by C. S. Harris
“Two men broke into Miss Boleyn’s house. I chased one of them here. Did you see where he went?”
The watchman lifted his gaze to the rooftops and kept it there. “I heard running footsteps, my lord. But I never saw anyone.”
“Check up and down the street. He may have ducked down someone’s area steps, or be hiding in the shadows of a doorway.”
The watchman kept his gaze carefully averted. “Yes, my lord.”
Sebastian started to turn away, but hesitated long enough to say, “By the way, there’s a dead body at Miss Boleyn’s house. You’ll need to send someone to deal with it.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Sebastian swung back toward Kat’s house. As he crossed the garden, he could see the house ablaze with lights, hear a crescendo of female voices coming from inside. Climbing through the window again, he rummaged through the sideboard until he found a tablecloth to drape around his hips.
He found Kat, Elspeth, and the cook clustered in the first-floor hall. The man Sebastian had hit with the poker lay near the base of the stairs from the second floor. Blood splattered the walls of the stairwell and the banister, and soaked into the carpet. Sebastian took one look at what was left of the man’s head and wished he’d thought to bring another tablecloth.
Kat came to stand beside him, her hands wrapping around his arm as she stared down at the man at her feet. Her face was white, but he suspected it was more from anger than fear. “It’s Jarvis, isn’t it? He sent these men.”
Sebastian forced himself to take another look at the face of the man he’d killed. He studied the even features, the fan of smile lines at the edges of the widely staring eyes, and knew a flicker of surprise. “No. It’s the man who threatened me outside my aunt’s house last Monday.” Hunkering down, he searched quickly through the man’s pockets, but found nothing of interest. “This had nothing to do with Jarvis. Lord Stanton, perhaps, or Sir Humphrey Carmichael, or perhaps someone else who doesn’t like the questions I’ve been asking. But not Jarvis.”
“How many were there?”
“Two. The other one got away.” He turned to head upstairs. “I need to get some clothes on. The watch should be here soon to deal with this fellow.”
She followed him, carefully lifting the hem of her dressing gown as she stepped over the bloody corpse on her stairs. “You’re certain it’s the same man you saw before?”
“Yes.” He pulled his shirt over his head and reached for his breeches. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Where are you going?”
“To have a little talk with Lord Stanton.”
The sun was still a mere promise on the horizon when Sebastian popped the lock on the library window of Lord Stanton’s Park Street town house and dropped inside.
He moved easily through the darkened house, hugging the wall on his way up the stairs to keep the steps from creaking. Lady Stanton had been advised by her doctors to retire to the country in an attempt to ease her prostration of grief. Only one of the bedrooms on the second floor—an opulent chamber overlooking the rear garden—was occupied.
Lord Stanton slept on his back in a gilded tester bed with red velvet hangings. Beneath the figured red coverlet, his heavy chest rose and fell rhythmically, his lips parting with each exhalation. Snagging a lyre-backed chair, Sebastian brought it, reversed, close to the bed’s edge and straddled the seat. He pressed the muzzle of his small flintlock pistol into the hollow beneath the man’s jawbone and waited.
The rhythmic breathing stopped on a strangled gasp. Stanton’s eyes flew open, then fixed, wide, on the pistol.
Sebastian showed his teeth in a smile. “I trust you can see well enough to know what this is?”
Stanton nodded, his tongue flicking out to moisten his lips.
“Someone tried to kill me tonight. Not just me, but my future wife, as well. That was a serious error.”
Stanton’s voice was admirably strong and controlled. “If they told you I hired them, they lied.”
Sebastian frowned. “Odd. I don’t recall mentioning that there was more than one of them. But as it happens, there were two. One is now a bloody mess on Miss Boleyn’s staircase. The other, regrettably, escaped.”
Something flashed in the Baron’s eyes, then was gone.
“This is the second time in the past few days that someone has tried to kill me. I must say, it’s getting rather fatiguing.”
“You’re obviously making yourself unpopular.”
“So it would seem. I keep thinking about our encounter in Whitehall the other day. You struck me at the time as a man with a secret, a terrible secret he was willing to do almost anything to keep from becoming known.”
Stanton stared back at him, his lips pressed tight, his narrowed eyes radiating hatred and contained fury.
Sebastian leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t know it all yet, but I’m getting close. At this point, I’m thinking it doesn’t matter whether it was you or Sir Humphrey Carmichael or someone I haven’t even met yet who sent those men into Miss Boleyn’s house. But if any of you threatens her again in any way, you’re dead. It’s as simple as that.”
“You’re mad.”
“I doubt you’re the first to think so.” Sebastian withdrew the gun and stood.
“I could call the watch on you,” said Stanton, his fists tightening on the covers at his chest.
Sebastian smiled and backed toward the door. “You could. But that would direct attention precisely where you don’t want it, now, wouldn’t it?”
Chapter 45
SATURDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 1811
Sebastian’s sister lived in an elegant town house on St. James’s Square. The house technically belonged to her son, the young Lord Wilcox, for Amanda was recently widowed. But Lady Wilcox ruled both her son, Bayard, and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Stephanie, with brutal purpose and an iron will.
