Why Mermaids Sing sscm-3

by C. S. Harris

  “You know something you’re not telling. What is it?”

  “I don’t know anything! Something strange is going on, but I don’t know what it is. I swear I don’t.”

  “Did she say when she’d be back?”

  “Tomorrow. She said she probably wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.”

  “Probably?”

  “All I know is what she said.”

  Sebastian slammed his open palm against the paneled wall and left.

  He went next to Emma Stone’s small house in Camden.

  The woman was famous for writing wildly popular ‘’improving” tracts with titles such as “Christian Piety” and “Moral Sketches for the Next Generation.” Had Hendon named anyone else, Sebastian could have dismissed his wild claims without hesitation. But Sebastian found it impossible to imagine Mrs. Emma Stone lending herself to one of the Earl’s schemes.

  Pausing on the footpath, Sebastian stared up at the proper brick facade before him. He knew only the faintest outlines of Kat’s earlier history, but what he knew fit uncomfortably well with Hendon’s tale. She’d told him once that her father was an English lord, but her mother had left London before Kat was born to take refuge in her native Ireland. Sebastian knew what the soldiers had done to Kat’s mother and stepfather. He knew too that after their deaths Kat had been taken in by her mother’s sister. Sebastian had formed a hazy image of a self-righteous, ostentatiously religious woman who’d punished her niece’s accusations of her husband’s misconduct with the whip.

  Sebastian studied the silent rows of neatly curtained windows. Had it been from this house that Kat had fled as a child into a life on the streets? She had never named her aunt as Mrs. Emma Stone. But then, there was much that Kat had never told him.

  He became aware of the sensation of being watched. As he climbed the short flight of steps to the front door, he saw the lace curtain at one of the upstairs windows shift slightly, then settle back into place.

  He half expected his knock to go unanswered. Instead, the door was opened almost immediately by a thin slip of a maid with jade green eyes and a scattering of freckles across her nose who looked at him with undisguised curiosity and asked breathlessly, “Are you Lord Devlin?”

  “Yes,” said Sebastian in surprise.

  The girl stepped back and opened the door wide. “Mrs. Stone said to bring you straight up.”

  Sometimes our worst dreams don’t come when we’re asleep.

  The nightmares that came to Sebastian in the bowels of the night were familiar things, disjointed memories of slashing sabers and exploding ordnance punctuated by the screams of dying men and maimed horses. He’d learned to live with those dreams, with those memories. But he wasn’t sure how he was going to learn to live with this.

  He wandered the darkened streets of London, down narrow lanes of shuttered shops and quiet houses. A mist had settled over the city, painting the pavement with a wet sheen that reflected the light from the streetlamps and an occasional passing carriage. He kept trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, how a love once so beautiful and life-sustaining could have suddenly been transformed into something unclean and vile. Of all the taboos with which Englishmen and women fortified themselves against the horrors of savagery and bestiality, only two were so unforgivably loathsome as to be spoken of in frightened whispers: the prohibition against the eating of human flesh, and the sexual union of those bound by the closest of family ties. Father and daughter. Sister and brother.

  He knew he should recoil in horror. A part of him did recoil in horror. But a part of him still ached for the future that had been snatched from him, for the woman he would have made his wife.

  He wanted to get on his horse and gallop out beyond the last straggling hamlets. He wanted to ride through woods lashed by a wild wind, with none but the cold and distant stars for companions. He wanted to ride until he reached the crashing waves of the sea and felt the salty spray rise up to meet him as he spurred ever on, to oblivion.

  A burst of laughter from an open door brought his head around. He paused for a moment, shuddering, recognizing the danger of being alone and far too sober.

  Wiping a hand across his face, he turned his steps toward Pickering Place, unaware of the slight figure watching him anxiously from the shadows.

  Paul Gibson pushed past the billiard tables toward the more select rooms filled with scattered faro and whist tables that lay beyond. The air he breathed smelled strongly of brandy and tobacco and the unmistakable sweet tang of hashish.

