Where Shadows Dance sscm-6

by C. S. Harris

  Sebastian stared across the room at his prospective father-in-law. Once, he would have said that Charles, Lord Jarvis cared about nothing beyond his own power and the security of England and the House of Hanover. In that, Sebastian now realized, he’d been mistaken.

  “I will remind you,” he said quietly, “that she is also my affianced wife.” And the mother of my unborn child.

  “This is because of you.” Jarvis punched the air between them with an accusatory finger. “You and this mad, quixotic quest of yours for ‘justice.’ You have no idea what you’ve mixed yourself up in this time. No idea whatsoever.”

  Sebastian set aside his brandy untasted. “What the devil are you saying? That Ross was involved in something else? Something more than the transfer of gold to the Swedish government?”

  Jarvis clenched his jaw so hard, the muscles along his cheek line bulged.

  Sebastian took a step toward him, then forced himself to draw up short. “Goddamn you. Tell me. Hero’s very life may well depend upon it!”

  Jarvis’s nostrils flared on a deep, angry breath. “The first and fifteenth of every month, the French Minister of War provides Napoléon with what is called the Survey of the Situation of the French Army.”

  “Which contains what?” snapped Sebastian.

  “Numerical changes in the French divisions. Billeting changes. A list of appointments to command posts. That sort of thing.”

  “And?”

  “For some time now, a certain individual serving on the General Staff has been making copies of these briefings, which he passes to a Parisian bookseller with a stall near the Pont Neuf. From there they progress to the coast, where smugglers carry them across the channel. Until yesterday, they then passed into the hands of a defrocked émigré priest.”

  “Antoine de La Rocque.”

  “Yes.”

  Sebastian studied the big man’s closed, angry face. “That’s why de La Rocque visited Ross the Wednesday before he died? He was delivering the latest dispatch?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what? What typically happened to the briefings after that?”

  “Generally, such documents are turned over to a dedicated section of the Foreign Office, where they are copied and studied. It’s a two- or three-day process. After that, copies are distributed to the representatives of a few select allies ... and certain friendly governments.”

  It was all, finally, beginning to make sense. Sebastian said, “You mean, friendly governments such as that of the Czar.”

  “Amongst others, yes.”

  “Let me guess,” said Sebastian. “The Russian who typically collected the copies of the dispatches from Ross was Colonel Dimitri Chernishav.”

  Jarvis gave a brief, curt nod. “Their meetings excited little attention, given the long-standing friendship between them. Chernishav was scheduled to receive the dispatches Saturday night. But the transfer was never made.”

  “So what happened to the copies of the briefing Ross had in his possession when he died?”

  “They disappeared.”

  Sebastian went to stare out the window overlooking the garden, one hand resting on the long library table. He was aware of a white-hot rage coursing through him, stoked by fear and guilt and a confused tumult of emotions he had no time now to analyze. “What have you discovered about the men who took her?”

  “Precious little. That fool girl, Sabrina, was hysterical by the time she reached the house. A nursemaid tending some children nearby saw the entire thing but wasn’t much better. All we have at the moment is a hazy description of an antiquated carriage pulled by a pair of showy dapple grays and driven by an aged, liveried coachman. That, and contradictory descriptions of two men who were not gentlemen but were dressed as if they were.”

  Sebastian swung to face him. “If there’s anything you’re not telling me—anything!—I swear to God, I’ll—”

  “Don’t be a fool,” snapped Jarvis. “No one is more aware than I of the gravity of the situation. I have put every available man on this, and so far they have turned up nothing. Nothing.” He held Sebastian’s gaze in a long, steady stare. “I can’t begin to understand precisely what has developed between you and my daughter these past two months. But right now, that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except Hero. You fancy yourself adept at solving mysteries? Then solve this one. Find her.

  “Before it’s too late.”

  It didn’t take Hero long to discern that the taller of the two men who’d grabbed her was the leader.

  He sat beside her on the forward-facing seat, his body swaying easily with the lurching movement of the antiquated carriage, his head tipped back against the worn velvet swabs, his watchful gaze never straying far from her face. He kept his finger curled around the trigger of the pistol held resting in an easy but purposeful grip on his thigh.

