by C. S. Harris
The discovery that the Archbishop of Canterbury had asked Viscount Devlin to investigate Prescott’s death filled her with a driving sense of urgency. She knew Devlin, which meant she knew it was only a matter of time before he discovered the truth behind her recent visits to the Bishop. And once he knew that, she had no doubt he would be relentless in his determination to “do the honorable thing” and marry her. Wild and unorthodox Devlin might be, but he was still an officer and a gentleman. And in affairs of this nature, the gentleman’s code was inflexible.
Of course, he could not compel her to marry him. Normally, Hero would have laughed at the suggestion that she might find it difficult to resist him. But she was discovering that pregnancy had the disconcerting effect of making even the strongest of females weak and—God help her—weepy. There were times, particularly in the dark, sleepless hours just before dawn, when she found herself actually considering such a solution. Which made it vitally important that the Bishop’s murder be solved. Quickly. Before it was too late.
That evening, when the papers from London House had still not arrived, she pleaded a headache (which was real enough) and stayed home from a dinner at the Austrian ambassador’s. She was convinced the schedule from the Bishop’s chaplain would arrive at any moment.
But it never did.
That night, Sebastian dressed in a white silk waistcoat, black tails and knee breeches, and silk stockings, and directed his carriage toward Covent Garden.
He arrived late, after the fashionable crush of chattering society members had settled in their private boxes, and after the less-than-fashionable stampede of those taking advantage of the theater’s practice of selling off all empty gallery seats at half price after the second interval.
For the better part of a year, Sebastian had carefully avoided the theater. Now, as he walked through the dim corridors and up the candlelit staircase, he breathed in the familiar scent of oranges and imagined for one painful moment that he caught the distant echo of a woman’s sweet laughter, like a ghost from the past.
There’d been a time when Kat Boleyn, the most famous actress of the London stage, had been Sebastian’s mistress and the love of his life. Then came the devastating revelations of the previous autumn, when Hendon rediscovered a previously unknown illegitimate daughter, and Sebastian . . . Sebastian lost forever the woman he’d hoped to make his wife.
He knew that painful truth should change the way he felt about Kat, and in many respects, it had. But over the last months he’d been forced to acknowledge that a part of his heart would forever be hers, no matter how damned that might make him in the eyes of God and man.
The boxes, although private, were as brilliantly lit as the stage, for one attended the theater to see and be seen as much as to actually watch the production below. He was aware of heads turning, of whispers behind raised fans as he slipped, alone, into his box. His many months’ absence from the theater had naturally been marked and speculated upon—coinciding as it did with the precipitous marriage of his longtime mistress to a gentleman of dubious reputation and questionable sexuality.
Sebastian kept his gaze on the stage below.
Resplendent in the red velvet robes of Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Kat was as beautiful as ever, her cheekbones exquisitely high and flaring, her dark hair touched with fire by the gleam of candlelight, her blue St. Cyr eyes flashing. He watched, his heart aching with need and want, late into the final act. Then he quietly left his seat and headed for the private dressing room he knew so well.
He was waiting for her when she swept in after the final curtain call, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed with triumph. Then she saw him and froze.
“I’m sorry for coming here,” he said, his shoulders braced against the far wall, his arms crossed at his chest. “But I couldn’t see presenting myself at your new husband’s house, and I need to talk to you.”
She had full, sensuous lips, a child’s nose, and slanting cat’s eyes she’d inherited from the woman who’d once stolen Hendon’s heart. Eyes she half hid with a downward sweep of her lashes as she closed the door quietly behind her. “You are always welcome there.”
Nine months before, she had married an ex-privateer named Russell Yates, a dashing nobleman’s son with long dark hair, a pirate’s gold hoop earring, and a flair for making himself the darling of the ton. But theirs was a marriage of convenience only, for Kat had made herself Jarvis’s enemy, and Yates had in his possession proof of a dirty little secret from the powerful man’s past. In exchange for protecting Kat from Jarvis, Yates received the cachet of being married to the most beautiful, desirable woman on the London stage. Which was important, given that Yardley’s sexual interests did not run to women.
