Why Mermaids Sing

by C. S. Harris

  “So what does any of this have to do with me?”

  “It occurs to me that the easiest and quickest way to lay the rumors to rest would be for me to take a wife. A famous wife known for her beauty, sensuality, and charisma.”

  Kat laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am utterly serious. It would be a mutually beneficial arrangement: I would protect you from Jarvis, while you would provide me with what I suppose one could call a disguise. With Kat Boleyn as my wife, anyone questioning my virility or sexuality would be laughed out of the room.”

  “Why me? Why not choose a bride from the selection available at Almack’s?”

  He smiled. “This isn’t the kind of arrangement I’d care to explain to some innocent debutante just out of the schoolroom. You need have no worry I would press to consummate the marriage. I offer you companionship and witty conversation at the supper table, but our amorous adventures, obviously, would be directed elsewhere. All I ask is that you pursue them with discretion—as shall I.”

  Kat pushed up from her chair to pace the room. She should have dismissed the suggestion out of hand. Instead, she found herself saying, “Devlin would never forgive me were I to embark on such a marriage.”

  “You think he would forgive you for running away to France?”

  When Kat said nothing, he added, “I can have a marriage contract drawn up preserving your control over whatever wealth you bring to the marriage as well as your subsequent earnings.”

  “No. This is impossible.”

  “Don’t dismiss the idea too hastily. Give it some thought.”

  She brought up one hand to rub absently at her temples. “This proof you claim to possess against Jarvis. How do I know it exists?”

  He smiled. “I expected you to be suspicious.” Slipping his hand into his coat, he drew forth a case of soft brown leather tied with a thong. “So I brought it.”

  The documents in the case were thorough, damning, and irrefutably authentic. “Good God,” whispered Kat when she had finished reading through them.

  “Exactly.” Yates tucked the documents away and rose to his feet to cast a significant glance around the elegantly proportioned room with its peach silk hangings and theatrical memorabilia. “You don’t need to give all this up.”

  “What you’re suggesting is outrageous.”

  He shrugged. “Think about it.”

  Kat stayed where she was, her hands gripped tightly together in front of her.

  At the door he paused to look back, his pirate’s earring winking in the sunlight streaming in through the front windows. “Oh. I almost forgot. The name of the Harmony’s cabin boy you were asking about? It was Forbes. Gideon Forbes.”

  After Yates left, Kat paid a boy a shilling to carry a brief note to Brook Street, giving Sebastian the dead cabin boy’s name. Then she thought about sending Elspeth up to the attic to pull down her trunks.

  Instead she stood at the front window, looking out at Harwich Street and the familiar crowded rooftops, chimneys, and soot-stained spires of the city she had called home for more than ten years.

  Chapter 49

  Later that afternoon, Sebastian drew up the curricle on the gravel sweep before a small Elizabethan sandstone manor. Lying to the north of London, near St. Albans, the childhood home of Gideon Forbes proved to be a pleasant, well-kept estate with fat-bellied cows and well-tended fields. As he swung down from the curricle, Sebastian could hear the sound of children’s laughter mingling with the barking of a dog in the distance.

  “It’s funny,” said Tom, squinting up at the manor’s forest of chimneys. “But when you think about what musta happened to that lad, somehow you don’t expect ’im to ’ave grown up someplace that looks so ordinary.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Sebastian. Acting on Kat’s message, he had found it easy enough to trace Gideon Forbes here, to this idyllic corner of the Hertfordshire countryside. Gideon’s father was a country squire named Brandon Forbes; the boy’s mother was some four years dead. But whatever Sebastian had been anticipating, it wasn’t this, this utterly English landscape of unpretentious gentility and bucolic peace.

  A shout brought Sebastian’s head around. A sturdily built man in serviceable buckskin breeches was walking toward the house from across a park of oak trees and sun-spangled grass that waved gently in the breeze. He looked to be in his midforties, his dark hair newly touched by gray, the lines on his long face just beginning to settle and deepen with age. A liver-colored hound loped at his heels. “May I help you?” he called.

