Why Mermaids Sing (16 page)

C
harles, Lord Jarvis leaned forward to study the row of hieroglyphs emblazoned against the brilliantly painted red and green tones of the sarcophagus. “Late seventh or sixth century
B.C
. wouldn’t you say?”

He turned to the curator at his elbow, a painfully thin man whose shrunken skin and bony features reminded Jarvis of the Egyptian mummies the scholar had dedicated his life to studying. “I’d say so, yes,” agreed the curator, clearing his throat.

The sarcophagus was part of a shipment of Egyptian artifacts only recently arrived at the British Museum, and Lord Jarvis was amongst the first in London to see them. His passion for Egyptology was one of the few distractions from statecraft Jarvis allowed himself.

He turned to the enigmatic statue of a cat displayed on a nearby plinth, its eyes, ears, and collar picked out in gold. “Ah. Lovely. Just lovely.”

The sound of footsteps echoing through the empty corridors brought the curator’s head around, his features twisted by a look of annoyance mingled with nervousness. When Jarvis requested a private showing, he did not like to be disturbed. “Sir. The museum does not open to the public again until Octo—”

“Leave us,” said Viscount Devlin, pausing in the doorway to the chamber, his fierce yellow gaze focusing on the curator.

The curator opened and closed his mouth several times, then scuttled away.

Jarvis uttered a bored sigh. “I trust you have a good reason for this interruption, Lord Devlin.”

He was already turning back to the sarcophagus when the Viscount moved, so rapidly as to be but a blur at the periphery of Jarvis’s vision.

Jarvis was a large man, tall and bulky with years of comfortable living. Yet by reaching across to grab a handful of Jarvis’s waistcoat, Devlin managed to bring him spinning back around. Jarvis saw the flash of a blade, felt cold steel at his throat.

“Very well,” he said dryly. “You have my full attention. Now what is this about?”

“I know you’ve threatened Kat Boleyn,” said Devlin, his lips peeling back from his teeth as he spit out each word. “And I know why. But if you want the name of Napoleon’s new spymaster in London, you’re going to have to find another way to get it.”

“If you think—” Jarvis began.

Devlin cut him off with a quick jerk of the knife that caused the edge of the blade to nick Jarvis’s flesh. “No. The matter is not open for discussion. I’m here to tell you the new situation. All you do is listen.”

Jarvis felt rage boil up within him, hot and impotent. He held it in check.

“By this time next week, Kat Boleyn will be my wife. You make a move to harm her or threaten her again in any way and I’ll kill you. It’s as simple as that. You know I’m a man of my word, and you know I’ll do it. I trust I make myself clear.”

Jarvis returned the man’s hard stare.

“Of course,” Devlin continued, “you could try to have me killed. But I don’t think you’re that stupid. The consequences for you if your lackey were to fail would be fatal.”

With one smooth motion, Devlin withdrew the knife from Jarvis’s throat and stepped back. It was with difficulty that Jarvis resisted the urge to bring his hands up to his throat.

The Viscount was already crossing the room. Jarvis stopped him before he reached the door. “You would do that? You would marry that traitorous whore?”

The Viscount’s hand moved. Jarvis felt a passing breath of air, followed by an ugly
thwunk
as the blade sank into the wood of the sarcophagus behind him.

“Call her that again,” said Devlin, “and the next knife bites flesh.”

Sebastian found her in the shadows near the stage door. The air was heavy with the scent of dust and greasepaint. She had the hood of her cloak drawn up as if she were cold. Her pale face and haunted eyes were those of a woman with no hope, no future.

He walked up to her and put his hands on her shoulders. What she must have seen in his eyes caused the little color she had left in her face to drain away.

“I know why you’ve been afraid,” he said. “It’s over now. Jarvis won’t bother you again.”

He felt her tremble beneath his hands. “God save us. Please tell me you didn’t kill him.”

“Not yet. But I think I’ve convinced him of the folly of threatening my wife.”

“Your
wife
?”

“I’ve found a bishop who’s agreed to marry us by special license on Monday evening at seven. I pushed for sooner, but he insists he has other engagements.”

“You can’t marry me.”

“You’ve been saying that for months, and I’ve respected it. But no longer. This is why you refused me before, isn’t it? Because of your arrangement with the French.”