When Sebastian returned no answer, Kat went to settle before her dressing table and began removing pins from her hair. “It must be important. You’ve been avoiding me for months now.”
“You know why.”
“Yes. I know why.”
He drew a deep breath, but it did nothing to ease the ache in his chest. He shouldn’t have come. He pushed away from the wall. “Last night, someone bashed in the head of the Bishop of London.”
Her hands stilled at their task. “And you’ve been drawn into the investigation of his murder?” Sebastian’s involvement in cases of murder had always troubled Kat. Of all the people in his life, she knew better than any—better even than Gibson—how much it cost him. “Oh, Sebastian.”
He gave a negligent shrug. “My aunt asked it of me.”
Her gaze met his in the mirror, her head tipping sideways. “You don’t seriously think I was in any way acquainted with the good Bishop, of all people?”
“No. But there is some suggestion he was vulnerable to blackmail. I thought you might know why.”
Once, she had labored to aid the country of her mother’s birth—Ireland—by passing sensitive information to the agents of England’s enemy, France. Ferreting out the secrets of the powerful and influential was an established technique in espionage. Which meant that if Bishop Prescott had indeed guarded a dangerous secret, then the representatives of Napoléon in London would have made it their business to know about it. Blackmail could be a powerful tool.
She understood at once the implication of his question. “I ended those associations months ago. You know that, Sebastian.”
“Still?”
Her gaze held his in the mirror. “Still.”
“But you would know whom to ask.”
She took the last pin from her hair, letting it cascade in glorious waves around her shoulders. He had to tighten his fists to keep from reaching out and touching it. She said, “I could find out, yes.”
He turned toward the door. “Thank you.”
He had his hand on the knob when she said, “Sebastian—”
He glanced back at her. The flames of the candles at each end of her dressing table fluttered in the draft, dancing poignant shadows across the planes of her face. She said, “Sebastian, how are you? Really?”
He found he had to swallow before answering. “I’m well, thank you.”
Her brows drew together in a frown. “You look thinner . . . wilder.”
He gave a sudden laugh. “At least I’ve given up trying to drink myself to death.”
No answering smile touched her lips. “That is an improvement.”
“And you?” he said, his voice gruff. “How is your marriage?”
“As I would wish it,” she said. Which could mean anything, or nothing.
He closed the door quietly behind him. He stood for a moment in the narrow corridor, breathed in the achingly familiar scents of oranges and greasepaint and dust.
Then he walked away, his footsteps echoing in the stillness.
He arrived back at Brook Street some hours later to find Tom awaiting him in the library.
“You shouldn’t have stayed up for me,” said Sebastian, holding himself painfully still.
Tom’s eyes widened, taking in the sligh
tly disordered cravat, the dangerous glitter that told of too many brandies downed too quickly. But all he said was, “I found yer Jack Slade. ’E ’as a shop in Monkwell Street, jist off Falcon Square, near St. Paul’s.”
Sebastian turned toward the stairs. “Good. We’ll pay him a visit first thing in the morning. Best get some sleep.”
“I asked around the neighborhood a bit, to see what manner o’ man ’e is. From what I can tell, ’e’s what ye might call an unsavory character. ’Im and ’is son, Obadiah, both.”
Sebastian paused with one foot on the bottom step. “He has a son named Obadiah Slade?”
“That’s right. Giant o’ a man, with a lantern jaw and yellow ’air ’e wears cut short enough to show an ugly scar running across the side o’ ’is ’ead.” Tom tipped his own head sideways, studying Sebastian’s face. “Why? Ye know ’im?”
“He was a corporal in my regiment, in Portugal. If it had been up to me, he’d have been hanged. As it was, he earned a hundred lashes and was cashiered from the Army.”
Tom’s face went suddenly solemn.
“What?” prompted Sebastian.
“They say ’e ain’t been back in town long. But ’e’s been talking big ever since ’e got back. About some officer ’e knew in the Army, some lord’s son. Says if ’e ever sees ’im again, ’e’s gonna kill ’im.”
