The Stuart Sapphire by Alanna Knight Read Free Book Online Page B

discretion. Mere paid servants, however devoted, were subject to bribes, and quite out of the question.
    Closing his eyes, he groaned. And now it would all come out. How on earth could it be avoided?
    ‘Yes.’ He closed his mouth, firmly aware of Tam’s searching glance.
    ‘Does she not require assistance with her toilette?’ Tam asked delicately, aware that he travelled in an age when women of substance were helpless even to dress themselves.
    Was it possible that the Prince Regent had hidden talents as a lady’s maid, he wondered, when suddenly he was hearing the solution to such a problem.
    ‘Her ladyship merely wears her sable cloak – over the chair there.’ Clearing his throat, he added: ‘Nothing under it.’ A naughty twinkle and an arch look at Tam. ‘You understand me, sir. We are both men of the world and such a prospect, you must agree, is daring in the extreme and most stimulating.’
    Men of the world they were, thought Tam sourly, but of two entirely different worlds. Separated from the Regencyby four hundred years of decadence, and without being in the least ‘holier than thou’, he was beginning to dislike his royal host exceedingly.
    He glanced around the room. ‘How does the lady make her exit? Does she not proceed through the withdrawing room under the close observation of the grooms?’
    The prince laughed at his naïvety and shaking a finger said: ‘That would never do – utmost discretion and all that.’ As he spoke, he walked over to one of the elaborate painted panels on the walls and touched a piece of the ornate dado, which responded as a secret door invisible from the walls of the room. It slid open to reveal a steep narrow stair.
    ‘Down there,’ whispered the prince, glancing nervously over his shoulder as if in danger of being overheard. ‘Down there – a door built into the exterior walls – ivy-covered, can’t be seen. Leads out across the garden to a gate in the Steine where a carriage awaits in readiness.’
    He seemed very pleased and nodded excitedly as if expecting approval for this piece of architectural ingenuity. Obviously, thought Tam, the sinister implications had not occurred to him, that anyone who knew this secret, one that the marchioness and doubtless many before her were privy to, realised that the door could also be opened from inside this room giving access to the interior of the Pavilion.
    Indeed the staircase would be a perfect hiding place for an assassin, Tam thought grimly, whose target, the Prince Regent, might subsequently be found dead one morning, not a mark upon him, having been smothered while he slept. Before the birth of forensic medicine, death dismissed as heart failure would not be received by the populace as any great surprise, considering that he wasgrossly overweight and given to perpetual over-indulgence.
    Deciding to keep this dangerous observation to himself for the time being, Tam said: ‘Might I suggest that Your Royal Highness confirms that no message was received by the stables from this room at any time during the last night or the early hours of this morning.’
    The prince considered the matter, frowned, nodded and hastily made his exit, leaving Tam to his own devices.
    The marchioness had been murdered. The evidence was there. All that was needed was the identity of her killer. How had her assignation with death been achieved? Was it the result of an insatiable woman’s lust for some exotic lovemaking to fill in an hour of boredom? If so, what had gone wrong?
    The prospect of a transient exciting experience with a new young lover – yes, he would certainly need be young and naïve too, Tam decided, to put any faith in the affections of this royal whore.
    From the little that Tam had been told about the marchioness, and what he had seen – he shuddered, all too much – he did not feel that her morals were in very good repair, and greedy and acquisitive by nature, blackmail might not be beyond contemplation should the