  Sebastian went to meet him. “Mr. Forbes? I’m Viscount Devlin. I’d like to talk to you about your son Gideon.”

  The man blinked several times, his eyes narrow and a bit wary. “All right,” he said at last. “Come walk with me.”

  They followed a footpath that curled away toward a distant string of cottages, the hound racing ahead of them. “It’s because of these terrible murders, isn’t it?” he said after a moment. “That’s why you’re here. You think there’s some connection to the wreck of the Harmony.”

  Sebastian studied the man’s sun-darkened face. “Did you attend the trial of the mutineers?”

  “No.” Forbes stared off across the fields, to where two little girls played with a much younger boy still in leading strings. “I’m afraid Gideon’s mother was sickening by then. She’d never been well after the birth of our last daughter, you see, and I didn’t want to leave her. But I followed it in the papers.”

  “Did you go to the hangings?”

  Forbes shook his head, his lips twisting in a grimace. “Nah. What would be the point?”

  “Revenge, perhaps?”

  “It wouldn’t bring the boy back, now, would it?”

  Sebastian nodded toward the laughing children in the distance. “Are they yours?”

  Forbes’s features lightened into a proud smile. “That’s right. Catherine there is eleven; Jane is seven, while Michael has just turned two. And I’ve two older boys by my first wife: Roland, who helps me here at the manor, and his younger brother, Daniel. Daniel’s up at Cambridge.”

  As Sebastian watched, the boy on the leading strings took a tumble and started to cry. His half sisters rushed to pick him up again. “You’ve remarried?”

  “Aye.” He sighed. “I’ve buried two wives, God rest their souls. I pray to the good Lord I won’t bury the third.”

  Sebastian brought his gaze back to the man’s plain, long face. “Do you think these murders have something to do with the Harmony?”

  “Looks that way, doesn’t it? I mean, I didn’t think much about it after Carmichael’s and Stanton’s sons were killed. But now, with Captain Bellamy’s son, and what the papers are saying was done to young Thornton last Easter…” He hesitated. “Well, it makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “Did you ever talk to Captain Bellamy about what happened to your son?”

  “Aye. Bellamy came to see me when it was all over. Brought me this.” He pulled a worn Spanish piece of eight from his pocket and held it out. “It was Gideon’s. He’d had it from the time he was a little one. Carried it with him everywhere.”

  “Did he tell you how the boy died?”

  “Spar fell on him during the storm. He didn’t die right away, though. Gideon was a plucky one, no doubt about it. Maybe if they’d been rescued sooner, he’d have made it. But without food or water…” The man’s voice trailed away. He hesitated, then blew out his breath in a long sigh. “I never should have let him go to sea. Not that young. But from the time he was a little tyke, it was all he could talk about. The sea and tall ships and all the foreign lands he wanted to visit. In the end, he wore us down. One of his mother’s cousins knew Captain Bellamy and arranged to have him take the lad on as cabin boy. Gideon was aiming to be a sea captain, you know. He’d have made it, too. If he’d lived.”

  Sebastian studied the man’s pleasant, weathered face. “The young men who’ve been killed have all been found with various objects st
uffed in their mouths—a papier-mâché star, a mandrake root, a page torn from a ship’s log, and the hoof of a goat. Do you have any idea what it could mean?”

  As Sebastian watched, Forbes’s face became tight with an effort to control his emotions. “I didn’t read anything about that.”

  “It does mean something, doesn’t it? What is it?”

  Forbes swung away to stare out over the park, toward the laughing children. “Gideon had a poem he liked. You know the one? Something about mermaids singing?”

  “‘Go and Catch a Falling Star,’” said Sebastian softly. “By John Donne?”

  Forbes’s throat worked as he swallowed. “That’s it. ‘Go and Catch a Falling Star.’” He brought his gaze back to Sebastian’s face. “Bellamy told me they buried Gideon’s body at sea. But that’s not what you think happened to him, is it? Is it?” he said again, when Sebastian remained silent.