  He was a well-made man, handsome even, with dark curling hair and a strongly boned face. But the slant of his full lips struck her as cruel, his pale gray eyes cold and hard as he nodded toward the sobbing abigail who sat bolt upright beside his confederate on the rear-facing seat. “Make her shut up.”

  Hero leaned forward cautiously, one hand reaching out to touch the abigail’s knee. “Marie, hush. You must hush.”

  The abigail stared at her with wild, unseeing eyes and wailed louder.

  “That did a lot o’ good,” observed the buff-coated tough slouched in the corner beside the maid.

  “I don’t know why you brought her,” said Hero.

  “Don’t ye?” said the dark-haired man. Sullivan, she’d heard his companion call him. “She’s our insurance. Ye do what you’re told, she lives, and ye live. Ye don’t...”He shrugged. “She dies. First. Unpleasantly. It’s that simple.”

  Fortunately, Marie was wailing so loud that the sense of most of that speech was lost on her.

  Deliberately, Hero turned her head to stare out the window at the passing rows of unfamiliar shops and tradesmen’s ateliers. She felt the sting of threatening tears and blinked them away angrily.

  She had no idea where they were taking her, or why. She knew only that the man beside her had lied. Neither she nor Marie would be allowed to live. Otherwise, he never would have let them see his face.

  Chapter 43

  N o one knew better than Sebastian just how ruthlessly thorough Jarvis’s minions could be. But on the off chance they’d missed something, he set Tom to scouring the neighborhood of the park and asked Calhoun to make inquiries amongst some of his more unsavory contacts.

  Yet barring any unexpected discoveries or a demand from the kidnappers, it seemed to Sebastian that his only hope of ever seeing Hero alive again lay in finding Alexander Ross’s murderer. Quickly.

  And so he went in search of the Russian, Dimitri Chernishav.

  The Colonel was coming out of his lodgings in Westminster’s Adington Buildings when Sebastian caught him by one arm and the back of his coat to spin him around and slam his face against a nearby brick wall.

  “What the devil?” growled the Russian, heaving against Sebastian’s hold. But Sebastian had the man’s arm held in an iron grip and bent behind his back at a painful angle.

  “Miss Jarvis,” said Sebastian quietly, bringing his lips close to the other man’s ear as he increased the leverage on his arm. “Where is she?”

  “You are making a mistake,” said Chernishav, panting.

  “Diplomatically, or tactically?”

  “Both. I heard Lord Jarvis’s daughter has been taken. But I am not responsible. Why would I do such a thing?”

  “As a distraction, perhaps?”

  “From what?”

  “My attempts to discover the truth about what happened a week ago last Saturday.”

  The Russian was silent a moment. Then he said, “I did not kill Alexander. Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that your plans for that evening had nothing to do with a pint at Cribb’s Parlour. You went to Ross’s rooms to take delivery of Na
poléon’s latest war briefing.”

  The Russian’s face twisted into a disdainful sneer. “And you are aggrieved because I failed to disclose this fact to you? I told you before, Devlin; there is much involved here of which you are ignorant.”

  Sebastian increased the torque on the man’s arm. “So, educate me.”

  Chernishav gave a ragged laugh. “Break my arm if you feel you must. But it will serve no purpose. I still won’t tell you anything.”

  “Let me help you out, shall I? The Russian Czar is pressing the British government for an active alliance that will involve a commitment of troops to help deflect Napoléon’s push toward Moscow. But certain elements within the government—the Earl of Hendon amongst them—are reluctant to divert troops to Russia at a time when they may soon be needed to protect Canada. Nevertheless, despite the lack of a formal treaty of alliance, the Foreign Office has been supplying Russia with copies of the French military dispatches, which regularly make their way out of Paris via a band of smugglers in contact with a certain rare-books collector named Antoine de La Rocque.”

  “Ah.” The Russian looked thoughtful. “That I did not know. But it does help explain why he is now dead.”

  “As is the Swedish trader Carl Lindquist,” said Sebastian.

