by C. S. Harris
Chapter 44
S
ome hours later, after a tense and unpleasant interlude with the local constabulary, Sebastian walked into Kat’s dressing room at the Covent Garden Theater. The curtain had just fallen. He was still covered in blood, and he wasn’t in the best of moods.
“Devlin,” said Kat, starting up from her dressing table. “You’re hurt!”
She still wore the elaborate stomacher and velvet gown of her character, and he stopped her before she could get too close to him. “Careful. You’ll ruin your costume. And I’m fine. It’s not my blood.”
She drew back, her gaze on his face. “Whose is it?”
“An old Parisian thief named Jacques Collot. He was one of the original gang who stole the French Crown Jewels from the Garde-Meuble. He found out Daniel Eisler was handling the sale of Hope’s diamond and tried to use his knowledge of the stone’s origins to weasel money out of Eisler.”
“How?”
“By threatening to tell Napoléon’s agent where to find the French Blue. Eisler made the mistake of laughing at him.”
“Collot went to the French?”
“He did.”
She turned away to fiddle with the hairpins and combs scattered across the surface of her table, her heavy dark hair falling forward across her face as she asked with what struck him as studied casualness, “And was he able to tell you the name of the person Napoléon has charged with the stone’s recovery?”
He kept his gaze on her half-averted profile. “No. He was killed before I could get it out of him. Shot, probably by the same person who killed the young thief in the alley behind Eisler’s house Monday night.”
He waited for her to make some response. When she didn’t, he said quietly, “Is it you, Kat? Are you working for the French in this?”
She’d sworn she’d severed her association with the French well over a year ago now. But that had been before. Before their lives and their future together had unraveled in a morass of long-buried secrets and Hendon’s self-serving lies. Before she married Russell Yates, and Sebastian married the daughter of Charles, Lord Jarvis, the man who’d sworn to see her die an ugly, painful death.
She looked up, her eyes going wide, her mouth forming an O of surprise and hurt as she drew in a quick breath. “I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
He looked into her beautiful, beloved face, saw the hurt that pinched her features, saw her eyes film. He said, “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, blinking rapidly as if she were fighting back tears. “I suppose I should be flattered that you still trust me enough to believe I’d give you an honest answer.”
“Kat—”
He reached for her, but she pulled away. “No. Let me finish. My love of Ireland is unchanged. I would do anything to see her free of this murderous occupation—anything, that is, except go back on the pledge I made to you.”
He felt as if he’d just sliced open his own chest and torn out his heart. “I should never have doubted you.”
“No.” To his surprise, she reached up to press her fingertips to his lips. “People are dying. I can understand why you felt you needed to ask. I kept the truth of my association with the French a secret from you when I should not have, and that will always be between us. It’s not good for a man and woman to keep things from each other. Secrets destroy trust. And without honesty and trust, love is just . . . a shifting mirage.”
He took her hand in his, pressed his lips to her palm, then curled his fingers around hers. “My love for you was never a mirage.”
They stood face-to-face, nothing touching except their hands. He could feel the tiny shudders trembling through her, breathed in the familiar theater scents of greasepaint and oranges, looked into the deep blue eyes that were so much like those of her father. He said, “Do you ever think what would have happened to us if you hadn’t listened to Hendon all those years ago? If you had listened instead to your heart and married me when you were seventeen and I was twenty-one?”
“I think of it all the time.”
He leaned his forehead against hers, drew in a deep breath.
She said, “I did the right thing, Sebastian. For you and for me.”
“You can still say that? Despite all that’s happened?”
“Yes. We would have destroyed each other had we wed. I couldn’t have continued on the stage as Lady Devlin, yet I would never have been accepted into society. So what would I have done instead? Sit home and embroider seat cushions? I’d have been miserable, and in the end I’d have made you miserable too.”
“We could have found a way,” he insisted.
Although for the first time, he was aware of a whisper of doubt.
Faint, but there.
That night, a new storm swept in from the north. A fierce wind rattled the limbs of the elms in the garden and sent dead leaves scuttling down the street. Hero could see streaks of lightning rending the sky, hear the patter of wind-driven rain against the window. She lay alone in her bed, her eyes on the tucked blue silk of the canopy overhead, her hands resting low on her belly, on the swelling of the child she had made with a man she’d barely known but who was now her husband.
She heard him come in when the storm was at its fiercest. But though she listened carefully, she didn’t hear him mount the steps to the second floor. And so, after a time, she drew on her dressing gown and went in search of him.
She found him in the dining room, beside the long windows overlooking the wind-savaged garden. He had his back to her and did not turn when she paused in the doorway. He’d stripped off his wet coat and waistcoat, and she could see the tense set of his shoulders through the fine cloth of his shirt. The air was damp and close with the smell of the rain and the tang of blood and an elusive scent she realized suddenly was pealed oranges. And she knew the pain of a woman who has given her heart to a man who lost his own heart long ago to someone else.
