When Maidens Mourn (35 page)

“Do you know who I am?” asked Devlin’s new Viscountess in a husky voice that could have earned her a fortune on the stage, had she been born to a less elevated position in society.

“I know.”

By silent consent, the two women turned to walk toward Oxford Market, pushing past a Negro band and shouting costermongers hawking everything from apples to fried eels. After a moment, Kat said, “I assume you have sought me out for a reason.”

“I wonder if you know someone nearly killed Devlin last night.”

Kat felt a quick stab of fear that left her chest aching, her breath tight. “Is he all right?”

“He is. But the man who was standing beside him is dead, shot through the heart from a distance of some three hundred yards.”

Kat knew of only one man with the ability to make such a shot. Two, if she counted Devlin. But she kept that knowledge to herself.

The Viscountess said, “I believe you are familiar with a tavern owner named Jamie Knox.”

“I have heard of him,” Kat said warily.

The Viscountess glanced over at her. “I should tell you that I know quite a bit about Russell Yates and his various…activities.” She paused, then added, “My information does not come from Devlin.”

Kat understood only too well what that meant. Kat’s own encounters with this woman’s father, Lord Jarvis, had been brutal, terrifying, and nearly fatal. He had promised her torture and a heinous death, and while that threat had abated, it had not disappeared. Kat knew he was simply waiting for the right opportunity to strike. She had to call upon all of her years of theatrical training to keep her voice sounding calm. “And?”

“I gather this Knox is one of your husband’s…shall we call them ‘associates’?”

Kat drew up abruptly and swung to face her. “Exactly what are you trying to say?”

The Viscountess met her gaze. “I think Knox is a danger to Devlin. I also think you know more about the man than you are willing to let on—even to Devlin.”

Kat was aware of the darkening clouds pressing down on them,
promising more rain. She could feel the dampness in the breeze, smell the earthy scent of the vegetables in the market stalls.

When she remained silent, the Viscountess said, “I can understand the problems that are created by divided loyalties.”

Kat gave a startled laugh and turned to continue walking. “Well, I suppose that’s one more thing you and I have in common, is it not?”

“My father at least is not trying to kill Devlin.”

Kat glanced over at her. “Can you be so certain?”

Something flared in the other woman’s eyes, quickly hidden. They continued along the side of the square for a moment; then the Viscountess said, “I don’t know exactly what happened to cause the estrangement between you and Devlin last winter. But I believe you still care for him—at least enough not to want to see him hurt. Or dead.”

“I think you underestimate your husband.”

“He’s mortal.”

Kat stopped again. The wind was flapping the draping on the market stalls, scuttling handbills across the wet cobbles. She said, “Why did you come here?”

A gleam of unexpected amusement shone in the woman’s eyes. “I should have thought that was rather obvious.”

“My God,” whispered Kat as understanding suddenly dawned. “You love him.”

Rather than respond, the Viscountess simply tilted her head and turned away.

“Why are you so afraid to admit it?” Kat called after her. “You don’t want to acknowledge it even to yourself, do you?”

She thought the woman would keep walking. Instead, the Viscountess paused to look back at her. “I would have expected you to understand that better than anyone.”

“He is no longer my lover,” said Kat, knowing exactly what the other woman meant. “He hasn’t been, for nearly a year.”

“No. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t still in love with you…as you are with him.”

“Devlin will always love me,” said Kat. “No matter who else he comes to love. He doesn’t love easily, but once he lets someone into his heart, they are there forever. It’s simply the way he is. It’s the same reason he will always love Hendon, however much he might wish it were otherwise.”

Kat saw the puzzlement in the other woman’s eyes, and she thought,
Oh, Sebastian; you haven’t told her. Why haven’t you told her?

Aloud, Kat said, “Have you ever seen Jamie Knox?”

“No; why?”

Because if you were to see him,
thought Kat,
you would know.
But all she said was, “You’re right; he is dangerous. For your sake as well as Devlin’s, you would do well to stay away from him.”

With any other woman, the warning might have worked. But this woman was Jarvis’s daughter. Kat watched a thoughtful gleam light the Viscountess’s eyes.

And knew she’d just made a terrible mistake.

Sebastian left his sister Amanda’s house and drove through the slackening rain to the Strand.

He paused at a butcher shop near Villers Street to buy a side of ham, then continued on to the half-cleared stretch of land that fell away steeply from the street to the site of the new bridgehead. The river was running swollen and sullen with the rain, a pockmarked expanse of muddy water that frothed and boiled around the new piers. Against the dull gray sky, the soaring arches of the bridge itself stood out pale and stark.

Reining in, he let his gaze drift over the work site. Far to the left rose the massive neoclassical elevation of the new Somerset House, bustling now with its usual assortment of functionaries; to the right lay the Savoy Chapel and its burial ground, the sole surviving
relics of the vast medieval palace that had once stood here. In the dreary light of day, the rain-washed expanse of churned mud, sodden weeds, and broken walls looked forlorn and empty.