  He was in one of the most expensive—and decadent—of the gaming hells off Pickering Place, and he had to keep reminding himself to clench his jaw shut for fear of staring around like some gape-mouthed lout just up from the country. Gibson had been in his share of hells and brothels before—and opium dens, too, for that matter. But he’d never been in a place quite like this one. The walls were hung with watered silk, the mirrors large and framed in ornate gilt wood, the cloths on the supper tables of starched linen. From somewhere in the distance came the lilting strains of a string quartet, the music forming an odd counterpoint to the high-pitched laughter of women and the ceaseless rattle of the dice box.

  Gibson lifted a glass from one of the waiters who circled the rooms bearing trays of claret and brandy. A woman wearing a scarlet gown with a shockingly low décolletage cast him a speculative glance, then brushed past him. Gibson thought the diamonds in her ears looked real, but then, what did a poor Irish doctor know? He fortified himself with a sip of brandy and pushed on.

  Scanning the gaming tables and the crowd around the whirling roulette wheel, he followed the gently curving staircase up to the next floor. The lights here were dimmer, but not dim enough to hide the bare flesh and unmistakable postures of the men and women who cavorted in groups of two, three, or more on low sofas and scattered cushions. Gibson felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment, and looked pointedly away.

  He found Viscount Devlin sprawled on the velvet cushion of an embrasure overlooking the darkened street below, one fist wrapped around the neck of a bottle of good French brandy. As Gibson watched, a half-naked woman stroked one hand over his chest and down his stomach, but Devlin shook his head and brought his hand down on hers to stop its slow descent. The woman mewed softly in disappointment, then moved away. The Viscount raised the brandy to his lips and drank deep. Gibson had been afraid he might find his friend in one of those knots of groping, naked flesh. But Devlin seemed more interested in drinking himself to death than in drowning his pain in sex.

  “There you are, me lad,” said Gibson heartily, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening. “Sorry I took so long. You haven’t forgotten you promised to meet my sister tonight, have you?”

  Devlin swung his head to stare directly at him. The feral yellow eyes were glittering and dangerous. “Your sister?”

  “Ah. See, you have forgotten. I’ve a hackney waiting outside. I know the Beau has dictated that no gentleman should condescend to ride in a hackney, but my carriage is being repaired, so I’m afraid there’s not much we can do about it.”

  “You don’t own a carriage,” said Sebastian. “Nor do you have a sister.”

  “Now that’s where you’re out, my friend. I do indeed have a sister. But seeing as how she’s taken the veil in a nunnery near Killarney, I don’t think you’d want to meet her. Especially not in your present condition.”

  Devlin laughed and pushed to his feet. His cravat was rumpled and his hair more disheveled than normal, but his gait was steady enough as they walked down the stairs. It was only when they reached the narrow lane outside the gaming hell’s discreet door that the Viscount paused to lean against the rough brick wall and squeeze his eyes shut.

  “Bloody hell,” he said after a moment.

  Gibson studied his friend’s pale face and tightly clenched jaw. “I haven’t seen you this foxed since that night in San Domingo.”

  “I haven’t been this foxed since that night in San Domingo. In fact, I’m
not sure I’ve ever been this foxed.” Devlin opened his eyes and stared at him. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “Tom was worried about you.”

  The dangerous glitter was back in the Viscount’s eyes. “The devil you say.”

  “That’s right.” Gibson clapped his hand on his friend’s shoulder, then laughed softly when Devlin winced. “And tomorrow, when you sober up, you can thank him.”

  The doctor waited until they were in the hackney headed toward Tower Hill before saying, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard the news.”

  Devlin had been gazing silently out the window, but at that he swung his head to stare at Gibson. “What news?”

  “They’ve arrested the Butcher of the West End. A country gentleman from Hertfordshire.”

  Devlin was suddenly, almost frighteningly sober. “Brandon Forbes?”

  “That’s it.”

  “But he didn’t do it.”

  Gibson raised one eyebrow. “Can you prove it?”