She drew in a breath that shuddered her chest. “Oh, God. Partially. But only partially, Devlin. You know what I am, what I have been. An actress. A whore—”

He pressed his fingers to her lips. “Don’t. Don’t say it.”

She stared up at him. “Why not? It’s the truth. Would you have me live a lie?”

“No. I would have you live a life defined not by what you’ve been, but by what you are.”

“My past is a part of what I am.”

“A part. But only a part.”

He slid his hands down her shoulders to capture her hands in his. “Marry me, Kat. It’s the only way I can truly keep you safe. As Kat Boleyn, actress, you will always be vulnerable. As the future Countess of Hendon, no one would dare move against you.”

“Your father—”

“Will adjust in time. Or not.”

Her hands twisted beneath his. “How can I knowingly cause an estrangement between you?”

He gave a wry smile. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s already an estrangement between us.”

“Society—”

“Society be damned. You think I care what Society might think of me?”

“No. I know you do not. But I care.”

“Why?”

“This marriage would ruin you.”

“Losing you would ruin me. I’m not taking no for an answer, Kat,” he added quietly when she only stared at him with wide, bruised-looking eyes. “I listened to you before and almost lost you. I can’t risk losing you again.”

“You think this marriage will protect me from Jarvis?”

“Yes. Nothing I could do or say would signal to him more clearly my intention to keep you safe.”

She was silent for so long he knew a quiet blooming of fear. Then she swallowed hard, her chin jerking up. “It’s true, you know. I did pass information to the French. For years.”

“Do you still?”

“No. Not since February.”

“Then I don’t care.”

Her mouth parted silently, her forehead knitting with confusion. He knew she couldn’t understand him, would never be able to understand how his experiences in the war had affected him in this way.

He ran one thumb across the back of her hand. “You did it for Ireland, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then how could you think I would hold your love of your country against you?” He brought her hands to his lips. “I’m frightened by the fact you put yourself at risk. And I’m hurt because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth, even before the threat from Jarvis. But my love for you is undiminished, Kat. It always will be.”

A tear escaped from the edge of one eye to roll silently down her cheek. “I don’t deserve this kind of love,” she whispered. “This kind of devotion.”

He gave her a tender, crooked smile. “I intend to spend a lifetime convincing you that you do. The notice of our approaching nuptials will be in the morning papers.”

A shadow crossed her face. “Then there’s something else you must do tonight.”

“What is that?”

“Tell your father.”

T
here was a heavy mist that night that brought with it the crisp scent of outlying, newly plowed fields and the distant briny hint of the North Sea. Finding his father gone from his Grosvenor Square home, Sebastian walked the boisterous length of St. James’s, a purposeful and solitary figure. The street rang with the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, the laughter of gentlemen lurching along the footpath in evening dress or calling to one another from passing curricles. He visited first one gentleman’s club, then the next, until he came upon the Earl of Hendon in the reading room of White’s, a book open on one knee, a glass of brandy on the table at his elbow.

Sebastian paused in the doorway. His father sat with his head bowed, his attention all for the volume before him. Hendon had no patience for the likes of Plato or Plautus, Euripides or Virgil. But he had great respect for the works of the Roman statesmen, from Cicero and Pliny the Elder to Julius Caesar himself, and he often spent his evenings thus, reading. In the gentle pool of golden light cast by the oil lamp beside him, he looked much like the father of Sebastian’s childhood, in the years before his brothers’ deaths and his mother’s disappearance.

Remembering those days now, Sebastian felt a pain building in his chest and sought to ease it with a sigh. The relationship between the Earl of Hendon and his last surviving son had never been a comfortable one. But through it all—through the anger and hurt and confusion—Sebastian’s love for his father had endured.

And so it was with a heavy weight of sorrow and no small measure of apprehension that Sebastian crossed the carpet to his father’s side. “Come walk with me. There’s something we must discuss.”

Glancing up, Hendon met his son’s eyes for one long moment, then slipped a marker in his book and stood. “I’ll get my cloak and walking stick.”

Side by side, they walked lamp-lit pavements gleaming with damp, a heavy silence between them. At last Sebastian said, “I wanted to tell you in person that I’ve sent a notice to the
Morning Post
.”