  Sebastian met the other man’s intense gray eyes. “No. No, I don’t.”

  Chapter 50

  Kat was drinking tea on the terrace at the rear of her house, overlooking the tree-shaded garden, when her maid came hurrying across the pavement.

  “I asked her to wait in the drawing room while I announced her,” said Elspeth, wringing her work-worn hands against her apron. “Truly I did, but she said—”

  Kat cut her off. “Who, Elspeth?”

  A woman’s voice reached her, low and stern. “Good morning, Niece.”

  Kat stared across the sun-dappled terrace at the thin matron who stood in the open doorway. It had been more than ten years since Kat had stolen away from this woman’s home—a frightened, desperate child willing to face the uncertainties of life on the streets rather than continue to endure this woman’s grim whippings by day and the degrading violations that came in the terrifying darkness of the night.

  Her name was Emma Stone, and she was a close associate of “Holy Hannah” More and William Wilberforce and the growing group of moral reformers known as the Evangelicals. Emma Stone had made the Evangelical’s Society for the Suppression of Vice and Immorality her own special project, perhaps as a public form of atonement for the shame of having a sister as scandalously immoral as Kat’s mother.

  They had come to London together, Emma and Arabella Noland, two Irish sisters, pretty but poorly dowered. The elder, Emma, had married a barrister named Maurice Stone. Arabella, the younger and prettier, had chosen a different path, becoming the mistress of first one wealthy nobleman, then the next.

  “You are not welcome in my house, Aunt,” said Kat, keeping her voice level with effort.

  “Believe me, it is only my sense of duty to my dead mother and the laws of our dear Lord that have brought me here.”

  Kat gave her aunt a cold, tight smile. “Your devotion to your Lord’s laws seems very selective.” She cast a deliberate eye over her aunt’s unrelieved mourning gown of black bombazine. “Is he dead then?”

  “Mr. Stone has been gone from me these past three years.”

  “And still you wear deep mourning for him? How”—Kat paused, searching for the right word—“hypocritical of you.”

  Two bright spots of color appeared on the other woman’s cheeks. “I did not believe the lies you told ten years ago. I’m not about to believe them now.”

  “No. Of course not.” Kat crossed her arms before her. “I assume you’re here for some reason. Please state what it is and go away.”

  The color in Emma Stone’s cheeks deepened. “I should have expected such a reception. There aren’t many women in my position who would have taken you in when I did—the illegitimate offspring of a harlot and the man who had her in his keeping. And how did you repay me? By fleeing my protection without a word of warning or thanks.”

  “I’m the oddest creature,” said Kat in a tight voice. “I decided if I was going to be forced to slake a man’s lust, then I might as well get paid for it.”

  A tremble of raw fury shook Emma Stone’s thin frame. Kat expected her to launch into an impassioned defense of her dead husband, or simply go away. Instead, she clenched her jaw so tightly she was practically spitting out her words. “I am here because of the notice of your approaching nuptials in the Morning Post.”

  “Really, Aunt? You shock me. I had no idea you interested yourself in the affairs of Society.”

  “I do not. Which is why I remained unaware of your relationship with Lord Devlin until the betrothal was brought to my attention by my dear friend Mrs. Barnes. You recall Mrs. Barnes?”

  Kat remained motionless. Eunice Barnes was both her aunt’s near neighbor and a fellow soldier in the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

  “She is the only one of my acquaintances who realized that the brazen hussy calling herself Kat Boleyn and flaunting herself on the boards at Covent Garden was none other than the niece I had once sheltered.”

  “And she kept such delicious gossip to herself? I am impressed.”

  Mrs. Stone acknowledged the barb with a twitching of her upper lip. “Had I been aware of the nature of the relationship you had developed with Viscount Devlin, I would of course have overcome my repugnance and approached you sooner.”

