Page 48 of A Proposition for the Comte
‘I had heard you were here in London and I imagined you might visit.’
‘It’s your association with Stephen Miller I hold interest in, Mrs Herbert. You went to see him in gaol? Why?’
‘He was a lover.’ She sat back at that and laughed. ‘I have shocked you, I think.’
His eyes ran across the pages on her desk filled with writing and he shook his head.
‘It takes a lot to shock me, madam.’
What was she telling him? There were things here he could not quite decipher.
‘Why are you here?’
Her expression changed with these words, the blue eyes darkening and the lines around her mouth much more noticeable. Not a beauty, but handsome none the less. Placing her question aside, he countered with one of his own.
‘Where is it you were born?’
‘In Normandy and I have heard your name mentioned on many different occasions, Comte de Beaumont, though some of the rumours are not so favourable.’ She sat up and took a large sip of her brandy.
‘I remember your name, from before, too. You are a supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte and you hold out the hope of French supremacy in Europe.’
‘I was told you were quick.’
‘Were you also told what brings me here?’
‘I imagine it is to trace the lost French gold? Perhaps I should tell you right now that I was one of those who contributed to its largesse.’
‘A close association, then, considering you were Lord Addington’s lover, too.’
This time the blood left her face and she stood with all the care of someone who needed a table to support them.
‘Viscount Addington was a fool and his untimely death was not such a surprise.’
‘Because without him you could reclaim the gold for Napoleon? You knew where some of it was, after all, and if getting your hands on it required another lover, then...’ He left the implication hanging.
‘Politics makes mockery of the small vanities of men.’
‘And your beliefs are the only legitimate ones?’ He laughed even as he meant not to, but fools like Antoinette Herbert had filled the greater part of his life in intelligence and he was tired of it.
‘I will give you a warning first, Mrs Herbert. Any further attempts on the life of Lady Addington will be met by me with a response that you could never recover from.’
‘Get out.’
‘With pleasure.’
He left and walked all the way to Green Park, needing the cold and the silence and the empty landscape to calm down his anger.
Antoinette Herbert had a part in the deaths and threats and violence, he was certain of it. She could have had no direct part in the killing of George Taylor, for she had not left the city boundaries since the second week of January, the day after he was shot.
The cards were forming a pattern and the haphazard facts were falling into shape. He would have her watched and she would know of it, a quiet message of intent in such surveillance.
Mrs Herbert liked jewellery, her neck embellished by two strands of heavy gold and both wrists and ears sporting more. Her brandy was French. Illegally procured given the customs ban on such goods and he knew this vintage had only been cleared from the maker in the last year.
The picture was building and widening out.
A house newly painted. Clothes of the latest fashion. The sweat beading on her upper lip when he had mentioned the name of Viscount Addington. That had been a guess and a good one, too. There were other things he might have mentioned, as well.
Albert Herbert, her husband, had died in suspicious circumstances, falling from a horse on the road north of Lyon. Since then she had enjoyed an array of disparate lovers. A woman who gathered men to her like a black widow spider, spinning nets around opportunities.
A woman who might use her lovers as bait as she tried to hide a cache of hidden gold? She’d told him she had been one of the contributors in the attempt to oust a legitimate English Government.
A dangerous confession that seemed out of place and foolish. But Antoinette Herbert was no dullard and he would have to watch her carefully.