Hendon’s gaze swiveled toward him, and Sebastian knew by the narrowing of his father’s eyes and the sudden slackness of his jaw that Hendon understood what Sebastian was about to say.

The Earl’s voice was an explosion of sound that startled a dappled gray between the shafts of a passing hackney. “Good God. Don’t tell me you’ve actually done it.”

“Not yet. Monday evening at seven, by special license. I don’t expect your blessing. But I would wish for your acceptance.”

“My acceptance?” Hendon’s lips twisted into a snarl. “Never.”

Sebastian set his jaw. “Nevertheless, it will happen whether you accept it or not. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“I swear to God, I’ll disinherit you. All you’ll get from me is what is not within my power to withhold from you. The title and the entailed estates.”

“I expected as much.”

“Did you, by God?”

Sebastian studied his father’s dark, contorted face. “And would you respect me, I wonder, if I allowed such a consideration to dissuade me?”

Hendon’s fist tightened around his walking stick. Then, to Sebastian’s surprise, the Earl’s jowly features softened for one brief instant. It was as if the fury momentarily ebbed, allowing a glimpse of the hurt and disappointment that fed it.

“Sebastian,” said his father, disconcerting him, for it was rare that Hendon called him by his given name rather than his title. “For God’s sake, think this through.”

“You think I have not? This is what I have wanted for years. As well you know.”

Hendon’s features hardened. “I’ll never regret what I did seven years ago.”

Sebastian met his father’s fierce gaze. “You did what you thought was right. I understand that now.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. But that doesn’t mean it
was
right. You were wrong about Kat—as she showed when she rejected the money you offered her.”

“Was I wrong about her? Then why the devil has she agreed to this? Doesn’t she understand what this marriage will do to you? For God’s sake, Devlin! Consider the consequences. You’ll be an outcast from everything familiar to you. Turned away from your clubs. Shunned by your friends. And for what? The love of a woman? Do you think your love so strong that it can survive the realization that you’ve allowed it to destroy your life?”

“Yes,” said Sebastian tightly.

Hendon made an angry swiping gesture through the air with one gloved hand. “You think yourself the first man to love a woman who was forbidden him? I know what you’re going through, Devlin. You think you’ll never get over it. But you will. You will.”

Sebastian stared at his father. “You? What woman did you love?”

“Never mind that,” said Hendon gruffly, as if he regretted having said so much. “It was long ago.”

They were on Grosvenor Street now. Sebastian paused at the base of the steps leading up to Hendon House. “Obviously not so long ago that you have forgotten it.”

Hendon gripped the railing beside him. “If you insist on going through with this, I swear to God, I’ll never darken your doorway again.”

Sebastian drew a deep breath that did nothing to ease the ache in his chest. “At seven o’clock Monday night, I will make Kat Boleyn my wife. If it causes an estrangement between us, I am sorry for that. Good night, Father.”

“O
h, Sebastian. I am so sorry,” said Kat later that night, when he told her of his interview with his father.

She lay in his arms, her glorious auburn hair spilling over his naked shoulder and down her back. He tangled his fingers in her hair, smoothing it away from her face. “It could have been worse.”

“Do you think he’ll change his mind?”

“No.”

She put her hands on his shoulders, rising so that he looked up into her face. And what he saw there, for just an instant, brought a yawning uneasiness to the pit of his stomach.

Then her head dipped, her lips parting as she kissed him. “Make love to me,” she whispered.

He swept his hands down her back, pulling her tight against him. “Every day for the rest of my life.”

Sometime later, he awoke to the sounds of the night, the rumbling of a night soil cart on Harwich Street, the distant cry of the watchman. He lay for a few moments wondering what had awakened him, letting his gaze drift over the curving cheek and gently parted lips of the sleeping woman beside him. Smiling, he was just drifting off to sleep again when an oddly muffled
crack
from the back of the house made him open his eyes.

The servants had long since retired to their attic bedrooms. There should have been no one downstairs. He sat up, his breath coming hard and quick as he listened to the distant creak of floorboards, the thump of someone bumping into unseen furniture in the dark.

Sebastian slid from the bed, his bare feet noiseless as he crept toward the door. Pausing at the fireplace, he selected a heavy poker from the rack of tools. Behind him, Kat stirred, then stilled.