  “Your repugnance. Yes, I suppose it must be quite a soul-trying exercise for a saintly woman such as yourself to venture into this den of sin and debauchery. You’d best say what you came to say and run away quickly before you become contaminated.”

  Mrs. Stone jerked open the strings of her reticule to draw forth two small miniatures painted on oval porcelain plaques and framed in gold filigree. “Your mother stayed with me for a short time before she fled London. Did you know?”

  Kat kept her surprise to herself, although in truth she had not known. Had Emma Stone’s despicable husband made his vile advances on Kat’s mother, too? Kat wondered. Had he found a grown woman—even one heavy with child—better able to defend herself than a thirteen-year-old girl?

  “The ungrateful wretch fled my house as you did, leaving only a curt note of thanks and these two miniatures, which she begged me to accept as payment.”

  “And you didn’t sell them?” However much Emma Stone might prate on about the Kingdom of Heaven, Kat knew the woman still maintained a healthy interest in the material comforts of this world.

  Mrs. Stone’s head reared back in exaggerated affront. “Do you think I would take payment for sheltering my own sister in her time of need? The Good Book says, ‘Jesus Our Lord hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity.’”

  Kat kept her gaze on her aunt’s lined face. The passage of time had not been kind to Emma Stone, crimping the skin around her mouth and etching her habitually disapproving expression deep. “I assume there is a point to all this, Aunt?”

  Emma Stone held out the first miniature. “This one is of your mother. I assume you recognize her?”

  Kat cradled the porcelain oval in her hands, the painting so exquisitely rendered that it caught her breath. It was a face Kat hadn’t seen in more than ten years, the wide green eyes slanted up slightly at the ends like a cat’s, the cheekbones high and flaring, the nose almost childlike above full, sensuous lips. Kat could trace some of those features in her own face, mingling with traits she’d come to think of as purely her own, although she knew they must come from the unknown lord who’d been her father.

  She skimmed her fingertips across the smooth surface, as if by touching the painted likeness she might somehow touch the laughing, breathing mother who’d once loved her. A welling of emotion closed her throat. It was a moment before she could look up and say, “And the other miniature?”

  Emma Stone pressed her lips together in grim censure. “The other miniature is the reason I have come. It is of the last man who had my sister in his keeping. Your father.”

  With a hand that was not quite steady, Kat reached to take the small painting held out to her. Somehow,
even before her hand closed over the miniature, she knew what she would see.

  He was younger, of course, at least twenty-four years younger. The deftly rendered hair was still dark, the features solid but still firm. She had his chin, Kat realized; she supposed it was understandable that she had never noticed it before. But she should have recognized the eyes, she thought. How could she never have realized that the vivid blue eyes that stared back at her from her own reflection were those of Alistair St. Cyr, the Earl of Hendon?

  Chapter 51

  “Once I give this information to Bow Street,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, “I have little doubt but what they’ll move to arrest Mr. Forbes.” Henry focused his gaze on Lord Devlin. “Do you think he’s guilty?”

  They sat in the modest drawing room of Henry’s Russell Square house, the remnants of tea spread on the table before them. Shifting in his chair, the Viscount stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Forbes seems the most likely suspect, obviously. But is he guilty? I honestly don’t think so. The pieces of the puzzle are all fitting neatly together, but the picture they make seems somehow off-kilter. I can’t explain why.”

  “He’s the only man with a motive that I can see.”

  “There’s no doubt it’s a powerful motive,” Devlin agreed, “knowing your son was killed and eaten by a shipload of starving men and women.”

  “Did they kill the boy, do you think? He might simply have died. He was injured, after all. Without adequate food or water…”

  “He could have died of his injuries. But there have been other instances in which starving Englishmen and women have been reduced to feeding upon their dead companions—or have drawn lots. The fact that this company kept quiet about what they did suggests the boy was simply killed out of hand.” He blew out a long breath. “I doubt we’ll ever know the truth.”

  “No, you’re probably right.” Henry sighed. “I’ll take this information to Sir James at Bow Street tonight.”