The night before, in the hour or more that had elapsed between when he sent word of Arceneaux’s shooting to Bow Street and the arrival of Sir Henry, Sebastian had scoured these ruins in an increasingly wide but ultimately futile search for a certain scruffy black and brown dog with a white blaze down his nose and a weakness for ham. He wasn’t entirely certain what he thought he could do today that he hadn’t done the previous night, but he felt compelled to try.

“If you were an injured dog,” he said to Tom, “where would you go?”

The tiger screwed up his face with the labor of thought, his gaze, like Sebastian’s, studying the rain-drenched riverbank. After a moment, he said, “Ain’t we just downriver from the Adelphi?”

“We are.”

“Well, if that Frenchy lieutenant used to ’ang around Miss Tennyson and them two boys, then I reckon maybe ’is little dog’d go there—if ’e could make it that far. Plenty o’ places to ’ide in them vaults under the terrace.”

Sebastian reached for the ham. “Tom, you are a genius.”

I
gnoring the curious stares and ribald comments that followed him, Sebastian plunged deep into the dank, shadowy subterranean world of the Adelphi.

“Chien,” he called, unwrapping the ham. “
À moi
, Chien. Chien?”

He tromped through the warehouses of the wine merchants, their owners’ angry shouts and threats following him; he scrambled over dusty coal piles and penetrated deep into the dank recesses of the wharf’s vast stables.

“Chien?”

He stood with one hand on his hip, watched the dust motes drift lazily in the gloom, breathed in the odor of manure and moldy hay. “Chien!” he bellowed, his voice echoing through the cavernous, high-vaulted space.

Blowing out a long, frustrated breath, he turned to leave…

And heard a faint, plaintive whimper.

“Can you help him?” Sebastian asked.

Paul Gibson stared down at the dog that lay stretched out and
panting on the table in the front room of his surgery. “Well, I don’t suppose dogs are
that
much different from people, when it comes right down to it.” He probed the bloody wound in the dog’s shoulder with gentle fingers and frowned. “Leave him with me. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian, turning toward the door.

“But if word of this ever reaches my esteemed colleagues at St. Thomas’s,” Gibson called after him, “I’ll never forgive you.”

The ancient, soot-stained church of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate squatted like a ragged wet hen in the midst of its swollen graveyard.

Wearing a plain cloak with the hood drawn up against the drizzle, Hero wandered amongst the overgrown churchyard’s gray, lichen-covered headstones and broken tombs, her gaze narrowing as she studied the yard of the gable-ended public house that backed onto the ancient priory grounds. The sky had taken on the color of old lead, the leafy boughs of the elms overhead hanging heavy with the weight of the day’s rain. She could easily trace the line of the Roman wall that Gabrielle had once come here to examine; it ran from the rear of the churchyard along the inn’s court to disappear between the Black Devil and the decrepit structure beside it.

So absorbed was she in her study of the ancient masonry that it was a moment before she became aware of a tall gentleman dressed all in black walking toward her. He wore black trousers tucked into high black boots, a black coat, and a black waistcoat. Only his shirt was white, the high points of his collar standing out stark against the darkness of his cravat. He had the lean, loose-limbed carriage of a soldier and the grace of a born athlete. His hair was dark, darker even than Devlin’s, although he had Devlin’s high cheekbones and fine facial structure. But it was his eyes that instantly drew and held her attention. And she knew then why Kat Boleyn
had warned her away from this man—understood exactly what the actress had been trying to keep her from seeing—and guessing.

“I know who you are,” he said, pausing some half a dozen feet before her.

“Then you have the advantage of me.”

He swept her a bow tinged with just a hint of mockery. “I beg your pardon. Please allow me to introduce myself. Mr. Jamie Knox, at your service.”

His accent was not that of a gentleman.

“Ah,” she said noncommittally.

He straightened, his gently molded mouth curving into a smile that did not touch those strange yellow eyes. “Why are you here?”

“What makes you assume I am here for any reason other than to study the architecture and monuments of St. Helen’s? Did you know it was once the parish church of William Shakespeare?”

“No. But I don’t think you’re here because of some long-dead scribbler. Are you spying on us, then?”

“And if I were to do so, would I see anything interesting?”

His smile broadened unexpectedly, a genuine if somewhat sardonic smile, and for a moment he looked so much like Devlin that the resemblance nearly took her breath. He said, “I see you left your carriage up the lane. That was not wise.”

She raised one eyebrow in a deliberately haughty expression. “Are you threatening me?”

He laughed. “Me? Ach, no. But the neighborhood’s not the best. You never know what might happen to a young gentlewoman such as yourself, all alone on a wet, gloomy day such as this.”

She slipped her right hand into the reticule that hung heavily against her. “I am better able to defend myself than you may perhaps realize.”