Slowly, he opened the door to the hall. The house lay in darkness, the heavy drapes at the windows blocking the faint glow of the waning moon and the streetlamps outside. He could hear footsteps now, on the stairs from the ground to the first floor, the scuff of boots, the rubbing of cloth. Two men, Sebastian decided, maybe three.

He hadn’t expected Jarvis to move so quickly, so directly, against them. The poker gripped in both hands like a cricket bat, Sebastian crept to the top of the stairs, then paused. He’d have preferred to fight the intruders on the first floor, farther away from Kat, but he didn’t have enough time to make it safely down the stairs and take up a position. And so he waited and let them come to him. It wasn’t until he felt a draft of cool air move across his skin that he realized he was utterly naked.

The intruders reached the first-floor hall and turned toward the steps to the second floor, coming into his line of vision. They moved carefully, like men groping blindly in the darkness. But Sebastian had the night vision of a cat. He saw two men, one of medium height and build and wearing a slouch hat, the other taller, bulkier. Both carried stout cudgels. It seemed a crude form of attack for a man of Jarvis’s ilk. But then, Jarvis would want to make the attack look random, the work of housebreakers surprised in the act.

They were on the second set of stairs now, the smaller man in the lead, the other some two or three steps behind him. Sebastian tightened his grip on the poker and waited. He waited until the first man reached the top stair. Lunging out of the shadows, Sebastian swung the poker with full force against the side of the intruder’s head.

The impact made a sickening popping sound, iron smashing through flesh and bone. The man himself uttered only a small sigh, his cudgel clattering to the floor as the force of the blow spun him around and sent him toppling backward to thump down one stair after the other.

His companion flattened himself against the wall, his eyes wide. For one brief instant, Sebastian looked into the man’s white face. Then the man screamed and dropped his club. Whirling, he bolted back down the stairs.

Sebastian chased after him, leaping over the bloody, lifeless sprawl of the first housebreaker near the base of the stairs. The second intruder hit the landing on the fly, then shot down the stairs to the ground floor. From overhead came the sound of Kat’s voice. “Devlin? Where are you? What is it?”

Sebastian kept running. The intruder careened through the dining room, knocking over chairs, crashing into the sideboard. Sebastian reached the dining room doorway just in time to see the man dive through the broken window to the terrace.

“Devlin?”

“Call for the watch,” Sebastian shouted up the stairs. He leapt over an upended chair in his path, then skidded to a halt beside the open window, wary of blundering into an ambush. But he could see the intruder already crossing the garden, running for the back gate. Still carrying the poker, Sebastian stepped gingerly through the broken window and dropped to the terrace.

“Watch!”
he cried, raising his voice. “Watch, I say!” Pelting across the terrace to the garden, he saw the intruder jerk open the gate and dart through it.

Sebastian chased him up the mews, the cobbles smooth and slick beneath his bare feet, the night air cold against his naked skin. The glow of a hastily lit lantern showed from the rooms over the stables. A second light flickered to life across the way.

“Watch!”
Sebastian cried again as the man ducked through the arch and swerved left.

Still gripping the poker, Sebastian erupted through the arch, then hesitated. The street before him stretched quiet and empty in the misty lamplight. Pursing his lips, he blew out his breath and said, “Son of a bitch.”

The shrill of a whistle brought his head around. The bulky figure of the neighborhood’s night watchman blundered around the corner from Harwich Street, his whistle gripped between his teeth, his lantern swinging wildly. “What’s this? What’s this? What’s this?” he cried, breathing heavily. “I say, young man. Your clothes! If a lady were to chance to see you—” He broke off, his eyes opening wide with recognition. “Goodness.
My lord
. ’Tis you.”

“Two men broke into Miss Boleyn’s house. I chased one of them here. Did you see where he went?”

The watchman lifted his gaze to the rooftops and kept it there. “I heard running footsteps, my lord. But I never saw anyone.”

“Check up and down the street. He may have ducked down someone’s area steps, or be hiding in the shadows of a doorway.”

The watchman kept his gaze carefully averted. “Yes, my lord.”