  “No.”

  “Then he’ll hang for it, for sure. Either that, or some mob will pull him out of his cell and tear him to pieces. People are afraid. They want someone’s blood, and quick.”

  “Stop the carriage,” said Devlin.

  Gibson sprang to signal the driver. “Why? What is it?”

  Devlin shoved open the door. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Chapter 56

  SUNDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 1811

  Charles, Lord Jarvis spent as little time as possible in his house in Berkeley Square. But he always attended Sunday-morning services at St. James’s chapel with his harridan of a mother, his half-mad wife, and his determinedly unwed daughter, Hero. After church, it was his practice to pass several hours in his library dealing with affairs of state before sitting down to Sunday dinner with his family. He was very conscious of the need for the better classes to set a proper example for the lower orders, and church attendance and devotion to family were an important part of that example. It was a duty he had sought to impress upon his daughter, although with indifferent success.

  On this particular Sunday, he returned from chapel to find the reports of several of his agents awaiting his attention on his desk. Devlin’s interference with his plans to use the actress Kat Boleyn to ferret out the identity of Napoleon’s new spymaster had forced Jarvis to fall back on more traditional means, but so far his agents had proved unsuccessful. He was glancing through their reports when he was interrupted by a cautious knock.

  “Yes, what is it?” he said without looking up.

  “A Mr. Russell Yates to see you, my lord.”

  Jarvis’s head came up. “What the bloody hell does he want?”

  “Shall I tell him you are not at home, my lord?”

  Jarvis tightened his jaw. “No. Send him in.”

  Russell Yates came in, bringing with him the scent of well-bred horses and a cool morning rain. From his manly chest and powerful shoulders to the glint of pirate’s gold in his left ear, he exuded an aggressive form of masculinity not often seen amongst the members of the ton. And it was all for show.

  Jarvis had dedicated his life to reading people and manipulating them. He was good at it, and he rarely made mistakes. Yet once Jarvis had underestimated this man. It would not happen again.

  Very deliberately, Jarvis leaned back in his chair, but did not rise. “Have a seat, Mr. Yates.”

  Yates adjusted the tails of his dark blue morning coat and settled in a leather chair beside the empty hearth. “Please accept my apologies for interrupting you on the Sabbath day, my lord.”

  Jarvis merely inclined his head. It was flowery flummery and they both knew it.

  “I am here, first of all,” continued Yates, “to share with you the news of my good fortune. The lovely Miss Kat Boleyn has consented to become my wife.”

  Jarvis drew a gold snuffbox from his pocket and flipped it open. “Indeed? It was my understanding that Miss Boleyn had consented to become the Viscountess Devlin.”

  “Things changed.”

  “So it seems.” Jarvis lifted a pinch of snuff to one nostril. “You understand, I assume, that Miss Boleyn has some…shall we say, unfortunate associations in her past?”

  “Actually, that is my primary purpose for coming to see you today. While it’s true Miss Boleyn has in the past engaged in certain activities that are better forgotten, the same could be said of many of us.” Yates’s smile widened to show his teeth. “Even you, my lord, have been involved in episodes that would be best left unknown.”

  Jarvis closed his snuffbox with a snap. He was not one to bluster or rage, for he had learned long ago to control his emotions. He did at times give vent to anger, but only when it served his purpose. It would not serve his purpose now.

  He tucked his snuffbox away and said calmly, “The understanding we reached on these matters still stands. I assume you are here merely to reassure me that as long as Miss Boleyn’s secrets are safe, others are safe?”

  “That’s a fair representation of the situation, yes.”

  “Good. Then we understand each other.”

  Yates rose to his feet. Jarvis waited until he was at the door to add, “It does seem a waste.”

  Yates turned. “How’s that, my lord?”

  “Such a beautiful woman, married to a man uninterested in women.”

  If he’d been hoping for a rise, Jarvis was disappointed. Yates merely smiled and said, “Good day, my lord.”