But all she said was, “I hope that’s not your blood I smell.”
He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. “It’s not. Jacques Collot is dead. He was telling me about how he came to know Eisler had the blue diamond in his possession when someone put a bullet in his chest with a rifle.”
“You didn’t see who did it?”
“I was too busy trying not to get shot myself.”
Crossing to the table beside the dying fire, she poured a glass of brandy and went to hold it out to him. “Here.”
He took the glass from her hand, his fingers covering hers for a moment. He said, “There’s something I must tell you.”
“Tell me later. You should come to bed. You’re wet and cold.”
“No.” He set the brandy aside and reached to draw her into his arms. “I’ve put it off too long already.”
She felt his hands slide down her back to rest on her hips, holding her—but not too close.
He said, “I first fell in love with Kat Boleyn when she was sixteen and I was just down from Oxford. Hendon grumbled about it, although if truth be told, I think he expected some such thing. It’s not exactly unusual for a young man to have an opera dancer or an actress in keeping. What he didn’t expect was that I’d want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
“You don’t need to tell me—”
“No, please, hear me out. When I told him I’d asked Kat to marry me, he flew into a rage and swore I wouldn’t see another penny from the estates until he was dead. I told him I didn’t care.” A sad smile touched his lips. “The world well lost for love and all that.”
A flash of lightning lit up the room with a throbbing blue glow chased by a rumble of thunder. She waited.
After a moment, he said, “What I didn’t know was that Hendon went behind my back and saw Kat. He told her that such a marriage would ruin my life and offered her twenty thou
sand pounds if she would leave me. She threw him out of her rooms. But his words had had their effect. She decided that he was right—that if she truly loved me, then she’d let me go—for my sake. So she told me she had no intention of marrying a pauper, and since my father was standing firm on his threat to cut me off, she wanted nothing more to do with me.”
“Oh, Sebastian,” Hero whispered. “How . . . fiercely noble of her.”
He sucked in a deep breath that flared his nostrils. “That’s when I bought my commission and left England. I wasn’t exactly trying to get myself killed, but I wouldn’t have minded terribly if it had happened. When I came back to London some six years later, I thought I’d managed to put it all behind me.”
“Until you saw her again,” said Hero softly, although what she really wanted to say was, Why? Why are you telling me this now?
He nodded. “Eventually I found out the truth about what had happened all those years ago—that she had lied to drive me away from her. I asked her again to marry me, but she still refused. She said nothing had really changed, that she loved me too much to allow me to ruin myself by marrying a woman off the stage. In my arrogance, I was convinced I could change her mind, eventually. Only . . .”
“Then you discovered she was Hendon’s daughter.”
She watched him reach for his drink and down half the glass in one long pull. The tension in the air was like an unnatural hum that had nothing to do with the storm.
He said, “I knew that in all fairness, I couldn’t blame Hendon for the blood relationship between them—after all, he was the one who’d been trying to drive Kat and me apart for years. But it took me a long time to forgive him for the undisguised satisfaction he showed at finally achieving what he had worked so hard to accomplish.”
She started to say, But if you have forgiven him, then why are you still estranged from him? Only, something in his face made her hold her peace.
He drained his glass and went to pour himself another brandy, as if he felt the need to put some distance between them. He said, “And then, last May, I discovered that in December of 1781, Hendon sailed for America on a secret mission for the King.”
Hero stared at him. Jarvis had sailed on that mission too. She tried to recall if she’d known the date of their sailing, if she knew when—
He said, “I will turn thirty next month. I assume you can do the sums?”
She watched him set aside the brandy decanter, watched him carefully replace the stopper, and understood finally what he was trying to tell her. “Are you certain Hendon’s not—”
“Yes. He tried to deny it at first, but in the end he was forced to admit the truth.”
“Do you know who—”
“No. My mother never said.” He stared at her from across the length of the room.
His mother, Hero knew, had disappeared at sea years ago, when Devlin was still a child.
Hero was suddenly aware of the fury of the storm, of the wind rattling the windowpanes in their frames and the rain pounding on the terrace paving. He said, “I would have told you before we married, had the circumstances been different. But as it was . . .”
She said, “Jarvis knew. He was on that ship with your father. So he’s always known.”
“Yes.”
Yet he hadn’t told her. Why? she wondered. Aloud, she said, “And the Bishopsgate tavern owner? Jamie Knox? Where does he fit in all this?”
“I honestly don’t know. He could conceivably be my half brother. Or a cousin, perhaps. I find it difficult to believe the resemblance between us is nothing more than a coincidence. Unfortunately, his own paternity is . . . cloudy.”
When she remained silent, he said, “I will understand if this knowledge alters your opinion of me.”
“It hasn’t lowered it, if that’s what you mean.” She drew a deep breath that shuddered her chest. “Why now? Why did you decide to tell me this now?”
“Because I realized I don’t want this secret between us anymore.”