Sebastian started to turn away, but hesitated long enough to say, “By the way, there’s a dead body at Miss Boleyn’s house. You’ll need to send someone to deal with it.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Sebastian swung back toward Kat’s house. As he crossed the garden, he could see the house ablaze with lights, hear a crescendo of female voices coming from inside. Climbing through the window again, he rummaged through the sideboard until he found a tablecloth to drape around his hips.

He found Kat, Elspeth, and the cook clustered in the first-floor hall. The man Sebastian had hit with the poker lay near the base of the stairs from the second floor. Blood splattered the walls of the stairwell and the banister, and soaked into the carpet. Sebastian took one look at what was left of the man’s head and wished he’d thought to bring another tablecloth.

Kat came to stand beside him, her hands wrapping around his arm as she stared down at the man at her feet. Her face was white, but he suspected it was more from anger than fear. “It’s Jarvis, isn’t it? He sent these men.”

Sebastian forced himself to take another look at the face of the man he’d killed. He studied the even features, the fan of smile lines at the edges of the widely staring eyes, and knew a flicker of surprise. “No. It’s the man who threatened me outside my aunt’s house last Monday.” Hunkering down, he searched quickly through the man’s pockets, but found nothing of interest. “This had nothing to do with Jarvis. Lord Stanton, perhaps, or Sir Humphrey Carmichael, or perhaps someone else who doesn’t like the questions I’ve been asking. But not Jarvis.”

“How many were there?”

“Two. The other one got away.” He turned to head upstairs. “I need to get some clothes on. The watch should be here soon to deal with this fellow.”

She followed him, carefully lifting the hem of her dressing gown as she stepped over the bloody corpse on her stairs. “You’re certain it’s the same man you saw before?”

“Yes.” He pulled his shirt over his head and reached for his breeches. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Where are you going?”

“To have a little talk with Lord Stanton.”

The sun was still a mere promise on the horizon when Sebastian popped the lock on the library window of Lord Stanton’s Park Street town house and dropped inside.

He moved easily through the darkened house, hugging the wall on his way up the stairs to keep the steps from creaking. Lady Stanton had been advised by her doctors to retire to the country in an attempt to ease her prostration of grief. Only one of the bedrooms on the second floor—an opulent chamber overlooking the rear garden—was occupied.

Lord Stanton slept on his back in a gilded tester bed with red velvet hangings. Beneath the figured red coverlet, his heavy chest rose and fell rhythmically, his lips parting with each exhalation. Snagging a lyre-backed chair, Sebastian brought it, reversed, close to the bed’s edge and straddled the seat. He pressed the muzzle of his small flintlock pistol into the hollow beneath the man’s jawbone and waited.

The rhythmic breathing stopped on a strangled gasp. Stanton’s eyes flew open, then fixed, wide, on the pistol.

Sebastian showed his teeth in a smile. “I trust you can see well enough to know what this is?”

Stanton nodded, his tongue flicking out to moisten his lips.

“Someone tried to kill me tonight. Not just me, but my future wife, as well. That was a serious error.”

Stanton’s voice was admirably strong and controlled. “If they told you I hired them, they lied.”

Sebastian frowned. “Odd. I don’t recall mentioning that there was more than one of them. But as it happens, there were two. One is now a bloody mess on Miss Boleyn’s staircase. The other, regrettably, escaped.”

Something flashed in the Baron’s eyes, then was gone.

“This is the second time in the past few days that someone has tried to kill me. I must say, it’s getting rather fatiguing.”

“You’re obviously making yourself unpopular.”

“So it would seem. I keep thinking about our encounter in Whitehall the other day. You struck me at the time as a man with a secret, a terrible secret he was willing to do almost anything to keep from becoming known.”

Stanton stared back at him, his lips pressed tight, his narrowed eyes radiating hatred and contained fury.

Sebastian leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t know it all yet, but I’m getting close. At this point, I’m thinking it doesn’t matter whether it was you or Sir Humphrey Carmichael or someone I haven’t even met yet who sent those men into Miss Boleyn’s house. But if any of you threatens her again in any way, you’re dead. It’s as simple as that.”

“You’re mad.”

“I doubt you’re the first to think so.” Sebastian withdrew the gun and stood.

“I could call the watch on you,” said Stanton, his fists tightening on the covers at his chest.

Sebastian smiled and backed toward the door. “You could. But that would direct attention precisely where you don’t want it, now, wouldn’t it?”