cleverness with which he pretended to dine: he'd very nearly fooled her, when they met.
The wampyr caught her looking and presented her with the thin edge of a smile. He swirled his wine in the glass, and touched it to his lips, inhaling the aroma. Garrett found she didn't have much appetite either, sitting among guarded men with Michel Nezahualcoyotl making polite forays into conversation.
Sebastien had scarcely set the glass down when the Aztec ambassador leaned forward. "What brings you to the Americas, Don Sebastien? You are Spanish, of course—" Nezahualcoyotl left the thought unfinished. The British alliance with the Aztec Empire dated from a time when both great powers found themselves with a common enemy: the then even greater power of Spain. "—I would have thought you'd go to the great trade city of San Diego, if you wished to explore the new world."
"San Diego is lovely," Sebastien said, laying his fork aside and letting
his left eye drift closed in a smiling wink. "But I prefer a cooler climate for my exile."
"No-one comes to America for the climate." Garrett watched Richard's face as she said it. He smiled faintly: he'd been born in New Amsterdam, made his fortune by twenty-one in the service of the Iron Queen, and married the old Duke's daughter and heir so he could protect the city and the colony he cherished.
"Some come to New Amsterdam to escape the consequences of previous actions," Henry commented without looking up from his food. "But I think most come out of—well, I won't call it cowardice. Perhaps it would be better to say, a desire to start anew. I suspect most of those merely wind up making the same mistakes over again. A man faces up to his errors, after all, and fixes what he can."
Garrett felt the pressure of Henry's eyes on her, his anger and his desire, and smelled again the smoke of scorching cloth. The anger she thought she should feel paled under white scorn at his cruelty, and her unease at the messages in the smoke. You broke his heart, Abby Irene. And he is angry. But what reason would he have to kill Cecelia? It only hurts the crown. Now, if it were the Lord Mayor. . .Perhaps this was an attempt to frame Sebastien? She saw Sebastien formulating a rejoinder, more incensed on her behalf than his own, and interceded casually. "It's a better exile than some."
"There are many sorts of exile," Nezahualcoyotl said. The Aztec seemed to eat with good appetite. "It's hard, being kept from your home." A self-deprecating smile touched the corners of his strange light eyes, and then he glanced at Henry. "But not too onerous; one finds good friends wherever one travels—"
The sound of footsteps in the hall silenced him. Richard half-stood from his chair, moving to place his body between the Prince and the door. Garrett pushed her chair back, a half-step behind Sebastien—who moved like oil on water when he wanted to—and slipped her silver-tipped ebony wand from her pocket as she came up beside the Duke.
She relaxed only incrementally when she realized that the figures framed in the archway were the blonde, reserved Duchess and the widowed Lord Mayor. Are they having an affair? she wondered—but they stood an unmeasured distance apart, and no awareness flowed between their bodies. No.
Could Eliot be behind the murder? He wouldn't be the first husband to sorcerously do away with his wife. And she knew he'd hired a black mage not twelve months earlier to weaken Richard's political position and to try to kill Garrett herself, although Garrett had been unable to prove it.
"My lord husband," Jacqueline began. She stepped into the dining room, gaslight glittering on her earrings and playing over the fine silk of her dress. "I happened upon the Lord Mayor in the drive as he was arriving. Shall we invite him to dine?" Her eyes measured Garrett for a coffin as she spoke.
"The offer is kind," Eliot interjected before Richard could answer. "But I won't sit at table with a killer. I suppose you've made no progress in your investigations, Detective Crown Investigator?"
His expression shook Garrett's cool assessment of the man as a bastard: there was pleading in it. Richard stepped halfway in front of her, and she bit back a snarl, but Sebastien laid a steadying hand on her elbow and moved aside, drawing her from behind the Duke's fair-haired bulk. "The Crown Investigator," Richard said, "is making every effort to bring the