by C. S. Harris
And her own revenge.
She was crossing the vast marbled entry hall when her staid butler opened the door to Sebastian. He saw the breath of surprise that shadowed her face at the sight of him, for she had been married a year and yet this was the first time he had ever come here, to the house she shared with Yates.
“Devlin,” she said, taking both his hands to draw him into a nearby salon. “What is it? Have you discovered something?”
She wore a simple gown of white figured muslin sashed in primrose, with a delicate strand of pearls threaded through the dark, auburn-shot fall of her curls, and he held her fingers just a shade too long before squeezing them and letting her go. “Nothing that makes any sense yet. But I don’t like the way Yates’s name keeps coming up the more I look into things.”
She held his gaze squarely, her eyes deep and vividly blue and so much like those of the man who was her father and not his that it still hurt, just to look at her.
She said, “He didn’t do it, Sebastian.”
“Maybe he didn’t. But I’m beginning to suspect he knows far more about what is going on than he would have me believe.” He drew her over to sit beside him on a sofa near the window. “Are you familiar with a man named Blair Beresford?”
Kat Boleyn might never receive invitations to London’s most exclusive balls and parties, but she still socialized with Yates’s easygoing male friends and acted as hostess at his dinners. She thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t believe so. Why? Who is he?”
“A beautiful, curly-headed, blue-eyed Irish poet only lately down from Oxford.”
She gave a soft laugh. “In general, Yates has very little patience with poets—especially those just down from Oxford.”
“What about an army lieutenant named Matt Tyson? Mid-twenties. Dark. Also good-looking, although not in Beresford’s boyish way. Has a rather rakish scar on his chin.”
“Him I do know. Yates finds him amusing.”
Amusing. It was the same word Tyson had used to describe Beresford. “But you don’t like him?” said Sebastian.
Her smile faded. “He’s never been anything except charming and gracious to me. But . . .”
“But?”
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t ever want to turn my back on him—metaphorically speaking, of course.”
“Do you know if he”—Sebastian hesitated, struggling for a way to put his question into words—“has the same inclinations as Yates?”
She understood what he meant. “I don’t know. But I can ask.” She tipped her head to one side, her gaze on his face, and he wondered what she saw there. She was always far too good at knowing what he was thinking. “Why did you come here to me, Devlin? Why not ask Yates directly?”
“Because I’m not convinced he is being as honest with me as he could be.”
She pushed up from the sofa and went to fiddle with the heavy satin drapes at the window overlooking the square.
“What?” he asked, watching her.
She exhaled a long breath. “To be frank, I’m not certain he’s being exactly honest with me either.”
“Why? Why would he lie?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” But her gaze slid from his in a way he did not like.
He said, “Do you know anything about a large blue diamond whose sale Eisler was handling? A diamond that may once have formed part of the French Crown Jewels?”
He watched her carefully and saw no trace of anything in her face other than puzzlement and surprise, followed swiftly by what looked very much like fear.
But then, he reminded himself, it would never do to forget that Kat was an actress. A very good one. And it struck him as ironic and troubling that he found himself doubting both of the women in his life—although for vastly different reasons.
She said, “What are you suggesting? That the French are somehow involved in Eisler’s murder?”
“You know about Napoléon’s quest to recover the French Crown Jewels?”
“Yes.”
A simple answer that told him she probably knew more than he did. Once, she had worked for the French, passing secrets to Napoléon’s agents in an effort to weaken England and free Ireland. She claimed she’d severed that relationship long ago. But Sebastian suspected she still had contacts with her old confederates—as did Yates.
He said, “Who would Napoléon task to secure the diamond? Would he send in someone new? Or would he use a contact already in place?”
“It’s difficult to say. He’s taken both approaches in the past.”
“Would it be possible to find out?”
He half expected her to tell him no. Instead, she twitched the heavy drape in place and smoothed it down, although it already hung straight. “I can try.”
He let his gaze drift over the familiar planes of her face: the thickly lashed, slightly tilted eyes; the small, childlike nose; the wide, sensual mouth. His love for her still coursed deep and strong, as he knew it always would. He had loved her since he was so very young, untested by battle and as yet untouched by the bitterest of disillusionments. Even when he’d believed she’d betrayed him—even when he had tried to forget her—he had loved her still. Their souls had touched in a way granted to few, and he knew that even if he never saw her again, his life would forever be entwined with hers.
But he also knew that with every passing day, the distance between them yawned subtly deeper and wider.
And it disturbed him to realize the extent to which he neither trusted nor believed her.
Chapter 38
A
fter Devlin left, Kat sat down and composed a carefully worded note she dispatched to a certain Irish gentleman of her acquaintance. Then she ordered her carriage and set off for Newgate Prison.
She found Yates standing beside his cell’s small, barred window overlooking the Press Yard. There was an uncharacteristic tension in the way he held himself, and she went to slide her arms around his waist and press her cheek against his taut back in a quiet gesture of friendship and comfort. They were two outcasts who’d made common cause together against both their enemies and the disapproving world. In many ways, he was like the brother she had never had. And she found she had to squeeze her eyes shut against a sudden upsurge of unexpected emotion at the thought of losing him.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” he said, closing his hands over hers and tilting back his head until it rested against hers. “I didn’t expect to see you again today. Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the theater?”