  “I never knew Mr. Lindquist.”

  “Maybe not,” said Sebastian. “But Alexander Ross did.”

  “Then perhaps, rather than assaulting diplomats in the street, you should instead consider turning your attention to someone who did have dealings with Alexander Ross, Antoine de La Rocque, and this Carl Lindquist.”

  “As in, someone else in the Foreign Office?”

  “It seems logical, does it not?”

  Sebastian shifted his hold on the Russian Colonel. “The copy of the briefing you were to receive the night of July eighteenth—what happened to it?”

  “I’ve no idea. I’m told Sir Hyde searched Alexander’s rooms the next morning, but the briefing was never found. We were given a new copy just a few days ago.”

  Sebastian frowned. “Ross’s man, Poole, notified Sir Hyde as soon as he found Ross dead?”

  “Yes. It was Sir Hyde who called Dr. Cooper.”

  “And subtly suggested to the good doctor that Ross may have suffered from morbus cordis?”

  “Perhaps. I wasn’t there.”

  Sebastian gave a grim smile. “One last question. When we met at the Queen’s reception, you told me of a quarrel at Vauxhall between Ross and the Turkish Ambassador. You knew of the rumors that Madame Ramadani had seduced someone in the Foreign Office?”

  “I had heard whispers, yes.”

  “But you didn’t believe them?”

  “I didn’t believe it was Alexander. You didn’t know him; I did. He was fiercely loyal, not only to his country but to his friends and to the woman he loved. He would never have played her false.”

  “So where did the rumor originate?”

  “One might suspect with the man who actually did allow himself to be seduced.”

  Sebastian released the Russian and took a step back. “You mean, someone like Sir Hyde Foley?”

  Chernishav adjusted his cravat. “I don’t know for certain. But it’s what I suspect, yes.”

  With a rising sense of urgency, Sebastian tracked Foley from Downing Street to Carlton House to Whitehall. He was just turning in through the classical screen of the Admiralty when he heard the shrill, ungenteel accents of his tiger raised above the rumble of wagons and carriages in the street.

  “Gov’nor!”

  Sebastian turned to see Tom darting between a ponderous coal wagon and the high-stepping pair of shiny blacks pulling a phaeton.

  “Gov’nor!” The tiger skidded to a halt, breathless. “We got somethin’! The wife o’ the under-keeper what lives in the lodge near the Corner recognized the carriage and dapple grays what come through the entrance to the park this mornin’. She says they belong to a livery stable on the Kentish Town Road. Seems Calhoun’s ma and the livery owner is real thick, and ’e tells Calhoun the rig was let to a cove by the name o’ Sullivan. Todd Sullivan.”

  Sebastian frowned. “Sullivan? Who the blazes is he?”

  “A weery rum character, according to Calhoun. ’Angs around the Castle Tavern!”

  They took her to a wretched one-room stone cottage with a tattered thatch roof somewhere to the northwest of the city.

  The cottage lay at the end of a rutted, overgrown lane, its windows broken and stuffed with rags, its yard empty and weed choked.

  The coachman—a wizened little old cockney missing one ear—stabled the horses in a dilapidated lean-to, which told Hero they anticipated being here for a while, at least. Then he went to gather wood for a fire while his companions spread the crude table with bread and cheese and salami they washed down with ample swigs from a bottle of gin.

  No one offered her either food or drink. But at least they didn’t tie her up. She was left to prowl the cottage’s dark, cramped confines, conscious always of Sullivan’s watchful gaze following her. Marie collapsed in a limp heap beside the grimy hearth, her body wracked with sobs punctuated by an occasional thin, reedy wail.

  “There, there,” crooned Hero, going to draw the distraught woman awkwardly into her arms. “Don’t be afraid, Marie. They’re not going to hurt us. You’ll see. Everything will be all right.”

  She looked up to find Sullivan smiling at her through narrowed eyes. “Feel sorry for her, do ye?”

  “That amuses you for some reason?” said Hero stiffly.