Sebastian found her in the morning room arranging white and yellow lilies in a large vase. She was a tall woman, and thin, with their mother’s pale blond hair still only barely touched by gray although she was twelve years Sebastian’s senior. She looked up without smiling at his entrance.
“I trust you are here to tell me the notice in this morning’s papers was an error.”
“You saw it, did you?”
She set down the last lily with enough force that the rings on her hand clattered against the marble tabletop. “Dear God. It’s true.”
“Yes.”
Her jaw hardened with cold fury. “You do realize that Stephanie’s come out is less than six months away?”
Sebastian controlled the impulse to laugh. “Console yourself with the thought that most of the talk will have died down by then.”
She studied him with one brow thoughtfully arched. “How did Hendon take it?”
“Predictably. He has promised never to darken my doorway again. I presume you intend to do the same?”
“As long as that woman is your wife? I should think so.”
Sebastian nodded. “I’ll bid you good day, then.” And he walked out of her house and out of her life.
Sir Henry Lovejoy was at his desk, glancing over the coming day’s schedule, when Viscount Devlin arrived at his office.
Henry sat back. “Good morning, my lord. And congratulations.” He permitted himself a small smile. “I saw the announcement of your upcoming nuptials in the paper this morning.”
The young Viscount was looking oddly strained, but Lovejoy supposed that was to be expected in one about to embark upon such a life-altering event.
“Some men broke into Miss Boleyn’s house last night and tried to kill us.”
“Merciful heavens. Do you know who they were?”
Devlin shook his head. “Hirelings. You received the list of passengers and ship’s officers I sent yesterday?”
“Yes, yes.” Henry opened a drawer and pulled out a report. “Please, my lord, take a seat. I have my constable’s notes right here. Of the
ship’s officers, the second mate”—Henry consulted his constable’s notes—“Mr. Fairfax, died four years ago from a fall.”
“A fall?”
“Yes. From a third-floor window in Naples. There was some speculation Mr. Fairfax may have deliberately thrown himself from the window, but as the gentleman was in his cups at the time, it was impossible to say.”
Henry consulted the notes again. “The third mate, a Mr. Francis Hillard, was lost overboard while at sea off the Canary Islands two years ago, while the first mate—Mr. Canning—drank himself to death six months ago. A most unlucky lot, from the sounds of things.”
Devlin grunted. “And the passengers?”
“The spinster, Miss Elizabeth Ware, died two years ago of hysteria.”
“Hysteria?”
Henry nodded. “The constable spoke to her sister. Seems the poor woman went mad not long after her return to London. Stark, raving mad. As for Mr. and Mrs. Dunlop, they were living in Golden Square up until several weeks ago, but they appear to have packed and fled the city somewhat precipitously. That leaves only Mr. Felix Atkinson of the East India Company. He lives with his wife and two children in a house in Portland Place.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
Henry slid the paper with the address across the desk to the Viscount. “I am no longer a part of the investigation, remember?”
The Viscount smiled and rose to leave.
“There is one other thing,” said Henry.
Devlin paused. “Yes?”
“Captain Quail. I’ve had another of my constables checking into his whereabouts on the nights of each of the murders.”
“And?”
“It seems the Captain was neither at home nor with the Horse Guards on any of the nights in question.” Henry peeled his glasses off his nose and rubbed the bridge. “I also looked into the Captain’s activities in the Army. I understand why you suspected him.”
“But there’s no connection between Quail and the Harmony. At least, not that I know of.”
“No.” Henry replaced his glasses and reached for his schedule again. “There does not appear to be, does there?”
Sebastian was halfway across the entrance hall of his Brook Street house, heading toward the stairs, when his majordomo cleared his throat apologetically.
“I trust you have not forgotten, my lord, that you have an interview with a gentleman’s gentleman scheduled for this morning?”
Sebastian paused with one foot on the bottom step, his hand on the newel post. “What? Good God.”
“I’ve taken the liberty of putting the gentleman in the library.”
Suppressing an oath, Sebastian turned toward the library. The prospective valet proved to be a tall, cadaverously thin man with a bony face and prominent, thick lips.
“My apologies for keeping you waiting,” said Sebastian, reaching for the valet’s credentials. Sebastian was heartily sick of this entire hiring process. Unless this candidate engaged in pagan sacrifices or wiped his nose on his sleeve, Sebastian was determined to hire him. “I understand you were most recently employed by Lord Bingham.”
The gentleman’s gentleman inclined his head. “That is correct.”
“And why, precisely, did you leave Lord Bingham’s service?”
“I’m afraid Lord Bingham shot himself last Tuesday.”
Sebastian looked up. He vaguely recalled hearing something about Lord Bingham earlier in the week, but had been too preoccupied to pay it much heed. “Right. Well, tell me—”
The sounds of an altercation in the hall reached them through the library’s closed door, Tom’s ringing cockney tones blending with Morey’s hissed “Not now. He’s with—”
The door burst open and Tom catapulted into the room. “Wait till you ’ear this, gov’nor. I been lookin’ into that cove, Quail, and you know ’ow ’e told you ’e didn’t know Barclay Carmichael? Well, it seems Carmichael won five hundred quid off ’im at faro right afore Carmichael was found butchered in the park last summer.”