  Some twenty minutes later, Jarvis was still sitting at his desk when his daughter, Hero, appeared at the door.

  “The most vexatious thing, Papa. Grandmama has thrown her chamber pot at the upstairs parlor maid, and now both the maid and Cook have quit.”

  “The cook?” Jarvis looked around, his attention caught. “Why the cook?”

  “Cook is Emily’s aunt.”

  “Emily? Who the deuce is Emily?”

  “The upstairs parlor maid.”

  “Good God,” roared Jarvis. “And what would you have me do about it? The petty affairs of this household are not in my province.”

  “I don’t expect you to do anything about it,” said Hero. “I have simply come to warn you that dinner will be delayed.”

  “Dinner? But…who is cooking it?”

  “I am,” said his daughter with unruffled equanimity, and closed the door behind her.

  Jarvis stared at the closed panel for a moment, then rose to pour himself a brandy. It had been a trying week.

  The day might have been overcast, but the light streaming in through Paul Gibson’s kitchen windows was still bright enough to hurt Sebastian’s eyes. He squeezed them shut and ran a hand across his beard-roughened chin. “Remind me why I stayed here, rather than going home? I need a shave. And a bath. And clean clothes.”

  Paul Gibson answered him from across the room. “You needed to talk.”

  Sebastian opened one eye. “I did? How much did I say?”

  “Enough.” Gibson came to stand on the far side of the battered kitchen table. “I’m sorry, Sebastian.”

  Sebastian looked away.

  “Here.” Gibson plunked a tankard of ale on the boards before him. “This will help your head. You’d best drink it before you hear this morning’s news.”

  Sebastian brought his gaze back to his friend’s face. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “It’s Felix Atkinson’s twelve-year-old son, Anthony. He’s missing.”

  Chapter 57

  Sebastian found Felix Atkinson in the drawing room of his prosperous West End home. The East India Company man stood with his back to the room, his gaze fixed on the scene outside the window overlooking Portland Place. In a damask-covered chair off to one side, a pale-haired woman in her early thirties wept quietly into a handkerchief. As far as Sebastian could see, her husband was making no attempt to comfort her.

  “I’d like a word with you,” Sebastian told Atkinson. “Alone.”

  Atkinson swung to face him, all bluster and trem
bling affront. “Really, my lord. Now is hardly the time—”

  Sebastian cut him off. “I don’t think you want Mrs. Atkinson to hear what I have to say.”

  A rush of color darkened the other man’s cheeks. He cast a quick glance at his wife, then looked away. “We can speak in the morning room.”

  They had barely crossed into the morning room before Sebastian’s hands closed over Atkinson’s shoulders and spun him around to slam his spine up against the nearest wall.

  “You bloody, self-obsessed, lying son of a bitch,” said Sebastian, spitting out each word through gritted teeth.

  Atkinson gasped and made as if to pull away. “How dare you? How dare you lay hands upon me in my own h—”

  Sebastian pressed his forearm against the man’s throat, pinning him to the wall. “I know what happened on that ship. I know about Gideon Forbes, and I know what really happened to David Jarvis.”

  Atkinson went utterly still. “You can’t.”

  “I read the log.”

  “The log? But the log was lost. Bellamy said the log was lost.”

  “He lied.” Sebastian shoved his forearm up under the man’s chin harder. “You all lied. What did you do? Get together after Thornton’s and Carmichael’s sons were killed and swear one another to secrecy?”

  “What choice did we have?”

  “You could have told the truth.”

  Atkinson’s tongue darted out to moisten his lips. “How could we? No one would have understood about the boy. You have no idea what it was like on that ship. The fear. The endless days and nights of hunger. That kind of hunger, it’s like a yawning pit of fire in your belly, consuming you. You’ll do anything when you’re hungry like that.”

  “You might. Yet people starve to death on the streets of London all the time. They don’t kill and eat each other.”

  Atkinson sucked in a breath that shook his entire frame. “The boy was dying. All we did was hasten the hour of his death. David Jarvis should never have tried to stop us.”