you?”

Sebastian pushed away from the table. “Perhaps. Except that I sincerely doubt Jarvis knew Nicholas Hayes had returned to England. But you knew.”

“I did. However, so did a number of other people.”

“Oh? Whom did you tell?”

“No one. But as you are doubtless already aware, neither the Earl of Seaforth nor Theodore Brownbeck was anywhere near so reticent.”

“So why didn’t you try to kill Nicholas?”

LaRivière gave what sounded like a genuinely startled laugh. “Perhaps I’ve mellowed in my old age.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Oh, believe me, I have. Eighteen years ago I was desperate. You may consider yourself a moral, ethical, and honest man—loyal and true and all that rot, as you English like to say. But you have no idea how you would behave in adversity. No idea at all.”

“I spent six years at war. You think I haven’t faced adversity?”

LaRivière’s eyebrows arched. “Perhaps you have. And would you have me believe that you have done nothing of which you are ashamed? I’ve heard whispers of things that happened in Portugal . . . when was it? Four years ago?”

Four years before, Sebastian had beaten a French captain to death with his bare hands. The raw, surging bloodlust of that night—and the unspeakable events that had led up to it—still haunted Sebastian’s dreams. But all he said was “Did you kill Nicholas Hayes?”

“And if I said I did not, would you take me at my word?”

“No.”

“I thought not. But the truth is, I didn’t kill him. On the evening in question, I dined with the Regent before attending his Carlton House reception for the Allied Sovereigns.”

“You could have hired someone to do your killing for you.”

“I could have. But I did not.”

“Again, I don’t believe you.”

LaRivière made a soft tssking sound and shook his head. “Such an untrusting person you are. Tell me, my lord, do you fence?”

“Yes.”

“We must have a match sometime.”

“I think not.”

“No? A pity, but as you wish.” LaRivière drained his glass, then held the stem between two fingers and twisted it back and forth so that the fine-cut crystal caught the candlelight and danced it across his cold, dark eyes. “Why do you do it, anyway? Devote yourself with such indefatigable passion to this quest to catch the killer of someone you never