She suddenly felt both humbled and oddly, buoyantly hopeful. “I’ve kept secrets from you,” she said quietly.
“You’ve kept your father’s secrets. There is a difference.”
Then the full implications of what he’d told her struck her. “So Kat Boleyn is not your half sister?”
“No. And Hendon knew it all along, damn his hide. He knew it, and he kept it to himself because he realized he’d finally hit upon the one sure thing that would keep us apart.”
And that, Hero now realized, was what had caused this new, intractable estrangement between the two men.
She said, “Hendon could have repudiated you years ago, but he didn’t. It could only be because he cares for you—loves you—as a father. He did what he thought was right for you.”
“Hendon did what he thought was right for the St. Cyr name and the St. Cyr bloodline. Nothing is more important to Hendon than fulfilling what he believes is owed to his heritage. Nothing.”
“But the cousin who stands behind you in succession—”
“The distant cousin who would become Viscount Devlin in my stead is in reality a vicar’s by-blow, whereas my mother was herself a St. Cyr, through her grandmother. So you see, St. Cyr blood does flow in my veins, even if it didn’t come from Hendon himself.”
“I think you do Hendon an injustice. Kat Boleyn is his daughter. If you had married her, then your child—your heir—would have been his own grandson.”
Devlin gave a soft, humorless laugh. “An actress’s son as the future Earl of Hendon? Hendon would stop at little short of murder to prevent such an abomination from ever coming to pass.”
She turned to stare out the window at the storm-thrashed garden. “Yet if Yates hangs for this murder, you could now marry Kat . . . if you weren’t married to me.”
“Hero . . .” He came to stand behind her. She was aware of his hands hovering for a moment over her shoulders without touching her. Then he turned her in his arms and drew her close. She felt his breath warm against her cheek, the beating of his heart against hers. He said, “I’ve loved Kat since I was twenty-one. There was a time I’d have sworn I could never learn to love anyone again. But . . . I was wrong.”
She touched her fingertips to his lips. “You don’t need to tell me what you think I want to hear.”
He gave her a strange, crooked smile. “I hope it is what you want to hear, because I’m telling you how I feel.”
She said, “It’s what I want to hear.”
He took her hand in his and pressed a kiss against her palm. “‘Rise up, my love, my fair one,’” he quoted softly, his features growing taut, his eyes half-lidded, intense, “‘and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.’”
A loud clap of thunder shook the room, and they laughed together.
She wrapped her other hand around his, their fingers entwining. “‘The flowers appear on the earth,’” she whispered. “‘The time of the singing of birds is come, and the vines with the tender grape give good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.’”
“I think you left out a couple of lines,” he said, pressing her back against the wall so that he could get at the ties of her dressing gown.
She brought up one bare leg to wrap around his hip and let it slide slowly, provocatively down the hard length of his thigh. “I was in a hurry,” she said, and caught his laugh with her kiss.
Chapter 45
Friday, 25 September
E
arly the next morning, Hero walked into the dining room of Jarvis House in Grosvenor Square to find her father looking over a stack of reports while consuming a solitary breakfast. Wordlessly, she closed the door in the footman’s face and leaned back against it.
“This is ominous,” said Jarvis, his gaze still fixed on the papers in his hand.
She pushed away from the door and came to stand in front of him. “You knew Devlin was not Hendon’s son, yet you chose not to tell me. Why?”
He looked up, his face—as always—inscrutable. “Under the circumstances, I saw no point. Are you suggesting it would have altered your decision to marry, had you known the details surrounding his birth?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
He dropped the report he held beside his plate and leaned back in his chair. “So Devlin finally told you himself, did he?”
“Yes.” She pulled out the chair beside him and sat. “Devlin says he doesn’t know who his father is. Do you?”
“Unfortunately, no. Believe me, I have tried over the years to discover the man’s identity. One never knows when such information might prove useful. But none of my attempts have thus far met with success.” He templed his hands before him. “Did Devlin also tell you that his mother still lives?”
“She what?”
“Omitted that little detail, did he?” Jarvis reached for his snuffbox and calmly opened it with the flick of a finger. “Oh, yes. She’s still quite alive. Although as it happens, he does not know where she is.”
Hero watched him lift a delicate pinch to one nostril. “But you do, don’t you?”
He inhaled sharply and smiled. “I think perhaps I shouldn’t answer that question.”
Her gaze met his. “You just did.”
It occurred to Sebastian that the more he learned about Daniel Eisler, the more he found it a wonder that someone hadn’t killed the nasty bastard years before.
Eisler’s life had been populated by an endless stream of desperate men and women upon whom he inflicted financial ruin, sexual degradation, and burning humiliation. Sebastian knew the names of some of his victims—but only some. The number of people who’d wished the man dead must have been beyond counting. And Sebastian had less than twenty-four hours to find the one who’d finally given in to his—or her—lethal urges.