  “Aye, it does.” He took another deep swig of gin. “How ye think we knew where ye was going to be, and when ye was going to be there?” He nodded to the woman now sobbing quietly in Hero’s arms. “She told us. Sold ye to us, she did. For a guinea. Just didn’t know she was includin’ herself in the bargain.”

  Marie lifted her head to display a pinched, tear-streaked face. “I did what you asked me to do!” she wailed, her pleading gaze fixed on their captor. “Why won’t you let me go? You’ve got her.”

  But Sullivan only laughed and turned away.

  Hero watched him go stand in the open doorway looking out on the sunbaked yard. Then she brought her gaze back to the abigail. “Why, Marie?” she asked, her voice kept low. “Why did you do it?”

  The abigail sniffed, her features hardening into what looked very much like hatred. “You think I should have been content with your cast-off gowns and a few paltry trinkets, do you? You fancy that because you pay my wages you also bought my loyalty?”

  “Oddly enough, yes,” said Hero, who paid her servants handsomely—for both philosophical and practical reasons.

  The abigail’s lip curled with scorn. “You’re a fool.”

  “Obviously.” Hero was tempted to add, But then, under the circumstances, I would venture to suggest that the appellation applies to you, as well. But she kept the observation to herself.

  The abigail had already begun to weep again. And though Hero knew that her tears were driven as much by hatred of Hero as by fear and self-pity, Hero continued to hold the girl and do what she could to comfort her.

  As the hours dragged on and the shadows in the yard lengthened, Hero found herself wondering, if Marie asked for her forgiveness, would she have the magnanimity to give it?

  But the abigail never did.

  They killed Marie just as dusk was beginning to send long shadows across the yard.

  Nothing Hero could do would silence the woman’s incessant weeping. In the end, Sullivan simply drew an ugly, curved blade from his boot and walked over to grasp Marie by the hair. Hero saw him yank the woman’s head back and she looked quickly away. But she heard the maid’s rasping gurgle and the soft thump of her body sinking lifeless to the flagstones.

  “I take it you don’t feel the need for insurance anymore?” said Hero, forcing herself to meet the tall man’s gaze.

  Sullivan wiped his blade on the dead maid’s dress and slid the knife back into its sheath.

&nb
sp; Chapter 44

  S ebastian was in no mood for subtleties.

  The muzzle of his pistol pressed to the temple of one of Todd Sullivan’s cronies at the Castle Tavern solicited the information that Sullivan frequently made use of a ramshackle cottage on the outskirts of Barham Wood, near Elstree.

  In the grip of a cold, driven purposefulness, Sebastian borrowed a bay hack from the nearby livery and entrusted Tom with a message for Bow Street.

  “Why can’t I come with you?” asked Tom, his head ducked, his voice strained as he tightened the saddle’s cinch. “It’s because o’ the things I said about Miss Jarvis before, ain’t it? It’s because you don’t trust me no more.”

  Painfully conscious of the daylight slipping from the sky, Sebastian paused to rest a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I trust you with my life, and you know it.” He swung into the saddle. “But I could be riding into a trap. I need someone I trust to deliver this message. Now go,” he said, and spurred the bay out the livery door.

  For Hero, the darkness came all too quickly.

  Only a single tallow candle set at one end of the table’s rough boards lit the inside of the cottage. That, and the soft glow from the fire kindled on the hearth by the coachman.

  The coachman had long since subsided into a drunken stupor in the fireplace’s inglenook. But the other two men continued to drink steadily. They sprawled now beside the crude table, the remnants of their dinner—more bread and sausage—scattered across the scarred surface. They talked in desultory tones about horses and cockfights and some colleague named Jed who had recently “made a good end” on the hangman’s noose. But all the while, Hero was aware of Sullivan’s dark gaze following her in a way she did not like as she restlessly paced the confines of the cottage.

  At one point she heard the buff-coated man lean in close to his friend to whisper, “Need to keep yer breeches’ flap buttoned fer a while yet, lad. Least till we hear they won’t be needin’ her fer some reason.” Both men laughed, and Hero felt a new rush of cold fear wash over her, followed by a hot fury that left a steady resolve in its wake.