“I’ve time yet.”
Beneath her encircling arms, she felt his torso expand with his breath. He said, “Your dashing viscount came to see me this morning.”
“Devlin isn’t my viscount anymore.”
“True. But then, he’s not exactly your brother either, is he?” When she remained silent, he said, “I’m sorry. That was totally uncalled for.”
“It’s all right,” she said softly.
He nodded toward the window, where the ancient masonry that formed the prison’s gatehouse was just visible. “Do you know what that chamber is over there, right above the entrance gate? They call it ‘Jack Ketch’s kitchen.’ I’m told that’s where they used to preserve the quartered bodies of those executed for treason, before putting them on display around the metropolis. They’d boil them in vast cauldrons full of pitch, tar, and oil. Must have smelled . . . ghastly. The heads were treated to a different process, of course; those were parboiled with bay, salt, and cumin. I suppose I should be thankful that in our own more enlightened era, I can look forward to merely dancing the hempen jig for the amusement of the populace, before being given over to the surgeons for the edification of their students.”
“You’re not going to hang.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “The verdict of the coroner’s inquest is in. My trial has been scheduled for Saturday; did you know?”
“Oh, God. So soon?” She was aware of a pressing sense of urgency that
came close to panic. And she understood, then, why he had been standing here watching the last of the light fade from his prison’s walls.
She said, “Is there anything you know about Eisler that you haven’t told Devlin?”
“I don’t think so.” He turned to face her. “Do you think I want to hang?”
She studied his dark, handsome face, the gold pirate’s hoop in his ear winking in the fading light. She said, “To be honest, I don’t understand why you’re still in prison. Jarvis could have had all charges against you dropped days ago, only he hasn’t done it. He knows you have the power to destroy him; all you need do is release the evidence you have against him. Yet he’s not afraid. Why not?”
He remained silent. But she read the answer in his face.
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” she whispered. “That’s what he told you when he came to see you the night of your arrest. He warned you that the documents you hold can protect you, or they can protect me, but they can’t protect us both.”
Yates held himself very still.
She said, “I’m right, aren’t I? He told you that if you made any move against him, he’d have me killed.”
Yates turned to where a bottle of his best brandy stood beside a glass. “Unfortunately, I’ve only the one glass. May I offer you something to drink?”
She shook her head.
“You don’t mind if I do?” He poured himself a large measure. “So you see,” he said, setting the bottle aside, “I have even more incentive to cooperate with your viscount than you previously thought.”
He took a long, slow swallow of his brandy and looked over at her. “You came for a reason; what was it?”
“Devlin wanted me to ask you about Matt Tyson.”
Yates frowned. “I already told him I know the man only slightly. What more is there?”
“Where did you meet him?”
“In a molly house on Pall Mall. Why?”
Kat sucked in a quick breath. “So he’s a molly?”
“Of course he is. So is Beresford.”
The last of the light was leaching rapidly from the sky.
Kat knew she should be at the theater, preparing for that evening’s performance. Instead, she went for a stroll through the flower stalls of Covent Garden Market.
Already, the square lay in deep shadow, the few remaining vegetable and fruit sellers scrambling to hawk their fading produce, cheap, before closing for the night. Only the florists, nurserymen, and bouquet girls were still doing a brisk trade, selling flowers to the theater, music hall, and restaurant managers and to earnest beaux looking for posies to present to their lovers. The air was full of laughter and shouting and a sweet, familiar medley of floral scents that always took her back to another time, another place.
When she was a little girl growing up in a small white house overlooking the misty emerald swath of a Dublin green, Kat’s mother and stepfather used to take her to the market that set up every Wednesday afternoon in the cobbled medieval square of their parish church. She could remember running excitedly from one stall to the next, exclaiming over the displays of satin hair ribbons and lace collars and carved wooden tops. But her mother’s favorite stalls were always those selling bunches of yellow daffodils and rainbow-hued tulips, or pots of rue and pennyroyal, hollyhock seedlings and briar rose cuttings. She’d take them home and plant them in the narrow strip of garden beside their cottage’s front stoop. Even now, all these years later, if Kat closed her eyes and breathed deeply, she could still see her mother’s strong hands sinking into the rich dark earth, a faint faraway smile on her lips that told of a deep and rare contentment.
In some indefinable way, Kat knew that the child she’d once been had resented the joy and peace her mother found in her garden. But she’d never been able to decide if her selfishness came from the wish that her mother would find that deep, unalloyed joy in her daughter alone, or if she’d simply envied the tranquility she glimpsed in her mother’s face. And it shamed Kat now to remember that she had begrudged her mother those brief interludes of peace and happiness.
There had been so little of either in Arabella Noland’s short life.
Now, as she breathed in the heady scents from the banks of Michaelmas daisies, ferns, and chrysanthemums, Kat found herself wondering if it was her mother’s spirit that had guided her here, to the peace of this place. Or was this love of growing things a trait passed down from mother to daughter, like dark hair and a talent for acting? A tendency that had always been there, nestled hidden within her, only waiting to be discovered.