Chapter 13
THURSDAY, 9 JULY 1812
Early the next morning, Sebastian donned a rough brown corduroy coat and greasy breeches gleaned from the secondhand clothing stalls of Rosemary Lane. Wrapping a coarse black cravat around his neck, he rubbed ashes into his uncombed hair and unshaven cheeks. Under Jules Calhoun’s amused eye, he settled an unfashionable round hat low on his head. Then he set out in search of Mr. Jack Slade.
Lying to the northeast of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Monkwell Street proved to be a narrow lane of small shops that wound uphill toward the noisome churchyard of St. Giles Cripplegate and the vast burial ground beyond it. “There,” said Tom, as Sebastian reined in the curricle at the base of the hill. “That’s Jack Slade’s place. Next to the knackery.”
“Convenient.”
“Maybe. If yer customers ain’t bothered by bein’ reminded o’ where their vitals come from.”
Sebastian eyed his young tiger with astonishment. “I’d no notion you harbored such exquisite sensibilities.”
Tom grunted and took the reins.
Jumping down, Sebastian continued up the lane on foot. With each step he sank deeper into the role he intended to play. The grace of the horseman and the swordsman faded away, along with the easy assurance that came unthinkingly to an earl’s son. His movements grew heavier, his demeanor pugnacious, argumentative. It was an acting trick Kat Boleyn had taught him years ago, when they’d been young and in love and blissfully, dangerously ignorant of the shared blood that flowed through their veins.
The footpath here was narrow, and crowded with a variety of goods spilling from the surrounding shops. Transformed now into Mr. Taylor, constable, Sebastian dodged stacks of tinware, trestle-mounted trays displaying colorful ribbons, a canvas piled with salted cod whose fishy odor mingled unpleasantly with the stench of freshly spilled blood and raw meat coming from the butcher shop and the knackery beyond.
A side of beef, a row of sheep’s heads, and what looked like half a hog hung in the open shopfront. Ducking beneath the sheep’s heads, Sebastian stepped onto a sawdust-covered floor where flies buzzed over trays of sausages and piles of tripe and blood pudding displayed on a long scrubbed bench; more flies coated the glistening joints hung from hooks screwed into the wall. Behind the bench, a grizzle-headed man in a bloody apron was hacking at a half-dismembered carcass lying on a thick block. A channel cut into the perimeter of the block caught the blood and drained it into a tin bucket below. As Sebastian’s shadow fell across his work, the man glanced up, grunted, and turned away again.
He looked to be in his fifties, his face lined and darkened as if by years spent beneath a powerful sun. Several days’ growth of gray beard shadowed his lean cheeks and pronounced jaw; his eyes were small and dark and wary beneath beetled brows. He was essentially an older, darker version of the Corporal Obadiah Slade who’d once raped a twelve-year-old Portuguese girl, then smashed in her head for the sheer joy of watching her die.
“You’re Jack Slade?” said Sebastian, every trace of the aristocratic West End carefully scrubbed from his diction.
“Aye.” Slade worked his cleaver free from between two ribs, then let it fly again. Splat. Small bits of gore splattered over the nearby wall. “What’s it to ye?”
“I’m told you paid a visit to Bishop Prescott Monday afternoon.”
The cleaver hesitated for one betraying instant, then fell heavily. “What if I did?”
“Care to tell us why?”
The butcher kept his gaze on his work, but Sebastian saw an angry muscle tighten along his heavy jaw. “What do ye mean, ‘why’?”
“It’s not a particularly obtuse question.”
“I’m a simple man.” Splat. “Ye want I should understand ye, ye’ll need t’ be usin’ simple words.”
“Simpler than ‘why’?”
Jack Slade sank his cleaver into the side of beef and left it there, quivering. He straightened slowly, uncoiling a big body laced with muscle. “The Bishop likes me pork chops, see? I brung him some. It’s as simple as that.”
It was the most improbable tale Sebastian had ever heard. He said, “You do that often?”