The valet’s already pale skin bleached white. “Merciful heavens. It’s true, what they say.”
Sebastian swung to look at the man. “What? What do they say?”
The valet pushed to his feet and backed toward the door, his hat gripped tightly in both hands. “That you involve yourself in…in murder.”
Sebastian rose from behind his desk and took a step forward. “Yes, but never mind that. You’re hired. You can start work today. My majordomo will show you—”
But the gentleman’s gentleman had already bolted through the door.
“You didn’t want ’im anyway,” said Tom with a sniff. “’E looked like a queer cove to me.”
“All I get is queer coves. Obviously because word has gone out amongst the gentlemen’s gentlemen of the city that I am a queer cove.”
Tom sniffed again. “I checked ’afore I come here. Quail’s at ’is ’ouse. In Kensington, just off Nottinghill Gate. Want I should get the curricle?”
Chapter 46
Captain Peter Quail occupied a pretty little brick row house on Campden Hill Road, with a shiny black painted front door and a small garden filled with a profusion of late-blooming roses. As Sebastian reined in his chestnuts beside the gate, a delicate-looking young woman with a basket looped over one arm and a pair of secateurs in her hand looked up from deadheading a large shrub near the fence.
Sebastian handed the reins to Tom. “Walk them.”
The woman appeared to be in her midtwenties, with a finely featured face and soft blond curls that tumbled from beneath a straw bonnet tied at her chin with a cherry red ribbon. She wore a lightweight, cherry red spencer over a simple sprigged muslin morning gown, and watched Sebastian’s approach with the wary eyes of a woman whose fragile world has already been rocked too many times by the unpredictable activities of her erratic husband. “Mrs. Quail?” Sebastian asked, politely removing his hat as he opened the low front gate.
“Yes.”
He gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m Lord Devlin. I served in the same regiment as your husband in Portugal. Perhaps you’ve heard him speak of me.”
The wariness in her pale blue eyes receded, and she smiled. “I have heard Peter mention you, yes. How do you do, my lord? What brings you here?”
Sebastian let his gaze drift over the house’s curtained windows. “Is the Captain at home?”
Mrs. Quail closed her secateurs and laid them in the basket of roses. “Why, yes. If you’d like to—”
The front door jerked open to slam against the inside wall with a bang. Captain Quail clattered out onto the small porch and down the steps to advance on them with a quick, long-legged stride. He was only half dressed, the tails of his shirt untucked, the neck half open to reveal a triangle of bare chest.
“What have you told him?” he demanded, his handsome jaw clenched, his eyes hard on his wife’s face.
She took a step back. “Nothing. Lord Devlin just—”
“Get inside,” he ordered, his good arm swinging through the air to point back at the house.
Her face drained pale, then flushed scarlet. She threw Sebastian a quick, mortified glance, then looked away. “Excuse me, my lord.”
Sebastian watched her hurry toward the house, her head bent, and felt his hands curl into fists at his side.
“What are you doing at my house?”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to Quail’s handsome face, with its rugged chin and clear blue eyes and aquiline nose. “You lied to me. You told me you didn’t know Barclay Carmichael, when in fact he won five hundred pounds off you shortly before he was killed.”
The Captain’s jaw tightened. “Get off my property. Now.”
With deliberate slowness, Sebastian settled his hat back on his head and turned toward the gate. “You might warn your wife to expect the constables soon.”
“Constables?” Quail stood in the center of his yard, his empty shirtsleeve flapping in the cool breeze. “Why? I had nothing to do
with that man’s death, I tell you. He was killed by the West End Butcher.”
Sebastian paused with one hand on the gate. “You didn’t by any chance have a younger brother, did you? A brother who served as a cabin boy on a merchant ship?”
Quail’s eyes narrowed. “No. What are you talking about?”
“The Harmony.”
“Never heard of it.”
Sebastian studied the man’s closed, hard face, and found only confusion and anger. He turned away.
“You don’t think it’s him, do you?” said Tom, scrambling back up onto his perch as Sebastian took the reins.
Sebastian gave his horses the office to start. “Unfortunately, no. Which means that however much I’d like to kill him, I can’t.”
Kat was peering through the bowed window of a perfumery on Bond Street when she heard a man’s cheery voice say, “Top o’ the morning to you, my lady.”
She swung to find Aiden O’Connell smiling at her with lazy green eyes. “Now you come?” she said.
His smile widened to bring a beguiling dimple to one cheek. “I had to leave town unexpectedly for a few days.” He captured her hand and brought it to his lips in a parody of gallantry. “Forgive me?”
She took her hand back. “No.”
He laughed. “Why did you want to see me?”
He fell into step beside her as she turned to walk up the street, her sunshade held at a crisp angle. “Actually, I was going to suggest you might want to leave the country.”
“Really?” He kept the smile in place, but his gaze sharpened. “Why?”
“Someone was about to betray you to Lord Jarvis.”
The dimple faded. “Who?”