She smiled at the thought. Then the smile faded as she became aware of a sudden charge of tension in the atmosphere, the rush of heavy feet. A trader’s high-pitched voice whined, “’Ey! Wot the ’ell ye doin’?”
Kat’s eyes flew open.
Rough hands seized her from behind. She lunged against the unseen man’s fierce grip, tried to scream. A calloused palm slapped down across her mouth, grinding her lips against her teeth and flattening her nose so that she had to fight to draw air. She smelled dirt and onions and fetid breath as he pressed his beard-roughened cheek against hers and whispered, “Come wit’ me quiet-like, an’ I’ll see ye don’t get hurt.”
Chapter 39
K
at heaved against the man’s hold and felt his arms tighten around her in a fierce hug. He dragged her backward, toward the shadowy, narrow lane that ran along the old, soot-stained nave of the church. She tried to bite the thick, dirty fingers smothering her, but the pressure was so brutal she could get no purchase.
“I say, there,” bleated one of the florists, stepping from behind his stall. “You can’t do that!”
A second man—a wiry, black-haired brute with a pock-scarred face and small, sharp nose—turned to thrust a blunderbuss pistol into the trader’s face. “Mind your own business or lose your head.” His English diction was careful and precise, but Kat caught the faint, unmistakable traces of French inflection and knew a new leap of terror.
The florist backed off, hands splayed out at his sides, face slack.
Her heart was pounding, her mouth achingly dry, the shouts of the scattered costermongers and stall keepers echoing oddly in her head, as if she were at the base of a well. The market square spun around her in a blur of startled, frightened faces, wet paving, spilled chrysanthemums. A flock of pigeons whirled up from the church portico, pale outstretched wings beating the cool damp air. She tried to twist her body sideways, but her captor’s fingers dug into her cruelly, his breath hot against her ear. “Ye want to live, don’t give me trouble. Ye hear, girl? Because wot I do wit’ ye afterward is up t’ me. Ye got that?”
She made herself go utterly limp, as if fainting from fear, her hands dangling slack at her sides. She heard him give a grunt of satisfaction. “Have yer friend bring the bloody cart up, quick,” he told his pockmarked companion. “Let’s get out o’ ’ere.”
They were passing the last stall in the row, a rough shed given over to the sale of earthen crockery, the stall’s seller cowering wide-eyed against the rickety frame, as if he could somehow make himself disappear into the weathered post behind him. Kat’s captor was half dragging, half carrying her now, a drooping deadweight that sagged in his arms, so that his effort was more focused on keeping her upright than on restraining her.
Flinging out one hand, she grasped the lip of a stout pitcher from the edge of the stall’s counter and swung it up and back to smash it against the side of her captor’s head. He let out a rumbling roar, his grip on her slackening with surprise and pain.
She twisted sideways, ignoring the wrenching pain that shot from her wrist as he tried, too late, to tighten his hold on her. “You bloody son of a bitch!” she screamed, grabbing a platter off the stall and breaking it against his face. “I ought to cut out your bloody liver and feed it to the crows!”
He howled, blood spurting from his cut face, his arms flinging up to protect his head as she snatched up a bowl and hurled it at him.
“Oy, wot ye doin’ to me crockery?” bleated the stall owner.
“Your bloody crockery?” shouted Kat, whirling to heave a plate at him. “You worthless, stinking coward! You would have just stood there and watched him kill me!”
“You fool,” screamed the pockmarked man to his companion as a shouting, angry crowd of stall keepers and costermongers, bouquet girls and nurserymen bore down on them. “Don’t just stand there. Grab her!”
“’Tain’t no way to treat a lady!” hollered a big, black-haired porter.
“You mind your own business,” growled the pockmarked man, flourishing his pistol.
A rotten tomato flew through the air to break in a red splat against his face.
The air filled with the day’s unsold produce, spoiling turnips and overripe melons, moldy pears and putrid apples. For one moment, the two men held their ground. Then the plucked, gutted carcass of a chicken whacked against the side of the bigger ruffian’s head. He turned and ran, feet slipping and sliding on a sea of rotten vegetables, splattered fruit, and smashed crockery. His companion hesitated a moment, then followed, swerving around the church steps to duck down the side street.
“Lay a hand on me again, and I’ll kill you! You hear?” yelled Kat, hurling a last earthenware bowl after them as they pelted down the lane to their waiting cart. She was no longer Kat Boleyn, the toast of London’s stage; she was Kat Noland, the scrappy, angry young orphan who’d struggled to survive in the fetid back alleys of a vast, unfriendly city. “I’ll cut off your pathetic yards and feed them to the stray dogs in Moorefield. I’ll decorate London Bridge with your entrails. I’ll—”
But the men were already piling into their waiting cart, its driver whipping up his horses into a mad gallop that took them careening around the corner and out of sight.
Kat let her hand fall back to her side, her fingers clenched tight around the lip of the rough mug she still held, her heart thundering in her chest.