“On occasion. It ain’t somethin’ I’d do fer jist anybody, ye understand. But the Bishop, he was a special customer.”
“He must have been.” Sebastian studied the sheep’s heads hanging in the doorway. “Lamb chops, did you say?”
“That’s right.”
“So you’re saying—what? That the Bishop didn’t like the looks of your lamb chops?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Ask anybody on the street, they’ll tell ye. Ye want fresh meat, ye go to Jack Slade.”
“So maybe you brought him lamb chops when what he really wanted was your pork chops.”
The butcher’s nostrils flared. “Ye’re tryin’ t’ be funny. Is that it?”
“What I’m trying to do is understand why a visit from a simple butcher would trouble someone like the Bishop of London.”
Slade’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you my visit troubled the Bishop?”
“Does it matter?”
“I s’pose not.” Slade turned to pull his cleaver from the half-dismembered carcass. “Except that whoever said it, he’s wrong.” Slade kept his gaze fixed on the meat before him; Sebastian kept his gaze on that cleaver.
Sebastian said, “So you’re suggesting the Bishop wasn’t distressed?”
“No. I ain’t sayin’ that. Fact is, Prescott was already in a high dander when I seen him. What I’m sayin’ is, it had nothin’ to do with me.” The man’s fist tightened around the cleaver, his jaw clenching belligerently as he spat the words out. “Ye bulls just won’t let a man alone, will ye? I done me fourteen years in Botany Bay. Lost me poor wife whilst I was there, then earned another seven for a spot o’ trouble I got into in Sydney Town. It took me three years on top o’ all that t’ earn the wherewithal t’ buy me passage back home. But I’m a free man now, ye hear? And there’s nothin’ the lot o’ ye can do about it. So why don’t ye get out o’ here and go bother some other poor sod?”
The man’s sun-darkened skin suddenly made sense. Sebastian said, “What were you transported for?”
“Like ye don’t know.” With a flick of the wrist, the butcher sent the cleaver flying to bite into the wooden board between them. It twanged a moment, then stilled.
“It was murder, wasn’t it?”
“I’m closin’ me shop now,” said Slade. Ripping off his bloody apron, he pushed through the ragged curtain that screened an alcove in the back, leaving Sebastian alone with the flies and the stench of raw meat and blood.
Seb
astian was heading back down the street when he saw Obadiah Slade.
The man came charging up the hill, his heavy fists clenched at his sides, his powerful jaw set hard. For one intense moment, he stared straight at Sebastian. But the rough clothes and grayed hair and unmilitary-like bearing confused him. Sebastian saw the man frown, as if trying to capture a fleeting memory.
Sebastian brushed past him and kept walking.
Obadiah Slade hadn’t made the connection yet between this unfashionably garbed, subtly older Londoner and the young officer in the Peninsula who’d once tried to have him hanged.
But eventually, it would come.
Chapter 14
“Never tell me Obadiah Slade is involved in this?” said Paul Gibson, glancing up from the naked, eviscerated corpse stretched out on the stone slab before him.
Sebastian had driven here, to Gibson’s surgery on Tower Hill, from Monkwell Street. Now he took one look at what Gibson was doing in the eighteenth-century cadaver’s bowels, and shifted his gaze to the unkempt yard outside. “Maybe. Maybe not. But his father is definitely hiding something.”
“Is the father anything like the son?”
“Yes.”
“Then I suggest you be careful, my friend.”
“I intend to.”
With effort, Sebastian brought his gaze back to the grinning fright on the slab. “What can you tell us about this one?”
“Well . . . judging by his teeth and certain other features, I’d say our friend here was about forty years old when someone stuck that dagger in his back. He was an unusually large man, well over six feet tall, and probably twenty-five or more stone.”
“A very large man,” said Sebastian.
“From the condition of his internal organs, it’s obvious he ate too much and drank too much.”
“Not exactly unusual.”
“Unfortunately, no. He still had most of his teeth, but at some point he must have broken his left forearm. It didn’t heal well. See?”