The Stuart Sapphire by Alanna Knight Read Free Book Online

was heartily glad that he had thrown a sheet over Sarah’s corpse. Even then he had to admit that a naked female body wearing nothing but a string of pearls was a sordid sight.
    Again he thought how extremely disagreeable it was of her to die in his bed, especially with the Masque Ball at Creeve House that evening. Frederick would be there. Suddenly he felt very cold indeed as he motioned Tam toward the bed.
    Tam who wasn’t squeamish in the least regarded the body with distaste.
    ‘Dead, ain’t she. That’s for sure,’ said the prince in a hollow voice.
    ‘She is indeed, Your Royal Highness, no doubt about that. And not only dead, I’m afraid she has been murdered.’
    ‘Murdered! That cannot be! There must be some mistake. Who would dare?’
    ‘Someone dared.’ And Tam pointed to the rope ofpearls which had been wound very tightly around her neck.
    ‘Could it have been an accident?’ asked the prince clutching at straws. Tam moved the body so that he could see that the pearls had been twisted to form a garrotte.
    The prince leaned against the bedpost. Dead was bad enough, getting rid of a corpse, but a murdered corpse!
    He sat down heavily on one of the gilt chairs which gave a creak of protest. He had never experienced anything like this – this
lèse majesté
– a murdered woman in his bed, the wife of the Marquis of Creeve and, even worse, the mistress of his brother. Now all would be revealed.
    He shook his head from side to side, groaning like a wounded beast.
    ‘Dear God, dear God. What are things coming to? Is no one safe? Murders like this don’t happen in royal residences in the nineteenth century. They call this the age of enlightenment. This sort of thing belongs to less civilised countries, to those vile Italians – the Borgias.’
    Tam glanced at him. The future King would be well advised to pay close attention to books recording English history, where it would soon become abundantly clear that palaces and castles were extremely popular settings for getting rid of kings and their royal offspring.
    The prince looked up at Tam. ‘But who could have done this to us? We have never harmed anyone.’
    A somewhat sweeping and naïve statement since Tam guessed that a litany of the prince’s misdemeanours, of young women ruined and men’s lives destroyed, might have quite comfortably filled several volumes of rather boring reading.
    ‘Who has had the audacity to incriminate us in such a fearful act?’
    Tam gave the prince a searching stare. It was noteworthy, he thought, that none of this chronicle of self-pity included any sorrow or regret for the untimely death of the woman who had shared his bed last night. She had become an embarrassment in her life and worse than that, death had turned her into a terrifying liability, a dreadful source of guilt.
    The prince waved a dismissive hand towards the two grooms lingering by the doorway, their faces pale, their expressions shocked and anxious.
    Tam would have given much to read their minds, certain they were familiar with the morals or, more correctly, lack of them in the Pavilion. But the naked corpse of a woman was not something they encountered with any regularity in their royal master’s bed. In this instance, not only dead but murdered, she must present a new experience.
    He presumed that the prince could rely on their discretion as the door closed and, turning to Tam, he cleared his throat and said: ‘As an Edinburgh lawyer, Mr Eildor, I expect you have dealt with crimes of this nature.’
    Hardly, thought Tam, and took refuge in a vague smile.
    The prince leaned towards him earnestly. ‘Will you help me in this matter, sir? I would be most grateful for your assistance.’
    And through this somewhat bewildering appeal a light began to emerge, as suddenly the whole reason why Tam had been invited to partake of this sordid sight became evident. Who better than a lawyer, a stranger passing through Brighton with no friends? There was something